RTFC Ticketing Fiasco Story - My Side

[Kitsun]

TLDR: Got banned and tickets revoked before I was notified that it was going to happen or that I did anything wrong. 1st email from lockout said it was for "scalping or funny business" (funny business = ticket botting, I think). I replied with fact I did no scalping and described method employed for ticket purchasing. Reason changed to "too many tickets" and "circumventing trial account periods of new accounts." Responded; more than I bought more than 1 ticket. I never heard of a rule where you can not pay for an account to buy an event ticket.

So, it was me that got my tickets revoked and account suspension. I waited to say anything because I had no idea what was going on and wanted to see what the response from lockout was. Yes, I purchased a lot of tickets (3 + 5 + 8; Run 1, 2 and 3 respectively). But it was done manually(my method is described below) with the help from my real life brother. So if you were hoping that Simutronics listened to your pleas, did investigation, research and due diligence in finding someone that botted for tickets to resell or hoard to rake in RL cash… they did not. The reason for my suspension and the tickets being revoked is changing since they already fired off the gun and they can't take it back.

Note: I got this email AFTER the Wednesday re-sale was announced and completed. I was fully locked out when he posted that the botter had tried for one of the re-sale tickets. Yes, I got one of those too because in my mind, I had done nothing wrong and it never occurred to me that it was my tickets going up for sale. Notice that I only got one of those because my brother was already occupied for the night.



When the Return to Corasine Field event was announced, one of the things mentioned was that no scalping or funny business was going to be allowed concerning the tickets.* Your actions in this round of tickets clearly violated both the letter and spirit of that.

As you have already attended the event multiple times in the prior weeks, all seven of the accounts have been closed.* All the charges have been refunded.* All of the tickets have been released for sale to others and by the time you see this will have been sold.

Your primary account, XXXXXX, is officially warned for Disruptive Behavior in this matter, and all your active accounts are to be suspended for 30 days.* The accounts will not be billed during that period.

This is something that was expressly stated would not be allowed.* Additionally, your actions to procure the tickets constituted a Denial of Service Attack on the Box Office system, blocking anyone else from getting to the purchase page to get a ticket.* This is completely unacceptable.

Your actions were in direct opposition to the stated rules for the event, and blocked others from joining.* This lockout may not be appealed, it originated with the head of all games and has full concurrence with all departments.

Should you have questions on this, I will endeavor to respond to them in a timely manner.*

Respectfully,
GameMaster Sanguious
Lockout Department
Simutronics Corporation


There are a number of things that struck me as wrong in that email. Mainly that since I know I didn't bot, he did not complete any investigation into how many requests were hitting his server from my brother and my computers. Completely ignores the fact that we were typically middle of the pack in purchasing most of the time(I was more late middle, my brother usually got a ticket in the high single digits). So either I wrote a really bad program or oddly the program is behaving a hell of a lot like a human.

The real irony about the situation(I am gleeful I get to use the word irony in proper context) is that of all the people that have sold tickets, sold account access with a ticket, sold off the service to purchase a ticket, etc. I am not one of the scalpers by any definition. I helped some friends acquire tickets but I did not ask for nor receive anything from them for the aid. I didn't even attend the event with the intent to sell off services for a profit. Mostly I gave away services and just said, "Give me what you think is fair." Sometimes they gave me coins, other times they thanked me and went on their way.

My response details out some of the other points that I found wrong with his email.



Hello Sanguious,

1. I did not scalp any tickets. I do not know how you define "funny business". The only thing I did was buy many tickets. A good number of other people have also purchased more than a single ticket.

2. Noted on the refunds. Is it for the ticket, account monthly subscription, premium upjump, extra character slots as well?

3. I would like to know under what rule am I getting hit for Disruptive Behavior.

4. I do not understand what you believe I did that was expressly not allowed. I did not use a program to purchase tickets. I had my real life brother helping me purchase tickets which is how I obtained two on each release window. I noticed that the tickets went on sale at EXACTLY the stated times and it seemed automated. I open up a separate browser window to time.gov and watch when the timer turns exactly. At that second, I hit the BUY TICKET button and then the PURCHASE. We sized the text down so there is no scrolling involved, the accounts have no extra characters to minimize mouse movement, we both play video games so our mouse speed is fast. Did you check IP logs of any kind?* Because we probably spammed the box office less than the other users who kept refreshing the signup page.

5. What rule did I violate that warranted the revoking of my tickets, an official warning and account suspensions? Because the ticket purchasing was done with the manual method described above. Was it the volume of tickets? Because if it was meant to be one per person, then there are many more violators.

If you check my primary accounts, I run a team of six post-capped characters. I started with a trio back in December of 2000. I try to attend every major Gemstone event with every active account possible as I try to gear them all out equally. I do not try to churn services for money. My mage and empath are still using the decently crit padded leathers I had made back during the very first CCF runs in 2009. This was touted as being one of the only times in a decade we'd see services like this; so I went ahead and wanted to make sure I could get what I wanted through making more accounts and attending to get the things I want for characters to use for the next decade.

I will gladly answer any questions you have about the method used for procurement. I would really like to clear up the issue.


Below is an IM log I had with a friend on July 1st:
================================================== ===

*** XXXXXXXX (8:49:07 PM): what happened to being done after one run!
****kitsunx (9:06:10 PM): I had way too much fun to let it go after one ><
****XXXXXXXX (9:06:14 PM): hehe
****XXXXXXXX (9:06:27 PM): did you upgrade just for the extra chance? I didn't think you ran so many premies
****kitsunx (9:06:51 PM): Upgraded 3 just to try for tickets.
****kitsunx (9:06:58 PM): Although I think I have the method nailed down tight.
****XXXXXXXX (9:07:19 PM): what do you do? I'm gonna try to get Rishi a ticket tomorrow night
****kitsunx (9:07:40 PM): Who is Rishi?!
****XXXXXXXX (9:07:44 PM): Kembal
****kitsunx (9:07:56 PM): Keep time.gov open on a different yet visible page.
****kitsunx (9:08:07 PM): Keep on the event page with the signup button
****kitsunx (9:08:16 PM): Click on it as soon as it hits the mark.
****kitsunx (9:08:36 PM): It has been precision timed so far.
****XXXXXXXX (9:08:57 PM):did you use your brother again?
****kitsunx (9:08:57 PM):First Person Shooter skills help. My bro scored the third ticket just by having super accuracy.
****kitsunx (9:08:59 PM):Yeah.
****kitsunx (9:11:21 PM):I walked into my bro's room after the tickets released. She him turned away from the keyboard, his head slightly down and he's holding his chest.
****kitsunx (9:11:31 PM):He was like, "Wow the adrenaline."
****XXXXXXXX (9:11:51 PM):heh
****XXXXXXXX (9:12:58 PM) : did you roll a new account?

****kitsunx (9:13:07 PM) : I may or may not be about to.
****kitsunx (9:13:53 PM) : Full team has been to or has tickets for CCF.
****kitsunx (9:16:25 PM) : Oh. Do not bother refreshing the signup page. Just click the button when it is time.
****XXXXXXXX (9:16:49 PM) : thanks
****kitsunx (9:17:00 PM) : And shrink the website font until it the confirm button would fit on the same page. Scrolling down will kill time.
****XXXXXXXX (9:17:01 PM) : August is the only run Rishi can go on since his wife and kid will be in India
****XXXXXXXX (9:17:17 PM) : how many zoom outs is that
****kitsunx (9:17:29 PM) : It's literally fractions of a second is the difference between ticket or no.
****kitsunx (9:17:36 PM) : Like 2-3 depends on monitor size.
****kitsunx (9:17:44 PM) : Too small and the confirm button is harder to hit.
****XXXXXXXX (9:17:59 PM) : I should practice on a Black Swan run I guess
****kitsunx (9:18:07 PM) : OH THAT IS PERFECT
****kitsunx (9:18:17 PM) : You're so smart.
****kitsunx (9:18:32 PM) : Wanted to do that during the 1st wave but BS wasn't up.
****XXXXXXXX (9:19:23 PM) : the orange PURCHASE TICKET is the confirmation?
****XXXXXXXX (9:19:25 PM) : or is there another page
****kitsunx (9:21:01 PM) : One sec. Let me check
****XXXXXXXX (9:21:18 PM) : I don't want to accidentally purchase a ticket, heh
****XXXXXXXX (9:21:27 PM) : I have had quite enough Black Swan thank you
****kitsunx (9:22:00 PM) : Yeah, Purchase ticket is it.
***
Regards,


And this response is where the reason for my suspension shifts...



While a number of other people did purchase more than one ticket, you single-handedly accounted for 5% of all tickets sold, and eight in the final group.*
Looking at the creation logs, the accounts were created to circumvent the restriction on trial/new accounts, and dealing with the login records, they went through the login server nearly 200 times just the second.

While it may be possible for the signup to work as described, it would require the server to be synched with time.gov.* It is not.

Finally, none of the accounts that purchased tickets in the third group should have been eligible.* Not one.* All of those accounts have been closed and refunded in full.

The circumvention of eligibility, blocking others from attempting to get tickets, of which you already had seven across the first two weekends, is ridiculous.* It more than satisfies the description of Game Disruption.

Respectfully,


I'm in violation of rules that aren't even rules. Below post is by Wyrom; trial accounts are fine - you just won't win anything with a level 0. Past events have always allowed you to pay to buy an event ticket.

If I am understanding Sangeious correctly, I blocked other people from buying tickets by buying tickets myself. So isn't every single ticket holder guilty of this by virtue of demand out stripping supply?

Buying multiple tickets is fine. Buying the most multiple tickets apparently is not.


http://www.tinyheroes.com/forums/GemStone%20IV/Quests%60Sagas%60Events/Returning%20to%20Coraesine%20Field/thread/1580781?page=1][/url]
Returning to Coraesine Field: Free Ticket Reminder, Transfers, and Trial Accounts
06/29/2013 04:23 PM EDT
With the second batch of tickets in Prime about to go up for sale, this is a reminder that anyone who has a free ticket for the event should NOT buy a ticket. Doing so will void your free ticket. And then I will re-release it right away, no questions asked.

Transferring a character that has already gone to RtCF to another account will still make that character ineligible for any services, so do not take the same character twice.

Trial accounts (and level 0 characters) cannot win most services at RtCF, so it would be wise to not attend with a trial account. You can shop and do the quest at Lite though as a trial account.



My response to lockout…



I did not realize that it was considered a restriction on new accounts. I always just thought that the accounts needed to be paid for in order to purchase tickets. I can not remember a point where it was communicated where it is unacceptable to pay for an account to purchase a ticket to an event. The GM in charge of the event stated that paying accounts were fine to get tickets.

I do not understand what you mean by this portion of the sentence: "...and dealing with the login records, they went through the login server nearly 200 times just the second."

I do not know what your server is synced to but it is most likely one of the main ones; Apple, Microsoft, etc. I'm fairly certain they're all within micro-seconds of each other.

Again, I do not believe this was ever communicated to the player base that paying for a trial account is considered circumventing a rule. As of this email, I still have not seen any credits to either of my credit cards for the accounts and tickets.

May I ask, at what point did I cross the line into rule breaking? If you check my account history for my characters, I have always played by the rules. I do not break rules that are clearly set. This one appears drawn in the sand after I had crossed it. Is anyone else in danger of being close to it? How would they know? How many is too many?


If you've followed along and read this whole thing; Congratulations! I hope you got some amusement out of it. I'm dying from the absurdity of it all.
All the things customers complained about: ticket resellers, ticket scalping, selling account access, bot programs to purchase tickets
Who they targeted: Person that doesn't fit any of the above list

Got suspended for being too good at giving Simutronics money. Not for scalping. Not for botting. Not for any infraction of an actual existing rule. I crossed some kind of magnitude threshold.

I should have spent my money on buying the items/services that I want instead of trying to get them myself because I actually enjoy events and like going with friends.

[diethx]

What fucking bullshit. I'm sorry, Kit.

[Check84]

So you want us to believe...You got 8 tickets, manually? Not using a program? Just you and one other person click on 8 different sign up buttons within milliseconds?

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Simu, but I call Bullshit, heh. And I don't blame them, their intent is make the game fun for everyone. You attempting to attend the event 16 times? It's a shame you don't get a lifetime ban.

[JackWhisper]

You getting several tickets using your reflexes: I'm jealous. *happened*
You getting several tickets using a bot: You're a douche. *didn't happen*
You getting banned because you're fast: Fucking. Stupid. *happened*

Sorry you got screwed Kit. That's some Grade-A bullshit right there.

...A little part of me really wanted it to be Fleurs, just for the irony in it.

[Sorcasaurus]

So you want us to believe...You got 8 tickets, manually? Not using a program? Just you and one other person click on 8 different sign up buttons within milliseconds?

I don't see how that's all that unreasonable for two people and multiple rounds of tickets. There were people selling their ability to purchase tickets consistently. Two of them teamed up, good for them.

Program or not, it's a shame they didn't talk to you before taking action. Sorry to hear it Kit.

[Kitsun]

So you want us to believe...You got 8 tickets, manually? Not using a program? Just you and one other person click on 8 different sign up buttons within milliseconds?

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Simu, but I call Bullshit, heh. And I don't blame them, their intent is make the game fun for everyone. You attempting to attend the event 16 times? It's a shame you don't get a lifetime ban.

If you go through the threads where people got tickets. The people saying that they did it with regularity used a very similar method to mine. I just tweaked it to eek out the split second. All of the good advice was similar. We are on Verizon Fios, relatively close to their servers, figured out the timing pattern, minimized the human element.

The mash refresh method is terrible for a number of reasons. Even on a fast connection with a fast computer, the refresh comes in at like 1 to 1.5 seconds. Then you have to actively recognize that it is up. My process skips that portion entirely.

You are free to believe what you want. You can choose to completely ignore how if I did bot, then there are ~8-12 faster bots that got in queue before me each run.

[crb]

So you want us to believe...You got 8 tickets, manually? Not using a program? Just you and one other person click on 8 different sign up buttons within milliseconds?

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Simu, but I call Bullshit, heh. And I don't blame them, their intent is make the game fun for everyone. You attempting to attend the event 16 times? It's a shame you don't get a lifetime ban.

This is very easy if you have two humans. If it was 7 tickets in a single batch that is a bit ridiculous (unless you had 7 humans) but 2 tickets per batch for 4 batches is doable with two humans. If you're fast enough to get a ticket for 1 batch, you're fast enough to get tickets for 4 batches, and then you just need one other person as fast as you.

[mrjrd222]

The thing is, they're claiming some kind of DOS attack on their server blocking anyone else from getting tickets at the same time you got tickets. I didn't try to get tickets at all (haven't been active until literally two days ago) but did anyone actually deal with the ticket server being down when it was supposed to be up? They'd really have to prove that it was YOUR IP address hitting them 200 times in under a second, which sounds impossible if you just timed a couple clicks well.

Are there any kind of plugins (or spyware) you've got that might automatically spam refresh every page you load?

[crb]

The first two runs the server did get overloaded during ticket releases and some people got connection errors from it. I personally did not notice it during run 3 releases, and no one complained about it that time publicly.

[Buckwheet]

The whole situation is disappointing.

[prance1520]

Seems like you've put together a good case for yourself, and I have no reason to believe you used a bot to acquire the tickets, so the suspension does seem like a tough break.

I'll be the one to say it, don't you feel a little scummy for scoring 16 tickets? I know your an MA'er, and I have no problem with you wanting to get your 5 (6? 7?) characters from your crowd into the festival, more power to you. But wasn't that enough? It didn't tug on your heartstrings at all to see people you've played a game with for years struggling to get tickets while you scored another 10 tickets for the fun of it? Maybe I'm out of the loop, but is it really that dog eat dog in Gemstone?

[diethx]

The thing is, they're claiming some kind of DOS attack on their server blocking anyone else from getting tickets at the same time you got tickets. I didn't try to get tickets at all (haven't been active until literally two days ago) but did anyone actually deal with the ticket server being down when it was supposed to be up? They'd really have to prove that it was YOUR IP address hitting them 200 times in under a second, which sounds impossible if you just timed a couple clicks well.

Are there any kind of plugins (or spyware) you've got that might automatically spam refresh every page you load?

They're full of it, backpedaling. Kit would have done and did do no such thing. If they wanted to make an example of someone, they really fucked up and picked the wrong person. Idiots like these people in lockout or whatever are more detrimental to the game than anything else, apparently. It's great though that they picked someone who had a real unconditional love of the game to fuck over. And who consistently paid for and played like 6 accounts.

[Tsk Tsk]

Greed arguments aside....

This is what I hate about grey areas. I mean, there are plenty of other people that I would personally view as excessive with their ticket buying or "too much" but that's just my POV. Kitsun makes an important point with the question, "at what point did I cross the line?". I don't know, maybe they wanted to make an example out of someone? Either way, if you're going to police you need exact laws not "no funny business" as a guideline.

Alas... this is a privately run business and they can do whatever they want. I just don't think it went smoothly in this instance.

[Bobmuhthol]

I'll be the one to say it, don't you feel a little scummy for scoring 16 tickets? I know your an MA'er, and I have no problem with you wanting to get your 5 (6? 7?) characters from your crowd into the festival, more power to you. But wasn't that enough? It didn't tug on your heartstrings at all to see people you've played a game with for years struggling to get tickets while you scored another 10 tickets for the fun of it? Maybe I'm out of the loop, but is it really that dog eat dog in Gemstone?Don't you feel a little cheated that Simutronics set up this entire system where the only way to help yourself is to hurt others? It's kind of retarded to suggest that people shouldn't be doing what is in their best interest.

[wizgem3]

I think you should have a right to those ticket if you payed for them. I know there are alot of people wanting to go to this event, but I think your a bit greedy going 8 more times when you already gone 5. There are some that have not gone. At least give some that have not gone a chance. Its just my opinion on the situation.

[Kitsun]

I'll be the one to say it, don't you feel a little scummy for scoring 16 tickets? I know your an MA'er, and I have no problem with you wanting to get your 5 (6? 7?) characters from your crowd into the festival, more power to you. But wasn't that enough? It didn't tug on your heartstrings at all to see people you've played a game with for years struggling to get tickets while you scored another 10 tickets for the fun of it? Maybe I'm out of the loop, but is it really that dog eat dog in Gemstone?

So, unfortunately Run 3 tickets went on sale before Run 2 even happened.

I had the option of NOT BUYING tickets, and if I whiffed on Run 2 for any services I wanted, then I'm up shit's creek unless I pay $300-400 per account or more for the services I really wanted. Or I could acquire the tickets and if I were happy, could just let friends have at it.

[Gweneivia]

...A little part of me really wanted it to be Fleurs, just for the irony in it.

:yeahthat:

[crb]

Don't you feel a little cheated that Simutronics set up this entire system where the only way to help yourself is to hurt others? It's kind of retarded to suggest that people shouldn't be doing what is in their best interest.

Indeed, people tend to act in their own self interest. Odd to see Bob admitting that though.

[m444w]

It is unreasonable to expect people to not act in their own best interest.

Kit has paid the price for them failing to incorporate a simple captcha or even laying out a X ticket per person rule.

Now it's in the realm of speculation and it doesn't matter what anyone says, however their arbitrary enforcing of rules should concern everyone who is a paying customer.

I really hope you don't quit, but I realize that's more than likely a highly probable event after this.

[Whirlin]

The lockout and warning seem excessive to me...

I'm ok with the ticket revocation tickets with refund, but to then close the additional accounts also seems a bit much... They could have left them open and forced you to pay for the month's sub!

[Ysamine]

In your first post you said you bought tickets for friends, were those in addition to the ones the identified as coming from your accounts? Because I have to say, I thought 15 total tickets was excessive, but I read that you were actually responsible for other tickets as well? That would be a sum greater than the 5% you were tagged for.

Really? While I realize you don't care what I think of you, I want to go on record saying it isn't much at the moment.

[Allereli]

there's a big difference between acting in your own self interest and being a selfish asshole.

[diethx]

How many tickets he bought for himself is completely irrelevant. Would some find it greedy? Sure, OK. But Kit owes everyone else nothing, and greedy is not a suspendable offense. Not even one to warrant revoking the tickets. They fucked up, plain and simple.

[JackWhisper]

I haven't commented on anything other than the situation sucking out loud but I posted on this before.

Ticket sales should be monitored by IP, as well as CC, and multiple repeat-account logons. I'm sure there's a dozen more ways to spiderweb catch people doing this. It's not 7-steps-to-kevin-bacon. It CAN be figured out. Simu just isn't. And that's reprehensibly bad business.

While I don't blame Kitsun for being fast as hell, I as well am one of the people who thinks that 3 + anything is bad. 3 + 5 + anything is worse. And 3 + 5 + 8 is so ridiculously WTF I can't fathom why you wouldn't give other people a shot. It was said 'If I didn't get what I wanted...." Where in that should it be okay for someone to say 'If I didn't get what I wanted at Run2, I'll just buy a 12th of the tickets for Run3 so *I* get what I want." I realize GS is cutthroat, but this cutthroat? Should really be evaluated. It's a bit much. Just my opinion.

It was said best in LNet an hour ago by more than four people.
"I didn't bother buying a ticket because I didn't know I actually had a chance."

That sentiment sucks out fuckin loud.

[JackWhisper]

I don't mean to point out the obvious, But Tsin did the self-interest shit and made tens of thousands off GS. He pulled that not owing anyone anything card. And was universally hated for the way he conducted himself. Conduct should matter, especially with how closeknit the gemstone community is now.

[JackWhisper]

And then promptly sold to someone who sold him to someone who sold him to someone who sold him to someone who turned a shaalk dag into vultite /cry.

[diethx]

I don't mean to point out the obvious, But Tsin did the self-interest shit and made tens of thousands off GS. He pulled that not owing anyone anything card. And was universally hated for the way he conducted himself. Conduct should matter, especially with how closeknit the gemstone community is now.

Tsin was hated for being a douche who consistently tried to manipulate those less educated on the value of items.

Kit isn't like that.

[Ysamine]

Thanks for the negative rep and colorful verb use! Classy!

On an aside, will not scoring a ticket to a limited event in the future now and forever more be labeled "Kitsuned"?

[JackWhisper]

Everyone knows Kitsun isn't like that, and never has been. But it's like parenting. You're gonna screw up once or twice along the way. You can't say somebody doesn't owe anyone anything. Because then we have people who will act like Tsin. Douchey, as you put it. Nobody wants that.

[diethx]

Kit really doesn't owe anyone, though. He's not stealing from and lying to people like Tsin did. You're comparing apples and assholes.

[poloneus]

someone who turned a shaalk dag into vultite

I hope it was for additional weighing....

[JackWhisper]

This whole situation would have been 100% on the other side if Kitsun posted

I don't owe any of you anything. I got 8 tickets. I was the one.

There would have been so many WTF's it staggers the mind. The conduct does matter. Any way you dice it.

[JackWhisper]

Oh it was, Poloneus, except he wasn't willing to pay what, 112 mil for the weighting? So he handed it over for nothing =(

[Jhynnifer]

I'm very sorry this happened, Kitsun. I still thin the ban was excessive in this case, the fact that they weren't even able to prove "brute forcing the box office" yet still managed to slap your wrists, ban you and refund your tickets makes me incredibly sad.

[Aluvius]

This is exactly what I posted about on the officials, that someone would open trial accounts and try for tickets to every run. I mean why not? Well other than being decent and not blocking other players from getting a ticket (not by ddos attack but just by taking up a slot that another player could use), but this game doesn't reward that sentiment. It doesn't reward it in game either. Heck I even feel its necessary to do things like run two accounts and enter raffles for an item I'll never use because half the other people in the game will do the same thing. If you follow the rules then you're the sucker is sort of where we've arrived. But even with that ...

I guess you followed the letter of the law here, but as for the spirit of things ... goddamn.

To be honest I've felt annoyed yet stayed silent when several other people posted that they got a ticket for a friend. My gut reaction was that was sort of iffy, that people should all just try their chances and get lucky or not. But to grab so many tickets out of the runs, damn. That's just disappointing to read about. I believe you when you say this was all manual, that's how I got the tickets for both of my accounts as well (one 22 years old, the other 4 years old) I just did it by myself and lucky clicked in separate batches though. I thought about trying with new accounts for the third run but it just didn't feel right. Now I feel like I was just a sucker.

On the other hand ... Hell, I guess the case could be made that I blocked another person from going as well or maybe I just kept another ma'er from sending a 5th account to the festival. Its complicated, I guess its just about the magnitude. You're not the only one that thought of doing what you did, but you were the only one that actually executed it to that degree. Maybe I'm a douchebag for buying 2 tickets, but you're 7.5x whatever that is. If that makes sense. :)

Why the fuck didn't they listen and release all of the tickets at once or at least in batches of 100? I mean this exact scenario was laid out on the forums ahead of time lol.

TLDR; You're really fucked up for actually doing what most of us thought was possible, I'm a smaller amount fucked up for taking 2 accounts, Simutronics ultimately fucked up for sticking to the ticket distribution system we all knew would be abused in this exact way.

[DaCapn]

If their intention was as-stated, they should have had some foresight as they did in the past Droughtman runs where tickets were limited to new participants. Some tickets made it through the premium window and were available for standard account holders. Plenty of measures were available to prevent ticket hoarding if they didn't wish it to happen. It was pretty clear to everyone that the tickets for this event would sell out in pretty short order.

[SHAFT]

What's the tl;dr version?

[Gelston]

If their intention was as-stated, they should have had some foresight as they did in the past Droughtman runs where tickets were limited to new participants. Some tickets made it through the premium window and were available for standard account holders. Plenty of measures were available to prevent ticket hoarding if they didn't wish it to happen. It was pretty clear to everyone that the tickets for this event would sell out in pretty short order.

What do you mean by limited to new participants? I had like 8 tickets to the first DM.

[Gelston]

What's the tl;dr version?

He did it, he didn't use a bot, he used another human. They locked out all his accounts and issued him a warning.

[Sean]

I'm inclined to believe Kitsun he's always seemed like a good guy. I just don't see the point in bringing the trial accounts based on the post he copied in the OP. It says trial accounts AND level 0 characters can't win most services. It just seems like a waste to bring 8 accounts of people who can just shop in the stores but can't win you major prizes if your goal was to get services that you might not have gotten during the 2nd run. Anyway just my .02

Go highlanders?

[Shaps]

Those that do things like this 3+5+8=16 tickets for one person (not counting any he may/may not have gotten for others) ... is pure greed. Kitsun wasn't the only one, I'm just using his numbers as an example.

Is it illegal? No. Should Simu fix their shit so this doesn't happen again? Yes. Will they? Depends on how much money they're taking in, because they want theirs also.

Anyone else find it odd it took to the third run of this event, with all of the talk going on since the first run, with a month in between... for Simu to finally say/do something about it? They wanted to make sure they got all their money first.

People can do what they want, but just know... a lot of people in this game are only out for themselves. If making some extra cash while not caring about the community or other players is that important to you, or you are that hard up for cash to survive, then /shrug... Sad in my eyes, but no one will care or change.

There are some very good merchants in this game... then there are those greed filled, me first attitude, could care less about others people that think they can merchant just because they can be online at any time and get lucky or do shit like this thread is about. Takes all types I suppose.

I posted on this about two months ago and got jumped all over by a lot of people, course most those people were defending their right to buy 20+ tickets and hey... they can. But that type of behaviour will only kill this community, and we're small enough as is, you would think there would be some sembleance of common courtesy. But some people are just dicks and don't care so /shrug. Of course you can look at society and see it going that way anyways, so guess this is just a reflection of it.

[Gelston]

While I think it is a selfish thing to do, even if someone bought every single ticket, more power to them. Shit load of money, but if you want to spend it on text services, well, have fun. I mean, have you any idea how many pies you could buy with the costs of 16 tickets?

[prance1520]

Kit really doesn't owe anyone

I'm not saying he owes anyone anything and he broke rules. All I'm saying is we all play a game together, and in the face of a poor decision by our overlords in how to distribute tickets, we choose to cannibalize each other instead of help. I blame SIMU for a bad decision, but we made it worse instead of better.

[AuctionBot2000]

Short version: Simu sucks and Kitsun is greedy.

I have no sympathy for someone who bought 16 tickets to RtCF.

[JackWhisper]

Man....Gimme yo 17 Dollas.

[Tisket]

I'm genuinely disgusted right now. Kitsun's a truly good guy. Simutronic's actions against him are a travesty.

[JackWhisper]

I never know when Tisket's trolling. I keep thinking about getting head from handicaps. Sigh!

[AuctionBot2000]

The first run you won the gory weapon and the weightless container. How much stuff do you need?

[Gelston]

Thread: RTFC Ticketing Fiasco Story - My Side
Would you feel the same if you didn't get a ticket?


I sure would, especially since... You know, I didn't get a ticket. I thought I made it pretty clear that I wouldn't care if someone bought every single ticket, which would sorta prevent me from getting one in the first place, right?

[AuctionBot2000]

I'm inclined to believe Kitsun he's always seemed like a good guy. I just don't see the point in bringing the trial accounts based on the post he copied in the OP. It says trial accounts AND level 0 characters can't win most services. It just seems like a waste to bring 8 accounts of people who can just shop in the stores but can't win you major prizes if your goal was to get services that you might not have gotten during the 2nd run. Anyway just my .02

Go highlanders?


Reading between the lines it looks like he had trial accounts that he paid the 14.95 to make a real account, in order to buy the ticket. So he circumvented the "trial period" by paying before the trial was up? To skirt the rules in order to buy a ticket?

[Tgo01]

As you have already attended the event multiple times in the prior weeks

This is something that was expressly stated would not be allowed.

Shit, crb has attended the event 40 times. Where was this even mentioned as not being allowed?

No offense Kitsun but of course you're going to say you didn't use any program and of course Simu is going to stick to their argument that you hacked the server, no matter what the truth is.

The real problem here is Simu continuing with this utter useless ticket distribution after the first round of tickets proved to be a total failure. They practically invited people to use scripts and hacks and to get their friends and family to help them buy tickets then they sit back and say "What happened?"

[DaCapn]

What do you mean by limited to new participants? I had like 8 tickets to the first DM.

In those "Mini Droughtman" runs, each account was only allowed 1 run basically. It doesn't matter what the measure was, it was effective at spreading the tickets around a bit (they actually made it to standard as I said). Whether or not YOU had 8 tickets to ONE of the runs or not, the tickets were spread around a lot more over the course of the THREE runs. They could have built upon this cursory measure. As I said "Plenty of measures were available to prevent ticket hoarding if they didn't wish it to happen."

[AuctionBot2000]

Shit, crb has attended the event 40 times. Where was this even mentioned as not being allowed?

No offense Kitsun but of course you're going to say you didn't use any program and of course Simu is going to stick to their argument that you hacked the server, no matter what the truth is.

The real problem here is Simu continuing with this utter useless ticket distribution after the first round of tickets proved to be a total failure. They practically invited people to use scripts and hacks and to get their friends and family to help them buy tickets then they sit back and say "What happened?"


Whatchu talkin bout Willis? Simu is never wrong.

[DaCapn]

Reading between the lines it looks like he had trial accounts that he paid the 14.95 to make a real account, in order to buy the ticket. So he circumvented the "trial period" by paying before the trial was up? To skirt the rules in order to buy a ticket?

You don't need to read between the lines. Just read the lines. He paid the premium cost for the accounts. No tickets made it to standard.

[Gelston]

In those "Mini Droughtman" runs, each account was only allowed 1 run basically. It doesn't matter what the measure was, it was effective at spreading the tickets around a bit (they actually made it to standard as I said). Whether or not YOU had 8 tickets to ONE of the runs or not, the tickets were spread around a lot more over the course of the THREE runs. They could have built upon this cursory measure. As I said "Plenty of measures were available to prevent ticket hoarding if they didn't wish it to happen."

Oh, I had 8 tickets to the real DMC, but not one run. The reason the Min-DM got to Basic accounts was because a lot of people weren't interested in the prizes. When the first batches of the Mini-DM tickets opened they sold out before the announcement about them was made, though.

[Jeril]

They've done the same thing with RtCF Capt, one ticket per account, but the demand is much higher and the batches of tickets was a horrible idea as people had/have been saying from the start.

[Tisket]

I keep thinking about getting head from handicaps. Sigh!

I don't even know what this means.

[Tisket]

I never know when Tisket's trolling. I keep thinking about getting head from handicaps. Sigh!

Actually, I was serious. Then I reread the OP and saw it was not a permanent ban. I believe Kitsun but I think he's man enough to take his lumps and move on.

[Tisket]

I think Jack Whisper has me confused with Seanofthethread. wtf does "head from handicaps" even MEAN. lol

[diethx]

Yes yes we get it. Everyone who didn't get a ticket is outraged. Even though you still didn't get one after Kit's tickets went back up for sale...

[Tisket]

I think ActionBot2000 is an Inspire handle. No empirical proof. I just like to fling accusations.

[AuctionBot2000]

Yes yes we get it. Everyone who didn't get a ticket is outraged. Even though you still didn't get one after Kit's tickets went back up for sale...


I think the whole thing is kind of funny. Hopefully people won't be so greedy in the future

[Gelston]

I think ActionBot2000 is an Inspire handle. No empirical proof. I just like to fling accusations.

Quite possibly.

[Jhynnifer]

Nah, the last Inspire handle I saw the TheDude or ThatDude.

[diethx]

I think ActionBot2000 is an Inspire handle. No empirical proof. I just like to fling accusations.

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

[Gelston]

Jhynnifer is Inspire.

[Tisket]

Nah, the last Inspire handle I saw the TheDude or ThatDude.

Yeah, because he's known for sticking to one handle.

[AuctionBot2000]

You're all inspiring

[Jhynnifer]

Jhynnifer is Inspire.

Damnit, you caught me!




Yeah, because he's known for sticking to one handle.

True enough.


Also... this reminds me of Kitsun

Lazlo: "These are entries into the Frito Lay sweepstakes. No purchase necessary, enter as often as you want so I am."
Chris: "That's great! How many times?"
Lazlo: Well, this batch makes it 1,650,000. I should win 32.6 percent of the prizes including the car."

[tyrant-201]

While you may not have been scripting, 16 tickets? Really? Did you ever stop and think to yourself at any point, "Wow. This is a bit excessive."

Once or twice with a few characters, I can see. 16 tickets just means you're greedy as fuck. I don't feel bad for you.

[diethx]

No one's asking you to feel bad for him. Least of all him.

[Moonwitch]

What a clusterf*ck. That is what I get out of all of this. It was just handled so poorly.

[Gelston]

You are allowed to use grown up words on PC.

[tyrant-201]

No one's asking you to feel bad for him. Least of all him.

Good, then my point still stands. He's a greedy fuck.

And so are you for buying a ticket to an event for a game you emphatically say you no longer play, or will ever play unless you're doing someone a favor. Didn't you buy one to sell everything for profit? How'd that work out for you?

[diethx]

I did not buy a ticket. I was gifted one. I also didn't pay for any account sub. I paid zero in and made $300. So. It turned out with me up $300. ;)

[Methais]

So you want us to believe...You got 8 tickets, manually? Not using a program? Just you and one other person click on 8 different sign up buttons within milliseconds?

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Simu, but I call Bullshit, heh. And I don't blame them, their intent is make the game fun for everyone. You attempting to attend the event 16 times? It's a shame you don't get a lifetime ban.

2 people getting tickets in 4 different batches of tickets: 8 tickets

They're not hard to get. I used mostly the same clock method as Kitsun and the only times I was unsuccessful was when I was in class on my school's shitty slow Internet.

I've gotten 4 tickets to RtCF (2 for me, 2 for others, all done manually), so your claim of bullshit is really nothing more than your ignorance of how the system works on display.

[SHAFT]

What's the tl;dr answer to kitsun getting his accounts banned? Temporary or forever?

[Nathala Crane]

What's the tl;dr answer to kitsun getting his accounts banned? Temporary or forever?

For 30 days.

[thefarmer]

Me from the officials before the thread got shut down by Aulis:

I have serious doubts that Solomon's action is anything more than "I want to set an example so the players know I'm the bawse and I mean business. So I'm going to pick 'X' person with multiple tickets to single out. Regardless of whether or I have actual hard proof of a program being used. I'm going to do it and look good."


Since plenty of people had multiple tickets, yep. I was 100% right.

[tyrant-201]

I did not buy a ticket. I was gifted one. I also didn't pay for any account sub. I paid zero in and made $300. So. It turned out with me up $300. ;)

That's some kind of GS sugar daddy you got there.

[diethx]

That's some kind of GS sugar daddy you got there.

I know you're mad that your attempt to say that I lost money was a wash, but really? Lol.

[Methais]

According to the email he posted it came from "the head of all games," which is either Bubba, Whatley, or Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto is out, and Whatley couldn't care less, which only leaves Bubba, and everyone already knows how he is.

They didn't do any "investigation", at least not one involving facts. They saw him buying a lot of tickets and decided to use some bullshit unjustified argument to make an "example" out of him so that they can tell all the people who suck at buying tickets that have been crying since May, "Look how much we care guys! THIS IS PROOF THAT WE CARE! WE FOUND THAT FILTHY BOTTER AND LOOK WHAT WE DID TO HIM!!!!!1"

The "blocking other people" thing was the most ridiculous part of the whole thing. They might as well have said "We're just making this shit up as we to along."

Kitsun is now the George Zimmerman of GS. Except Zimmerman got a trial.

[AuctionBot2000]

Someone told me the feedback guy is solomon and the feedback name they use is an anagram for sarcasm (or something close)

I think Farmer is right and that's why they killed the official thread. Solomon basically just fucked Kitsun over without proof

[SHAFT]

For 30 days.

Thanks. Interesting. At least it wasn't lifetime, which was threatened by Solomon.

[SHAFT]

According to the email he posted it came from "the head of all games," which is either Bubba, Whatley, or Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto is out, and Whatley couldn't care less, which only leaves Bubba, and everyone already knows how he is.

They didn't do any "investigation", at least not one involving facts. They saw him buying a lot of tickets and decided to use some bullshit unjustified argument to make an "example" out of him so that they can tell all the people who suck at buying tickets that have been crying since May, "Look how much we care guys! THIS IS PROOF THAT WE CARE! WE FOUND THAT FILTHY BOTTER AND LOOK WHAT WE DID TO HIM!!!!!1"

The "blocking other people" thing was the most ridiculous part of the whole thing. They might as well have said "We're just making this shit up as we to along."

Kitsun is now the George Zimmerman of GS. Except Zimmerman got a trial.

So they blocked kitsun for trayvon is what you're saying? For trayvon?

[zazulu]

According to the email he posted it came from "the head of all games," which is either Bubba, Whatley, or Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto is out, and Whatley couldn't care less, which only leaves Bubba, and everyone already knows how he is.
16 ticket make Miyamoto sad.
5435

Does it suck for people that didn't get a ticket? Probably. Did he deserve to have his tickets revoked, his account suspended, then dragged through the town square after being tarred and feathered? No. Many others got multiple tickets. As Kit said, "Buying multiple tickets is fine. Buying the most multiple tickets apparently is not." As long as there was no automation, I see absolutely nothing wrong with what he did.

[Buckwheet]

He was just an innocent man walking in the rain on his way home from getting some RtCF tickets, and Solomon was like, "Fucking MAs."

[SHAFT]

He was just an innocent man walking in the rain on his way home from getting some RtCF tickets, and Solomon was like, "Fucking MAs."

For kitsun!

[Jarvan]

Also... this reminds me of Kitsun

Lazlo: "These are entries into the Frito Lay sweepstakes. No purchase necessary, enter as often as you want so I am."
Chris: "That's great! How many times?"
Lazlo: Well, this batch makes it 1,650,000. I should win 32.6 percent of the prizes including the car."

God I love that movie... Real Genius

[diethx]

Lol

[Jarvan]

One thing I do find funny.. if this was Inspire, Fleurs or hell me, that had done this. I bet we wouldn't have gotten even half as many "sorry it happened" posts. Fleurs likely zero.

Also, does this mean we can now call Kitsun, Fleurs 2.0?

The fact that someone tried to go 16 times is staggering. While not a violation in and of itself, I do think opening new accounts to buy tickets is circumventing the 1 ticket 1 account rule. Just like me wanting to take my main back to the festival on an already existing account to try for the ~one~ thing I really wanted. The only difference is Kit would have been trying for stuff he could pass back to his main. If mine is wrong, why wouldn't his be?

If Kit didn't do a bot to buy tickets, I agree, a perm ban certainly isn't warranted. As for the rest, it sucks, it's true. But hey, look on the bright side. You went 8 times already.

[AuctionBot2000]

One thing I do find funny.. if this was Inspire, Fleurs or hell me, that had done this. I bet we wouldn't have gotten even half as many "sorry it happened" posts. Fleurs likely zero.

Also, does this mean we can now call Kitsun, Fleurs 2.0?

The fact that someone tried to go 16 times is staggering. While not a violation in and of itself, I do think opening new accounts to buy tickets is circumventing the 1 ticket 1 account rule. Just like me wanting to take my main back to the festival on an already existing account to try for the ~one~ thing I really wanted. The only difference is Kit would have been trying for stuff he could pass back to his main. If mine is wrong, why wouldn't his be?

If Kit didn't do a bot to buy tickets, I agree, a perm ban certainly isn't warranted. As for the rest, it sucks, it's true. But hey, look on the bright side. You went 8 times already.


Prepare for diethx to respond non-stop now.

[Suppressed Poet]

My 2 cents...

While I do think it is messed up to have 16 tickets, I don't blame kitsun at all. It's the ticket purchasing system that is the issue. Why don't they just come out and say "My bad guys. We fucked up on this and we will take this knowledge and experience to make the next event better." instead of singling one person out of many and saying "we found you son of a bitch! Look at us enforcing our rules. All is better now."

[Tgo01]

Simu to customers: "It's okay if you're good at buying tickets, just don't be the best at buying tickets."

Way to tell me to shoot for the stars Simu but make sure they always remain just out of reach of said stars.

[Buckwheet]

I don't always buy tickets to pay events, but when I do, I use Kitsun.

[Allereli]

then dragged through the town square after being tarred and feathered?

it was his choice to out himself. he could have gone away for 30 days and most of us would have never found out.

[Jarvan]

So all weekend we joked about everyone really being CRB, or Fleurs, when it really turned out... we are all Kitsun!

[Buckwheet]

So all weekend we joked about everyone really being CRB, or Fleurs, when it really turned out... we are all Kitsun!

If only this was true. I would love myself even more.

[diethx]

If only this was true. I would love myself even more.

^^^^

[Gelston]

One thing I do find funny.. if this was Inspire, Fleurs or hell me, that had done this. I bet we wouldn't have gotten even half as many "sorry it happened" posts. Fleurs likely zero.

I think it is an overreaction no matter who it was. I don't know, maybe they don't have a way to block someone from the box office so they gave him a game ban.

[crb]

Shit, crb has attended the event 40 times. Where was this even mentioned as not being allowed?

No offense Kitsun but of course you're going to say you didn't use any program and of course Simu is going to stick to their argument that you hacked the server, no matter what the truth is.

The real problem here is Simu continuing with this utter useless ticket distribution after the first round of tickets proved to be a total failure. They practically invited people to use scripts and hacks and to get their friends and family to help them buy tickets then they sit back and say "What happened?"

How dare you besmirch me sir? Forty Times! I am not such a rank amateur as to be in the mere double digits!

[Methais]

One thing I do find funny.. if this was Inspire, Fleurs or hell me, that had done this. I bet we wouldn't have gotten even half as many "sorry it happened" posts. Fleurs likely zero.

A person's character is usually taken into account in situations like these. Everyone hates Fleurs because she's a cunt to everybody. If all circumstances were the same and it was Fleurs instead of Kitsun, people would have still likely agreed that what Simu did was fucked up, but it would be more like "That's fucked up they did that, but at least it happened to Fleurs instead of someone who we don't hate."

I could probably word it better but you get my point.

[Buckwheet]

There is not a much better word than cunt. But I would like to see the attempt anyways.

[KmberlynX]

I love Kitty just as much as the next person, but I agree 16 times is a bit excessive. I would have loved to go just once, but didn't even bother to try to get a ticket for runs 2 and 3 after my first attempt failed so badly. Couldn't even get one within 2 seconds of the box office opening!

I do, however, think the 30 day ban was a bit excessive. I agree, take away and resell his tickets, but why the hell does he have to be banned on top of that?

Also, why not "investigate" all the other people who have gone multiple times or have multiple tickets and do the same to them? It just doesn't seem fair at all. I agree with the person that said they should base ticket sales on IP address so more people can get a chance to attend a limited ticket event.

[Gelston]

A person's character is usually taken into account in situations like these. Everyone hates Fleurs because she's a cunt to everybody. If all circumstances were the same and it was Fleurs instead of Kitsun, people would have still likely agreed that what Simu did was fucked up, but it would be more like "That's fucked up they did that, but at least it happened to Fleurs instead of someone who we don't hate."

I could probably word it better but you get my point.

I don't hate Fleurs :/

[Latrinsorm]

What fucking bullshit. I'm sorry, Kit.Yeah, this.
To be honest I've felt annoyed yet stayed silent when several other people posted that they got a ticket for a friend. My gut reaction was that was sort of iffy, that people should all just try their chances and get lucky or not. Would you rather choose to donate a kidney to your daughter over a stranger or flip a coin? If it's okay to be nepotistic about literal life and death, why not for a merchant in a computer game that (ostensibly) means much less?

[Methais]

I don't hate Fleurs :/

Well then you are just wrong, kind sir.

[Methais]

(red) Thread: RTFC Ticketing Fiasco Story - My Side (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?84509-RTFC-Ticketing-Fiasco-Story-My-Side&p=1577318#post1577318)
Not exactly. I agreed with Zimmerman's actions.

So did I. Reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point, at least as for why I said Kitsun is the Zimmerman of GS.

[Jeril]

<3 Fleurs.

[Jhynnifer]

<3 Fleurs.

She has a vagina, of course you love her. =)

[Methais]

She does act kind of manly though, that's probably what caught Jeril's eye

[Velfi]

She's always been super nice to me, so I would second Jeril's <3.

[Sav]

creating accounts just to buy more tickets is greedy imo... thats all I have to say on the matter

edit: buy tickets for all your actively used accounts = kudos.

[Aluvius]

Would you rather choose to donate a kidney to your daughter over a stranger or flip a coin? If it's okay to be nepotistic about literal life and death, why not for a merchant in a computer game that (ostensibly) means much less?

But in this case wouldn't the analogy be more like, would I rather choose to sign my healthy daughter up for a kidney donor list so I could actually give it to my daughter's friend over a stranger or flip a coin? If you don't think that's a bit shady then I guess that's that.

Edited to add: Of course its a grey area, that's why I didn't ever say anything until this discussion started about the overall process. It could go either way, I see how some folks wouldn't have a problem with it. Honestly I don't really care enough to argue either way, its just a vague personal feeling. :)

[Tgo01]

Thread: RTFC Ticketing Fiasco Story - My Side

Why don't you consider removing your lips off Kitsun's ass?

lawl Fleurs. If you can find one post me of "kissing Kitsun's ass" I'll kiss your ass.

[Klinor]

creating accounts just to buy more tickets is greedy imo... thats all I have to say on the matter

edit: buy tickets for all your actively used accounts = kudos.

What about buying other people's tickets? Or going just to sell every service you win?

[Sav]

what you do with your ticket is your business... nothing wrong with making money.. what I said sums up my opinion on the matter I don't care who it is

[Methais]

The whole point isn't whether he was being greedy. It's that he didn't break any actual stated rules, and they falsely accused him of botting tickets and launching a DoS attack on their website (which is illegal as far as i know, and he would have had cops at his door instead of feedback in his inbox) complete with claims of them doing an actual investigation that either never took place, or was conducted by Barney Fife.

[Klinor]

what you do with your ticket is your business... nothing wrong with making money.. what I said sums up my opinion on the matter I don't care who it is

I'm not understanding the distinction. Those were his accounts and those were his tickets. For personal use. He didn't set out to sell his service to make money, nor did he buy a ticket just to sell it away for cash and yet it's not greedy when other people do that?

[Sav]

creating accounts you'll just toss later... to me that means funny business

[SHAFT]

creating accounts you'll just toss later... to me that means funny business

Simu never stated you couldn't create a throwaway account for RtCF.

[Warriorbird]

The whole point isn't whether he was being greedy. It's that he didn't break any actual stated rules, and they falsely accused him of botting tickets and launching a DoS attack on their website (which is illegal as far as i know, and he would have had cops at his door instead of feedback in his inbox) complete with claims of them doing an actual investigation that either never took place, or was conducted by Barney Fife.

I always tend to wonder when companies start trying to act like getting money is a bad thing.

[Sav]

I'm not defending simu's actions... but I'm not surprised by them either... Banning is harsh and uncalled for cause yea they didn't say it wasn't allowed but Simu half asses things much of the time and I would suspect that if you were to ask any GM that if creating piles of accounts to buy 10+ tickets you otherwise wouldn't be able to get they'd say it wasn't allowed. This is mostly based on the population of friends that weren't able to get tickets and quite unhappy about it. Things like this is bad for our community... its abuse of a broke system and you should know better... one time I found a pile of silvers on the ground and I picked em up and they were still there and I picked em up again and again etc... yeah nobody told me not to do it and I could pick up millions of silvers but I knew better and reported it. I dunno, any of this make sense to anyone?

[Candor]

Simu's method of awarding tickets to this event royally sucks. It needs to change so that the method is fair and far less prone to abuse or manipulation.

[Sav]

oh and I'm not a terms of service junky.. but is giving access to your account to other people against them?

[SHAFT]

oh and I'm not a terms of service junky.. but is giving access to your account to other people against them?

Who cares? People have been lending accounts since day 1.

If Kitsun broke the rules, shame on him. No one but Kitsun knows if he did or didn't. If he didn't, and Simu just got pissed he got 16 tickets, well shame on them. There wasn't a limit to buying tickets.

16 is a lot though....but not so bad that any of this should've happened to him. Unless he did what they say he did.

[Geijon Khyree]

I think the paid trial accounts was a glitch. I think the intent of that comment was all accounts that purchase tickets must be 31 days old. This is moot and you could draw a different parallel to Kitsun's treatment in that more people should have been banned for what is essentially exclusionary tactics.

Solomon and Simutronics learned their lesson about this ticket release method so we don't see it again. I also don't think we'll see an event to this level in the next 4-6 years either because of some of the negativity it caused. It also is going to glut the game with good to high-end items, but thats another story.

This isn't really defendable. If you extrapolate some numbers based on the 5+3+7 or 8 idea and support that Kitsun had 5% of the tickets you can assume that he and 3 people combined for 20% of the attendees and that methodology really proves the fault in the ticketing method.

As Gordon Gekko says I guess. Greed is good. Regardless of if this was used for his characters it was motivated by some kind of addiction to the purple gear chase ala WoW.

[Sav]

Who cares? People have been lending accounts since day 1.

well if it is against the rules and you explain to a GM who is trying to ban you that this is how you obtained a crazy amount of tickets....

[Klinor]

I think the paid trial accounts was a glitch. I think the intent of that comment was all accounts that purchase tickets must be 31 days old.

A trial account and a paid account are different though. You can't have a paid trial account. Once you pay for an account, it's no different than any other account.

It's also no different than people going premium for 1 day to attempt to buy tickets for the premium ticket sales then dropping down immediately. It's been done before and there hasn't been any complaints against that practice either. Simu hasn't had a mandatory 31 day old premium history for those past event. At least I haven't heard of any minimum length requirement. I don't think I've seen people complain about that happening either.

[Latrinsorm]

I'm not defending simu's actions... but I'm not surprised by them either... Banning is harsh and uncalled for cause yea they didn't say it wasn't allowed but Simu half asses things much of the time and I would suspect that if you were to ask any GM that if creating piles of accounts to buy 10+ tickets you otherwise wouldn't be able to get they'd say it wasn't allowed. This is mostly based on the population of friends that weren't able to get tickets and quite unhappy about it. Things like this is bad for our community... its abuse of a broke system and you should know better... one time I found a pile of silvers on the ground and I picked em up and they were still there and I picked em up again and again etc... yeah nobody told me not to do it and I could pick up millions of silvers but I knew better and reported it. I dunno, any of this make sense to anyone?The ticketing system was dumb, not broken: Working As Intended. If a GM was dumb enough to intentionally and knowingly put an infinite pile of silvers on the ground, why shouldn't you keep taking them?

The bad thing for the community was implementing a dumb system, then dumbly declaring an arbitrary post facto rule, then dumbly enforcing it (and dumbly running off at the mouth about it). I don't know if Kitsun will stay or go, but potentially throwing away a long term customer because your staff is too stupid to enforce its own made-up rules is not the road to a thriving community.
Solomon and Simutronics learned their lesson about this ticket release method so we don't see it again.If they were smart enough to learn they'd have been smart enough not to do it in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the exact same thing again.

[Donquix]

The funny thing is, they released tickets this way to try to be more fair, to an extent, because the same set of people monopolize all the services every other event.

It was made a fiasco because the same set of people who monopolize all the services tried to monopolize all the the services.

I don't think EITHER SIDE (simu, or the players) handled it well, but at the very least here they're (ineptly) trying to do right and it's complicated because you can't help but try to game the system and buy 20 tickets a piece then argue about technicalities to justify it.

[tyrant-201]

Saying that when you pay the 15 dollars it's no longer a trial account might be correct, technically. But then, technically you can't ignore that wasn't their intent when they said trial accounts would be excluded. You're intentionally circumventing the whole concept that trial accounts were denied to avoid situations like this, where someone makes a shit ton off services and discards the account afterwards. In the process, excluding others from going. Some people see nothing wrong with it, I see it as not only greedy but intentionally doing something you knew wasn't right to begin with.

[Klinor]

Saying that when you pay the 15 dollars it's no longer a trial account might be correct, technically. But then, technically you can't ignore that wasn't their intent when they said trial accounts would be excluded. You're intentionally circumventing the whole concept that trial accounts were denied to avoid situations like this, where someone makes a shit ton off services and discards the account afterwards. In the process, excluding others from going. Some people see nothing wrong with it, I see it as not only greedy but intentionally doing something you knew wasn't right to begin with.

A trial account is one that isn't paid. That's it. Why would they want to allow non-paying accounts win anything? Once it's paid for, it's not a trial account so there's nothing to circumvent. I think people are reading more into the phrase trial accounts than Simu intended. Again, if that was their actual intent, why haven't they raised the issue of trial premium accounts? Or buying osmeone's account for access? It's doing the same thing if you want to get down to it. You use the account, then give it back.

Excluding other people isn't much of an argument either since every ticket purchased excluded someone else. Even if they just bought one.

[tyrant-201]

A trial account is one that isn't paid. That's it. Why would they want to allow non-paying accounts win anything? Once it's paid for, it's not a trial account so there's nothing to circumvent. I think people are reading more into the phrase trial accounts than Simu intended. Again, if that was their actual intent, why haven't they raised the issue of trial premium accounts? Or buying osmeone's account for access? It's doing the same thing if you want to get down to it. You use the account, then give it back.

Excluding other people isn't much of an argument either since every ticket purchased excluded someone else. Even if they just bought one.

Okay, trial account nuance aside (which I disagree on), is it right to create multiple accounts to garner a ticket, then dispose of them? I can see going more than once if you normally have more than one paid account normally.

The other areas, I don't agree with buying someone's account for access but it's their account. They can do what they want with it. Trial premium accounts aren't right either, and I assume you're talking about them being used in trying to score a ticket a day earlier. But it's less egregious than say, creating throwaway accounts to score multiple tickets.

Greed is greed. Spin it anyway you like.

[Latrinsorm]

Saying that when you pay the 15 dollars it's no longer a trial account might be correct, technically. But then, technically you can't ignore that wasn't their intent when they said trial accounts would be excluded. You're intentionally circumventing the whole concept that trial accounts were denied to avoid situations like this, where someone makes a shit ton off services and discards the account afterwards. In the process, excluding others from going. Some people see nothing wrong with it, I see it as not only greedy but intentionally doing something you knew wasn't right to begin with.Your knowing it to be wrong does not imply that others knew the same. For starters you may be incorrect, or they may be, or both or neither.

[tyrant-201]

Your knowing it to be wrong does not imply that others knew the same. For starters you may be incorrect, or they may be, or both or neither.

Incorrect that it isn't right to open throwaway accounts to purchase 5+ tickets to an event that a vast majority of the game would like to attend and can't because of examples like this? Normally right and wrong isn't black and white, but in this case I'm not sure why we're even arguing over this.

[Latrinsorm]

Okay, trial account nuance aside (which I disagree on), is it right to create multiple accounts to garner a ticket, then dispose of them? I can see going more than once if you normally have more than one paid account normally.

The other areas, I don't agree with buying someone's account for access but it's their account. They can do what they want with it. Trial premium accounts aren't right either, and I assume you're talking about them being used in trying to score a ticket a day earlier. But it's less egregious than say, creating throwaway accounts to score multiple tickets.

Greed is greed. Spin it anyway you like.Greed is also in the eye of the beholder. The mere desire to consume is not greed, or else anyone who even wanted to buy a ticket is greedy. In my eyes, the act of obtaining tickets for other people undermines the accusation pretty dramatically.

Again, the people you should be angry with are not the consumers but the producers who arbitrarily limit their production and create an artificial scarcity in at least three ways: number of tickets total, number of tickets per account, number of tickets per batch. It's not a coincidence that this situation occurred the very first time this particular combination of values for those fields was implemented. In fact, it was predicted by players (and presumably overruled staff) to do exactly that.

Simu wants you to believe this was an unforeseeable abuse of the system, but it was neither. They wanted enormous demand because enormous prices require it. If they really cared about the dissatisfaction of those who didn't get tickets, they would sell more tickets, not put on an inept dog and pony (and, I suppose, kitten) show.

[tyrant-201]

Greed is also in the eye of the beholder. The mere desire to consume is not greed, or else anyone who even wanted to buy a ticket is greedy. In my eyes, the act of obtaining tickets for other people undermines the accusation pretty dramatically.

Again, the people you should be angry with are not the consumers but the producers who arbitrarily limit their production and create an artificial scarcity in at least three ways: number of tickets total, number of tickets per account, number of tickets per batch. It's not a coincidence that this situation occurred the very first time this particular combination of values for those fields was implemented. In fact, it was predicted by players (and presumably overruled staff) to do exactly that.

Simu wants you to believe this was an unforeseeable abuse of the system, but it was neither. They wanted enormous demand because enormous prices require it. If they really cared about the dissatisfaction of those who didn't get tickets, they would sell more tickets, not put on an inept dog and pony (and, I suppose, kitten) show.

I blame both parties. Simu for very poor planning and execution, and the people with "the desire to consume" that couldn't look beyond their own noses and see Also, consider if the perpetrator had been someone else. The very people defending him would likely be up in arms, but because PC regulars deem this guy a 'good guy' (and I'm not saying he is or isn't, I don't know him) and many of you did the exact same thing he did, you're defending him.

I simply refuse to dismiss it as entirely Simu's fault. I recognize you can't expect most people to have a concept of common decency, but call it wishful thinking.

[Latrinsorm]

But we can reasonably believe Kitsun got tickets for other people. Why do you criticize him while applauding others who did the same? Is it just a question of ratio? If so, what is the point where it goes from good to bad?

It seems to me like you are attributing all the distaste you have with buyers in general to him, and as a neutral party I don't see why that should be.

[tyrant-201]

But we can reasonably believe Kitsun got tickets for other people. Why do you criticize him while applauding others who did the same? Is it just a question of ratio? If so, what is the point where it goes from good to bad?

It seems to me like you are attributing all the distaste you have with buyers in general to him, and as a neutral party I don't see why that should be.

If we can reasonably believe that, I still fail to see where the whole trial account thing comes into play. Was he getting them for people who had already gone on other accounts? I have no distaste for the guy. I have distaste for what he supposedly did, but even then - none of us completely understand that. My distaste is more for the process and for those who took advantage of that.

[crb]

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out. But in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”

Replies the scorpion: “It’s my nature…”

[Tgo01]

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out. But in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”

Replies the scorpion: “It’s my nature…”

Translation: I bought 100 tickets, NEENER NEENER NEENER!

[tyrant-201]

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out. But in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”

Replies the scorpion: “It’s my nature…”


Who knew. You're all philosophical when it suits your ambitions.

[crb]

No, translation: Self interest is human nature, and self interest is ultimately moral. So don't hate someone who asks in their self interest and takes advantage of an opportunity presented to them in a poorly designed system. Don't fault water for flowing downhill.

Though, 16 tickets is pretty crazy. I mean, people think I got a lot of tickets, but truthfully I don't have that many accounts, lots of people apparently got more tickets than I did, and Kitsun quite frankly lapped me multiple times. But still, had they taken my advice and the advice of most other people and done 1 batch of 100 tickets with a 10 minute premium head start, we'd have a much more equitable system. In a way I'm reminded of, well, big government. People keep trying to please everyone, make things "fair" or "equitable" trying to engineer equality of outcome while maintaining a guise of equality of opportunity, but with each added bit of complexity all you do is make it things more difficult for everyone except an elite few who know how to navigate the system to their benefit, and the complexity also of course makes corruption easier to hide. I find it an excellent analogy. Wyrom paved a road to hell with his good intention to make tickets available across time zones and subscription levels, and in trying to spread things around simply increased the complexity to the point where if you were not an elite you had a hard time benefiting.

[crb]

Who knew. You're all philosophical when it suits your ambitions.

Oh I'm incredibly nerdy about this sort of thing.

[Methais]

I always tend to wonder when companies start trying to act like getting money is a bad thing.

Normally I'd agree, but since it's Simu we're talking about...well you know.

[Pereus]

I'm not going to read through 13 pages of this, but after reading the first post I will say this:

FVCK YOU Kitsun, you are the reason we can't have nice things.

Simu is going to see how much a debacle this entire event was, albeit some staff fvck ups and PREDOMINATELY players trying every feasible maneuver to cheat the system and say, No more events like this again.

So in conclusion, go fvck yourself for trying to get that many tickets and screwing that many people out of going. I'm glad your ass got banned, you deserved it.

[Gelston]

YOU CAN SAY THE WORD FUCK ON THE PLAYER'S CORNER FOR FUCKS SAKE.

Hell, even if you put what you put on the officials you'd get a warn for masked vulgarities, so I have no idea what you were going for.

[Pereus]

YOU CAN SAY THE WORD FUCK ON THE PLAYER'S CORNER FOR FUCKS SAKE.

Hell, even if you put what you put on the officials you'd get a warn for masked vulgarities, so I have no idea what you were going for.

Meh, I'm used to other forums where it's blocked and I'm on my iPad.

[Gelston]

Oh, and yeah. They'll have plenty of events in the future. It makes too much money for them to be dissuaded by a few complaints.

[Methais]

If Simu was really interested in controlling how many tickets people bought and wanted to make it "fair", they would have made it so that any accounts that are linked to an account with a ticket aren't eligible for a ticket.

Yeah, people will argue "But those are accounts I pay for, why shouldn't I be able to get tickets on all of them?" To which Simu could say "Too bad, our goal is for as many players (not accounts) as possible to attend.

Most MA'ers use the same credit card for all of their accounts. Is Simu really that short sighted that they couldn't come up with a simple solution like that? Or is their refusal to update their billing system from the 1990s just making them look extra stupid?

[Silvean]

You of all people should appreciate that FVCK is the classical Roman spelling. As in, "FVCK the imperator, his blatant socialism contradicts my objectivist values."

[Gelston]

fvtvo actually

[Methais]

Simu is going to see how much a debacle this entire event was, albeit some staff fvck ups and PREDOMINATELY players trying every feasible maneuver to cheat the system and say, No more events like this again.

Incorrect. A bunch of people crying over this isn't going to deter them from essentially printing money via similar events in the future.

The reason you won't see an event like this for probably several years is due to game balance issues and not wanting to flood the market with high end stuff. Which is why the original CCF was in 2009.

That said, why haven't you been buying statues and orbs lately? This makes me sad. :(

[SHAFT]

Greed is greed.

Greed is good.

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x176/shaft4783/image-15.jpg (http://s184.photobucket.com/user/shaft4783/media/image-15.jpg.html)

[SHAFT]

Also pereus, simu will never stop churning out paid events if people are buying tickets. GM's will stop coding for events because dealing with some of the players is a mindfuck, but new gm's will come along.

[DCSL]

I find this to be completely crazy. A "warning" issued after the punishment is already given is not a warning. Simply ridiculous. What would it have cost them to actually investigate the circumstances? Hell, it would only have taken a few minutes of their time to talk to Kit and then an hour tops (surely?) to do what they can to corroborate or contradict his account of his actions. If they found those actions to be out of line, then a warning to stop those actions should have been given. If those actions still continued, then a punishment should have been given. It looks like they skipped straight to punishment without any of those pesky "fair" processes beforehand.

[Pereus]

Incorrect. A bunch of people crying over this isn't going to deter them from essentially printing money via similar events in the future.

The reason you won't see an event like this for probably several years is due to game balance issues and not wanting to flood the market with high end stuff. Which is why the original CCFA was in 2009.

That said, why haven't you been buying statues and orbs lately? This makes me sad. :(

Because you do such a damn fine job with what you sell, I buy 5 at a time and dont need any for a month!


Also pereus, simu will never stop churning out paid events if people are buying tickets. GM's will stop coding for events because dealing with some of the players is a mindfuck, but new gm's will come along.

I didn't say events or paid events, I said events like this one. While I agree with above poster whom I forgot to quote, this whole ticketing fiasco, the nerfing of services, IdolGate, passing of items, and the hailstorm of complaints from the player base about everything under the sun is just incredibly overbearing. I wouldn't be suprised if we never saw any event like this again.

And honestly I don't think there should be. The pure depravity of some people looking to profit off this silly game is embarrassing. The whole idea for this festival was for as many people to go as possible. What happened, a bunch of greedy fuckers tried every method under the sun to circumvent that goal and profit from it by taking tickets away from people who legitmately wanted to go so they could get their own stuff worked on without having to pay out the ass.

This whole event has been a clusterfuck from the getgo both on SIMU and on the playerbase.

[Slit-eye]

There is a failure to see the obvious:

nearly 200 times just the second

Not only does this sort of server request load constitute a DOS attack (which they did rightfully point to the offending accounts), but their ability to come up with a number dictates that a view into the IP:request table was indeed performed. Simutronics did not arbitrarily come to the decision that this series of accounts was one of the sources of server disruption. I would also like to point out that even splitting the work load between two individuals and following the login process per request would result in far fewer attempts in the 2-3 second window of ticket availability than "nearly two hundred". Each and every one of you who went through the process to obtain a ticket to RTCF know this to be true, regardless of your personal beliefs or feelings about Kitsun. It happens by running a multi-threaded application across multiple machines... and you get caught by a: running too many threads, b: making calls that unwittingly bypass user-viewed pages, or c: failing to ensure that not all of the machines running the threads aren't running through the same router (IE, IP address). These are script kiddie mistakes, and you live and learn by making them.

I will believe that 200 login requests/navigations through the box office within a 3 second window was done by a guy and his brother manually the moment I see a youtube video of someone who not only can type over 15,000 wpm, but do so on a computer that gets the response from the server before the server gets the request.

[Tgo01]

I'm by no means an expert but 200 requests in 3 seconds is considered a DOS attack? I thought it took like thousands of requests a second? Or is it considered a DOS attack because it can be viewed as an attempt to commit a DOS attack?

[tyrant-201]

I'm by no means an expert but 200 requests in 3 seconds is considered a DOS attack? I thought it took like thousands of requests a second? Or is it considered a DOS attack because it can be viewed as an attempt to commit a DOS attack?

I would guess anything not humanly possible "can" be considered, but I'm no expert. It's just trying to get a ticket by brute force.

[Jarvan]

I find this to be completely crazy. A "warning" issued after the punishment is already given is not a warning. Simply ridiculous. What would it have cost them to actually investigate the circumstances? Hell, it would only have taken a few minutes of their time to talk to Kit and then an hour tops (surely?) to do what they can to corroborate or contradict his account of his actions. If they found those actions to be out of line, then a warning to stop those actions should have been given. If those actions still continued, then a punishment should have been given. It looks like they skipped straight to punishment without any of those pesky "fair" processes beforehand.

Not exactly sure how that would have worked Dex. Wait till he bought 8 tickets to another run of RtCF in 4 years before punishing him? If they wanted to that is? This was the last run of it. This was basically it. More then anything, they really could just point at the 7 freshly made accounts for the sole purpose of nabbing tickets and say "we never intended anyone to be able to do that, so we are going to revoke those tickets because our system is shit and we are to lazy to fix it". Not much you can do about it either way.

Really though, they need to update their entire billing system, website, and ticketing system. As the player base shrinks, more and more people will want to take multiple accounts. Since we KNOW these events will sell out as long as there are enough players for 1 ticket to player, they should maybe look into a max # of tickets per person, not account. Ok, so you pay for 10 accounts say. Does that mean you should get 10 tickets, and joe schmoe who has 1 premie gets zero? Cause you are a faster clicker? Personally, I would make it no more then 2, maybe 3 accounts per person per run of the event. I think 2 would be reasonable really. Oh, you didn't get that epic service you really wanted? Well, neither did 98 other people, plus all the others that didn't even get to go. if you remember, Wyrom said the reason for this ticketing idea was so as many PEOPLE as possible get a chance to go. 1 person buying 8 tickets to 1 run for himself doesn't really fit.

Basically, Simu needs to take a good long look at how they do their tickets.

[SonoftheNorth]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYNnPx8fZBs

[tyrant-201]

LOL

[thefarmer]

And honestly I don't think there should be. The pure depravity of some people looking to profit off this silly game is embarrassing. The whole idea for this festival was for as many people to go as possible. What happened, a bunch of greedy fuckers tried every method under the sun to circumvent that goal and profit from it by taking tickets away from people who legitmately wanted to go so they could get their own stuff worked on without having to pay out the ass.

This whole event has been a clusterfuck from the getgo both on SIMU and on the playerbase.

You sold how many services outright or after you got things worked on or won?

Kit sold how many services or sold stuff he got worked on?

Sure thing buddy.

You got a lot of your own stuff worked on alright. Remind me again how high your MBs were on that voln plate and chrism holder you won?

[thefarmer]

Really though, they need to update their entire billing system, website, and ticketing system.

They tried awhile ago I think and the people they 'hired' said 'lol. no'

That's why our forums are so shitty. It's tied to billing and they can't update the boards without their billing database and shit.

[thefarmer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYNnPx8fZBs

The people in that aren't azn enough.

[Pereus]

You sold how many services outright or after you got things worked on or won?

Kit sold how many services or sold stuff he got worked on?

Sure thing buddy.

You got a lot of your own stuff worked on alright. Remind me again how high your MBs were on that voln plate and chrism holder you won?

Sold two, one was armor that didn't fit my character after seeing all the things I would need to switch and the other was the major I fell into after I lost all the other things I wanted.

I have no idea what Kitsun sold but that is inconsequential as that isn't what the subject is about if you missed that part in your selective quoting. Nice try at the jabs though!

I tried for and got 1 ticket to this event as it was supposed to be. I didn't use my spare account to go, I didn't create new accounts for the purpose of getting more tickets, I didn't sell my spot after I had secured it. I didn't try to so other people could have a chance to go, but people like Kitsun here purposely tried to fuck those people, so again I'm glad he got his tickets revoked and his ass banned. I wish all the others would have too.

P.s. grow the fuck up if you want to take swipes like "sure thing buddy".

[SonoftheNorth]

The people in that aren't azn enough.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhpoqjB4NkE

[JackWhisper]

Red Thread: RTFC Ticketing Fiasco Story - My Side

You stupid cunt. Figures a dumb bitch like you would be so moronic, you're the same kind that would fuck over anyone just cause your life is so pathetic that you need to be a baby douche bag in GS to make up for your pathetic real life. Inspire

Thought I'd share that gem ^^. No clue why it pertains, but hey, the thread's this one! Must matter!

[zzentar]

Let me preface the following with the fact that I am one of the butthurt that couldnt get a ticket after trying 9 times out of 12 chances.

Let's for the sake of argument, assume Simu is lying about all they say. Easy argument to make since Kitsun says it was just him and his RL brother trying to get tickets. There is no way two people can try to get on server 200 times in within a seconds time. Obviously Simu is lying.

From the posts I read this person has 6 accounts and I personally feel that if you have an multiple accounts you should have the same benefits for every one of those accounts. But this person wasn't satisfied with that, lets skew the odds a little more in my favor by making new accounts and getting more tickets.


I want to stop here and deal with the HUGE issues that I see:

1. His RL brother helped him get tickets...
does this constitute an unfair advantage over other players? I think so. If I had a dozen people in my basement chained to computers for the sole purpose of getting me tickets, Id expect to be called on it.

2. He opened and paid for new accounts for the sole purpose of getting more tickets. There is no way that you can tell me that you aren't trying to skirt the system and more importantly fuck the other players out of a chance to go to this event by getting new accounts.
2a. I also want to add, most wouldnt buy a new account unless they were pretty sure they were gonna grab a ticket with that account.

3. He freely says his purchases, Yes, I purchased a lot of tickets (3 + 5 + 8; Run 1, 2 and 3 respectively). 16 tickets on his account plus, again his own words, I helped some friends acquire tickets but I did not ask for nor receive anything from them for the aid. That's some fucking nimble fingers.

[crb]

If Simu was really interested in controlling how many tickets people bought and wanted to make it "fair", they would have made it so that any accounts that are linked to an account with a ticket aren't eligible for a ticket.

Yeah, people will argue "But those are accounts I pay for, why shouldn't I be able to get tickets on all of them?" To which Simu could say "Too bad, our goal is for as many players (not accounts) as possible to attend.

Most MA'ers use the same credit card for all of their accounts. Is Simu really that short sighted that they couldn't come up with a simple solution like that? Or is their refusal to update their billing system from the 1990s just making them look extra stupid?

They know on which side their bread is buttered. They're increasingly reliant on fewer customers with more accounts. Of course, doing tickets in a single batch naturally limits an MAer's ability to buy tickets, which is what we said all along. 4 Batches was a gift to people with multiple accounts.

[crb]

There is no way two people can try to get on server 200 times in within a seconds time. Obviously Simu is lying.

Actually, there is. Each request to a webpage is not just one request, there are followup requests for every page component, external javascript, images, etc. Sometimes that stuff will be cached, sometimes not. But a single request to view a web page can result in dozens of lines in access logs. Of course, a script isn't going to work like a modern browser and request all those things (which is one telltale sign). In anycase, seeing 200 hits to a log file in the course of a second isn't enough to indicate artificial means of access, it depends on the details.

You could still be doing it somewhat manually, if you merely have a bunch of tabs open in your browser and refresh them all simultaneously - I guess that depends on your definition of manually.

Ultimately we don't know, we won't know, someone is telling the truth, someone is lying.

[crb]

2. He opened and paid for new accounts for the sole purpose of getting more tickets. There is no way that you can tell me that you aren't trying to skirt the system and more importantly fuck the other players out of a chance to go to this event by getting new accounts.
2a. I also want to add, most wouldnt buy a new account unless they were pretty sure they were gonna grab a ticket with that account.

Irony here is I got in an argument on the officials with Wyrom about this specific issue. I said that his method of ticket distributor was just going to favor MAers and that, with the opening to basic two batches, people would just open new accounts. I suggested a backpay requirement like they had done from a premie auction in the past. I was curious as to how many ticket gaining accounts were newly created accounts, Wyrom insisted none were (for run 1 anyways).

[prance1520]

Irony here is I got in an argument on the officials with Wyrom about this specific issue. I said that his method of ticket distributor was just going to favor MAers and that, with the opening to basic two batches, people would just open new accounts. I suggested a backpay requirement like they had done from a premie auction in the past. I was curious as to how many ticket gaining accounts were newly created accounts, Wyrom insisted none were (for run 1 anyways).

Instead of backpay requirement, the just decided to be reactive instead of proactive, hoping the people wouldn't try to take advantage of it. They were wrong. In the end, your solution and their solution end with the same outcome. Granted yours would have been done with significantly less drama...

[Slit-eye]

In anycase, seeing 200 hits to a log file in the course of a second isn't enough to indicate artificial means of access

While that statement is correct, it does not apply in this case... otherwise a very large mass of legitimate ticket hopefuls would have similar logs. The statement used as a form of detection implies a database entry for a single page call 200 times... not the thousands of "Oh yeah give me this stupid picture while you're at it".

Also, it still couldn't be a series of browser requests for a single page call, as that would dictate the browser had NO caching enabled at all. This would increase the page load time to the point where the concept of multiple calls to the page within a 3 second window becomes astronomically more ridiculous.

While your point of each individual object adding up to a series of 200 requests within seconds is very true and very common- it happens to be apples and oranges in this case.

[Bobmuhthol]

I love that your argument is that an employee of Simutronics, who are notoriously fucking bad at technology, made a vague and really unbelievable statement about a DoS attack, and therefore "it implies" that Kitsun must be lying because everything Simutronics said is unquestionably correct. Keep on keeping on.

[Tgo01]

Darn Bob beat me to it. I was going to post (still going to) that I doubt Simu would even recognize if their servers were being hacked.

They probably saw someone bought a lot of tickets, scratched their ass and said "Yup! hacker!"

[Slit-eye]

Solomon already told everyone that individuals had contacted them and assisted. I'm sure the people who checked the logs and actually sniffed out the culprits (more than 1 I'm sure) were not customer service reps. I'm not going to comment on any more of the situation because the resulting conversation rings far too similar to previous discussions:
1. You're reserving half the tickets as the premium bonus? Have you thought this through?
2. You're splitting the batches into four sets of 25? Have you thought this through?
3. You're charging six times more for plate based armors? Have you thought this through?
4. You're not protecting the login page? Have you thought this through?

Each one of those discussions resulted in a specific GM following his "I'm in charge" initial concept and everyone else saying "YEAH! HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING! SHUT UP PEOPLE!" Then the bots were revealed to the point of even being released publicly.... and everyone else said "THERE ARE NO BOTS! YOU'RE PARANOID! I GOT MY TICKET LEGIT!" Now people get smacked because they were caught with bots and everyone says "SIMU IS MAKING IT UP!"

Being a Fanboi isn't always a bad thing... but rejecting reality and substituting your own does not change the physical world for anyone else. It just means you're retarded.

P.S.: As an aside, I'm referring to the response to Kitsuns "I don't understand what you mean!" emails. They explained it to him in no uncertain terms that he had been caught - and his posting it here either reveals full disclosure of it, or a modified version that somehow still retains the incriminating answers. Of course they're not going to send you a letter about how they will catch you, who was involved, or what programs/scripts they've already snatched. This lack of interaction with YOU, a person who was most likely NOT involved, does not mean that your version of what you believe happened is any more probable than Richard Simmons being straight.

[Bobmuhthol]

Let's take a closer look at what was said:
Looking at the creation logs, the accounts were created to circumvent the restriction on trial/new accounts, and dealing with the login records, they went through the login server nearly 200 times just the second.This sentence is a grammatical mess, but at no point do I interpret it as meaning "you hit the server 200 times within one second." Sanguisiosus even says that the way Kitsun describes that he got the tickets is possible, and then he mistakenly goes on to say that it only works if the server is synchronized to the same timeserver that Kitsun was looking at (this is obviously not true at all). The point here is that Sanguicity very clearly admits that the exact method Kitsun claims to have used is plausible, but that would certainly not be the case if he had evidence that Kitsun was an elite hacker. If anything, the word second here is referring to the second run/ticket batch/whatever, and not a time measurement.

[Tgo01]

Solomon already told everyone that individuals had contacted them and assisted. I'm sure the people who checked the logs and actually sniffed out the culprits (more than 1 I'm sure) were not customer service reps.

What do you mean by this? People actually contacted Simu and said let us check the logs and we'll tell you if you were hacked?

[thefarmer]

People wrote in whining about other people with multiple tickets.

[thefarmer]

Sold two, one was armor that didn't fit my character after seeing all the things I would need to switch and the other was the major I fell into after I lost all the other things I wanted.

I have no idea what Kitsun sold but that is inconsequential as that isn't what the subject is about if you missed that part in your selective quoting. Nice try at the jabs though!

I tried for and got 1 ticket to this event as it was supposed to be. I didn't use my spare account to go, I didn't create new accounts for the purpose of getting more tickets, I didn't sell my spot after I had secured it. I didn't try to so other people could have a chance to go, but people like Kitsun here purposely tried to fuck those people, so again I'm glad he got his tickets revoked and his ass banned. I wish all the others would have too.

P.s. grow the fuck up if you want to take swipes like "sure thing buddy".

Selective quoting? I quoted an entire block of your post. Word for word.

As for growing up.. didn't you post a video of you drunk as fuck on a skateboard or something ordering in some drivethru on Lnet not too long ago? Then later ask for suggestions as to what other fucking stupid thing to do next?

Grow up? Sure thing buddy.

[Slit-eye]

I was using it to refer to the second run (I assumed through the grammatical mess but could of course be wrong)... where each ticket sale "batch" ended in less than 4 seconds. Sanguicity is very incorrect in the statement that it's plausible if the "nearly 200" statement was truth. We therefore assume Simutronics is lying about tallying the hits, or Sanguicity had nothing further to say to Kitsun and so simply tried to retain the account for the future by massaging the situation. Go ahead if you don't believe me. Hit the login server 100 times (half of himself and his brother) by sending your username/password request through their login page or through the simple form at the top. Speed click if you'd like for the sake of argument. You will not manually be able to SEND 5 requests a second in this method, let alone hit the server and await a replay, which is over the course of a 20 second window - far more than we all know the box office to have been open.

I'm sorry. Either Simutronics is flat out lying about the amount (which I suppose is possible since they pulled arbitrary numbers out of their ass for the plate pricing charts), or everyone else refuses to look at the train wreck right in front of them. I urge you to try what I suggested. Then I urge you to try with the single threaded bot provided earlier. The only way to get those kinds of calls to the server is through multi-threading synchronous requests.

As far as DOS attacks are concerned, any series of requests to a webserver that provides an interruption of service because of excessive load (even if the excessive load is due to low server hardware specs) is a DOS attack - intended or not.

[Tgo01]

People wrote in whining about other people with multiple tickets.

Not sure I see the point of this then.

If anything it just reinforces the posts by others that suggests Simu conducted a witch hunt and banned someone just to appease the masses.

Even if the emails were more along the lines of "people are hacking/cheating" instead of just "it's not fair people are getting more than one ticket" I find it hard to believe Simu did any sort of thorough investigation and Kitsun was the only one with any sort of suspicious activity.

Simu probably said "Fuck! We'll have to ban two thirds of our player base!" and said "Meh, we'll just pick whoever bought the most tickets."

Funny thing is I'm willing to bet at least two of those released tickets were bought by the same person.

[Bobmuhthol]

I'm not going to experiment with how many webserver requests I can generate. Simutronics has full control over their server logs, and they have reported a number that absolutely no one can verify in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, tickets sold out in 4 seconds, that's awesome... but nobody has demonstrated that Kitsun's accounts had 200 requests within only those 4 seconds. Your problem with me is that I am skeptical of Simutronics' claims given that we have no evidence. My problem with you is that you're not.

Also, it's not a DoS until someone's service has been denied, and that didn't happen. You can't point at the highest traffic generator and say they're "attempting to deny service" simply because they're the most frequent user when your server is doing just fine.

[Tgo01]

As far as DOS attacks are concerned, any series of requests to a webserver that provides an interruption of service because of excessive load (even if the excessive load is due to low server hardware specs) is a DOS attack - intended or not.

I know we all make fun of Simu for having shitty hardware but isn't it pretty bad if they can't handle 200 requests in a couple of seconds?

[thefarmer]

Not sure I see the point of this then.

If anything it just reinforces the posts by others that suggests Simu conducted a witch hunt and banned someone just to appease the masses.

Even if the emails were more along the lines of "people are hacking/cheating" instead of just "it's not fair people are getting more than one ticket" I find it hard to believe Simu did any sort of thorough investigation and Kitsun was the only one with any sort of suspicious activity.

Simu probably said "Fuck! We'll have to ban two thirds of our player base!" and said "Meh, we'll just pick whoever bought the most tickets."

Funny thing is I'm willing to bet at least two of those released tickets were bought by the same person.

The picked his name out of a hat to prove to the masses that Solomon is the bawse.

/end

[Slit-eye]

Simu probably said...etc
See, this is what's grinding my gears. You really think a company that's been established for decades is going to do what you posted? Whatevs man. Ostriches.

Edit: As far as the 200 requests statement, multiply that by a similar yet more reasonable number by people using other less detectable bots, not to mention the hundreds of "Backspace refresh" crowd who thought they actually had a shot but kept coming back with server 500 errors, legitimate traffic, and you've got a SINGLE WEBSERVER (not a server farm), logging to a SINGLE DATABASE (per request). Chances are there were 500-1000 requests made and only 200 got through completely enough to be logged.

[Bobmuhthol]

There have been many companies throughout history with much longer tenures than Simutronics, and they have done some truly evil things. I find it appalling that you find it appalling that a tiny, shitty online game company would not be extremely competent at everything they do.

[thefarmer]

See, this is what's grinding my gears. You really think a company that's been established for decades is going to do what you posted? Whatevs man. Ostriches.

Wait.

Wait.

You're actually going to argue that Simu, as a company, is run like an actual business? And makes savvy rational business decisions?

[Tgo01]

See, this is what's grinding my gears. You really think a company that's been established for decades is going to do what you posted? Whatevs man. Ostriches.

Uh? Have you been paying attention to the shit Simu has done in the past? And I don't necessarily mean over a decade ago, I mean just a couple of years ago.

How about last year when people were unhappy with the prizes in Droughtman's so people requested a refund from the customer service rep, they were refunded the purchase prize then Solomon (yes Solomon) accused everyone of "manipulating" (whatever word he used) the customer service rep and that they were not entitled to a refund so he actually went in there and reversed all of the reversed transactions.

I'm pretty sure that's illegal. How can you reverse a charge reversal unless you have a damn good reason? And no, the reason can't be because the customer asked for it and the customer service rep granted his request.

[Tgo01]

Edit: As far as the 200 requests statement, multiply that by a similar yet more reasonable number by people using other less detectable bots, not to mention the hundreds of "Backspace refresh" crowd who thought they actually had a shot but kept coming back with server 500 errors, legitimate traffic, and you've got a SINGLE WEBSERVER (not a server farm), logging to a SINGLE DATABASE (per request). Chances are there were 500-1000 requests made and only 200 got through completely enough to be logged.

It's as Bob said though, that seems like terrible reasoning. Assuming Kitsun did send 200 server requests a second/in three seconds/whatever, he obviously had a legitimate reason to do so just as everyone else had a legitimate reason to do so. I don't think you can look at your logs and say this person had the most when the servers went down therefore it's his fault and he did something illegal.

[Archigeek]

What do you mean by this? People actually contacted Simu and said let us check the logs and we'll tell you if you were hacked?

It was posted here that a ticket buying program had been written. That info made it to the officials.

Personally I think Kitsun hit two home runs in the first round and got excited for more, and went for it.

Everything he says about his method rings true. They may not use time.gov, but all computers sync on a regular basis to some source, and all those sources are within micro-seconds. Ironically, I switched to that method to score one of the tickets that were taken from him and put back out there.

I think he was greedy, but I don't think he used a bot to buy tickets.

[Jarvan]

I'm not going to experiment with how many webserver requests I can generate. Simutronics has full control over their server logs, and they have reported a number that absolutely no one can verify in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, tickets sold out in 4 seconds, that's awesome... but nobody has demonstrated that Kitsun's accounts had 200 requests within only those 4 seconds. Your problem with me is that I am skeptical of Simutronics' claims given that we have no evidence. My problem with you is that you're not.

Also, it's not a DoS until someone's service has been denied, and that didn't happen. You can't point at the highest traffic generator and say they're "attempting to deny service" simply because they're the most frequent user when your server is doing just fine.

So you are willing to take Kitsun's word over Simu's word? Kitsun can claim anything he likes, Simu gave him a statement of what they claim happened. You are simply choosing to believe one over the other. Also, Simu doesn't need to supply us with proof at all. They very well could have supplied Kitsun with proof, and Kitsun could have decided not to give it to us. So lack of proof is not really a valid reason to disbelieve Simu.

As for DOS, wouldn't getting an Internal 500 server error be an indication of this? I know I got them a number of times. If the error happens because of to many requests to the webpage, and if Simu's statement that Kitsun sent 200 requests a second, and someone got the 500 error, wouldn't that be a DOS?

[Bobmuhthol]

Yes, I am willing to take Kitsun's word over Simutronics' word. Every time.

More importantly, Kitsun has provided evidence, and Simutronics has not.

[Gelston]

Short of a subpoena, there will never be any evidence shown from Simu. They don't need to show it either. In fact, I bet they are looking at this thread right now and giggling.

[Jarvan]

Yes, I am willing to take Kitsun's word over Simutronics' word. Every time.

More importantly, Kitsun has provided evidence, and Simutronics has not.

I am sure you also look at out of court settlements and say the same thing. "Well Company A didn't show any proof that they didn't do anything wrong, so they must have done something wrong."

Also, I am sure even you bob have to admit that anything Kitsun posted could technically have been altered to make him look better. (I am not saying he did this, just saying it is possible)

[Bobmuhthol]

I have witnessed Simutronics being absolutely and utterly fucking retarded firsthand, and I'm sorry that y'all haven't. I was once pulled by Brauden and he threatened to lock out my account on the spot because someone lost an item and I said it was sitting in my locker. This is inside their own fucking game, and they couldn't figure out that I not only was not in possession of it, but had never touched it. So, yeah, I won't be believing dumb shit that Simutronics says to justify banning people.

[Bobmuhthol]

I am sure you also look at out of court settlements and say the same thing. "Well Company A didn't show any proof that they didn't do anything wrong, so they must have done something wrong."

Also, I am sure even you bob have to admit that anything Kitsun posted could technically have been altered to make him look better. (I am not saying he did this, just saying it is possible)... no that's actually the opposite of the argument I made, so what are you talking about?

I will fully admit that Kitsun could have doctored anything. But then a natural extension to that argument is that nothing can ever be decided because no evidence could ever be good evidence, as it's all subject to foul play. This is where not being totally retarded and using your brain comes in. I didn't skip that step.

[Slit-eye]

Which is more likely:

A. Simutronics pulled a scapegoat out of their ass, took punitive measures against seven of this persons accounts, had absolutely no evidence to back up their accusations - but continued to correspond with the accused and has seen no uproar from the person except for them to say "Simutronics is lying!" on these forums.

or B. Simutronics was contacted by some of the dozens of IT professionals in regards to their initial 500 server errors during run 1, collaborated to find out where the problem was, and definitively pointed to multiple people who were botting the servers - only one of which was stupid enough to try to buy sympathy on PC by calling "liar liar pants on fire".

If you're in the A crowd, you probably also believe Obama can't be president because he's black; 9/11 was orchestrated by three midgets, a mexican donkey, and a lemon donut; and bigfoot lives in your basement and raw dogs your grandma every night to help her sleep.

[Warriorbird]

I'd trust Kai and Alex's takes a lot sooner than I would an incognito GM or Jarvan's takes (which was humorously referenced in that other thread and not, actually, for once a dig at Jarvan).

[Bobmuhthol]

Which is more likely:

A. Simutronics pulled a scapegoat out of their ass, took punitive measures against seven of this persons accounts, had absolutely no evidence to back up their accusations - but continued to correspond with the accused and has seen no uproar from the person except for them to say "Simutronics is lying!" on these forums.

or B. Simutronics was contacted by some of the dozens of IT professionals in regards to their initial 500 server errors during run 1, collaborated to find out where the problem was, and definitively pointed to multiple people who were botting the servers - only one of which was stupid enough to try to buy sympathy on PC by calling "liar liar pants on fire".

If you're in the A crowd, you probably also believe Obama can't be president because he's black; 9/11 was orchestrated by three midgets, a mexican donkey, and a lemon donut; and bigfoot lives in your basement and raw dogs your grandma every night to help her sleep.As an "IT professional," B sounds real unlikely.

[Tgo01]

or B. Simutronics was contacted by some of the dozens of IT professionals in regards to their initial 500 server errors during run 1, collaborated to find out where the problem was, and definitively pointed to multiple people who were botting the servers - only one of which was stupid enough to try to buy sympathy on PC by calling "liar liar pants on fire".

So you are saying that people volunteered to look at Simu's logs to determine what was going on? Isn't that a sign that Simu is inept?

[Slit-eye]

Alright, fuck it. I know B to be the truth. And no, Simutronics is not in the business of showing their logs (webserver, database, or stool samples) to anyone outside of the company. Now you can take pleasure in knowing that you're instead choosing to take Kitsun's word over mine which is a much more acceptable practice by even my mother's standards.

And I'm not the only one who knows it to be truth... I'm just the only one who happens to partake in the idiocy that happens on these forums.

[Gelston]

If you're in the A crowd, you probably also believe Obama can't be president because he's black; 9/11 was orchestrated by three midgets, a mexican donkey, and a lemon donut; and bigfoot lives in your basement and raw dogs your grandma every night to help her sleep.

What? You are a complete idiot. I'd say most of the people in crowd B are whining because they never got a ticket.

[diethx]

I love that your argument is that an employee of Simutronics, who are notoriously fucking bad at technology, made a vague and really unbelievable statement about a DoS attack, and therefore "it implies" that Kitsun must be lying because everything Simutronics said is unquestionably correct. Keep on keeping on.

^^^

I would have quoted everything Bob's posted and caret'd them too, but, that would be a long fucking post.

The idea that Kitsun would use anything other than himself and his brother to buy those tickets is just unfathomable to me. Maybe that's because I know him. I get that lots of you don't. But, fuck, just unfathomable.

[Ysamine]

Every time Bobmuhthal posts my head hurts and I lose brain cells.

Bob - I can't even be mad at you. You always demonstrate stupidity with a sheer level of magnitude that is impressive, so I just can't get mad at you. How you have managed to function is this world thus far is a real feat.

[diethx]

What? You are a complete idiot. I'd say most of the people in crowd B are whining because they never got a ticket.

Dude, yes. This. This this this.

[Bobmuhthol]

Every time Bobmuhthal posts my head hurts and I lose brain cells.

Bob - I can even be mad at you. You always demonstrate stupidity with a sheer level of magnitude that is impressive, so I just can't get mad at you. How you have managed to function is this world thus far is a real feat.Hi, who are you and why do you matter again?

[diethx]

Every time Bobmuhthal posts my head hurts and I lose brain cells.

Bob - I can even be mad at you. You always demonstrate stupidity with a sheer level of magnitude that is impressive, so I just can't get mad at you. How you have managed to function is this world thus far is a real feat.

lolwut

You can say a lot of (negative) things about Bob. Stupid isn't really one of them.

[crb]

While that statement is correct, it does not apply in this case... otherwise a very large mass of legitimate ticket hopefuls would have similar logs. The statement used as a form of detection implies a database entry for a single page call 200 times... not the thousands of "Oh yeah give me this stupid picture while you're at it".

Also, it still couldn't be a series of browser requests for a single page call, as that would dictate the browser had NO caching enabled at all. This would increase the page load time to the point where the concept of multiple calls to the page within a 3 second window becomes astronomically more ridiculous.

While your point of each individual object adding up to a series of 200 requests within seconds is very true and very common- it happens to be apples and oranges in this case.

Like I said, it depends on the details. We can assume simu does the logical thing and knows enough about these issues to do it and look at log files and not get confused at what they're seeing, but, you know what assuming does.

As I see it we have possible situations.

1. Kitsun is lying, used a program, Simu has proof from analyzing the server logs.
2. Kitsun is not lying, Simu analyzed the server logs and saw ~200 hits in a second from a single IP address, and the person doing the investigation didn't know how to differentiate between different kinds of hits to really detect an artificial means.
3. Kitsun is not lying, Simu is, and pulled the 200 number out of their ass. Ultimately they banned him for the trial account usage, for which they gave an inconsistent rule against, and they bootstrapped the DOS accusation on top of that.
4. Llama.

Regardless, we'll never know.

[Tgo01]

Darn you crb! I wanted to post asking for the fourth option but you added a fourth option and removed the word four just to confuse me!

[Jarvan]

I have witnessed Simutronics being absolutely and utterly fucking retarded firsthand, and I'm sorry that y'all haven't. I was once pulled by Brauden and he threatened to lock out my account on the spot because someone lost an item and I said it was sitting in my locker. This is inside their own fucking game, and they couldn't figure out that I not only was not in possession of it, but had never touched it. So, yeah, I won't be believing dumb shit that Simutronics says to justify banning people.

Oh, I have seen Simu do incredibly stupid shit as well. Just saying, no one is above lying. Specially when they know that no one can dispute them, since Simu never has, and likely never will, discuss it with the masses.

Can Kitsun have gotten 2 tickets per batch manually? Hell yes, I know people that got one ~Every~Single~Time they tried. I highly doubt they were boting. I don't know if Kitsun was or wasn't. Through frankly the opening of 8 new accounts to purchase more tickets could be reason enough for Simu to do what they did if they so chose. If he botted ticket as well, that would just compound it.

[Jarvan]

Hi, who are you and why do you matter again?

Technically same as you, no one, and you don't.

[Warriorbird]

Alright, fuck it. I know B to be the truth. And no, Simutronics is not in the business of showing their logs (webserver, database, or stool samples) to anyone outside of the company. Now you can take pleasure in knowing that you're instead choosing to take Kitsun's word over mine which is a much more acceptable practice by even my mother's standards.

And I'm not the only one who knows it to be truth... I'm just the only one who happens to partake in the idiocy that happens on these forums.

There's quite a number of people who buy into the highly political variations of the truth brought to you by Simutronics who both read and post on these boards.

[ElevenElven]

This is something that was expressly stated would not be allowed.* Additionally, your actions to procure the tickets constituted a Denial of Service Attack on the Box Office system, blocking anyone else from getting to the purchase page to get a ticket.* This is completely unacceptable.

In the end, this is probably what it all boiled down to: You gave us money, but stopped other people from giving us money - even if just for a split second.

In Simu's mind, you can pay them $1000 a month, but if you stop someone from paying them $15 a month you're on the super shit list.

They knew people would buy your tickets when they resold them and they kept their Jewish pride by taking care of anyone who fucks with their cash flow.

If the bots would have caused them to lose even a penny, I'm sure they would have been all over them, too.

[Slit-eye]

I'm sorry, you're right. I should've been clearer. I meant I'm the only one of the people who collaborated who post here... which isn't entirely correct either. There's one other but it's up to him if he wants to come forward and say "I am Turncoaticus!"

[diethx]

I'm sorry, you're right. I should've been clearer. I meant I'm the only one of the people who collaborated who post here... which isn't entirely correct either. There's one other but it's up to him if he wants to come forward and say "I am Turncoaticus!"

Wait what? So you went from posting up a bot script to hunting down the "botters" to make sure their tickets were revoked?

[Warriorbird]

I'm sorry, you're right. I should've been clearer. I meant I'm the only one of the people who collaborated who post here... which isn't entirely correct either. There's one other but it's up to him if he wants to come forward and say "I am Turncoaticus!"

I have nothing against you or any of the rest. I don't particularly like your PM though.

[Tgo01]

I'm sorry, you're right. I should've been clearer. I meant I'm the only one of the people who collaborated who post here... which isn't entirely correct either. There's one other but it's up to him if he wants to come forward and say "I am Turncoaticus!"

What exactly do you mean by this collaboration anyway? What all did you collaborate on? What were your findings exactly? Are you just fucking with us? Are you? ARE YOU? :(

[Slit-eye]

I never posted a bot script. I posted a single-threaded spidering application, and I'm not going to go into the many differences that make one okay and another not from an ethical standpoint. I never hunted down botters. Simutronics did that - they simply asked a couple of people some questions that their webmasters weren't entirely savvy with in regards to script kiddies. It's not like this has ever happened to them before.

BTW - What PM?

[diethx]

Ohhh ok so you posted something that you immediately deleted once you realized you shouldn't be posting such a thing. That wasn't a bot script. Got it.

[Tgo01]

I never hunted down botters. Simutronics did that - they simply asked a couple of people some questions that their webmasters weren't entirely savvy with in regards to script kiddies.

Simutronics asked their customers for advice on how to deal with their servers being hacked?

Yup, this sure screams "professional company" to me.

[Jarvan]

Simutronics asked their customers for advice on how to deal with their servers being hacked?

Yup, this sure screams "professional company" to me.

Pm a side note.. imagine them approaching a professional IT person to look into it that wasn't a player..

Simu "We need someone to review our logs and determine if someone was using a third party program to obtain event tickets"

IT guy "Ok, I can do that. Event tickets to what?"

Simu "75.00 tickets to an ingame event for our text based MMO where people will bid in game money on items that don't really exist and likely resell the items or silvers on a secondary market for thousands of dollars"

IT guy "Oh... that sounds nice. Btw... My cost just went up 5x."

[Slit-eye]

Did you look at it? It's not deleted, it's there the same as it's always been. You'd be aware that it's not a bot script if you happened to know what you were talking about - but as I said previously: Everyone here seems to be happy with their own version of "fuck simutronics" reality. They don't believe what's staring them in the face, and since they don't understand network security, automated agents, or the effect of bogging down a server with an insane number of requests - as long as they get their ticket they're pleased with their ignorance.

What about the hundreds of others who wanted to go to RTCF but couldn't? Who speaks for them? Not you - you were happy with your ticket. Sue me for attempting to level the playing field, and sue me for happening to have a sixteen years of professional webspider experience. Screw you for thinking you know my intentions or for telling me I'm wrong in helping to stop the DOS attacks of Run 1 so that you could have a shot just like everyone else when round 2 came around.

"I'm trew wit dis guy" - Joe Pesci, My Cousin Vinny

[Bobmuhthol]

I understand servers just fine. I still believe Kitsun.

[diethx]

Did you look at it? It's not deleted, it's there the same as it's always been. You'd be aware that it's not a bot script if you happened to know what you were talking about - but as I said previously: Everyone here seems to be happy with their own version of "fuck simutronics" reality. They don't believe what's staring them in the face, and since they don't understand network security, automated agents, or the effect of bogging down a server with an insane number of requests - as long as they get their ticket they're pleased with their ignorance.

What about the hundreds of others who wanted to go to RTCF but couldn't? Who speaks for them? Not you - you were happy with your ticket.

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?81611-RtCF-ticket-obtainer&p=1540500#post1540500 (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?81611-RtCF-ticket-obtainer&p=1540500#post1540500)

[AuctionBot2000]

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?81611-RtCF-ticket-obtainer&p=1540500#post1540500 (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?81611-RtCF-ticket-obtainer&p=1540500#post1540500)

Look out folks, we have an internet pro in this argument! She can't win but she'll respond to every post you post to make it seem like she did!

[diethx]

Look out folks, we have an internet pro in this argument! She can't win but she'll respond to every post you post to make it seem like she did!

lol Inspire.

[AuctionBot2000]

lol Inspire.

Don't you have any friends, or any hobbies, or anything to do besides sit here and troll the message board all day every day?

[diethx]

No, Inspire. I'm going to make it my life's work to sit on the PC and do nothing but get each of your handles banned (and try to make you meltdown. Let's face it, I won't have to try hard), from here until the end of time.

[AuctionBot2000]

No, Inspire. I'm going to make it my life's work to sit on the PC and do nothing but get each of your handles banned (and try to make you meltdown. Let's face it, I won't have to try hard), from here until the end of time.

It's pretty clear that your life is all about sitting here on this message board. Try going outside. There's a big world out there and maybe you won't be so angry all the time when you realize it's not other people who are the problem.

[Slit-eye]

The spider was never posted in that thread. The thread was deleted because it started to contain too much information and needed to be quashed because it encouraged people who didn't know what they were doing to write bots and scripts (not spiders). The spider was posted on file share, in AOL chat prior to each ticket sale, and then finally in this thread so people who were simply unknowing about what is "possible" and what is "malicious" could see the difference between a spider and what Kitsun was accused of.

[diethx]

The spider was never posted in that thread. The thread was deleted because it started to contain too much information and needed to be quashed because it encouraged people who didn't know what they were doing to write bots and scripts (not spiders). The spider was posted on file share, in AOL chat prior to each ticket sale, and then finally in this thread so people who were simply unknowing about what is "possible" and what is "malicious" could see the difference between a spider and what Kitsun was accused of.

Oh see, I thought you were just trying to sell a script that'd get you tickets for $300. Ok.

[Tgo01]

Did you look at it? It's not deleted, it's there the same as it's always been. You'd be aware that it's not a bot script if you happened to know what you were talking about - but as I said previously: Everyone here seems to be happy with their own version of "fuck simutronics" reality. They don't believe what's staring them in the face, and since they don't understand network security, automated agents, or the effect of bogging down a server with an insane number of requests - as long as they get their ticket they're pleased with their ignorance.

I didn't get a ticket nor did I even try to.


Sue me for attempting to level the playing field, and sue me for happening to have a sixteen years of professional webspider experience. Screw you for thinking you know my intentions or for telling me I'm wrong in helping to stop the DOS attacks of Run 1 so that you could have a shot just like everyone else when round 2 came around.

What are you talking about? What exactly did you do? How did you "help stop the DOS attacks"? Are you under some sort of gag order from Simu or something?

ETA: Even if what you're saying is true, Simu came to you for help and you assisted them in tracking some sort of hacker program or whatever, how do you know Kitsun used said program? Because Simu said so?

[Slit-eye]

I've said all I felt the need to say in regards to Simutronics bot detection, the existence of scripts and bots, and the existence of spiders. Nobody said Kitsun used a specific program, or any program for that matter. Simutronics stated that Kitsun used a bot or a script (different from a compiled application) and backed up their accusation with numbers beyond the realm of human I/O to a webserver. I happen to know that *IF* the number presented is accurate, they are correct in stating that it is humanly impossible outside of a multi-threaded bot or script... and caught Kitsun red handed.

I can't say that Simutronics didn't pull the number out of their hindquarters and were lying in their correspondence to Kitsun in regards to this - but I can say that if they were doing so they certainly had no reason to provide that false information and in fact would be digging themselves a hole by doing so. The smart way to be an evil corporation about it would be to give no details other than to say "Third party software was detect" and run away hoping it doesn't escalate.

[Bobmuhthol]

There is no practical difference between a bot, a script, or an application. All of them refer to automated logic. Let's not be 16 years of webspider experience IT professionals about this.

[AuctionBot2000]

Remember when that guy tried to buy 16 RtCF tickets and got caught, banned and had 8 of those tickets resold?

[Slit-eye]

There is no practical difference between a bot, a script, or an application. All of them refer to automated logic. Let's not be 16 years of webspider experience IT professionals about this.

The practical difference in this case is one can be written to ensure that it cannot cause a DOS attack anymore than a standard user, cannot be throttled, and cannot be edited to abuse the coders intent. A bot is a generic term that can be applied to a script, and a script is completely editable, able to be multi-threaded, spammed, or what have you causing what amounts to the problems Simutronics ran into. Don't generalize my statement please in an attempt to be petty.

[Bobmuhthol]

So your argument that scripts and applications are different is that you don't see the source code of an application? Well that's just fucking ridiculous.

I'm glad to hear that all my projects are scripts until the second I click "build," and suddenly they're transformed into a magical new thing called an application, and everything becomes right with the world.

[Slit-eye]

Did you just generalize my statement in an attempt to be petty again? Well I'll be damned.

[Tgo01]

I've said all I felt the need to say in regards to Simutronics bot detection, the existence of scripts and bots, and the existence of spiders.

I'm pretty sure you need to provide more information after saying "I helped stopped Simu's servers being hacked" if you expect anyone to take you seriously.

[Slit-eye]

I'm also pretty fed up with people tossing around the word "hacked". The servers were overloaded by a few scripts that were poorly written and used by individuals who thought "MOAR SPEED=MOAR TICKETZ". That's not hacking anymore than lighting a bottle rocket on the fourth is a terrorist attack.

It's more important that I not go into details than it is "people take me seriously". If Solomon wants to discuss their tactics in finding the sources of the DOS attacks, I'm sure he will. It's not my place to do so especially when I only know my side of the story.

[Tisket]

It's pretty clear that your life is all about sitting here on this message board. Try going outside. There's a big world out there and maybe you won't be so angry all the time when you realize it's not other people who are the problem.

So what's your count up to as far as how many characters and handles you've created so far? Must be triple digits by now.

Your ass must be the size of Idaho.

[Gelston]

Remember when that guy tried to buy 16 RtCF tickets and got caught, banned and had 8 of those tickets resold?

Remember that guy that posted this?




Against my better judgement I'm going to write the following and tell you the truth about my life.

I'll start by saying that I'm a very private person. I grew up a Jehovahs Witness and unless you were part of the church you were considered to be a "worldly" person and a bad person. So growing up I had no friends because I was not allowed to play with anyone outside of the church.

When I became a teenager I found Gemstone and got hooked. It was an escape from a life that I didn't agree with. I was only allowed to play for an hour here or there and spent most of my time being a twat dragging bodies out of TSC to decay and whatnot. But having a place where I could be someone different than who I was forced to be was salvation.

Eventually I got out on my own and came back to GS. I played on and off for a few years, never really making any close friends. I was part of the Trophy Room gang when Debia, Jubuls, the original Tijay, Xak, etc used to hang there.

Anyway, fast forward about 9 years from there and it brings us to last year. I guess I should also tell you that I am a 28 year old bisexual male, I'm not a girl but it's sometimes fun to play around. I have been in a relationship for 4 years now with someone I care about very deeply. Unfortunately that person had a drinking problem and it got out of control. One night he decided to swallow a tube of pills and drink himself to death. I woke up at 4am to find him barely breathing. I called 911 and they rushed him to the hospital where he stayed for awhile. He went into rehab from there and got help for his drinking problem but I wasn't alright. His suicide attempt affected me in ways that I wasn't prepared for. I became severely depressed myself and sunk into gemstone like a tick. It was getting harder and harder for me to get out of bed in the morning and I started missing more and more work. I eventually was let go, which made me sink even further into GS.

Thankfully I was able to make silvers in the game and sell them to the PC community. Had it not been for all of you, I wouldn't have made it over the last year, financially or mentally. That is also part of the reason why Myklians changing was hard on me. I was using gemstone to survive and to pay my bills. It became a full time job. When Myklians were changed I realized my life was about to become much more difficult and I freaked out. I was already in a bad place because of the suicide attempt and I no longer knew how to deal with anything.

So where does that leave me now. Unfortunately I have a drug problem. I smoke marijuana every day. I don't like taking pills to be normal, so I turned to drugs to stabilize my mood and help me feel better. Most of the time I am alright, but every now and then I turn into an ugly monster, which is what you see from time to time on lnet.

So, this is the mess that is my life. Feel free to make fun of me now in typical PC fashion. I'm sorry if I have insulted you personally. Please know that it wasn't personal if I went off on you. I have a lot of problems that I don't know how to deal with or overcome. I have become someone that I don't want to be, so I am sorry if I have affected you negatively because of it.

[diethx]

HAHAHAHA.

Also I would like to high-five Tisket. She hit the nail on the fucktarded, myklian-skinning head.

[AuctionBot2000]

That's almost as funny as getting banned for buying too many RtCF tickets.

I take that back, that's a pretty sad and pathetic emo story, and a lot less funny than getting banned for RtCF tickets.

[diethx]

That's almost as funny as getting banned for buying too many RtCF tickets.

I take that back, that's a pretty sad and pathetic emo story, and a lot less funny than getting banned for RtCF tickets.

Yes. You are sad and pathetic. It's good that you can admit it. That's the first step. Admitting you have a problem.

[Kitsun]

So if you take a step back a moment and try to remember the ticketing pages (I didn't keep screenshots but some people may have): My characters/accounts were upper middle of the pack to mid-pack.

Is it your experience with using bots that they fail to beat 8-15 humans consistently?
Or do you contend that the people ahead of me in the queue are also botters that did not get caught?
Or does my bot amazingly behave like a human?

Ignore the back and forth and go on what could be tracked.

1. My accounts did not score top slot or right next to it each time. There was variance. (I think my bro hit #1 or 2 once)
2. The ticket re-release I only scored 1 ticket. My brother was busy. Did my bot fail? Is the bot then just a piece of shit that doesn't actually guarantee anything?
3. As evidenced by my purchasing habits: I had time, motive, opportunity, resources to buy however much I wanted. I only did 2 slots at once because I only have my brother and myself. Why pay an upcharge for premium at all? Why not bot out all 25 tickets in a single basic batch and lock it up for cheaper?

Did I somehow use sub-par bots to out-buy all of the faster, more efficient bots?