It is a to nice hear that another bot ban wave happened and removed the majority of the bot from the game again However, it also took away one of our friend who’ve been playing this game since day one. Vnvv(Azena) is his first character name and we have been playing lost ark almost every single day and since the game launch. For the past year, we kept our faith in the game despite all the negative feedbacks on roadmaps, bots, and disconnections. None of those issues really affected our interest of keep playing lost ark as the game now serves an important connection for all of us in this small group of friends. We talk about the game, talk about what happened daily, and discuss what we will be doing in the game daily.
Yesterday our friend vnvv logged into the game right after maintenance, he could not wait to check what is updated since usually there’s almost nothing to do in the game in Monday and Tuesday. He got disconnected 6 times in 30 mins and decided to go to sleep. Later the day our group was doing clowns while waiting for him to join so we could start clearing brelshaza and finish our brelshaza set. He came back from work and joined discord chatting with us while opened the game, he then found his account is permanently banned for cheating. In more specific, it says known cheating program detected. We have nothing to convince other people, but we all believed in him that he never cheated in this game. He is always on discord responding while he is in the game, and he had put so much time effort and money into the game that we refuse to believe he would risk his characters. Connecting to the huge bot ban wave, we strongly believe he got false banned.
He then wrote an appeal ticket, surprisingly, he got email respond almost immediately.
We have no clue what way he could possibly cheated, or what kind of program was detected. We do all the guardian raids and legion raids together, everyone in our group can tell he did not cheat in any form in raids (he dies and almost never gets the top dps :P, as a sad mayhem and reaper player). This is also the first time he got banned thus we also do not know what is the history of penalties refering to.
We then checked the forums and found that all responds to bans are from the two exact same templates. Combine with the time it took from submitting the ticket to receiving the email respond, we hardly doubt if the case was even reviewed.
We tried to send another ticket and within 3 mins he receive the respond with the second template saying insufficient evidence and any further appeals won’t change the outcomes.
We do not know what kind of evidence could be provided to prove that he did not cheat nor a clue what is the ‘known cheating program’ that EAC detected. We wrote another ticket and hope to at least he can get a reason or know what kind of program was detected causing the ban, or what kind of evidence he needs to appeal. However, he received another exact same response as last one, saying cheat program detected and evidence is insufficent.
The responds from appealings are extremely disappointed not only for vnvv, for all of us who heard about him. All the responds came out from the same 2 templates and seemly unreviewed in details. For us, it now feels like all the time and money investment into the game can be taken in any moment without a reason, and it is really disencouraging for all of us to keep investing our effort in the game.
On the side note, I actually do know a guy who had cheated in the game. The other guy had been scripting afk chaos dungeon for two month and left the game afterwards. He never gets a ban as he deserves but he left the game naturelly. I never really cared about the real life friend who have been cheating afk chaos dungeons since the action really does not affect anyone else, in addition to that he is playing in a different region. All I could tell him is you probably will get banned tomorrow and it is not worth it but that never happened. The fact that EAC only been disconnect people but almost never catch anyone who is really cheating is frustrating. But the false ban on legit players and the irresponsibility of the ban appealing team is much more heart breaking.
Or maybe it is a relief for my friend vnvv, maybe it is a good thing for him and now he can enjoy his life better without lost ark.
