Controversy and Contradiction

[Ezzerland]

There has been a rather large amount of Controversy over the actions and decisions (or lack their of) from OMAC these recent weeks. Many Kingdoms have received deletions with nearly as many that have been re-instated. Discussions ensued about the appearing random nature of the deletions, and even stranger re-instations.

In response to the controversy, OMAC has publicly posted that a new system is being considered in regards to actions against the different variations of cheating. They act on a case by case basis ONLY on reported material and, given a varying degree of consideration, decide on a respective coarse of action.

Currently, OMAC continues responding, deleting a multitude of players and acting in contradiction to the current rules and posts of which they explain their recent actions. Such contradictions include:
- Deleting Legitimate Provinces
:: What degree of consideration leads to the deletion of perhaps the ONLY legit/non-traded/non-x-logged prov in a kingdom?

- Sustaining Deletions of Some traded provinces while Re-instating others
:: Granting "fresh" accounts for some traded players (such as troll hammerman) while leaving others (such as X) to sustain their deletions.

- Stating that rule violations result in action, while not acting on violations they have acknowledged.
:: Violation for obscenities result in deletion, whereas violation of dismissing account information for the purpose of player trading is... not violating rules?


At what point can a line be drawn? At what time can OMAC release a new guideline to which they can enforce? Will OMAC continue in their current coarse, without rules they can point to as a fail-safe fall back?
And most importantly, IF OMAC addresses this thread, will they only reply to a small fragment while avoiding the actual issue?

[VT2]

I do believe that everyone who's been deleted is part of a kingdom that cheats heavily, but I still can't explain why that first kingdom got reinstated.
Sinners deserved it.

Either way, this is their game now, and their terms of use state that they can, and will, strip you of your province at any given time, without giving any reason, unless they feel like it.
It's just like in World of Warcraft, and pretty much any other game, kids.

[Ezzerland]

of coarse. it's coorporate bs now. what do they care what their players think.

they have eliminated any thought I've given to consider rejoining utopia, I certainly wont participate in this game with such attitude given from the administrating company.

[Black Kabal]

of coarse. it's coorporate bs now. what do they care what their players think.

they have eliminated any thought I've given to consider rejoining utopia, I certainly wont participate in this game with such attitude given from the administrating company.

Why do they care?

You are one person. They will advertise the hell out of whatever "game" they turn this into and get more revenue that way. As one of their moderators so delicately put it.. you don't click on the banners, you don't make them money.

[Ezzerland]

Why do they care?

You are one person. They will advertise the hell out of whatever "game" they turn this into and get more revenue that way. As one of their moderators so delicately put it.. you don't click on the banners, you don't make them money.

I sum this entire thing up with two words from my previous post:
Corporate bs

[VT2]

The more ancient, decayed players they chase out, the better, but only if they actually manage to fill the game with new blood.

[Black Kabal]

The more ancient, decayed players they chase out, the better, but only if they actually manage to fill the game with new blood.

So when are you leaving?

[Ezzerland]

woah, VT2 said "new blood"

he must be afraid his prov will get deleting for saying something far more common.

[VT2]

It sounds cooler than n00bs.
I'm never leaving - unless they chase me out, then ban me.

[Ezzerland]

I'd like to ask, just one simple question, to omac.

Are you TRYING to eliminate your player base? Or at least the core of dedicated players?

If they can answer that yes, then I'd say they're doing a darn good job of it.

[Ruairi]

From Matthew 7:24–27:

"Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it."

[VT2]

It's not wrong to kick out those who break the rules of the game on a daily basis.
What is wrong is them letting one of the cheating kingdoms live, but know this: they're being watched and monitored, and if they start doing suspicious things again, they'll get deleted for real.

So, in the end, it doesn't matter, and I'd rather play a game with 16,000 people who don't cheat, and that has various kingdoms in the top each age, than one with 18,000 people, with a strongly cheating-dominated top, that always gets the best positions on the end-of-age charts.

[bigfoot]

I can't give you an exact number but I would estimate that I've mistakenly taken action against probably less than 5 "legitimate" provinces since I started doing support and in those cases have normally been able to rectify the issue to avoid their account going from the game.

Note that I don't consider a province to be legitimate where it has mismatching account information (i.e. appears traded) or fits into any other criteria that normally is associated with cheating such as matching IPs, same computer, that sort of thing, even if we do determine it to be clean afterwards.

The only area where people might have lost their accounts in error was when we took over the support. At that time there was a 3 going on 4 day backlog of tickets. So people that might have been suspended prior to us getting involved wouldn't have been recoverable by the time we finally started clearing the backlog. But that was a timing issue and not directly related to our management of support since we, that is to say OMAC, began doing it.

As I've said if any province feels they've been mistreated they should contact support. In some cases traded accounts have been combined with other areas that make re-instating the accounts impossible as we can't even be sure that there are individual players of the game managing those accounts. That can be why you see things which you feel are discrepancies when in fact there is more to the story.

[agesdg]

Note that I don't consider a province to be legitimate where it has mismatching account information (i.e. appears traded)

I think you're doing a good job in the most part.

But about account information, i know I didn't use my real address to create my account because I never like to give it out when it is not necessary. The name is correct though. The birthdate is probably correct but I probably didn't use the exact date for it. I usually put January and then some random day and year. This is for privacy issues. How would you differentiate if someone couldn't match it?

[Redlenin]

People are leaving this game, it's just sad that omac decides to alienate a community of hardcore players who actually are keeping an otherwise death game alive. Sure u can argue what we done in most top kd is wrong, we traded to fill accounts, but is it our fault when there is no new blood to the game? and that we have to kill the same account 20-30times otherwise to get a decent player (further more making it impossible for new players to get to know the game in a reasonable way)

But now u are random deleting, U know urself that every top 100kd is Mostly traded, still u pick out random people and delete em (it is random cause u can delete whole top 100 in 1 go cause they all did the same thing)

We are happy someone is actually involved in the game, but instead of using you power for suporting ur most active community u chose to remove them from the game.