11,500 Final Fantasy XI accounts banned

by James Ransom-Wiley { Nov 28th 2006 at 2:15PM }

Square Enix has again taken action against Final Fantasy XI cheaters, banning more than 11,500 accounts, in turn, removing roughly 5 billion Gil from in-game circulation. The mass crackdown has affected users on all platforms (PC, PS2 & Xbox 360), as administrators targeted a range of illegal activities:

Use of 3rd-party tools to enhance character movement (approx. 1,100 accounts banned)
Use of 3rd-party tools to bypass game mechanics (e.g., timing of ability use) (approx. 6,400 accounts banned)
Engaging in Real Money Trading (RMT) (approx. 4,000 accounts banned)

Tags: ban, Final Fantasy XI, FinalFantasyXi, Gil, PS2, Sqaure Enix, SqaureEnix

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JimmyHACK @ Nov 28th 2006 3:10PM

OWNED!!!!!!!!

kodec @ Nov 28th 2006 2:18PM

...So they pretty much banned every one left who was still playing the game?

Alecks @ Nov 28th 2006 2:25PM

Lol, Yeah. THey Missed me though. I still play with the other 500k people they missed :(

Insomnious @ Nov 28th 2006 6:23PM

Good news all round. It's always good to see a company looking after the affairs of their games well after they've shipped it.

Kyrra @ Nov 30th 2006 9:46AM

There was so much cheating going on with that game when I played. Fish Bots, Farming Bots, speed hacks... it was crazy. When I used to do HNM stuff, we had a couple people in my LS that would speed hack to get around faster (walking everywhere in that game sucked).

And World spawn bosses made me want to kill myself... "Oh, I just spent 4 hours waiting for a boss to respawn and another group got it... SWEET!"

/sigh

I'm happy I went to WoW, having much more fun with it.

Zo� K. @ Nov 28th 2006 3:27PM

Haven't played it in forever, but I'm curious is this has helped the game's economy to an appreciable degree.

I know where I played (on Asura), the economy was horrible because there was way too much gil in the system, way too many players buying and selling it, and not enough sinks to take the gil back out. But this is good to hear. Once a scroll of Phalanx got up to around half a million, I was pretty much done playing the game.

Chachi @ Nov 28th 2006 2:38PM

I wonder how many of those banned for bypassing "game mechanics" were simply using windowers to avoid logging out of the game to check a game guide or chat applets.

RD @ Nov 28th 2006 2:57PM

Slow news day, eh?

kevin @ Nov 28th 2006 2:58PM

"The termination of these accounts has led to the removal of approximately 45 billion gil from circulation."

45 Billion gil. And when they talk about bypassing game mechanics they are talking about the 3rd party warping tools people use not Windower.

Gorvi @ Nov 28th 2006 3:07PM

These kind of actions are having a great impact on the economy. Where the RMT's (or gilsellers) had monopolies on some very in demand items, they're just not there anymore, making them much more affordable. SE seems to be on a mission this fall getting rid of these people.

kevin @ Nov 28th 2006 3:24PM

oh, yes and on the bypass game mechanics I remember there was something about a hack to reset the Theif ability Steal. People were going to bestmen zones and Stealing Gold bestcoins and resting the 5 minute timer back to zero.

fanguad @ Nov 28th 2006 4:19PM

Does anyone know if they've gotten rid of the people denying access to NMs like Ulli?

For those not in the know, a recent tactic of gilsellers has been to give deny access to certain monster in the game which drop spawn items for other monsters which drop good items. They sell the spawn items, and thus profit without killing the hard monsters themselves. S-E has previously ruled that this is legal, much to the chagrin of people trying to camp these monsters in a fair manner.

kevin @ Nov 28th 2006 3:32PM

Well Phalanx is about 40-45k now, the economy is in pretty good shape compared to a year ago. In fact when this mass banning was announced Last week, a LS member went to IGE and discovered all servers were under going gil restocking, IGE had no gil to sell. It was pretty funny.

Waluigi @ Nov 28th 2006 4:52PM

Well the prices on most items have been decreasing for the most part. Alot of the rarer items are also alot cheaper. http://www.ffxiah.com has a rough graph of everything decreasing.

As for windower being a problem, just don't talk about it in game, and it's not an issue. It's 100% not detectable on the server-side, but if you tell a GM that you use the Windower then they'll count that as a strike against you since it's still a 3rd party program.

Zo� K. @ Nov 28th 2006 4:46PM

You have to remember, Asura has one of the worst, most inflated economies in Final Fantasy XI... so while your scrolls may sell for 40-50k, ours went for 400-500k. And it was a sad state of affairs, especially when you can recall a time where it was even cheaper than they are on YOUR server.

Tukka @ Nov 29th 2006 11:57AM

"I wonder how many of those banned for bypassing "game mechanics" were simply using windowers to avoid logging out of the game to check a game guide or chat applets."

Good question. Hopefully none, but who knows? I know this is one of the things that contributed to my decision to ultimately stop playing FF11. I couldn't get any of the windowers to work properly and I refused to let a game monopolize my PC in the way that Square-Enix tries to mandate.

Mr. Khan @ Nov 28th 2006 4:38PM

Square Enix's JP division DOES consider Windower to be a third party mechanics-warping tool, they feel it sullies the game experience

Square Enix is waaaay too harsh about this, they've got to calm down
seriously, no-one else would be stupid enough to ban 11,500 accounts, that's about $150,000 a month that you're not getting, especially considering some of the pretty tame things they deem hacking

Now Console PSO, that was where you saw some manly hacking (especially after they began building AR codes for the GC version), and Sonic Team had no problem with it (unless you brought in certain unreleased Items)