Greetings,
I have not blogged in a year due to major health issues, which I will not go into detail at the moment. In lieu of this Downtime, I was introduced to a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Wizard101. This game was so Very therapeutically important to me, I was able to visit with Family and Friends across the country every day. It kept me going, and gave my mind exercise being as my physical exercise was limited. We could play this game, chat and catch up on a daily basis. I loved seeing my brother every morning before he left for work, to tell him "I Love you and have a great day". When I would see his texts in game, I could hear his voice speaking these words to me, it was very special and kept me going through the pain difficult times I had. Like any good online game, you need to spend money in order to help the game continue to function. We had no problem investing some extra curricular money into a diversion so Dynamic, with animations that made you "star in your own cartoon". It is extremely Kid friendly and therefore his young daughter was enjoying it with us. There are so many aspects to this game, you can never get bored of it, and the things it can teach a young person are absolutely amazing. The value of money, priorities, teamwork, strategy, Math, spelling, social interaction, manners and much more. For safety they have a menu chat for children under 13, they can only "speak" certain premade phrases and can only "see" these phrases spoken back to them... such as "Please may I join?" "Would you like some help?" "Thanks" "You're Welcome" and game specific phrases. For those 13 - 18 years old, the open chat would show yellow as you typed a word incorrectly and would not show that word in public... if you typed the correct spelling you would see it in white and it would be displayed in your text. Rather ingenious we thought, and so approved of this entire concept, we shared with other friends and got them "hooked" on it as well, because as you gain higher levels you need teams to defeat the difficult dungeons.
Which brings me to the subject of the Blog post, in the level 90 world of this game, over the holidays, we discovered four specific housing items that could be collected within the game. No big deal, throughout the game there are many items you discover that you can pick up and either display in your wizards house or sell for gold, or even feed to your pet for it to gain experience. However, these particular items in Azteca (a level 90 world) would give you an infinite amount of these items, you could fill your backpack. We thought surely this was a gift from KingsIsle so that we could make some extra gold (in game currency, used to purchase in game items, with no real monetary value) and that surely we were not the first and only people to find this. Well, KingsIsle waited until after the holidays, when all their players spent extra money on Crowns (in game currency to purchase Special in game items that cost real money) game pack bundles, gift cards, and all the special holiday sales on things we do spend our real money on to have fun in the game; to drop the hammer and suspend and permanently ban Tens of Thousands of players stating that we exploited a bug. Without warning we could no longer play the game, the email sent to us said that we violated their terms of use and they referred us to this post about Account Sanctions for Game Exploitation . Which, as you can see they got so much feedback that first 24 hours from ALL the people impacted by this, that they added another post revealing that they had changed their minds on SOME and "reduced the sentence" of some that had been suspended, some that had been banned were now only suspended, and yet some were still permanently banned without reply to their query's. In normal instances of Permanent Banning, they allow an appeal, HOWEVER they are not allowing ANY appeal in this situation, it is their determination and you have no say.
Upon further investigation, this particular "bug" has been in the game for approximately a year and posts on the forum discussing it on December 25th 2013 had been removed (found in Google cache) There was No warning or explanation of why these items were left in the game so long, only immediate execution of at least 10% of their paying customers. Now many of us have money sitting in our accounts that we will never be able to use again, and they will not refund or provide an explanation of the specific Terms of Use that were violated. Here is the link for their Facebook post, and please take a look at the comments if you have time. I would like to get a census of all the players that this has impacted by being suspended or permanently banned to get a grip on the true number, Please leave a comment if You have been a part of this Entrapment Corporate Greed Scam.
As of this writing my brother still has had no response to his query and has not had a "reduced sentence" to being suspended. At the very least they will never get another penny from me, and if they do not reinstate my brother's account I will most likely give up the game entirely, as I have had only a suspension. Thank you all for listening, I really hope the National Media Outlets pick this up because it is the Biggest case of Bullying I have ever seen, which is also one thing that KingsIsle says they do not tolerate. How Ironic
Much Love and many prayers
wrulf
In memory of: Iridian Wyrmflame, Logan Runner, Allan Bearwalker, and all our brother and sister wizards that have been cut short of their life in the Spiral.
We as fee paying members of Kingsisle Entertainment's game Wizard101 are shocked and appalled to have our accounts banned because we took more than one free offer in the game, a free offer that the game allowed us to take! Do not punish us for your programming incompetence! We are your source of income, don't treat us like idiots! Restore all sanctioned accounts!
If you would Please also participate in the Petition that is available here
