Today, I got a bombshell dropped in my comments. At first, the person just basically mentions it, without sourcing it, and then, after I asked, I did some research and got it confirmed through Kimiko's blog.
Everyone, please do me a favor, and read this other post first that I found just a few minutes before I started my own:
Kanichan - Coming Home
He gives me two paragraphs of that post, for very very good reason.
Keichan = Kaeko. (One of THE most famous Salvage bans in the entire 1/22/09 banning list.)
To say I am pissed off would be more than an understatement.
I feel my character has, bluntly, been tainted, backstabbed, and defrauded -- I do not say this lightly.
I have literally spent the last four hours trying to talk myself out of just deleting the character and throwing an Internet-wide rampage disgracing Final Fantasy XI as a bunch of cheaters and Square-Enix as a bunch of fucking enablers.
I almost do feel the only justifiable thing I can do is, at the very minimum, leave Siren -- which I almost-certainly will do now, but will need to wait at least to the next billing period to do so (I have plans for the first full week of May) -- if not, by the only moral move I have left, leave the game.
From all of my dealings with him, Keichan seemed like a reasonable person, but we definitely butted heads a couple of times over the things I have said in this blog.
He and Medicinebox (what, another Salvage ban-ee??) took a lot of what I had to say personally. I didn't realize the extent to what he meant before today.
I wrote an article to him, condemning him in much the same way I did Chinchilla and the rest of Pet Food Cheater. I have it up in another tab, and put the link here.
He never revealed to me who he was, until Monday's post.
He, and quite correctly as such, told everyone to keep it from me. (If I had known, I'd never have joined Cloak and Dagger.)
So I guess all that is left is not only to reiterate what I have said on my January 26, 2009 post to him, but also to respond to some of what he said to and about me on Monday:
The biggest problem I have had with the Salvage bans is that only the characters were ever banned. The players involved were the ones needed to be banned.
I said it for Chin, it applies to Kaeko, and to all the other people involved. Else, why in the Hell remove the characters at all, or their ill-gotten gear, or anything else?
The standing assumption anyway is that the vast bulk of top-level players (of which Kaeko clearly is one) have so many undiscovered exploits at their disposal that it is of no value to ban them -- they will clearly lap the fair-players in any realistic event.
(Some have said as much quite arrogantly on BG, and I've reposted some of it here. Kei was not happy with me for not understanding why it took 220 days for me to do what took him 20. Well, now I think I know why it took him 20...)
When the characters were banned, the players behind them needed to be banned or all they have lost is (an increasingly-smaller amount of) time.
So, Keichan, let me address what you said specifically to and about me in your blogpost:
"This one I'm going to spend a bit more time on. When I came to Siren, the first person I saw in LS other than Kimiko was Starcade, who I found was the same player that rants non-stop about cheaters and Salvage Dupes (in fact, I even had a post written specifically at me). Kimiko asked me to try not to cause any drama, so I never really mentioned who I was; but I wanted to take the time to understand him since I was going to be here anyways. At this point I would consider him a friend, regardless of how he reacts to finding out that I'm probably one of the more notorious LM-17s out there. If he ever reads this, I hope that he can see things in game as more than just black and white."
The problem I have always had with the Salvage bans is that Square-Enix did not go nearly far enough in doing what they had to do to save FFXI from the likes of the BG-parsers, HNM-botters, and the whole other freaking shooting match.
As a result, even you yourself have admitted that, without a lot of that illegally-based action (you said: "Having now played without the perks of a top tier HNM LS, I can confidently say that FFXI is dying.", and I don't think I need to say that "top-tier HNM LS" basically implies every damned cheat exploit one can come up with...), FFXI is dying.
The fact is is that you confirm to me one of the reasons why a lot of what you said about me in the second paragraph is absolutely true: WHO THE FUCK CAN I TRUST IN THIS GODDAMN GAME???
As of right now, frankly, I probably stand bannable now for some of the tactics we may have used (with or without my knowledge) over the last months.
You all but basically come down that playing the game outside the terms of the Terms of Service (so much that Square-Enix has to openly turn it's back on same Terms to keep the whore pimped out long enough so their new call-girl Eorzea can be trained and perfected before "working the streets") is a necessity to play this game.
How are you any different from the likes of Chinchilla, and how is the linkshell any different from Pet Food Alpha?
"In maybe 3-4 years of playing, I was surprised to find that Star had no sky ZM4, was stuck on Ouryu in CoP, virtually no assault rank, no nyzul isle - virtually everything that requires more than 1 person, he didn't have. in about 2 months, I rushed with him sky, the entire CoP, about 2/3rds assault, and 1/3rd nyzul. It's unfortunate, but outside of help that involves me, I don't think he has ever been able to consistently get help for anything."
And now I understand why.
For the very same reason I never got myself involved in Salvage, I couldn't trust anybody enough not to get more than a menial (failed) attempt at Ouryu once in a while. I just laid Zilart down for the longest time til that one day we decided to run the table. I was PSC when I came to Siren.
And you are right, Kaeko, and we talked about this: It's not that I wouldn't want to ask for help if I knew I could trust somebody -- it's a matter that I know (an absolute and declarative KNOW) that I will not get help that I ask for. And I'm not sure I care how much of that is me, how much of that is trying to keep the top tier as exclusive as possible, or whatever.
"The irony that someone he would probably label as an "elitest cheater that's too good to help others" is the one to rush him most of this is not lost on me."
"Cheater"? Most certainly.
"Elitist" and "too good..."?? Not as much, and we discussed as such.
But I should've realized at some point that I was getting in where I should not have gone. I can't place exactly when, but it was clear that I should've realized something was up.
I play this game to try to be "better than the cheaters", and to spit in their faces. There is no other real reason for me to continue in FFXI, and hasn't been since the Salvage bans, for the very reason Keichan closes my section with:
"MMOs are about interacting with others, and I hope that when I return to Odin, he is able to continue interacting and find others to work with."
Especially after what I know now, how the Hell can I do that? Serious question.
What has now happened is the main reason I say that I don't play this game to make friends -- because I don't know who my friends are.
I've already not had a good week -- I had to spend four hours yesterday talking my friend down again, as things continue to disintegrate in RL all over the place (speaking generally, not specifically).
Keichan, frankly, never should've existed. That that character did is Square-Enix' fault, because any such bans should've been on the players. I say now what I said then: Square-Enix is basically enabling a lot of this because they refuse to take the actions needed which would've saved XI (we'll see if hypergame is workable) and wouldn't make XIV an abject non-starter.
I'm sorry, but I now feel all of the forward progress I've made on Siren has been tainted.
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4 comments:
While I understand you might feel betrayed, learning that one of the people you'd come to play alongside of and get along with was a "notorious cheater", I think you're totally belittling anything that happened prior to finding out Keichan = Kaeko. Did he go out of his way to help you? Does he consider you to be a friend, regardless? Did you consider him a friend prior to find out who he "really" was?
In my opinion, the answering of yes to any of those questions outweighs who he was in a previous incarnation in Vana'diel. To say otherwise totally belittles (apparently this is my word of the day) anything that happened prior to his "bombshell" of a blog post.
The big part of MMO is the MM part- massive multi-player. When I left Vana'diel a year ago (mostly because of being no longer pleased with the turns the game was taking at the time), I left the bad stuff I had sweated over behind and took the good stuff with me- the friends I made who I still keep in contact with this day. In the end, that's all that really matters, not whether or not so-and-so did x to get y.
It's about the journey, not the destination.
~Etain, Fenrir, 2004-2009
Etain: The problem is, and, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'd know this: Nothing in this game is ever going to get cleaned up until the people behind the players are removed.
I've said it time and again. It's as true for the Salvage bans as it is for the RMT as it is for what they should do to all the Windower/App/NASA players.
And, as I've said time and again: If they cannot continue XI without them, then shut XI down.
I considered him about as much of a friend, he did go out of his way to help, and all that. BUT: He never should've been allowed in that position, and, in doing so, his conduct has placed enough question on my character (both "Starcade" and my personal integrity) that I had to ask the Special Task Force to investigate my own conduct with respect to my dealings with him, because of the massive amount of work we did together in the three months or so he was on Siren.
That I can answer all of those questions in the affirmative does not change that he should never have been allowed in that position. I don't think people get this, sadly.
I think his previous conduct already belittled our work, and the fact that they had to withhold that information from me for me to "progress" in the game as anyone (other than an ultimate lone-wolf like me) would define "progress" as does so doubly.
I HATE the amount of MM in this MMO. I think it forces people to either cheat or leave, frankly -- given the social fabric of MMOs and groups like BG and most of the HNM demimonde.
(To say otherwise, you'd have to deny the amount of this game which has been taken over by endgame (so much so, Square-Enix has had to create hypergame to try to compensate).)
The problem is that the only "good stuff" involved in FFXI the last 18 months has been destructive (the Salvage bans, the 3PP statements (and hopefully eventual bans), the blowing up of the present power structure through hypergame, etc.).
I leave you with the same question I have left others with: If this is the case, why ban him? I now question whether, in pursuit of helping me to get to a better "destination", the "journey" has placed me in the very same nullification I've spoken of for types like Kaeko and Chinchilla and Mogknight and the like.
"I HATE the amount of MM in this MMO. I think it forces people to either cheat or leave, frankly -- given the social fabric of MMOs and groups like BG and most of the HNM demimonde.
(To say otherwise, you'd have to deny the amount of this game which has been taken over by endgame (so much so, Square-Enix has had to create hypergame to try to compensate).)"
The only areas I know of where you might be 'expected to cheat' are HNM, possibly tiny portions of Sea an ZNM (by which I mean specifically Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden and nothing else).
That's a very small portion of endgame, and while it does offer some of the top-tier items around, none of it is actually vital to any event outside of... HNM, AV, and PW.
If you go look at BG, you'd probably get the impression that HNM, AV, and PW are 50-60% of endgame, because they seem to be the sort of events -- and the sort of groups -- that will try to take over your life in FFXI. Step outside of the noise and take another look. They aren't. Those people aren't the majority of the player base. Their events aren't the majority of endgame.
They are, in short, largely irrelevant to anyone who doesn't do HNM/AV/PW. At worst they might harass you in Campaign Battle or Besieged, or kick you out of their meripo, all of which amounts to a minor annoyance easily dealt with by /blacklist or a GM Call for harassment.
The problem is, without some of those same "top-tier items", can you do a lot in this game that you'd like to do?
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