Four years hence, and the arrogance of the cheating pieces of shit knows no ends...

I got another one of those probable "GM investigations which eventually came to nothing".

Reviewing the Terms of Service at my 24PB probably did some good.

Basically, what happened kind of dove-tails into the ominous anniversary that Final Fantasy XI is about to suffer/celebrate, depending on your take on the matter.

Tomorrow is my 44th birthday.

*boos, groans, and screams of "GO DIE ALREADY!" permeate the Internet*

But that's not the anniversary I'm talking about.  (And, before anyone starts, I do not have the maturity of a 44 year-old.  More just the body.)

Anyhoo, as people probably well expect, tomorrow is four years since the Salvage bans which decimated North American end-game and pretty much set the table for the de-emphasis on Final Fantasy XI in favor of Rapture/Final Fantasy XIV.

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of probably my second-happiest moment on the game...  Watching much of North American end-game, reliant on bots, cheaters, and exploits, burn in Hell.

It was almost certainly the day Square-Enix (in Japan) decided to try to phase out Final Fantasy XI.

The problem was:  What they were going to phase in has turned into such a colossal joke that we are now just nine weeks from getting FFXI's fifth full expansion.

And the player-base seems to be helping in turning Square-Enix (or, at the very least, their MMO division) into such a similar joke that intelligent people are actually beginning to talk about the death of the entire Final Fantasy brand.

Square-Enix, with their corporate policies and their player-base, is about two swirls to the hole in the shitter.

Let me give an example that I will dove-tail two different ways...

Saturday night, I'm in Jeuno, and basically see that we have yet another (semi-obvious RMT) FC announcer running around, Levexp.

(Leviathan Experience)

So, I cross-check him on FFXIAH to see if he merits an immediate report to the STF, but he's another one of those that the RMT outfits basically have made straight out of the box and sent to Jeuno to do announcing.

Level 1 WHM, no sub, no history on the AH, as of the time I spoke of him.

So, Fell Cleave XP Power-Levelling groups being illegal (and they are, even absent RMT concerns (Absentee Play/Pay to Advance -- read the Terms, people!!), I call him out and put him on notice.

I don't hear from him (probably another obvious tell as to his intentions and history).

Whom I do hear from is another old "friend":  One of the cheating-est pieces of shit on the entire damn server, so much so that he's been reported as the person behind the bot-fest that ran the piece-of-shit LS Exodus off the Leviathan server entirely!

I'm talking about Comeatmebot...  ERRRR, Comeatmebro.  One of the most famous players on Leviathan.

So, we get into it, he's a lying dumbshit, blah-da blah-da.

That's not what gets me really started.

It's Agentd, one of his syncophants and a cheating piece of shit himself, who needs to do no more than say one thing to basically prove not only his cheating, but his allegiance...

(You lie down with dogs, you get fleas.)

What Agentd said:  That I should thank Comeatmebro for still having a Final Fantasy XI to play, because he pays for eight accounts.  How many do I have?

(This is eight accounts -- not eight mules.  This is 8 X $12.95/30 days.)

OK, let's look at this on four different levels to see how ridiculous this piece of shit is and how badly he needs to get smacked up side the head (which I barely kept off the in-game chat, but telling him to "watch his back" or I'll GM him probably got me GM'ed for threatening him -- I'll do that here if, when, and as I have to -- it's why this is the first and only blog ever removed from the Tarutaru Times Online) :

1) Are we going to start effectively "voting shares" in this game, that botting conglomerates that have multiple accounts have more rights than the rest of us because of having 4-6-8-more accounts?

(Please note:  2 accounts is not necessarily a problem.  We start getting into more, though, and I have a question for you below...)

Are we going to get to the point that there's one set of rules for those who pay "their $12.95", and another for those who pay "their $38.85, $51.80, ..." and so forth?

2) What, Agentd, then separates this from a "Free to Play" model, where you basically have to pay money to do anything reasonable?

And don't think Square-Enix is above that.  There are those who are stating that their newest Final Fantasy mobile title, Final Fantasy All the Bravest, does just that -- for characters, immediate revival, etc. and so forth.

In so many words, do you want this game to degenerate to a money model?

It reminds me of something I was half-listening, half-snoozing to this morning before an early morning grocery run...  I was listening to the 2007 Limit Break Radio Fan Festival shows - the one Fan Festival I actually attended.  (You can actually hear me exclaim about Windowed Mode being out the "next Tuesday!" that Wings of the Goddess was released on.)

God, five-plus years now...

Anyhow...  In the second part, one of the first things that are discussed after the remote taped interviews complete is the first year or so of efforts from the Special Task Force, in which about $3,000,000 worth of gil was wiped from the game.

Aneiro and most of the audience (and I recall myself being one of the loudest in this regard in said audience at the panel where this was announced) were very happy for this.

I don't think that would be the case today.

I truly think that one of the few ways that Square-Enix would be able to keep this game going more than a few months after Seekers is to allow RMT, knowing that most of the cheating pieces of shit would like to make money.

One good example is in the next two parts:

3) Comeatmebot:  Why the fuck you need 8 accounts?

4) I want people to realize that if Comeatmebro is as he is represented to be (which would also be consistent with the accusations (which I believe have been reported!) of his bot activity eliminating Exodus LS from Leviathan), he is literally paying $103.60 every 30 days to play the game.

This would basically be $1,250.00 just for the characters and accounts.

WHY?

If he's not conducting some sort of massive money scheme on FFXI, why the Hell is he paying the better part of $1200 a year to play an 11-year old MMO that most of the gaming community sees an utter joke?

This shithead is up to something, and I'm not sure it's just botting in-game.

Because I find it very hard to discern that he (and I'm almost certain I know who the other 7 accounts are in-game -- there are "Seven Faces of Deadly Sin" that seem to follow this piece of shit around:  Slothface, Gluttonyface, and the others...) is legally playing the game and not trying to make that money back, and far more, playing FFXI.

Especially as prominent of a player as he is (which basically almost translates to cheating, in and of itself, with any real acceptance in the North American FFXI community), one would have to think he's the "10M for NNI wins" (which is $30-40 on a lot of RMT sites, which they can turn around and sell for at least double that!) crowd.

And if people like Agentd are going to support these jackasses, then I will call them cheaters and liars as well.

Because I believe that that few people are still trying to play the game according to the Terms.

So few, as a matter of fact, that it could be a defensible position that any player who refuses to bot, use Windower, conduct RMT measures, etc., could be seen as a disruption to Final Fantasy XI, and, hence, actionable under those very same Terms.

This is the reason that Square-Enix is in the shape it's in:  A juvenile player-base who cheats their asses off.

What the game should've been is a place where all three platforms of the game had equal access to the game -- and this is why anti-3rd party program rules are there.