Ban Hammer Hits! – A W50 Special
October 27, 2010 in World 050 News, World News
A very busy week for all of us here, isn’t it? We’ve all heard about the bans by now. We’ve all seen the top tribe of the world disband because of them. We’ve seen the countless accusations and counter-arguments on the external forums. At this point in time people are choosing to believe what their closest friends tell them. I felt the need to address this issue on a more global scale in the W50 Blog. Below you will find an interview with the Community Manager of tribalwars.net, in which he addresses most (if not all) of the concerns surrounding the large amount of bans in our world.
An Interview with the CM regarding the W50 Bans
Morthy: Hiya. We’ve always kept a look out for people cheating by automating activities (bots) but until now we’ve only been able to automatically detect a few very specific illegal tools. The analysis of player activity patterns has been something I’ve been focusing on recently and after our team finished a very lenghtly and time consuming investigation I decided it was time to work on a new detection tool. The initial coding took around half a hour and was first tested on World 52. The first player we tested it on was found to be cheating. From then onwards it was a relatively simple job to convert the script to automatically scan high ranked players across all worlds.
FrailBeauty: A lot of people seem to believe that everyone got banned for exactly the same thing (the same farming method that is), therefore some are raising questions as to why some bans were lifted and others weren’t. Were all the bans for the exact same thing?
Morthy: All the bans were for some form of automatic activity, though not necessarily the same program or the same actions.
FrailBeauty: What exactly happens to an account after it is banned in this way? Will their villages simply remain un-attackable for the remainder of time?
Morthy: Yes, unless a player has a ban revoked or is offered a punishment the villages will remain unattackable until they go barbarian. This usually happens between 14-15 days after the ban was made apart from in very rare circumstances.
FrailBeauty: A number of banned players of our world were highly influential personas. The top player, in particular, was also the leader of the top ranking tribe. Since the ban it has become quite obvious that he has been rallying support, and has even seemed to convince most of his tribe to set their accounts to deletion. In situations like this, is it not reasonable (if not necessary) to make the evidence against that player be known to the public? Due to the privacy policy, such players could be telling people anything they wish, and due to the earned respect on this world – they will be believed by many. Has the thought crossed your mind to publicize the evidence against such players, or is this strictly forbidden by Innogames (even in dire situations like this one)?
Morthy: It’s something we often wish we could do, but there are a couple of reasons we can’t here. Firstly, the ‘war’ against players using illegal tools/scripts is never winnable, it will always be a question of one side one-upping the other for a little while. They release a new tool, we release a new detection method, they change their tool to get around it, etc. I’d prefer to keep the exact method our internal tools use as secret as possible, which is why despite temporarily relaxing the forum rules on ban discussion we’re still preventing those involved from pasting any of our replies there.
Secondly, any public discussion about the evidence would soon turn into a back and forth between supporters of the players and the modding team, with other players commenting from the sidelines. It wouldn’t end well.
However, while the ban discussion rules are relaxed I would advise players to stop lying about their bans and the evidence/reasons behind them on the forums. I will not hesitate in responding and countering to whatever a banned player says if it is factually incorrect.
I’m aware a lot of the involved players have already started spreading misinformation. If you’re reading this and you’ve been told something that sounds really unfair or unlikely, please remember that these players have been banned for cheating. If they were willing to stoop that low, they’re also perfectly willing to lie about it to their teammates.
FrailBeauty: So claims about using TW Farm Reports and other external TW scripts are all false, correct?
Morthy: Twfarmreport.com is completely legal and you will not be banned for using it. I’m not sure what you mean by external TW scripts.
FrailBeauty: By that I mean scripts from Zomgtw, The-hangout, as well as TWmentor etc.
Morthy: Scripts from those three sites have all been approved by our staff. They are okay to use. The scripts that are not okay are ones that perform more than one action per click, or without any input at all.
FrailBeauty: There have been claims of banned players popping up in the game and sending messages through other accounts. How is this possible? Are they not IP banned from the world? Or are they simply getting others to pass on their messages for them via an external source of communication?
Morthy: Banned players are able to log in to sat accounts and so can send messages via them. It’s also possible they could be getting others to post messages for them. Lastly, if a player is permanently banned they are able to start playing again on a new account or by taking over another account immediately, as long as they are not actively appealing the ban on their banned account. We do not give out IP bans.
FrailBeauty: So they are never truly banned from the world, just from their accounts?
Morthy: Yes, we deal with accounts, not players. This is due to the large amount of account ownership changes and co-playing taking place nowadays.
FrailBeauty: Understandable. Well thanks for taking the time to address some of the publics’ concerns today. Is there anything you wish to add which hasn’t already been covered in the interview?
Morthy: Just that I hope no-one allows themselves to be mislead by the lies of those that have been banned. It would disappoint me to see players stopping playing the game due to being mislead by those they trust.
The Future of W50?
So what happens to our humble little world as a result of these bans? Above is a map of all the banned players.
So one thing is, we’ll have a lot more barbs. But what about the politics of the world? Many forum go-ers seem convinced that this is pretty much the end of the world (or the exciting part of it). Only time will tell what happens. Will former all former [END] members really delete? If so, why the need to disband the tribe? What large-scale wars will break out next? Who will dominate the South East from now on?
If you ask me, things have just gotten interesting.
Next Week
-An article on the changes in the world, plus interviews with former [END] members that have decided to stay on W50.
- A look at life on the Rim.
- All the regular features (normal maps, some stats, ranks etc.)
- The Survey Section.
Till then!
-Frail
I’ve had serious problems with lag as well. I got rid of a lot of it by running ccleaner frequently throughout the day, and doing multiple reboots, but that only gets rid of some of the problem. I am wondering how much of this lag problem is because of individual computer issues, and how much is from ISP issues…and how much of it is from the servers at TW?
I would like to know how players can multi account and only lose a fraction of their villages, and do this numerous times over, but when someone is thought to be using a bot or tool they are perma banned, especially if this is the first offense on them..Where is the justice in that.
I would also like to address the fact that this bot/tool testing method was used only once and had not been previously tested..Just because when you first used it found someone to be cheating does not mean it works 100% accurately each time… Would be like me trying to recruit this morning and everything working fine, and then when i switch groups I then couldn’t recruit, or like when I mint, sometimes it goes smoothly and other times I just get a blank screen
Not everything always works smoothly without flaws..I would like to ask Morthy, have you personally tried to duplicate some of the methods that have been described to you? You have yet to answer our question regarding the epic lag on the larger accounts, and we are talking about the accounts that are well over 22mill in points.
I wanted to say lacks, my bad!
But i think you get the point, and I’m not even going with the conspiracy theory made by the masses here, because i refuse to follow trough that path, otherwise I wouldn’t be playing this game, but it sure looks suspicious to have something like this inflicted only on the top players and it bothers me to see this gaming community approving this kind of discrimination, it surely starts to seem there is an hidden agenda somewhere along this new tool, why not put that anti bot text we had to type from time to time, it is boring but surely more effective then this new tool being used to clearly ban the best players and some cheaters among them, it is more then understandable that a top player plays with multiple tabs, to improve their gaming abilities and there are some quite good at it, considering that cheating just ain’t understandable from where I’m sitting, but hey somewhere someone posted this ain’t a democracy but a gaming community, i guess maybe this gaming community isn’t based in a democracy after all, and the rules that influence them aren’t the ones that influence every democracy since the Greeks came out with the concept, it really bothers me to have such mindless creatures roaming around planet earth!
Now i understand why us mankind can’t get along!
But please do show me where it is said by not the democracy with which almost all our societies are built upon, and therefor this gaming community is based also, please show me where it is said it is against the rules to have 100 different tabs open and to have a huge amount of villas thus causing a huge lag thus assume you have a bot running on your acct, i don’t see it anywhere, and because it isn’t posted anywhere it is legal as any other legal action that ain’t against the rules, therefor to assume one is guilt is entirely tw’s and inno’s fault, because they are the responsible for picking the mods and leaving to their judgment to apply the rules.
I’m not flaming the mods or anything like that, i’m just calling your attention to a mistake that was made, but it is needed a man to understand his mistakes and that is what morthy lakes of!
2) “It’s really sad to see that this game has turned to where the rules even if followed truly mean nothing and the only real agenda here is to ban players who are removing paying customers (basically, drop 1 paying customer to keep 20 around). ”
R: Of course they will, would you rather be in a gaming community where cheaters roam free creating that awful “lag” with their bots
Who said there was a “bot” causing the lag. I’m talking about banning a top player that takes out smaller players LEGITIMATELY. Seems TW would rather find an excuse to ban an honest legit player so they only lose 1 paying customer while keeping 20 paying customers. It has little to do with cheaters and much more to due with revenue streams. Why do you think they are only scanning the top players?? If they really cared about banning cheaters, they would scan EVERYONE across the board the same way. Is a 1m point player who cheats the same as a 20m point player?? Or, is it OK to cheat while you are small size but once you get to the top 50, you need to play legit??
C’mon now, how naive are you people. This is only about 1 thing…. trying to keep their revenues flowing.
Ask yourself this question: If TW lost 20 playing PP players for every person they perma banned, do you think they would ever perma ban anyone again??? Highly doubtful (more likely they would only do village loss bans but let all the people keep playing).
~ The Masses
1) The fact is, Morthy is the community manager, obviously picked by Innogames, obviously so that Innogames can make money.
2) “It’s really sad to see that this game has turned to where the rules even if followed truly mean nothing and the only real agenda here is to ban players who are removing paying customers (basically, drop 1 paying customer to keep 20 around). ”
Of course they will, would you rather be in a gaming community where cheaters roam free creating that awful “lag” with their bots
And you claim that having 4K villages causes the awful lag, but when you think about it, that wouldn’t cause any more lag than having 4K different players with one village each, because you can only see one village at a time
If you have 100 different tabs open at one time, then that’s you and your computer’s fault for lagging, not TW’s or Inno’s
3) This isn’t a “democracy” it’s a gaming community
What an absolute disgrace. And to have the gall to say that our “cheating” friends are lying to us. TW breathes from these relationships that have built over the years and you nail your own coffin due to unfounded bans.
Firstly, I have a lot of sympathy for the position that Morthy and the team are in, here.
Whatever they do, they will be criticised. If they ban top players, they will be criticised by said players. If they don’t, they will be criticised by the victims of those players who will always have a nagging suspicion that they were destroyed by cheating methods, not fair play.
I also have a lot of sympathy for those who were banned, and should declare that I am a friend of one of those mentioned (and have, in the past, been in a tribe of which he was Duke.)
I’ve had various dealings with in-game staff over the years, having been in tribes with a few of them since my W9 days. In my experience, they are far harsher with their friends than with people they don’t know… and are absolutely keen to make sure that those they play with are squeaky clean. (This, in addition to the fact that they don’t have mod privs on worlds they actually play.)
However, I do have some problems with the “no discussion” rule.
I agree that a general discussion on the forum is probably a bad idea, but I do wonder whether there might be a compromise along the lines of:
- For each ban, the player is given the choice of accepting or appealing.
- A list of bans that have been put in place is created, and a note put against each to say whether the player has accepted the ban, or appealed.
- If the player has appealed, then the mod banning them has to write a short piece about why they were banned, and what the evidence was…. and they are allowed to write a short piece about why they feel this is bogus.
I suspect that the vast majority of bans are, indeed, legitimate.
I suspect, however, that there is the occasional mistake made… but that the game and the community would be better served by open and transparent evidence, rather than a cloud of censorship.
Mark
I think that you should have tested the bot checker on everyone, and not just the top 50, and then placed the bans after checking whether they have lagging Internet ^.^ Because if more peoples Internet where laggy then you would have found a whole lot more ‘cheaters;
At the moment I think that you are not actually defending the bot checker (Great idea though), you are just trying to save face.
Morthy: Just that I hope no-one allows themselves to be mislead by the lies of those that have been banned. It would disappoint me to see players stopping playing the game due to being mislead by those they trust.
Maybe you aren’t that trustworthy at all yourself and innogames should consider to ban you to whom would you appeal then?
This said in every democracy there is something that we could say looks like a council that votes the major decisions being made, having you makin them all just doesn’t seem very democratic does it?
unfortunately, the world of TW may soon be coming to an end as the TW mod team led by MORTHY will be happy to ban people regardless of whether real cheating is going on or not. It could be that there is just lag involved with the timings and making it look like cheating is going on when in all reality, an innocent person will be banned for playing a game honestly.
It’s really sad to see that this game has turned to where the rules even if followed truly mean nothing and the only real agenda here is to ban players who are removing paying customers (basically, drop 1 paying customer to keep 20 around). It’s a money game and nothing to do with right or wrong. Well, I tell you this will come around to bite the great Morthy and Innogames very soon as many players will get upset over their friends being wrongly accused when the real reason had nothing to do with the “rules”.
The TW era will soon come to an end with this type of behavior.
~ The masses
I still see that this new method has mistakes in it, and those mistakes aren’t fixed, i remember when the last update came there were alot of errors going on, and i’m not talking about the scripts that we had to change, there were rankings all messed up as well, and if a player can get a huge lag, and play on 100 different tabs, in the end many of is actions can come out at the same time, even something stupid like voting in a poll, tw developers as well as tw mods make mistakes, we are human and as such we are doomed to make them, we most check things right before an action is applied to a player who might be innocent and currect those mistakes, otherwise innogames most not forget the law is applyable to them as well, and if proven wrong a compensension most be paid to the ones that are being prejudiced, so i request tw mods to see this exhaustively, so they can be certain that no harm is being done to players that haven’t inflicted any rule otherwise the one inflicting the rules would be themselves, and how can we be ruled by those who can’t follow the rules, even if their excuse is plain ignorance.
Kickin’ tail and taking names! That’s the way supervise a game. Keep up the good work mods. You make me proud.
On world 53, if there is no there is a paladin, but no weapons, whats the point of having it?
Morthy, I applaud you for banning all these players using bots.
Personally, I have known Astro from W35 and he owned over a dozen of his tribe’s email addresses- then gave their accounts to the people whom he liked/took them back whenever he felt like it. This was the main reason why I lot of W35 accounts were deleted when Astro quit- he simply used proxies to log in accounts- having the emails, it wasn’t hard to do so, and went on a deleting rampage. While these players can whine all day long and threaten to quit TW forever- they are making a W53 premade to come back so I doubt they’ll be affecting TW’s business in any way. Good riddance, I say.
what i want to know is why people can admit that they have mutiple accounts on a world (which is against the rules) and they dont get banned. god knows that i could create mutiple accounts, and get around the whole one account to an ip addy. i dont do that cause i play fair, and i dont cheat.
I am a large player on another world where our top player was banned..he swears the lag on his account is so bad that he can set his coins to mint and have time to read the mail, yes this is true as I also have this problem, I lag with over 2500 villages, I can only imagine the lag with a player that has over 4k
He says he opens up hundreds of tabs to send attacks and due to his lag being so bad he can have other things up and going by the time the attacks get through being sent, for instance building etc..
I have noticed the larger we become the more we lag, the more our attacks are lagged and sent out of order, one of my attacks the other day was generated in 61530ms, this was extremely laggy…so can you really say that an action and a command can not become crossed with lags such as these on the much larger accounts
Good bye cheaters, you will not be missed. We all work hard at this game, the cheaters deserve exactly what they received.
Well I must say anyone who blindly support the MODS of this game need to seriously think twice.
I dont doubt the the need to have MODS in game and for them to ensure that the game is played out as intended and fair.
But in the name of fairness which INNO has yet to grasp there needs to be a FAIR and TRANSPARENT appeal process especially for those who pay to play this game.
And yes ill expect the response that I do not pay to play this game I play for the extra’s in this game. ITS THE SAME DAMN THING! I PAY! YOU COLLECT! I CALL FOR TRANSPARENCY AND FAIRNESS. If INNO cannot do this then code what you can in the game and let it run its course.
Another POST GONE UNHEARD BY INNO.
‘Stop coming up with excuses, realize that the code, as Morthy previously said, only comes up with a list that is examined by humans before the ban hammer hits. If they get banned, they WERE cheating. No if, ands, or buts.’
I hope you dont get falsely accused I really do
Well do not forget,
Most of the former [END] Members are now in JPEG (Reborn).
Only the W35 players (Aetost Friends) that Astro gave accounts to (From former W50 [END] members) have deleted their accounts.
There will be a rush of the Former [END] Members, now in JPEG, to move and Conquer the villages going Barb.
Seeing as I have more than one top 50 account (and at the time for the first bannings, 2 top 20 accounts) I can say that the system is not flawed. I have not been banned on either world, and I bookmark farm.
Stop coming up with excuses, realize that the code, as Morthy previously said, only comes up with a list that is examined by humans before the ban hammer hits. If they get banned, they WERE cheating. No if, ands, or buts.
Knowing a few of the banned players very well I got to say this is very sad for me to read.
Tattered and Idling are probably two of the best players I’ve seen in action and whether or not they did something that was not approved noone can deny their skill.
Got to say I do not approve of the bans, but Morthy has to do his job that’s why he’s in charge and not me.
A few bad apples spoil the whole game!
Or a Conspiracy?
I wonder if by banning the top players of one or two tribes that this doesn’t have a direct impact on the outcome of this game? By that, I mean to say, I think the mods have “friends” in certain places whom are protected by them.
Take the case of a certain world where the 2 top tribes are at war. However, not one player from one of the tribes has been found cheating? Hummm, what a coinkydink!
I smell something fishy. I’d be curious as to see how this ends up.
Maybe more people leaving the game because of this.
‘If you actually read what I posted you’ll notice the word “initially”.’
So you will be scanning everyone eventually ?
I look forward to a full apology and compensation then once you eventually realise your scan is flawed
To those who will also be banned in future as a result of this you have my sympathies
Sadly you wont get any from TW
Anyone who wants to avoid my fate needs to ensure they do not click the mouse more than once a second.
I also advise everyone who pays for premium to buy only small amounts at a time or face being unable to use whats left if your banned. TW do not refund unused premium if they say youve breached their rules.
@An Innocent Man
If you actually read what I posted you’ll notice the word “initially”.
@Paul:
The script did throw false positives. It merely produces a list of what it thinks may be dodgy occurrences which then must be examined by a human before a ban is made.
I’m hoping Morthy is around and can help clarify something. A quote:
“The initial coding took around half a hour and was first tested on World 52. The first player we tested it on was found to be cheating.”
Being a Software Engineer myself by trade, seeing this worries me. Please tell me that extensive testing was done on this script so that it wasn’t throwing false positives and/or that the people the script red-flagged were manually checked by someone before the ban-hammer fell.
My point: 30 minutes of development time and one test does not a reliable tool make.
Thanks!
‘It hasn’t initially been ran on all players because it would take too long and because the players who cheat are most likely to be highly ranked.’
Clear message here to anyone who spends a lot of time in this game.
Expect your loyalty to be rewarded with suspicion and your actions to be scrutinised more than normal players.
Every player should be treated equally TW staff are not doing so
This treatment of innocent loyal players by TW is a Disgrace
Just because a player is highly ranked DOES NOT mean they cheat.
I once again state TW have not done this check on everyone because if they did so thousands of players would be wrongly accused. The fact only highly ranked players have been targetted keeps the numbers accused to a minimum and also ensure less ranked players are kept happy as the move up in the rankings
Pretty much a win win situation for TW Staff
Its quite easy for TW to dismiss the claims of innocence made by a few players
Come on TW run the checks for everyone We’ll see how those wrongly accused then feel about your wonderful new checks.
Don’t try to excuse your flawed system fix it.
“If this new method is so reliable why has it only been run on high ranking players ?”
The script has to analyze a great deal of data, it takes a very long time to run and slows down the server.
It hasn’t initially been ran on all players because it would take too long and because the players who cheat are most likely to be highly ranked.
Its great to see cheats getting what they deserve. nice to know that we are not wasting money buying premium to play a GAME that has no future because of cheats taking control where they dont deserve to. I am right next to astronomy in world 50, I have seen him grow from a really small player to rank 1. he manipulated the system for his own gain and grew so quickly giving him the power to get sheep follow him into [end] and then started attacking my tribe where cbears had left off, breaking a NAP they had with us as soon as it was convewniant to him. if it wasnt for astronomy cheating a lot of my tribes villages would still belong to my tribe, friends of mine quit playing because of him. If he had not been cheating they may not of quit. so his ban means we now have a chance again. I will never understand why people cheat at games, whats the point of playing if you need to cheat to get anywhere?
Well Done Morthy, keep up the good work.
Clap Clap… I miss W50
Leeboy?
Congrats to Behn and and his co. (applauds)
Not only did they go smoking down in flames, they went with other top players.
Waiting for next week.
If this new method is so reliable why has it only been run on high ranking players ?
‘From then onwards it was a relatively simple job to convert the script to automatically scan high ranked players across all worlds.’
Could it be that TW Staff know its unreliable and as such only wish to risk accusing higher ranked players who by that very fact are highly visible thus giving most players a false sense of security that TW are doing what they can to eleminate cheating ?
TW Relaxing the forum rules permitting limited discussion of the bans is just further evidence that TW staff change rules as they feel like with little regard for those who have been accused. Its now OK to bash banned players whose appeals are still pending yet they cannot respond with any real detail for fear of breaching the rules re non disclosure of ban discussions with TW staff
Its very hard to defend onself when the rules prevent you discussing the evidence against you
‘Morthy: Just that I hope no-one allows themselves to be mislead by the lies of those that have been banned. It would disappoint me to see players stopping playing the game due to being mislead by those they trust.’
Only to be expected as less players equals less cash for innogames
Thankfully those whom I know well in this game are all on skype where I cannot be censored by TW mods.
Lastly am I an aggrieved player ?
You Bet I am but wouldnt you be if you were banned for something you didnt do ?
TW Staff need to spend more time detecting Bots and not accusing anyone whose activity looks slightly abnormal
Frail,
Thank you for this blog. It was, as expected, very informative.
My thoughts;
1. The southeast is volatile and up for grabs. Personally I can see ~Hell~ expanding and HUG moving quickly. (Surely they have loaded nobles and coins galore)
2. I agree with your assessment regarding the current politics of the world. I, like you, believe the fun is just beginning.
3. I would like to give props to Morthy for taking the time to interview, he had to be very busy with the massive inquires. I would suggest this blog be pinned on all worlds that have this same issue. The interview was professional, direct and informative in its clarity.
4. Lastly, I would also like to make an appeal to the former [END] players. I know your disappointment is high right now and W53 is soon opening however, a tribe is more then a single player. Is deleting really the answer or way that you want your W50 experience to end?
~Bee
Well that clears a lot up.
awesome