Another day, another Reddit drama, although the one swirling around ArcheAge appears to be coming to a middle. In a message titled Transparency is key, and so is freedom of speech, the mods who outlawed pay-to-win discussion on the ArcheAge subreddit earlier this week have now apologized… to those who erroneously thought they were banning accounts. They’re not banning you, see; they’re just sending all of your P2W messages through a spam filter first and then deleting anything they decide is spam or disruptive. Also all your past messages on the subject. Yeah, so that part is still happening.
Instead of declaring that ArcheAge is totes not pay-to-win so shut up, the new AutoModerator spam filter auto-reply now reads,
P2W discussion is currently moderated in the ArcheAge sub-reddit. We’ve recently been hit with an increased amount of spam accounts. Your thread has been filtered for a keyword that reaches this criteria. Your post will be approved if it is not found to be within spam criteria and is a well-thought-out discussable topic about P2W. If you still see this post about an hour later, it may have been caught within spam guidelines and the thread will remain as a deleted topic. Feel free to appeal to the moderators if you think this is wrong. We’re sorry we have to do this, our goal is for more unique discussions.
The mods “did not wish to create an automatic filter,” understand, but “to prevent the ongoing spam that is being brought upon to this community, [they] have to.” “Our goal was not to censor topics,” they write, blaming statements like “any new threads asking about the game and if it is P2W will be removed automatically” they made earlier this week on a “poor choice of words.”
Meanwhile, over on Trion’s official ArcheAge forums, Community Manager Scapes has wrapped up the saga of the game’s recent honor and experience exploit by announcing multi-day suspensions and bans for those involved.
We’re issuing 72-hour suspensions for all accounts involved in the exploit. During this time, a Game Master evaluates how egregiously the account used the exploit. If the account generated a highly abusive amount of honor using the exploit or if it transferred honor-bought goods to another account in an attempt to obscure their activity, it will be permanently banned. For less extreme offenders, any honor sold for gold will result in that gold being removed from their inventory, any honor-bought items (titles, mounts, etc.) will be deleted including items socketed with ill-gotten gems, and all accrued honor will be reset to zero. The least egregious offenders whose gameplay data shows they didn’t do anything malicious with their minimal honor gains will be issued a warning and may also have their honor reset to zero. The 72-hour suspensions may be extended while these evaluations proceed.
The exploit has already been blocked on live servers.
