If the "rules" to MapleStory's customer service is in the "Terms of Service" (ToS) and forum rules, the word "service" needs to be re-evaluated. ToS is null and void as a contract. For instance, it is not legal to hold the consumer responsible for remitting taxes (check out the ruling for Lands End catalog sales in states outside Wisconsin). Unlike Maplestory NX cards from Target, music cards are taxed as they are used by the music suppliers. For another instance, either all characters should be banned for their name, or any character can be arbitrarily banned without consdiring what's fair. ToS states both that your character name cannot be non-sense (l33t or random numbers), and it cannot be a name OR phrase. I challenge you to post anything that meets that condition. Paradox in the ToS is endless, too innumerable to list here. But customer service ultimately becomes one-sided, where the original service (the game) and the remedial service (tickets and forums) are beyond reproach. Since service becomes wholly oriented toward players that might cheat, players that do no cheat either receive no service, or are treated as cheaters unfairly. It's like the domineering police officer who pulled me over in a quiet small town in a well-lit public area because one headlight went out. He was either conditioned to be a jerk, or became an officer to express his natural tendencies, but he was bullying, snide, and had a major chip on his shoulder. I didn't ask if he moonlighted in customer service for a certain gaming company.

If you are playing MapleStory NX-free, you can't complain if customer service abuses (I mean, "services") you, except perhaps for the betrayal and the many long hours of enjoyment that are suddenly soured.

If you or your parents pay real money, the legal standards are different. A groundswell is less likely for surfacing real issues and root causes if a company relies on players' competitive spirit and the need for "privacy," as well as outdated instrumentation of their software. Some attempt to throw a threatening dog a bone of distraction. For instance, while a purchase may be legally non-refundable, a company is still held to the contract to DELIVER the service you have purchased. In MapleStory, when high-levels complained that 2X drops were failing for many weeks, (and SW heavyweights couldn't profit from z runs), a promise was made to add MaplePoints for those that purchased 2X. Now I personally maintain 2X drops and experience (at least $31 a month) continuously for training each of my accounts, and have not seen a single MaplePoint. Clearly there is no method of correlating the purchase of products with the use of the software. If MaplePoints were only given to those filing tickets, even though thousands were affected, someone got off cheap, and it wasn't the customer. The Guild Hack "event" exposed the same apparent inability to provide proactive and responsive customer service. I personally don't see why a list of guild members wouldn't exist on server backups, to allow systematic outreach to the guild leaders and members that were affected. That worries me, because it gives the appearance of little forensic evidence, or little effort in terms of service.

Maplestory is not managed as a software product by customer service. Best-practice software customer service focuses on identifying and remedying defects in the product. For MapleStory, tickets are summarily closed (often not closely read, based on the responses I've seen). A standard in software support desk training is to insure the problem is clear (which might require some back and forth), and the customer accepts the resolution. On the contrary, if you dare file a follow-up ticket on an issue you feel has not been resolved to your satisfaction, it can be deemed a "duplicate," which is apparently considered a major nuisance, and can result in all your tickets being removed and your account being permanently banned. If that's service, I'm a flying gorilla.

Further, is there a real interest in identifying and limiting deliberate hacking, scamming, and harassment. MapleStory gives you the opportunity to report another user for an abuse (and claims you'll never know if they took action so as to protect all players' privacy). But if the abuser admits more in the chat log, you cannot report for about 5 minutes. From there, you must stay on the same map as the abuser to right-click and report them. If you can't move fast enough for that, you can no longer include a screen-shot as evidence of an abuse with a MapleStory ticket. An further still, if you stay on a map with an abuser for any length of time, you risk being incriminated as participating in their abuse. All this discourages effective user-policing of "their" game.

Conversely, MapleStory relies blindly on buggy GameGaurd autoban software that bans more legitimate users than true hackers. For example, the no damage "glitch" is a bug in MapleStory software that GameGuard can detect. (How "no damage" can be detected to reliably yet cannot be fixed is another mystery.) Legitimate players never intentionally continue to play if they "see that they don't see" damage. Yet autoban's monitor blindly decides what a player sees and doesn't see, no matter how cluttered the map, and decides the player's intention as well. ILLEGITIMATE player don't leverage the MapleStory software bug that GameGuard's autoban detects. True hackers hack under 1 damage because they can easily figure out what triggers the autoban. I've seen them prance through to loot my drops too many times, often extorting the players on the map. Therefore, one can conclude that the autoban for no damage ONLY affects legitimate players 99% of the time.

In software customer service, it's very bad practice to purposely LIMIT the evidence on an issues for fear you'll be assisting the customer's defense. Open communication is vital to get to the root of persistent problems. Most software publishes a list of specific bugs (usage notes). For MapleStory, that would include the actions that are known "glitches" that need to be avoided. When you accidentally cross the invisible lines drawn by autoban, the customer service response remains very general. You won't be told what evidence the autoban detected, and for those that play long, hard, and legitimately, they are left to walk on eggshells once the ban is lifted, not knowing what time, what map, what glitch, what monster, what skill, or what party member might have triggered their ban. In fact, you'll be told that specific details of your own actions are "proprietary." There is nothing proprietary about calculating the change in levels for each player and sorting to identify the top 1000 fastest levelers (it seems a reason for a reward, as in fact it WAS in Yellonde's opening).

Regardless, a basic legal right is to be able to face and question your accuser. As a computer professional, I personally don't want any accusation of hacking to stand on my record undefended, because it amounts to defamation of my character. To provide support for a hacking ban would first require the software collect such details, and would second require that customer service eventually see that the autoban software actually has defects in it's design and implementation. Did someone spend too much money or take too much pride in this bad idea to simply turn it off?

My least favorite thing about playing MapleStory is the arrogance and obvious bullying inflicted upon players in the name of "service." Consider the unabashed threat of "dire consequences" for those "abusing" the Bigfoot "glitch." Again notice no clear definition of "glitch" was published. Players were left to assume the use of poison, ice demon, shadow web, or doom on a "boss" was an accident--just as had happened on the initial release of Headless Horseman. But when the "fix" came out, none of those were changed, the Bigfoot "boss" was not made a true boss, and instead the experience for this 35 million HP adversary was reduced to nil. Bigfoot has been reduced to a nuisance for the majority of players that would like to play on all the new maps of Masteria. To pretend that the "glitch" was actually Bigfoot's experience is an absurd backpeddling spin on an obvious mistake. More "service" was then pursued to "remediate" the "glitch," by banning anyone that leveled "too quickly" during the several days it took for some group in a conference room to figure out they didn't learn from HH, and the software developer that once knew how to configure a boss took a better job. How unfair to anyone that may have killed one Bigfoot for a toe, but leveled quickly using other hertofore legitimate means. Being unable to actually go out and "catch" people taking advantage of Bigfoot, they then decide that a heretofore legitimate part of the design of the game (leveling a character in a party through leeching experience from other party members' kills) is now illegitimate, because they could not discriminate between those leveling off Bigfoot, and those leveling on other kills. It remains a mystery why a course of actions that COULD affect one or more innocent players was pursued when it was clear only a handful of those guilty players poisoning Bigfoot "before and after" the warning could be irrefutably identified. I'm glad this extreme notion of deterence in lieu of service isn't followed when juries are instructed on capital crimes.

From here, I realize can't begin to detail all the ways customer service competes against customers, and the MapleStory service, not the product, has gone awry. Anyone who has never been abused by customer service, or had a trustworthy friend abused, is either very lucky or very new/sheltered. In a guild of 80 and alliance of 250 over the last year, with many people I know in real life, I know of one legitimate abuse (which merited expulsion but no ban by the game), compared to at least 25 (and growing) cases of long-time legitimate players banned for 3, 9, 30, 90 days, and permanently.

I would become the number one fan of a game service that turned these abysmal service trends around, and recommend the game, even with the old bugs and the few abusive players, to my other adult friends. For now, every computer professional I tell about MapleStory practices does a real life F6, and I only keep playing in hopes of seeing a transformation.