The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira)

I sincerely feel for you, Mira.

I encountered a similar issue back in 2006 when Nexon allowed users to gift lump sums of NX. For those of you who weren't playing around that time, about a year after the Cash Shop came out Nexon enabled gifting, but you could not gift individual cash items like you can today. Instead, Nexon made it so you could only gift actual NX amounts i.e. 10,000 NX, 30,000 NX. Apparently people were stealing PayPal accounts or Credit Cards and making fraudulent charges and because Nexon kept seeing returned charges and so on they decided to mass ban a bunch of people. I had a friend who helped me out and gifted me some NX cash. This account, which I had since beta ended in 2005, was then banned.

I appealed again about 6 months to a year ago just for the hell of it. I saw Nexon change my banning from "NX Fraud," the label I was 'given,' to hacking, and then finally to scamming. I've submitted numerous tickets, emailed billingpp@nexon.net as requested. I even offered to charge the amount of NX they had claimed was fraudulent as I read some players had had success doing that. Their billing department said it was for scamming, which is ironic because last I checked first offense scamming bans aren't permanent, or at least they weren't in 2006.

The sad reality, that many of us have known for years, is that Nexon knows as much about how MapleStory functions and how we play it as they know about rocket science. In other words, not much.

If you choose to play the game now like a lot of us still do, I do it casually and don't invest money I frankly wouldn't be destroyed if I lost. I equate buying NX to blowing money on an expensive coffee. Something that is gone after one use and you kind of regret buying afterwards. It's just throw away money to have fun for a bit and I only do it every year if that.

It's still possible to play MapleStory and have fun. It's just you have to do it super casually which is extremely difficult given the way Nexon has made the game very time intensive. If you don't log in for even a day or two, it's fairly common for half your buddies to delete you (or at least when I played somewhat actively, that was the case). As [MENTION=4235]KhainiWest[/MENTION]; has said time and time again, the writing is on the wall. It's pretty obvious that's the case. Nexon will do whatever they have to to spin things but hey, we know the truth.

Also, no offense to [MENTION=12842]Aurtax[/MENTION]; but if your job is to function as the community manager then other than posting topics asking for GM Feedback, why aren't your replies more frequent in these threads? I don't want to appear insensitive, but unless you have a couple different roles at Nexon, what are they paying you for? If you are in charge of different roles, then perhaps Nexon can spend some of the money they've made on hiring someone to actually be involved in the community. Most of the people who post here are more active in the community than you are. Honestly, it's kind of insulting the way Nexon employees (ticketing staff, GMs, community managers) behave. Some people don't even get a break at their jobs and it sure feels like the laziness across the board at Nexon is rampant. Oh, but you guys have a basketball court, a fancy sign and office, and parties! Talk about the haves and have nots. Maybe I'm assuming too much but it sure feels like the laziness at Nexon is ridiculous.

lol...last time Aurtax posted/replied to a thread was about 1.5 weeks ago yet his last login was today...

lol...last time Aurtax posted/replied to a thread was about 1.5 weeks ago yet his last login was today...

He's no Girasol by any means, from what I've observed

They aren't deliberately doing that to skirt about a tax system, though. There's no way to force someone to buy a whole stack at once in a shop, anyway''

Of course they are. You know why people sell stuff for 14,999,999 instead of 15,000,000? It isn't because it looks nice or any other reason other than to avoid taxes. That's how every shop in the fm works.
If you say you have no clue about the topic in discussion why bother making non-sense posts?

lol...last time Aurtax posted/replied to a thread was about 1.5 weeks ago yet his last login was today...

As a former professional community manager, I can tell you that some companies don't give you authorization to reply to certain delicate topics without first receiving instructions from the guys upstairs, which can take days, weeks, or never. Even if you reply something like "we're looking at this matter, please be patient" without their approval, that could lead you to lose your job.

Which is partly why I don't work at that crap anymore.

The best part about all of this, is that there are constantly meso exploits being found and abused. I'm sure the Cash Shop meso exploit is still being used, or last I knew it was, which was about 10 days ago.

Technically, at any given moment, this could happen to any player. Generally only if the exploit becomes shared enough among a group of people where Nexon actually starts to notice it, do they take action. Only time they ever really give you an announcement or acknowledge it is if it becomes public that there's one going on. Yay Nexon!

I love MapleStory forums and communities, but why do some of you still try to put up with this company by actually playing?

Of course they are. You know why people sell stuff for 14,999,999 instead of 15,000,000? It isn't because it looks nice or any other reason other than to avoid taxes. That's how every shop in the fm works.
If you say you have no clue about the topic in discussion why bother making non-sense posts?

The example posted was [4,999 each instead of a whole stack at 500,000], not [4,999 each instead of 5,000 each].
Besides I don't even think there is a difference in tax rates between 4,999 and 5,000.

The example posted was [4,999 each instead of a whole stack at 500,000], not [4,999 each instead of 5,000 each].
Besides I don't even think there is a difference in tax rates between 4,999 and 5,000.

Because there's a chance that buyers don't get bundles and if that's the case there's a chance that you can save meso by avoiding taxes?
Of course, maybe it doesn't happen often but the intention is still there, so yes they are deliberately trying to avoid taxes.

As a former professional community manager, I can tell you that some companies don't give you authorization to reply to certain delicate topics without first receiving instructions from the guys upstairs, which can take days, weeks, or never. Even if you reply something like "we're looking at this matter, please be patient" without their approval, that could lead you to lose your job.

Which is partly why I don't work at that crap anymore.

A friend of mine was a GM for a semi-popular korean MMO for all of a week; he got fired for posting a thread on the forums saying that the servers were currently down and they were working on fixing it. Basically, something everyone already knew seeing as the pineappleing servers were offline and they couldn't get into the game, he was just trying to show a positive sign from the moderation team by saying, "hey, we know there's a problem", which is more than most GMs do. Probably because they get fired if they do.

The best part about all of this, is that there are constantly meso exploits being found and abused. I'm sure the Cash Shop meso exploit is still being used, or last I knew it was, which was about 10 days ago.

Technically, at any given moment, this could happen to any player. Generally only if the exploit becomes shared enough among a group of people where Nexon actually starts to notice it, do they take action. Only time they ever really give you an announcement or acknowledge it is if it becomes public that there's one going on. Yay Nexon!

I love MapleStory forums and communities, but why do some of you still try to put up with this company by actually playing still?

As much as I hate how smug you come across everytime you make a post, you're right.

Because there's a chance that buyers don't get bundles and if that's the case there's a chance that you can save meso by avoiding taxes?
Of course, maybe it doesn't happen often but the intention is still there, so yes they are deliberately trying to avoid taxes.

But there is no difference in tax rates between 4,999 and 5,000 mesos.

A friend of mine was a GM for a semi-popular korean MMO for all of a week; he got fired for posting a thread on the forums saying that the servers were currently down and they were working on fixing it. Basically, something everyone already knew seeing as the pineappleing servers were offline and they couldn't get into the game, he was just trying to show a positive sign from the moderation team by saying, "hey, we know there's a problem", which is more than most GMs do. Probably because they get fired if they do.

It seems like the Korean game companies share a ruthless attitude that there should be no contact with the players beyond whatever is necessary to extract the maximum money from them, and the players should never, ever be treated with honesty, openness and respect. They no more want to fraternize with the players than muggers do with their victims.

Companies CAN be more lenient on things with their GM's communicating though. Back when I played WonderKing NA (yeah, before it shutdown), the lead GM was pretty active on the official forums and would post in more than just the announcement topics of whatever event was going on. And once I got to being on the moderator team, he added me on MSN messenger like with the other mods, so I had actually talked to him directly. And there was some stuff that moderators got to hear that had to still be kept secret from the rest of the community, but it wasn't anything shady or just bad in general. Still, there was definitely some communication going on.

So apparently it's alright for Nexon to permaban now for the simple reason of guilty-by-association. Sigh. And this is one of the reasons why I stopped buying NX and quit until the RED patch comes.

So apparently it's alright for Nexon to permaban now for the simple reason of guilty-by-association. Sigh. And this is one of the reasons why I stopped buying NX and quit until the RED patch comes.

Yeah, because in RED there will be no more false bans!

So apparently it's alright for Nexon to permaban now for the simple reason of guilty-by-association. Sigh. And this is one of the reasons why I stopped buying NX and quit until the RED patch comes.

RED will not save you.
RED will not save any of you.
I don't understand what all this hype is about RED.

RED will not save you.
RED will not save any of you.
I don't understand what all this hype is about RED.

I didn't imply that RED will "save" anyone. And it's not like I'll be super-active when it comes. Since when is wanting to try out new skills hyping anything? Oh my, sp is known for jumping to conclusions today.

[MENTION=4093]SaptaZapta[/MENTION] There won't be? Awesome.

edit: I didn't think I hit submit on this, not sure why it posted anyway. My bad, disregard this I guess.

I just don't get why, with such a popular game, there would be such a vast disconnect between players and GMs. Even in the live chat they give these stupid d0uchey automated responses AS THEY'RE CHATTING WITH YOU. Sometimes after seeing a bunch of these logs, I feel the entire thing is cleverly automated. Like instead of fixing bugs (kanna) or doing positive feedback or encouraging site events or whatnot, they've been working on a way to placate individuals by making their livechat ENTIRELY AUTOMATED. I mean... makes sense no?

Well the live chat doesn't look -completely- automated. I mean, usually responses are at least partially related to the topic.

I think what you're seeing is that the GM's have a lot of pre-set responses that they can select from a list to send to you. Most of what they say probably comes from those responses, and very rarely do they actually put hands to keyboard to actually formulate a unique sentence.

...and I have seen worse live chat conversations. Seriously.

Well the live chat doesn't look -completely- automated. I mean, usually responses are at least partially related to the topic.

I think what you're seeing is that the GM's have a lot of pre-set responses that they can select from a list to send to you. Most of what they say probably comes from those responses, and very rarely do they actually put hands to keyboard to actually formulate a unique sentence.

...and I have seen worse live chat conversations. Seriously.

Is it EA screencaps time?