A lot of people seem to think that this is about the ban, however this is about my opinion on how the staff treat players, single players out and their general behaviour towards their community.

If everyone has been on their discord you would often see how staff was tired of negative feedback or just questions that seemed negative to towards them would be answered with comments like they only volunteer and there is no money in it for them.

Lets first gets things clear. They are in their right to ban or take any actions they see fit as per T&Cs. Also players are always responsible for what happens on their accounts. These things never been up for denial.

Limitation

I was running a very well known shop on the server, and the prices were fair. Some might think it was cheaper than it should be, but was still more than 50%-400% profit on each item. While others might have charged 1000-5000% profit before and now had to make fair prices to compete.

For me it all started with being limited from receiving items or gold as well as max 40 items in bank from any new characters created on my accounts each week. This seemed to have happened because I have a lot of accounts and I was singled out and limited while others could still keep continuing to do the same each week, this was possible for 4-5 weeks for everyone else until there was implemented a “fix” for this. Also this was not against their T&Cs and this took some time, which if you farmed a dungeon or other things you should easy gather 3-4x as much in that time it took to delete and create new characters on each account each week.
While no reason for limitations was given each time asked the answer would be “I have no idea what you are talking about”

The ban – The contact – The logic?

So what actually happened from my point of view. After my accounts were banned I did not understand for what reason or what happened. I would was suspecting this might have been regarding the creating new characters each week. So below are some of the correspondence.

First email to support. (this was sent same day of the ban)
Can someone explain so me why my accounts has been banned from the game? 

I have had my accounts restricted due to having created new chars and emptied them for gold. But that was not against the ToS. Any specific reason for my accounts being banned?

First reply (this reply was just a few minutes after first email was sent)
You were caught selling gold for real money. 

After this I replied since I did not have any understanding what happened or time to investigate their claims. I accepted their claims.

Thank you for your reply with reason for ban. If any of my accounts was used for gold sales or my IP was used for gold sales its still on me for the choices I made and nobody else. 
Have a great week.

The next day

I’m sure you all did a great job investigating the allegations of gold selling. If I actually was selling gold then I suspect any gold I had, would be traded all the time for no other values. 

I even guess you would have to check logs of trades I have done to make 100% sure I would be selling gold. Considering people ask me to provide them items and gold in locations on the map other than where I had my vendors, I can’t really see how I was supposed to have been selling items or gold for real money. 

But I suspect you have had a lot of time investigating this, in the future when someone asks a player to give them something they will have to think about what they are doing before they do it. 

It is your game and you are free to do as you please with it. I just ran a shop, traded and if people asked me to give someone items or gold I did. 

Like I wrote before if any of my accounts was used for gold sales or my IP was used for gold sales its still on me for the choices I made and nobody else. Just make sure you investigate cases where alleged gold sales are happening.

No reply at all

So later that day I provided them with screenshot of conversation that happened on Discord where someone asked me to lend them 10.000gp. Which did not show anything but the conversation text and time/date, anything else was mostly truncated. Since they had not provided what the RMT was or when it happened, this was the only transaction I did on the day of the ban. So I had to investigate their claims to figure out what happened. If this was the case that I lend someone 10.000gp was RMT while they never requested a non truncated version of the conversation. After experience and seeing how they treat the community I do not see any reason why others should be put in a position of their false accusations.

Now remember their claims were I sold gold for real money and also the staff wrote clearly on discord I was caught selling gold for real money on website. However no evidence was ever provided but only their word without any investigation from their end.

Lets look at how they handled announcement and clearly needed to make sure that anyone knew that their claim was that I was caught selling gold for real money.

Here you can see the difference on how they choose to show people their claims, that they wanted to make sure that their claims would be known to everyone who checked the shop sign.

After not receiving any reply on support email I wrote again trying to figure out if they did any investigation into their claims. Some of the main parts from the email. Was sent a week after no reply regarding my evidence against their claims.

So you still wont investigate the case since you will never admit you clearly made a mistake. You had circumstantial evidence from where you decided I was a gold seller. However if you had taken time to look at any of my accounts you would have seen that I normally do not hand out gold to players and most players got given free crafted items at Brit Blacksmith. 

I was asked to hand someone 10.000gp at location with a char name and I did that, I never denied that.  If I was selling gold on a site, I guess that gold selling stopped with the ban or did it continue because it was not me selling gold

In the end its your game and you can choose whatever you want to do. I take responsibility for any actions on my accounts to hand gold to a player because someone asked me to lend them some gold that will always be my choice. 

No reply to that. After 30 days I wrote another email about their claims and logic. Again some of the points from that email.

If you actually took 5min to investigate your accusations you would find out there is no evidence of me selling gold. But you clearly will not admit your mistake. 

I did not change IP, I did not trade gold without getting resources back. Sometimes however people dropped resources on floor at bank and I paid them in gold after. A lot of players trust me because I been playing LoA since it came out and I always been one of the best traders in the game. However you clearly have some issues against players who are more dedicated in running shops than any other players. 

So lets see what evidence you claim to have.

– I handed gold to another player (Already can prove that someone asked me to lend them 10.000gp)

– You claim I sold gold on a webpage however you still have not provided evidence also I even asked you if the sales stopped after I got banned. (So if the sales continued would that indicate you made a mistake?)

After this email above I started publishing the case from my view on LoA discord. When I started to do so I got a reply on email 5 days after previous email was sent.

If you were serious about your claims of innocence you would not have sent in a screenshot with blacked out portions. As you previously agreed to when starting to play on our server, you are responsible for all actions from your accounts. Whether you did it intentionally or not is not up for debate. We don’t ban people without just cause and evidence to support it. Nothing will change the fact that your account was linked to or had a part in in the RMT transaction(s). I understand you think we are in the wrong but you have to ask yourself what you would do in our position if you caught someone doing something and had to take action against them. You may think it’s personal but it’s not, it’s simply because you completed the RMT transaction, it’s nothing more and nothing less. Take care now. 

So here shows that it did not matter if I knew not that the trade was a gold sale for real money. This is clearly not up for debate from their end. However their claims were also that I sold gold for real money on website. While I question if there even was a RMT or just that it is false accusations from their end hard to say. Claiming it is not personal however checking on how they handled my case shows it was clearly handled different than anyone else who has been accused of breaking the T&Cs.

After their reply on email I replied with a lot of logic and questions. again main parts of the email.

You think I would put anyone else at risk of a ban based on Discord conversation that they have with me after being banned and falsely accused of RMT. I provided enough evidence for my case. I never completed a RMT transaction because there never was a RMT from my end nor do I see any evidence as to your claims I was RMT on a website.

I did ask myself what I would do, I would have done the ban while investigating so I would have all the facts and check all the data I can check. I used to work in a Fraud department for Online Casino, catching people who broke T&Cs or did fraud was my job.

I guess because of my previous job I have the privilege to think about what I would do and how I would handle a case like this.

All the questions should have been asked if you bothered to investigate after the ban. I’m responsible for actions on my accounts, you are responsible for your actions. When you make a mistake admit it, I never hid the fact that I was creating new chars weekly. I guess I get a target on me because I ran a shop against a lot of other shop runners. I have no idea, all I know is that you falsely accused me of RMT.

I have pleaded my case and put question mark for several things that would not be normal things to do if I was RMT.

I thought what I would have done in your place, now try and take just 2 minutes to think about the things I mentioned and if I’m the one who really is in the wrong.

Have you given a just cause? – Other than you claimed I was caught RMT, then No. It is very easy to accuse someone of something without being able back up or take time to investigate. 

Have you provided evidence? – No.
Has the webpage / gold sales stopped? – Well I do not know, since I don’t know where you got that from.
Did I change IPs or use VPN? – No
Have I provided evidence against your accusations? – Yes
Are you only evidence which you accused me of RMT on a website that I traded 10.000gp to another player ? – Yes that seems to be it. Well you have not even said as much this is what I had to gather based on what happened that day.
Did my gold disappear into the air without having anything in return (as I would suspect a RMT would just sell gold not spend it) – No, I traded a lot for resources to keep shop stocked and running as that is what I did in LoA and did again in SoB.
Should I understand “Whether you did it intentionally or not is not up for debate.” As if someone hands someone an Item or Gold in game that there is always a risk of that being a RMT so people should not do that? – I think we all know that is not what you really want or are trying to say. I hope that is not it, but I would suspect you would have more evidence to back up your claim than just someone trading gold to another player.

You are responsible for your actions and I will keep being honest and open with people about the actions you have taken. Because I can admit if I do mistakes, however I did play fair you might want to consider that in the future for next time you have to make a choice and don’t want to investigate things.

My mistake was thinking that you would be fair and would investigate, I have accepted I can’t expect that because not everyone will be fair. 

And they will continue to make false accusations without any evidence.

So as their claim is others got banned also same time. However funny that no other condemned house sign had any remarks about caught selling gold. This was never about the ban this was about how they handle things, which in my opinion clearly shows to not be with logic or that well at all.

They have always been free to do as they want on their server and they can make any claims without needing to back up or provide evidence to their claims. So it is very easy for them to claim things and that is just what has to be accepted as the truth. However I wonder if there ever was a RMT or they just made up things because it suited them to do so. Who knows?

Do I know if it was personal or not? Not really after looking at things it just seems that they have no idea how to handle things and will stick with what works for them.

I wonder if they actually would have investigated their claims they would know what happened and understand why things happened. But maybe there never was a real case to begin with and that is why they wouldn’t investigate anything.

They are free to do as they please, maybe there will not be any playerbase left if they keep treating people the way they do.

Would I actually return to play if I got the chance?
No, after the first week I wanted to return, however after looking at everything and seeing how they treat people not worth it. I will stick to providing people information about how they treat people.