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Credit Sellers and Account Security

Originally Posted by EricMusco ( Original Post ) | 23.03.2017 01:50PM
Hey folks,

Working to substantially reduce credit selling spam is a constant battle. We all know its impossible to eliminate all of it, but making it difficult or expensive to these spammers is an on-going effort most of our players never truly realize. Its one of the key reasons we make regular changes and occasionally let you know we did so. Sometimes, those changes simply dont work for very long and we have to try new tactics without disrupting your normal game play.

We made some behind the scenes changes in Game Update 5.1.3 (after the chat restrictions in 5.1.2 failed to slow them down) and since then we have seen a dramatic drop in the amount of accounts spamming credit sales, and the amount of messages they are sending overall. Depending on the time of day and what server you play on, you may have already noticed the drop.

What we are seeing now is actual player accounts being compromised and used to spam Credit Seller messages. In all cases, the players password has become known to the Credit Selling company resulting in that account being banned. The reason we are telling you this is a reminder that your account security is vitally important, and you should take care to never share your password, use the same password as your email (or other accounts), and to update it regularly. You should also consider adding a free Mobile Security Key to your account (we offer 100 cartel coins every month to each account using one!).

If you can't or don't want to, always try to be aware of strange login attempts on your account and notify Customer Service immediately if you spot them. We also know players visit these sites and purchase credits which quite honestly is a violation of our Terms of Service agreement and places your account at risk of being banned permanently.

Lastly, since we have taken the amount of accounts participating in spam down, reporting them is more important than ever. With less accounts to deal with, player reports are exponentially more valuable in not only squelching those accounts from spamming, but also allowing us to track them down even faster.

We want to thank all of you for every time you press that report button. Battling against credit seller spam is a war that will go on, but with your continued help we can keep it to an absolute minimum.

Thanks!

-eric
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Maintenance: 28 March 2017

Originally Posted by EricMusco ( Original Post ) | 23.03.2017 01:13PM
Hey folks,

We will be taking the servers offline on March 28th in order to perform back end updates. As there are no client-side changes, there wont be a version number or download associated with this maintenance.

Details:
DATE: 28 March 2017
TIME: 4:00 AM PDT / 11:00 GMT - 9:00 AM PDT / 16:00 GMT
VERSION: N/A

Thank you for your patience as we maintain Star Wars: The Old Republic!

-eric
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Game Update 5.2 Release Date and More

Originally Posted by EricMusco ( Original Post ) | 23.03.2017 01:37PM
Hey folks,

Game Update 5.2 will be launching on Tuesday, April 11th. As we begin to get closer to that date we want to talk more about some of what you can expect in the update. Starting on Monday, here are some of the 5.2 topics we will begin talking about:
  • New Galaxy Map
  • PvP on Iokath
  • The Daily Area - What's different and what's the same
  • Access to Iokath - Who, When, How
  • Choosing a Faction on Iokath

We are also planning to do our 5.2 Twitch stream in the next couple of weeks. On that stream we will not only talk about 5.2, but show you some of it as well. Thanks everyone!

-eric
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#2 Please stop protecting cheaters/botters.

Originally Posted by EricMusco ( Original Post ) | 13.03.2017 12:26PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramalina View Post
Eric, if you don't mind giving a clarification I'd like to know what official policy is at the moment.

The EULA and TOS got changed from a SWTOR specific set to the generic EA EULA and TOS.

I like very much that they are now much shorter, and much more comprehensible. Whoever wrote them could probably be nominated for a brevity and clarity award of some sort when you compare to most software terms and license documents.

However, with the changes, it's no longer as clear that things like deliberate suicides, or running multiple clients so that you can park a ship in one place and farm yourself with another character is actually against the rules. Especially if you take the trouble to have multiple computers running and do the dummy-target characters' movements by hand rather than with some sort of macro (or use hardware where a single wireless keyboard is giving input to multiple computers, which technically isn't any use of forbidden software).

Is that sort of thing still considered an actionable exploit?

Just wondering because if I were arguing this in front of an arbitrator with the current EULA and TOS I think it'd be easier to argue the, "this is allowed on a technicality even if the player is clearly being an antisocial jerk," position than it would be to argue for, "actionable exploit."

Not that I have much problem with things like multiboxing for things like open world PvE (it tends to sort of weaken the multiboxer compared to doing something with an equivalent number of similarly competent players, so for those purposes there's already a built in penalty of sorts), but it's really unpleasant in PvP(including GSF) when you find that half your team is working to lose, and in a way that doesn't even really benefit their farming character's team. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone except the person farming themselves.

Sorry, that got longer than I wanted, but clarification would be great.
This really is a great question, it is one that gets complex quickly. I think ultimately the answer is a bit of a "it depends." I would say err on the side of being overly judicious and let the Terms of Service team work it out. That is, if you think something is exploitive or against the rules, report it. Then the team can investigate and look at if it really is against the rules or not.

The same is true of private reports made to me. I would always prefer you err on the side of being overly critical and let me figure out if it needs to be escalated. I will always try to respond and let people know instances where they are far off the mark on something being against the rules as I know that can be a grey space sometimes.

-eric
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Please stop protecting cheaters/botters.

Originally Posted by EricMusco ( Original Post ) | 13.03.2017 09:10AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by LordTurin View Post
They are not protecting them. File a ticket, and send the video to Musco as well and they will look at it. They have a general "no naming & shaming" rule on the forums, and for good reason to be honest, as 90% of the time when someone complains about cheating, it is simply because the person complaining doesn't understand the game as well as they should.
Quoting Turin for accuracy here. Report them to CS and send any information you have to me privately. If you post about it, especially with the inclusion of names, the thread will be removed. We take cheating/exploiting seriously, but we also take everyone's safety and privacy seriously as well.

Send me any information you have.

-eric
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