It's also possible that New Frontiers reduced the RvR population, as NF was released at the same time Mythic implemented their radar detection system. I feel confident in saying that the overwhelming majority of players from 2001 through 2004 intensely disliked New Frontiers, so it's possible that introducing New Frontiers did more damage than banning radar users.





There were several different suspend before ban cycles that followed the release of New Frontiers. You should understand that New Frontiers was released 7 years ago and the suspend before ban cycles went on until 2005 or 2006.

 

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i hated nf, didn't really accept it until classic.

 

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Found this while hunting up something else. It would seem that my points were mostly spot on.


From:

http://vnboards.ign.com/daoc_percival_rp/b20670/70468190/p1


"New Anti-Hack Technology Coming In New Frontiers

Posted By: Sanya Thomas


2004-06-15 16:18:15


Got an important essay for you folks:


New Frontiers represents a clean, fresh beginning for realm versus realm combat in Dark Age of Camelot. Part of that new beginning means that we must continue our ongoing battle against the cheaters and hackers who seek to have an advantage over honest players in our new lands; over the honest players who are the vast, vast majority of our customer base.


As part of the New Frontiers development effort, we have developed new "hacker sensing" technology. Early tests indicate that we can identify hackers better than ever before, and at the same time with fewer hours of investigation. We’re very excited about this, as it will significantly speed up our banning process. We have always cared very much about getting cheaters out of the game, but the process was so time consuming that it frustrated both ourselves and our honest players. Now, our first New Frontiers bannings and suspensions will happen during the first week of launch.


On some message boards, a few people have posted that they believe they need to use cheat programs because "everyone" does. While our numbers don’t reflect this at all - our tests continue to indicate that only a small minority of our players cheat - we will still give those people a chance to jump off the bandwagon and stop cheating of their own free will. Here’s your notice: If you completely uninstall the programs now, you won’t have anything to worry about.


If someone doesn’t uninstall the cheat programs he depends on to stand a chance against good players, because he thinks this is just another typical pre-release press release, he’ll present the perfect chance for us to give our new technology a spin. We’re looking forward to banning even more players who feel that it is perfectly acceptable to cheat in our game. Mythic will gladly lose the small portion of its subscriber base that does not abide by the EULA in order to make the game experience even better for the vast majority of the players.


Although our new technology guarantees faster and more accurate investigations, we will still consider each case individually and take the action appropriate to each account. Just remember, our stated policy is, and has always been "one proven hack, one banned account". If we opt to give second chances, we can only hope that people take advantage of the chance to start fresh.


New Frontiers will be be great fun, and we want the great rewards to accrue to players who really are that good, as opposed to people that really are that sad. Thanks for playing, and we hope you all enjoy yourselves on launch day."

 

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The bans were the only thing Mythic did right.

 

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They had a fantastic development team that built the original game. Then they must have replaced them with the folks who made SI (not as good certainly not thematic by culture in the manner of the original game). Then they got a team of developers who thought PvP was GOD, and the PvE side of things began to decay. The game began to be tailored to the PvP crowd more and more exclusively, and the population (most of whom do not PvP heavily if at all) left the game.

The mass bannings of those who used Radar and other exploits were one of the best things that ever happened to any MMORPG. If we got rid of a bunch of cheating assholes, that was a good thing. Good riddance to them all IMHO.

The same old tripe from the OP above of course. Because you agree with the devs trying to balance a game it doesn't make you a "fanboi", it makes you an intelligent player who realizes a balanced game is better in the long run. The folks who complain about "fanbois" are usually those who are too focused on their own issues - and a massive desire to win at all costs (thus the massive cheating). I got news for you, if you had to cheat to win, you didn't win

 

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Some cheaters go to extreme lengths...

Xbox Live patrols hit by ugly SWAT attacks
-- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/23/xbox_live_enforcers_swatted/

ignore, double post somehow

 

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"New Anti-Hack Technology Coming In New Frontiers
Posted By: Sanya Thomas

2004-06-15 16:18:15

1. we will still give those people a chance to jump off the bandwagon and stop cheating of their own free will. Here’s your notice: If you completely uninstall the programs now, you won’t have anything to worry about.

2. our stated policy is, and has always been "one proven hack, one banned account". If we opt to give second chances, we can only hope that people take advantage of the chance to start fresh.


if part two of the statement was correct (and imho it wasn't), then part 1 must be a lie. if there ever was such a policy, talking about second chances would make no sense at all.

 

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If mythic wouldn't have take action against that flood of cheaters, than I and many other players would have stoped playing 5 years ago. At that time RvR became more and more unplayable as non-cheating player. I'm happy mythic did what they did .. they should hade done it much earlier, than less players would have dared to usse such tools, hence less would have been banned. However, I prefere a server with "only" 1000 active non-cheating players over a server of 3000 playerts where every second group is cheating.

If you were able to play without cheats, after doing so for months, than you could have simply restarted with a fresh toon. It would have taken only a few days to get your toon 50, fully equiped and ready for rvr. But I belive some of you just became addicted to easy mode radar rvr, that it was impossible for you to integrate to normal rvr, once again.

 

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i think the real question is - if they did unban, how many people give enough of a shit to come back?

i just reactivated and im already on the way out. seems like the game has only gotten progressively worse thru the years...not due to population, radar users, or anything of the sort...but because mythic has made 1 poor decision after another while failing to fix even the most simple of issues.