Gunner
2014-03-12 14:25:49
Yesterday I went to collect the cash stack and start up one of my herb bots, and low and behold…I got the banhammer. I had been saying for a week I was gonna get on there and clear the cash, but had been putting it off. GF 300M :duh: I took the ban gracefully knowing I had it coming, no whining or crying or blaming bots. I didn't even appeal, because we all know how useless that process is anyway. Apparently the offense occurred in Nov 2013, which was exactly the time I was using PB to get his dungeoneering up for the scroll of cleansing. So I knew when and why, and there was nothing else to be said. RIP tiny soldier. That's the Banned part.
So today, I'm running some dungeons on one of my other accounts to get him prepared for herb, and about 10 dungeons in what do I see? At the end of the dungeon one of the achievements is whoopwhoopwhoop. I'm thinking "WTF is that?!?" I have NEVER run a dungeon with another person, I always solo, so I'm well aware of what the achievements are at the end. This one obviously caught my eye. I hover it to see what it is and it says something to the effect of "Congratulations. You kept up with Mod Chris L and completed the dungeon!" I said "wait, what?" And then it hit me, he was invisible and following me through the dungeon checking to see if I was a bot!
"Holy shit" I think to myself, "WTF do I do now"? Obviously I have to talk to him, right? I say "ever get the feeling you're being watched?", no response. About halfway through the dungeon I say "still here?", again no response. I then jumped in his FC and asked "you still in my dungeon?", no response. Added him to my friends list, and it says Offline. I figured I would try one more time and said "you must be invisibruuuu!!!" Still nothing, but I made myself laugh, which doesn't happen very often. At that point I decided to stop talking to myself and just play the game. If he's still watching, he'll know I'm legit. I'm playing through the RS client, and obviously acting human, so I figure no worries.
However, the one thing that sticks in my mind is, they obviously have me flagged now because they're checking in on my other accounts. So what's a rational person to do? Keep botting of course! Don't change a bunch of your playing habits because then you basically admit you're botting and don't want to get caught. So that's what I'm doing. I had one of my other herb bots running the whole time. I kept checking on him to see if he had been logged off, because if he can see my noob in the dungeon, he can see my skiller at the bank and I was expecting any minute to see him logged off and banned, but it never came. That's the Spied On part.
Now to make a long story even longer, here comes the kicker. So after 10 or 15 more dungeons, I'm getting bored. I decide I'm gonna check the account statuses of my main and my bot accounts just to be sure everything is cool and as it should be. Main, good. Herb bot, good. Dungeon Noob, good. Ok, everything is all good for now, I'm gonna go get something to eat. I'm not sure what made me check the banned bot again. Maybe I wanted to make sure (for the 8th time) that I was actually looking at the correct account, or maybe I wanted to pay my respects to a fallen soldier one last time. Whatever the reason, I certainly didn't expect to see what I saw. I expected to see a full ban meter, an expired ban from 2011, and two new offenses added yesterday. Instead I find a completely clean status screen! I took me a second to even process it because I had just logged in to 3 other accounts that looked exactly the same as this one. No warnings, no red ban lines, no previous offenses, nothing. So what's the first thing I do? I log out and log back in to make sure I'm looking at the right account. Yep, that's the right one. What's the second thing I do? Open Simba and hit Run. I disable SMART and take a quick look around the account. Skills appear to be ok, cash stack is what it should be, bank looks to be in order. I collect my GE orders so I have some supplies to run on, put everything where it needs to go and enable SMART and watch with teary eyes as my soldier gets right back to work doing what he does best. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in pixel form.
So the moral of this story is, there isn't one. I was breaking the rules, got rightfully banned, and by some weird set of circumstances I was unbanned with no XP or wealth penalty. Maybe I was unbanned because Mod Chris L still watching me and I made him laugh, or maybe he decided to show me mercy because I wasn't whining, or maybe he just decided to unban me because he was having a good day. We'll never know for sure. Whatever the reason, I'm glad he did.
I still haven't gotten the cash off that bot…
tl;dr - Got banned, got followed around a dungeon by an invisible mod, then unbanned.
So today, I'm running some dungeons on one of my other accounts to get him prepared for herb, and about 10 dungeons in what do I see? At the end of the dungeon one of the achievements is whoopwhoopwhoop. I'm thinking "WTF is that?!?" I have NEVER run a dungeon with another person, I always solo, so I'm well aware of what the achievements are at the end. This one obviously caught my eye. I hover it to see what it is and it says something to the effect of "Congratulations. You kept up with Mod Chris L and completed the dungeon!" I said "wait, what?" And then it hit me, he was invisible and following me through the dungeon checking to see if I was a bot!
"Holy shit" I think to myself, "WTF do I do now"? Obviously I have to talk to him, right? I say "ever get the feeling you're being watched?", no response. About halfway through the dungeon I say "still here?", again no response. I then jumped in his FC and asked "you still in my dungeon?", no response. Added him to my friends list, and it says Offline. I figured I would try one more time and said "you must be invisibruuuu!!!" Still nothing, but I made myself laugh, which doesn't happen very often. At that point I decided to stop talking to myself and just play the game. If he's still watching, he'll know I'm legit. I'm playing through the RS client, and obviously acting human, so I figure no worries.
However, the one thing that sticks in my mind is, they obviously have me flagged now because they're checking in on my other accounts. So what's a rational person to do? Keep botting of course! Don't change a bunch of your playing habits because then you basically admit you're botting and don't want to get caught. So that's what I'm doing. I had one of my other herb bots running the whole time. I kept checking on him to see if he had been logged off, because if he can see my noob in the dungeon, he can see my skiller at the bank and I was expecting any minute to see him logged off and banned, but it never came. That's the Spied On part.
Now to make a long story even longer, here comes the kicker. So after 10 or 15 more dungeons, I'm getting bored. I decide I'm gonna check the account statuses of my main and my bot accounts just to be sure everything is cool and as it should be. Main, good. Herb bot, good. Dungeon Noob, good. Ok, everything is all good for now, I'm gonna go get something to eat. I'm not sure what made me check the banned bot again. Maybe I wanted to make sure (for the 8th time) that I was actually looking at the correct account, or maybe I wanted to pay my respects to a fallen soldier one last time. Whatever the reason, I certainly didn't expect to see what I saw. I expected to see a full ban meter, an expired ban from 2011, and two new offenses added yesterday. Instead I find a completely clean status screen! I took me a second to even process it because I had just logged in to 3 other accounts that looked exactly the same as this one. No warnings, no red ban lines, no previous offenses, nothing. So what's the first thing I do? I log out and log back in to make sure I'm looking at the right account. Yep, that's the right one. What's the second thing I do? Open Simba and hit Run. I disable SMART and take a quick look around the account. Skills appear to be ok, cash stack is what it should be, bank looks to be in order. I collect my GE orders so I have some supplies to run on, put everything where it needs to go and enable SMART and watch with teary eyes as my soldier gets right back to work doing what he does best. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in pixel form.
So the moral of this story is, there isn't one. I was breaking the rules, got rightfully banned, and by some weird set of circumstances I was unbanned with no XP or wealth penalty. Maybe I was unbanned because Mod Chris L still watching me and I made him laugh, or maybe he decided to show me mercy because I wasn't whining, or maybe he just decided to unban me because he was having a good day. We'll never know for sure. Whatever the reason, I'm glad he did.
I still haven't gotten the cash off that bot…
tl;dr - Got banned, got followed around a dungeon by an invisible mod, then unbanned.
