A month ago, a close friend of mine got banned while AFKING in a town for no apparent reason. After talking to live chat, they could not solve his problem and declined to specify what has happened to his account. Unsatisfied, he sent in a ticket. Moments later, his account was released and Nexon declined to comment what has actually happened to his account and sent a standardised reply. Thinking it was a system glitch, he let it slide.
Surprise boxes, re:zero events etc. were tempting. He spent somewhere along $1,000 - $1,500 to get the stuff he wanted from the boxes. RNG could not have been worse. In the meantime, it earned him MVP diamond. Not too bad as he's able to get some perks, he thought.
A few days later, he went back to the SAME character he was banned which was just a low level mule - to try to get some pensalirs so he can have better raid power in legion. And -bam- disconnected from server.
You guessed it. He was banned, again. He sent in a ticket, no reply for hours. Stayed up till 3AM to wait for live chat to come online and when he described what happened, live chat just responded with the same standardised reply. Feeling dejected, he went to bed and barely had any sleep. The next morning, his ticket was marked closed as Nexon, as expected, replied with the exact copy of the first ticket response except, he changed one sentence to: we have decided not to release your account because this was a repeated offence.
Repeated offence?
Unsatisfied, he pressed on. Same answers. Finally, a GM responded with: "We are unable to disclose any information to why your account was compromised due to proprietary rights." and ended the ticket stating he will be barred from all access to customer support if he asks more questions.
Needless to say, he uninstalled the game and was very very depressed. His wallet and bank account was not too happy as well.
Having spent a fair bit myself on this game (also MVP diamond), I feel the anger and rage towards the incompetency of the company, staff and game. If it was me, I could have spent that money on a holiday or buying a brand new phone!
Countless hackers occupying maps, getting to max level, being the first to kill the hardest boss in the game, reaching ungodly times in Dojo (pre-legion), reaching impossibly high floors in Dojo (post-legion) and even advertised on world megaphone how proud they are to still be free and undetected.
Maintenance after maintenance, channel & map crashes after crashes. Server instability. Has the game really been out for 10 years? It seems to be worse than a beta game and is deteriorating.
Player base shrunk & still shrinking, world mergers & even server mergers (EU & NA, really?), FM bots spamming S> mesos & accounts, Bots spamming S> mesos IN REBOOT (they have no clue do they).
Sure, they sort of made the game (a little) more popular as Reboot launched. Benefits of reboot in cash shop reward points = nil. Stacked up 100,000 reward points at one time not knowing what to do with it, just letting it expire and waste away. More players selling reboot services for irl money.
Players after players in reddit posting the same thing: Banned for no reason, unable to appeal.
I don't think I'll be maintaining my MVP status anymore knowing it will be taken away from me if something glitches/ bugs and no one's going to help you.
I'm slowly inching away from this cancerous game which does nothing for its players. I don't think I want to be playing a game where GMs are unreachable, unable to speak as per normal person and answers as good as an answering machine. Might as well make an FAQ and all the answers be "We understand your frustration on [insert the issue you are currently facing] and we are trying our best to solve it."
As my friend pleads and reaches out to Nexon to look into his case and all Nexon does is to laugh at him & threatens to revoke his access to customer support, my heart bleeds. Not so much for the sentiment of the game, but for the amount of money and time invested in it.
For all you know, that poor lad could be in depression and having suicidal thoughts. I know I would if I were to be in his shoes.
I'm drawing a line.