Look, I just want to have my formal complaint go out to FFXI/Square Enix. Before I start, though, I want to say this. I love this game. I enjoy the storyline and the vast amount of things it offers for me to do and keeps me entertained. It has been one of my favorite MMORPGs all time. I have spent a lot of money on this game, through the months of membership I've forked over cash for, compared to many of the other games out there that require no upkeep. But, at the time, it had been worth it.
Recently, I returned to this game to see some changes I really don't like. I saw spam botters, RMTs, and rule breaker spam everywhere. In chat all day. 24/7. Spamming yell chat in every city. "Plevel" for such and such a zone. Selling services to help beat such and such a boss. For job point/xp gains. Why do we have this? And why so much and in such high concentration? I mean, I pay $20+ a month. Where is my money going to? Isn't there suppose to be some type of controls on this? Yet, here I am looking at a screen of spam, with perhaps 1 in 3 yells being a normal person with a message I want to see. The rest of it is likely some person living in a foreign country, selling gaming services for gil so that they can use that gil on a website somewhere to sell for money to some foolish and gullible adventurer who is too lazy to do the work themselves. I'm sick of looking at screens of spam. I'm sick of reporting all these people only to see nothing done about it. Day. after. day. Coming back to the same spam the next day. then the next.
In addition to this. I go to places like Sky to harvest crystals only to be met with a crystal farming bot at pretty much every elemental spawn location. Sometimes I saw more than 1 crystal farming bot at a single location. I would follow them. I would watch their movement and behavior. They neither responded to my chat, my waving. They were more often than not /anon, as well. They had the exact same (or very similar pattern) of movement as they traversed Sky. I would know they were bots, when through a 30 minute period of me camping a certain element, a bot and it's trusts would return to my camped elementals every 5 minutes...even though each time I had killed them all. They neither responded to me, nor acknowledged me...just passed by me using the exact same pathing as they did the last time. On a rare occasion, they managed to find an elemental spawn before I did and would attack and kill it. Again, not acknowledging me an any way. Only to continue their movement pattern all over.
You need to know, for a player like me--this is very frustrating. I've reported numerous times your spamming RMTs and players breaking rules (spamming services related to Pleveling is against your code of conduct, is it not?) Yet, here I am weeks later only to see all these bots still interrupting and frustrating my gameplay. All these RMTs and cheaters spamming yell chat...and me wondering if you folks over at SE give a damn about your customers.
I'm highly considering quitting this game. And in fact, I've already cancelled service. I would highly suggest for you to consider my plea and work harder to deal with your huge problem with bots and spammers. I had a discussion with my linkshell, and they also talked about many other places with bots (places I never visited, so I could not verify). People pay you a large amount of money each month for a game they expect to have--at least to some extent--monitored by people in charge to keep a tight reign on bots and other irritations to players. I mean, after all--what am I paying my $20 a month for? You haven't come up with any new DLC in ages. Surely, the least you could do is keep your game cleaned up a bit of all these annoyances, can you not? But you aren't even willing to do that. So my plea is this. You will be losing customers by neglecting your responsibilities to your game we pay a nice chunk for each month. I will not continue to feed you $20 a month when I feel the people in charge of the game don't care enough about their customers to monitor and deal with the problem of bots and spammers that FFXI has. I would suggest it sooner than later. It will not be long before you lose my business. I will not keep logging in to a screen full of RMT spammers or a trip to Sky where I have to compete for crystals with a bot. It just makes this game more frustrating than it is worth.
Here are some of the names of players I've blisted because they were RMT spamming, botting, or otherwise. I have no idea which is which, but they all warrant an investigation: moonquakea
mmozzskdlkasdma
ebryrr
djjjdmm
maguo
ouzo
maaaat
nnmm
dhozzb
nohonh
wakakae
feeoo
dhooz
wakakav
kyniker
pplma
vipskyexp
kooro
waryd
nohohv
lokaloka
nohohy
maaaata
kimerzzc
nohohx
fudue
dizzybulll
rehh
djjdmmm
dhpoz
kingshuyang
keeooo
mergis
poomoo
ebryrr
expexpeexp
jpsell
yooh
maguo
nohohn
fudua
nnmm
kimerz
djjjdmm
moonquakes
yanhoo
quzo
feeoo
vipexp
yaapi
vipple
fehound
nohohp
yyxx
pplma
kooro
feeooo
blkuyfvb
aavaa
mikrokosmos
jimimia
wakakat
ebryra
blkuyfv
wakaat
rehh
nohohv
nmnn
kerzzc
dhpoz
vipexps
vvxx
uxux
yezi
moliya
nohob
loredana
yooh
yaapi
fudua
vippl
kooro
wwyyxx
irohani
ruchubachuba
NOTE: and this list is not all inclusive--it was just 3 of my 8 character's blist. I'm too lazy to log into all my characters and have to list every one.