The account suspensions and gil reset leave a black mark on this game.

[TrystWildkey]

What would be the reaction if, within the next few weeks the following happens:

Players that had a majority of their gil stripped received a portion of it back.
SE sends them an email that their full investigation is now complete and gil that was not from an RMT/exploit source has been returned.

I think a good point was brought up here. SE could have taken the weeks they would need to determine an exact amount of gil to be removed, or they could take a big chunk and get everyone back up and running.

What if they are still investigating? What if, when they conclude their investigation, either items or gil are returned to the players found NOT to have participated in botting/RMT/exploits?

[Susanoh]

People can debate which would be better/worse all day long, but I wish someone who has a problem with how SE handled the aftermath (or even how well they prepared for it, which is what I'm more miffed about) would offer a solid suggestion to how it could have been done better without simply leaving the gil in the game, or having suspended accounts take a month or more to be unsuspended again.

Personally? I think anything would be better than issuing sweeping suspensions that prevent playing customers from accessing the game and removing their assets with no legitimate source of support. I can't think of much worse (that would be even somewhat reasonable). If an investigation could be done before action was taken, that would be fine. If the gil had to be removed in order to freeze the RMT mules, then do so and issue a statement that the situation will be taken care of instead of leaving the players in the dark. Currently though, with no decent communication and no hope for players to solve the issue, it's just a bad situation any way you look at it. If SE is unable to deal with RMT without catching players in their nets and having no one to turn to for the players who were wrongly punished, then from a customer standpoint, they should consider fixing their own issues internally before taking action without the means to do so effectively.

What would be the reaction if, within the next few weeks the following happens:

Players that had a majority of their gil stripped received a portion of it back.
SE sends them an email that their full investigation is now complete and gil that was not from an RMT/exploit source has been returned.

I think a good point was brought up here. SE could have taken the weeks they would need to determine an exact amount of gil to be removed, or they could take a big chunk and get everyone back up and running.

What if they are still investigating? What if, when they conclude their investigation, either items or gil are returned to the players found NOT to have participated in botting/RMT/exploits?

I can't speak for those who were caught up in this mess, but my opinion of SE would be much higher if a thorough investigation were conducted and further action was taken from there. It wouldn't erase how badly I feel it's been handled up to this point, but it would still be far better than nothing IMO.