Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[tocsin]

additionally, http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/company/officer.html gives a list of all current board members. Based on the fact that the EU and Americas CEO, Phillip Rogers, uses an email that merely shortens his first name, as a nickname, it may be prudent that the other board members may do the same. blanket emailing said directors, to figure out which are real emails and which are not, may also be prudent.

We may need to be persistent. more persistent than the RMT spammers themselves, in order to get a response. but if we are, it may make this better.

Additionally, http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/company/group.html Gives addresses to each of the corporate headquarters. lets start mailing the people, too.

[Zabuza]

additionally, http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/company/officer.html gives a list of all current board members. Based on the fact that the EU and Americas CEO, Phillip Rogers, uses an email that merely shortens his first name, as a nickname, it may be prudent that the other board members may do the same. blanket emailing said directors, to figure out which are real emails and which are not, may also be prudent.

We may need to be persistent. more persistent than the RMT spammers themselves, in order to get a response. but if we are, it may make this better.

Hello, I write this letter and petition in hopes that it will get to Yoshida himself. I feel SE currently does not realize just how bad the RMT situation is on the NA/EU servers, being that the JP servers have been relatively spam free in comparison. On my server, Zalera, I often get a /tell from an RMT roughly once per minute, as well as friends requests from gilsellers and shouts in the cities. The imgur hyperlinks below will prove what I am saying is true.

http://imgur.com/qkNTxWQ
http://imgur.com/PuCI6oz
http://imgur.com/rb45o8h

I would not have sent this email were the situation on the NA servers not desperate. Players on many servers have resorted to shutting off their private communications channels so that RMTs cannot spam them. In an MMO, the most social genre of game there is, this is a very bad sign. I am concerned about the new players who will join. In an oversaturated market, new players will not put up with such spam the moment they begin to play this game. You as a company could be missing out on possibly millions of dollars from these new players who will likely not sub because of this very problem.

I do not expect SE to reveal the strategy they are going to use to deal with the RMTs, that would be tipping your hand. I do however, expect some sort of reassurance and acknowledgement of the problem, and that SE's current solutions to combating this problem are not enough. I realize it might be bad publicity or what not to admit your current measures have not been enough, but consider this; Had it not been for SE accepting they had made a mistake, we would not have this beautiful game called FF14: A Realm Reborn in the first place. The game itself was an amazing comeback from what was previously a massive failure. Back then, you all came out and admitted fault, and you strived to better the situation. You succeeded spectacularly. Please, follow this example once more, and make things bearable for your players once again. We are so very tired of being harassed every minute of our gametime by RMTs. Below are the signatures of all the players on the forums who feel the same as I do(approximately 200 gathered), and those are only the extreme minority of people who have visited the forums in this month's time.

(Obviously the signatures are down here.)

This is the email I will be sending.

[tocsin]

I would also print out like 50 copies of the petition itself, stick it in an envelope, and mail one a day to each of the SE corporate headquarters, addressed to the CEO of the respective division.

[Ophie-Mio]

Emailing the board of directors...borderline creepy AND insane. >_>
Like the board has anything at all to do with this game other than looking at expense reports.

[Zabuza]

Emailing the board of directors...borderline creepy AND insane. >_>
Like the board has anything at all to do with this game other than looking at expense reports.

Would prefer to simply get the letter to Yoshida somehow, to be honest. Odds of that seem to be low, but I feel like he doesn't actually know how bad the RMT thing is on NA servers. I wish I knew the proper way... the proper channels through which to make that happen. If their stance still remains the same after, then whatever, at least I tried. I mean, with the amount of replies and such I'm sure at least one of the devs has seen this, but does it go any further than that...

[tocsin]

Honestly, its a pretty "old-time" tactic. Sending protest letters to the presidents of companies, over and over again until you receive a response, has been something done for decades, to force responses. ever watch the movie "Shawshank Redemption"? remember how the main character kept writing congress for a grant for the prison library, and after 5 years of sending one letter every day, he finally got a response? that's how it works.

The main problem is, Yoshida is seeming to be blowing off the NA playerbase, and focusing on promoting and selling his new expansion. He really doesn't seem to be paying attention. Maybe a well placed letter from the CEO of SE, telling Yoshida to "Take care of this." may be the only way to get meaningful action.

Emailing the board of directors...borderline creepy AND insane. >_>
Like the board has anything at all to do with this game other than looking at expense reports.

if you have a better idea, feel free to share it. Posting on the forums isn't working anymore, as 545 posts and counting in this thread would indicate.

[Zabuza]

Honestly, its a pretty "old-time" tactic. Sending protest letters to the presidents of companies, over and over again until you receive a response, has been something done for decades, to force responses. ever watch the movie "Shawshank Redemption"? remember how the main character kept writing congress for a grant for the prison library, and after 5 years of sending one letter every day, he finally got a response? that's how it works.

Unfortunately we don't have five years, lol. More like 2 months. If this isn't fixed by Heavensward...I don't wanna think of how many new players will be turned off.