Confused about Recent Account Suspension

[Ninster]

First, I would like to state that I enjoy the community here in the official forums and I have found the forums to be extremely helpful in my enjoyment of Final Fantasy XIV. I am also proud to have made positive contributions and suggestions (seen or unseen) to the community and would hope to be able to make more.

With that said, in December I made an apparently grave misstep in starting a satirical thread that led to a 10-day ban. Given the nature of satire, I did not actually condone the statements I was making and I apologize both for my unintended attempt to damage the community as well as the negative intent of the thread, regardless of if I had or had not been less subtle.

On reviewing the forum rules and game guidelines, I'm slightly confused as to where I stand. 72 hours is the maximum stated penalty, with potential review for permanent suspension, yet I was given 10 days AND I'm still here.

Could I have some clarification on this? Also I still had access to the game itself, so I'm not ensure I made another misstep in logging in and playing during this suspension. If so I apologize, and I would appreciate any help as far as understanding where I stand. I also apologize if this thread would be more appropriate elsewhere.

[Atoli]

Forum bans and ingame bans are unrelated. You can get permanently banned from the forums and it has no influence whatsoever on your ingame status.

As for forum bans..they appearently have a system that starts off with smaller bans and then goes up to a longer ban duration once you do something bad again and ends with a permaban if you do bad things often enough.
That said, forum bans have always been seemingly completely random with people getting permabanned with zero offenses before, or people got a 3 day ban and when they asked to review that, it suddenly went up to a permanent ban, and so on.
I also had zero offenses to my name, posted one picture that had a slightly offensive word in it a few weeks back, and instantly got an 11-day ban...at this point, we are all just at SE's mercy, I guess

[oLLiCS]

I also just got back from such a long ban - without receiving any warning - and before I start a new thread, I thought I'd rather post in one that already existed.

I do really like the FFXIV community and I enjoy being part of it. I created a thread that was meant to be constructive criticism and used the word "sh**" to describe certain content. Yes, back then I should have used a different word but I find it unreasonable to ban someone from the forums for that. Whoever it was probably gets offended by a fly aswell and I expect another ban for stating that. Banning people straight away for such things without giving a warning is unprofessional. I have moderated alot of forums in different communities and it's not about getting some activity in the moderation logs.