Novaro & it's name pruning scheme favoring a certain player and how I was banned

Started by Lovely, Apr 24, 2021, 02:27 AM

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Lovely

Warning: Long post ahead.

For context I had been playing on Novaro since late 2015, early 2016. I saw it grow from a mere 500 players online, then just a little over 1k until today where it's above 4k population at any given time.

As many people have pointed out, this server is great on the outside, but the more you play, the more you start to notice the cracks and how the GM team direct themselves and react depending on the player.
As a casual player, I was never really involved in the WoE scene or actually being close to GM's.

But enough of that I'm here to explain my experience on this server and how it lead to my ban:

Being a long time player on this server it's not hard to get carried away and start making alt characters, especially on a server such as this one that has been online for this long, over 6 years I believe and with middle rates that provide for a suitable and enjoyable leveling experience. nothing too high or low. As I was used to low rates before coming into this server. the leveling and rates was just perfectly to get me up to speed and catch up with other players. ^^

This server used to do yearly prunes after new years maintenance, which were perfect because everyone had an equal chance of getting that specific name they wanted.

Fast forward to the past 2 years, Nova decided to change how it was conducted and started doing ninja maintenances that only a selected handful of people (one if which will be relevant at a later point in my thread and is a bigger name hoarder than me) knew when they were going to take place, and thus diminishing the chance of everyone else getting the chance of getting unique names.

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Time to get straight to the point; the reason of my post comes from my ban after Nova pruned my characters and banned my characters that of which I feel was strongly unwarranted for and I was given a very unfair treatment!

A few days ago I received this rather crude PM from him in-game. Notifying me that he had pruned most of my characters regardless of their level without any previous warning or consideration. (they usually prune chars under level 99 that have been inactive for sometime).


Which shocked me because,
1. There wasn't a written rule anywhere, not on your website, or the wiki nor discord that said how many chars one could have or how many names one could get! and
2. It had never been a problem before! I had been making alts and afking with them for years without any warnings.

And to be honest I didn't realize how many novices I had accumulated over time D:< I never really counted them. It's easy to lose track when you've played on this server for years and you start making alt characters.

I then logged onto the server's forum and saw that he had also sent me a pm there:


Imagine my utter shock when he threatened to ban my accounts for something that has never been a problem before and something that I didn't think was considered serious, because I got those names for my alt chars myself when they were free!!

I then explained him my situation in the same pm shortly:


At this point I was terrified and told him that I'd start to delete the rest of my pruned novices which I did and how I felt it was so unfair for him to prune my lvl 99+ chars that I've put so much effort and care in lvling. chars that I used to log in regularly too. I usually style and dress my chars according to their names.
And told him he could've approached me before and given me a warning instead of just pruning some of my characters right away! All of my lvl 99+ characters were never inactive to warrant being pruned!

So after I deleted all of my novices (except for those few novices with pruned names that were holding my guilds).
I noticed some of my higher level chars were also pruned, and of course I wouldn't go running around with pruned names right? I decided to rename them which weren't that many (but noticed some of my names were already taken by that certain person I mentioned before, the one that's always taking unique names after every pruning maintenance) As I had been leveling some of my chars that were higher level in the previous days that didn't get pruned. And as so, I didn't think much of it. Because I had released all the pruned novices already, and didn't make a single one afterwards.

At this point I felt deflated and slowly started to realize how the server owner doesn't care about the efforts and time of a long time and loyal player like me has put into his server. I decided the best course of action was to take a break from this server.

I still remained logged in until the next day, and after the server had 1 hour long maintenance and came back up, I logged in sometime later.

Shortly I noticed I had been logged out of my chars:


And to my dismay I was greeted with an account banned window =/


I then quickly realized that my characters had been pruned and banned... yes all of them! regardless of their levels and despite having been lvling them up all week long!!

I quickly logged into the server's forum again and saw that Nova had again PM'd me saying all my chars have been pruned and banned. chars that i've had since dating as far as 2016, totally unfair!!


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This is where I'm going to start pointing out how biased and how his blatant gm favoritism and preference he has towards a certain player.

Here we see how he expects expects me to only take a "couple" names back while letting the rest of my chars run around with pruned names.


Aww, cute. You say you weren't able to see the name hoarder taking my names that you "somehow" you took from me but mysteriously she obtained them right after mine were being pruned? Isn't that weird? how can a regular player be getting my names right away that you somehow are "taking" away? could it be that she's working behind the scenes with you, or blatant gm favoritism? and somehow is okay for her to take as many char names as she wants without you batting an eye?

Also fyi, most of my chars didn't get pruned on your first prune that you did to me a few days ago, why? because I was actually leveling them up this month! I was doing gramps with them. I got many of them to over lvl 180+ that didn't warrant being pruned. So that's one of your lies that can be debunked.

Let me provide irrefutable proof for you Nova.

Please note: The following person also know as Enya/Rain has been envious of my character names from the day I met her!
And everyone I've spoken to tells me she's closely in contact with the admins!
Also, she somehow always knows and manages to get the most unique names after every maintenance unopposed, that is until earlier this month where I managed to get some characters for myself during a pruning maintenance that pruned all inactive chars under lvl 175. It must've really struck a nerve somewhere when she saw me leveling them in gramps earlier this month and decided to run to Nova or other GM to do something about it and thus my ousting of the server began:

She was taking my names right after they were pruned despite the fact Nova telling me he's monitoring other name hoarders, how is she in close contact with the GM being a regular player and one of the biggest name hoarders?
All of these were my chars that she stole from me and Nova is blatantly letting her have.

Imagine being this petty and envious of me as to get Nova to prune my chars and get me banned just so she can have them.
This is only a small portion of my character names that you're letting her hoard! why are you being so blatantly biased and favoring her and why isn't she being punished at all?
You tell me you took my longstanding names so others could have a chance, why is it only the same person(Enya) that's getting most of them? you're basically giving all of my names to Enya/Rain and you act like everything is fine. This is daylight robbery.

Below are my original chars, that Nova unfairly took away from me and i logged in regularly to level up or afk with:


She immediately started grabbing my names like a leech after my characters got pruned and banned. It's either she working behind the scenes with Nova or he's telling her the moment my names got pruned.
gm favoritism and biased much?

Why am I being punished and banned when all I ever did was take the time and effort to level up my chars! I earned those chars myself!
Regardless of what you say, my chars didn't warrant being pruned much less banned!
Do you have any idea how much care and effort I put into those chars? it is simply not fair! It's not fair for you to simply to take my char names away to others on a silver plate. when I had to work so hard to get them! Most of my char names went to her and her friends! Not even giving others a chance to get them. You should be ashamed of yourself Nova!



Above we see him claiming how he can't see how can anyone need playing more than 100 chars and playing dumb when I point out how he only caters and listens to a certain few individuals.
It's called having alts, friend. Especially on a server that has been up for so long with rates this high and how fast you can level up with gramps.
Do not try to dictate how I play this game! if I wanted to afk in town or at the main office with my lvl 1, 99 or maxed out char I should've been allowed to do so, without being warranted name prunes. Why are you looking down on me and want to prune my chars for afking in town with, regardless of my characters levels? let me afk in town with as many chars as I want without prunning them.
But you're okay with a single player having more than 50 autotraders on inflating your player count beyond the stars, though right?

The next part is about me finally pointing out the person that's been taking my names. (sorry about the caps, emotions were running high :D) and his refusal to admit that she's taking my names. when it's pretty clear he's giving her my names. completely bias!
He keeps pointing out 1500 despite that I've already deleted all of the novices the previous day which made the majority of them! and how somehow her having close to 400 characters is fine, despite telling me earlier how he doesn't see how anyone would ever need more than 100 chars. can you start notice a pattern now? double standards.


And here's the complete screengrab along with him banning me shortly afterwards from his forums.
Spoiler
[close]

And yet, she's still running on his server, unscathed, why? because GM's are bias and cater towards her.
You complain about how I take some names but yet, this person is the one responsible for taking almost all the unique names after every pruning maintenance and you let her be because she's either a very close friend to you or donates a lot.
If you were completely unbias, you'd also prune her names, no matter their level & give a ban similar to just as in my case.
but knowing you. I don't see that happening. since you clearly have a blatant bias and favor certain players that go unpunished no matter what they do.

While the less outspoken and less favored players such as myself, get the short end of the stick.

You're a biased server owner. through and through.
I guess being friends with the server owner and other GM's has its perks eh? You can have innocent people you don't like being banned if you're close enough to this biased server owner.

Bonus: Discord convo shortly after getting banned from forums.
Spoiler
[close]

Just showing Nova's hypocrisy:


Nova allowed this behavior with it's overzealous monthly prunes until his close friends and favored players complain and proceed to unfairly ban me even though I did delete all of my novices!

I know this won't bring my accounts back but should serve as a warning for anyone out there looking to play this server to be wary for how rampant gm favoritism and bias can be on this server if you get on the wrong side of the GM's or their friends!

I still stand firm and believe my chars didn't deserve this unfair treatment you've given them. And you know it, as it can be seen from you saying sorry multiple times in those screengrabs Nova.
It's not like I was bug abusing or botting, I got all my characters the legit way, just as anyone could've gotten them. But you still decided to punish me unjustly.

Thanks for reading everyone!  /lv

banix


Tokeiburu

Heya,

This is so dumb. After you told us about Enya, her characters were pruned too, just like yours. Calling this bias or unfair is just stupid at this point.

Not to mention you should have been banned the first time around after you made a bunch of character names insulting the staff and the server. I regret fighting over your case to keep you unbanned at that time. As for your current case though, I'm changing my stance and I want it to be reviewed again to decide whether it is made permanent or not (because yes, it is a temporary month ban right now). You have no respect towards our community and I don't see why we should give you another chance as you've clearly not learned anything from this.

Edit: Here are the character names you've hoarded over the years (this is absurd): https://i.imgur.com/ExB1ZkN.png

Lovely

Hi Tokei!
Thanks for replying,

Well that is doubtful.

This must've been in 2018/2019. I apologized for it. The year when my pets died and I was really down.
And aww, while I'm grateful that you fought for my case at that time. I'm going to save you the trouble this time and request a permanent ban on all my accounts if you haven't done so!. I've already asked Nova to ban me when we had our discussion before. I don't plan on going back to your server this time. ^^

LOL I don't even remember most of chars, it must've been over so many years.

While I do respect you, and you seem like a good GM/Developer. There are certain individuals that leave a lot to be desired. Respect is earned not given. Also community=/=GM team.
I admire that you were always active on main/support chat helping others with issues whenever you're on!

throwawayasdf

Yikes! So you took the name NekoilliliManeki? Imagine taking the name of a guy who sends d*ck pics and videos to almost every girl in iRO without their consent. Then messaging me this on Nova (https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/252000997520572426/302244936785330176/unknown.png)
I hope you lose your names for impersonating someone, weirdo  /kis

Daifuku.

1500 is a f*** up gigantic number, lol.
but i have to say, back then when i used to play ragnarok regularly i had around 50 alt chars that i made simply for styling reasons. even on the official server back then i had over 20 high priests that had all the same build, just different names and different styles. i wouldn't judge anyone for doing this. i would've just pruned the chars you didn't log into since date XY and left you the ones you're actually using (may it just be to afk sit in town). maybe given a warning that char name hoarding is not really nice for other players but ultimately i wouldn't have banned your chars that you have been actively playing. may it be 25 or 250. just my opinion. but eh, females don't rly have an opinion in ragnarok. we are always on our period apparently.  /hmm

Lovely

@throwawayasdf he requested me to rely that message to you before i myself found out the things he does last year. lol

Catrina

*I agree that this is all shady as hell, BUT-

That list Tokei posted ... That is not "naming" a character anymore, that is just hash-tagging at this point. lol

Novaenthusiast

I hate to say guys, guys Enya, favoritism?? Nooo way man, it CAN'T possibly happen. She's an angel man! Whaaat, this is the first time she's been caught crossing the line! To put it bluntly, yes she is 1000% favored amongst other players aside from the fact that not only is she staff. No, this isn't the first time she's done things that got way for. Just because Nova/Tokei said "It's been corrected" doesn't change anything from past behaviors that they most likely overlooked because it never blew up so they just pushed it under a rug. It's funny because this girl is kind of insane, (not that saving 1500 names isn't either but...) the stuff she did in her previous servers is kind of wack, she always has the tendency to be GM of the servers she's playing for the long hall so she can get her PVM/PVP high/fix up to the next lvl.

tbh stupid that you got banned for holding all those names, if you followed the rules and made them past 100, then everybody else can suck it. Simple as that. One of the greatest advantages of being first on an MMO is having the choice of picking up a name that you want. Obviously, Enya came into the scene way later, tried to be a smartass to get these names pruned as she's so fixated on single-worded names. There's absolutely no reason why you should have lost your character names if they were immune to deletion. Once again, this clearly screams favoritism as the GM's wouldn't even give 2 craps about names and this would only come as a request from somebody who's obsessed about this junk and convinced the admins to look into this bs.

Neffletics

solacero rip

Nithraniel

Quote from: Novaenthusiast on Apr 24, 2021, 07:28 AM
One of the greatest advantages of being first on an MMO is having the choice of picking up a name that you want.

That's exactly the dilemma, you can't pick up the name you want if there is someone hoarding 5 million names since the beginning. One person's freedom ends where another one's begins. It's not difficult to understand with some logic why the pruning system was put in the first place. I noticed also that characters who are past 99 also get pruned eventually (up to a specific level I guess).

I think we're long past the era of people wanting to call themselves xXgamertag2398sasukenarutoXx, most RO players are old enough to want proper names.

Daifuku.

Quote from: Nithraniel on Apr 24, 2021, 09:05 AM
It's not difficult to understand with some logic why the pruning system was put in the first place.
...I think we're long past the era of people wanting to call themselves xXgamertag2398sasukenarutoXx, most RO players are old enough to want proper names.

i too think the system comes with logic. it makes definitely sense to get rid of char names if the char has not been used for a specific amt of time and is below a certain level. it makes 10000% sense.
what however does not make sense to me is how OP is being judged for the way she wants to play the game. if she wants to create 500 chars with 500 different styles and logs into those even if it's just to chat/afk with her friends for 5 mins per char/day then what is so wrong with that? who is anyone to judge her way of playing the game?
again, if her chars would be below 99 and she wouldn't have logged into those within that time frame nova has set (whichever that might be) then i understand completely why those chars were renamed. but that's not the case here.
she put time and effort to level those characters, obtain their headgears, styles them/make their clothes match with their gears, etc.
i have checked her name list and 98% of those are all utterly female character names.

to me, this isn't hoarding. to me this is just a girls thing honestly. my friend used to have 150 dolls, to me they all looked the same but she dressed them all differently and bought accessories for each. her parents threw away those she didn't touch in over 6 months because they were afraid of her getting obsessed with just collecting dolls for the sake of collecting dolls. same s***.

also not going to talk about how a supposedly normal player took her names right after hers were pruned.
but i won't go ahead and judge that said person might just sit 24/7 on her pc trying to claim char names.  /hmm

stareczhory123

The admins of NovaRO are definitely the ones that F***'ed up here.

If you don't want people to hoard names, then simply impose a limit onto how many characters/accounts can each person create/own. Simple as that.

Don't punish players because of your lack of incompetence.

Eluminare

TLDR
Expectations: We will have flying cars in 2021!
Reality: 2021 and people have a butthurt over taking their names of 1.5k characters in Ragnarok Online.

This is a big lol.

But besides this whole stupid drama, I can agree with one thing - it does look suspicious when one player takes the specific names not even 24h after this post was written. Inside info? Doing a favor? Idk but both sides seem to be fcked up.
Eluminare van Rijn - the honest review maker

Ariasqt

Quote from: Lovely on Apr 24, 2021, 06:25 AM

This must've been in 2018/2019. I apologized for it. The year when my pets died and I was really down.

So you actually admit being at fault here and use your pet's death as an excuse to misbehave, you are a very nice human being.

I actually never knew you in-game nor do I actually care for this egirl name drama cause who the f*** cares about names except a handful of people like you.

As others pointed out I agree that being one of the first players in a game/server gives the benefits of choosing names as you like but the provenly retarded list Tokei provided is way over the top.

If you wanna have 100 200 300 chars with ACTUAL different styles and for different usage (instance farming etc), sure go for it. But having 1500 low-level uncostumed characters without any use for them but just for the sake of hoarding names is a little unfair for the other thousand(s) of players, no?

You won't be missed in this server.

Additionally, I wanna add that nobody gives a crap about RMS it's just for memes and drama, and... people don't care (except the already banned ones that actually are so delusional and think their opinion matters here). It's just used for its outdated database at this point.

Quote from: stareczhory123 on Apr 24, 2021, 09:52 AM

If you don't want people to hoard names, then simply impose a limit onto how many characters/accounts can each person create/own. Simple as that.


Stop pretending to be less smart than you actually are, they literally warned her several times to not do that and didn't impose a rule because there simply wasn't anybody else who has the same type of mental condition as her. Not to mention the insulting she did to the staff was already enough to get banned anyway.

Anyway, keep it coming people I sincerely enjoy this.