izigame.me

I have played this game 3155 hours and would have given in a thumbs up until recently. I am not your typical player as I am a 52 year old father of 4 teenagers. One of them played with me and we had some unforgettable times. I have played MMO's for 25 years when Ultima Online came out. New World started off a bit slow once you got to 60 but I believe the devs put their heart and soul into the game over the past year and it shows. First it is a gorgeous game from a graphics stand point. There was times I am out running around and I would have to stop to watch the sun go down. It was incredible! Some of the changes the devs put in was it cost less azoth to fast travel, you can get to all your storage from any storage, the umbral shards became a lot easier to grind you gear score up, OPR, new Expeditions, soon to be new lands that you do not even have to pay extra for, and many other changes. I was incredibly excited about the future of the game.
I really enjoyed all the professions and had them all at 200+ except for Weaponsmith that was at 187. Wars and OPR were a lot of fun and challenging especially for more of a PVE type player like myself. 50 on 50 going at each other what is there not to like? Expeditions and Invasions were fantastic especially with friends and company mates. Farming for resources on full servers was difficult because it seemed that there was more players looking for resources then resources available but it is something I still enjoyed doing. Sometimes I had good runs and others not so much as others beat me to it. In the end over time I was always able to get what I needed but you could tell others were not able to as they would get upset if you beat them to a resource node. With the new lands and more space I think this will be corrected though.
Obviously I really enjoyed this game and even with it's flaws I felt it was one of the best overall MMO's I have ever played! In all the years I have played MMO's I have never even been accused of cheating let alone suspended or banned from a game. That came to an end in New World as I was first suspended for 'cheating' on 5/20/22 for a week. That is the only description they give you and you can only appeal as you are locked out of any other way to communicate. I followed the appeal process that day and appealed the ban. A week later I still had not received a response so before logging in I went to the New World forums and explained what happened trying to figure out what to do. An admin on the forums was empathetic and told me to appeal again and showed me how to add the logs stored on my computer to my appeal. So I appealed again. In the end I figured it was a mistake so I jumped back into the game I so enjoyed. I never received a response to either appeal except for a canned response that they are working on my appeal and one of them thanked me for playing Lost Ark. Not sure how they messed that up as the appeal was for New World. At this point I was 1900 hours into the game.
I put in another 1200 hours until I was permanently banned on 9/21/22. I appealed immediately thinking after all this game time how can this happen to me? Within 8 hours I received a canned response that I have seen all over the forums that I had 'cheated', my appeal was denied and any future replies would be ignored. I tried to email them back to find out what I specifically did and within a minute I got the same response.
So after 25 years and untold hours of playing MMO's with a perfect record here I am banned from a game that I was loyal to, enjoyed immensely and I have no idea what I did to deserve this. How can I support a game that treats it's player base like this especially a loyal player who stuck with them during the tough times when so many players did not?
My apologies it got long. If you made it this far thank you for listening.
***An update on 9/25/22 - I was told to try and appeal a few days after the initial appeals by multiple people so I tried it this morning. I included 8 logs (rather large files stored on my computer and the most I could fit in the space provided), a Steam forums post explaining everything (also long winded) and the official NW forums post from May when I was first banned for a week along with other information and within 5 minutes I received the canned denial. No way could have they looked at anything to make a determination if my appeal was warranted or not. I did reply to that email and I got two emails they are looking at my appeal. Maybe I will get lucky.
So to keep track my first two appeals from the week ban I sent on 5/20/22 and 5/28/22 were never responded to. On the permanent ban from 9/21/22 the first one without logs was responded to and denied within 8 hours and the second one that same day with logs was not responded to. The third appeal with 8 logs on 9/25/22 was denied within 5 minutes. The fourth appeal made on 9/26/22 also with my last 8 logs was not responded to. So far I have appealed 6 times and only two were even responded to.
My appeal today, 9/28/22, with the last 8 logs and two forum posts that are again rather lengthy to get more information to AGS was denied in 3 minutes! So the only 3 appeals responded two were denied in 3 and 5 minutes. Those two had 8 large log files stored on my computer that can prove my innocence where are the other appeal that did not took around 8 hours to deny.
I would hope what we all can agree on is that AGS's appeal process is an embarrassment. I feel for the innocent players that are still suspended that bought a dupers item on the trading post because if they have to go through the appeals process many others who are innocent will be banned permanently.
***10/8/22 update: On 9/26/22 the dev Katy K said on twitter that AGS is investigating the dup and housing trophy issue and once the investigation is done and you are still banned to appeal. I am not part of that as I had not traded anything recently and i keep my trophies separated in my three houses. I appealed again on 9/28/22 and it was denied in 3 minutes. Really AGS are you taking this seriously at all, 3 minutes??? She said the investigation was concluded on 9/29/22 and since I was still banned I sent another appeal. There was never a response. On the same day a friend contacted Amazon about a return and spoke to Antiqa. He asked if she could unsuspend my account and agreed to and that I should be able to login in 48-72 hours. It was still banned 72 hours later so he contact them again. Mohommed helped this time and sent an appeal to AGS stating that I should receive an email within 48-72 hours. He also had a manager call my friend and they spoke about the dilemma I was in. She transferred him to a direct line with AGS but they never answered. I had heard this before from others trying to get there accounts unbanned. Both reps tried to be helpful but were not able to help in the end.
The patch notes from updated 1.6.7 New World on 10/4/22 that said they adjusted an in game penalty message to provide additional clarity and context. Finally I had been asking for this since I first was banned! Know what you are banned for will at least help you defend yourself. I logged in all excited and it still says I was banned for 'cheating' with no additional clarity or context. Back to square one as they fail to even get the patch right. I appealed on 10/5/22 and again I never received a response. Today on 10/8/22 I just made my 8th appeal. Wish me luck I will need it...