After coming home after school Friday on a seemingly typical day I decided to go play Runescape and join in some games Pest Control, which I had been hooked on since its release the week before. After slowly waiting for my computer to boot up and Runescape to load I went to enter in my username and password, only to see the fearful message "Your account has been disabled. Please check your message-centre for details." Horrified I went to check what this was about, brining up another Runescape window and loading up my message-centre. Clicking on the newest message titled "Re: Your Runescape Account" I discovered I had been banned for supposedly marcoing, which I have never even seriously though of doing. Continuing to read the message I discovered it was a permanent ban, my only hope was to appeal it. After returning to the homepage I clicked the link titled "Appeal a ban", a link I thought I would never have to use, and began to write my appeal, hugely constricted by the low amount of characters I was allowed to type. Finally I wrote the best appeal for the situation I could with only 400 characters, and sent the query, hoping to have this mess straightened out as soon as possible. Impatiently I refreshed my message-centre inbox less then 5 minutes later hoping for a reply, and amazingly, there was one. Opening it I discovered it seemed to be a completely automated message that did little more then restate what the previous message had said. This clearly meant they didn't even read my appeal, which astounded me further. I then hoped this was standard procedure, simply confirming that that received my appeal, and that they would send another message later telling my they sorted out the problem. At this point I then loaded up Runescape again, this time on a free world, and logged onto my newb account designed as a skill pure, hoping to inform some of my friends what had happened. Very few of my friends had this account name though, so I could contact very few of them, but I desperately added the few who I could remember their full name, including various numbers or etc. hoping they were online. Through the course of the day I only managed to contact about 5 of my friends, who were also astounded I got banned, for they know me as an honest player. But this didn't worry me much, I had faith in Jagex fixing the problem and that I would have my account back soon enough. At this point I had to get offline, as I was going to my aunts, and truly believed I would have my account back the next day. Upon returning home I loaded up Runescape, not even checking my message-centre to find the same horrific message, and after logging onto the message-centre, I found no new messages. My friends advised me to send another, which I promptly did, adding in the detail that I was sending in another because the first one seemed to have not been read. For this one I did receive no automated message, so I expected a human would actually be reading it, and it would just take some time. Throughout the day I checked my message-centre quite often while still attempting to remember as many friends names as I could. Then one of my friends had a strike of brilliance and thought of friends list highscores, so I rushed on to that and printed the list that contained the majority of my friends, and added them to my newbs friends list, hoping to contact them. After adding the great majority of them to the list, I noticed a frighteningly low amount of them were online, only one thing could have caused that....Private chat set to Friends. This worried me greatly, because it meant that if I didn't get my account back, I would not be able to contact a great majority of my friends. But I still had hope...Thinking of time zones, I realized that Jagex would have been closed at the time, and that I would most likely receive a message come morning once the staff got back to work, and on these happy thoughts drifted off to sleep. Waking up the next morning, today to be precise, I decided to check my message-centre, and....still nothing. At this point I was really starting to loose hope, but decide I would get a reply soon and went to go do stuff outside. After I came back inside about 2 hours later I again checked my message-centre, and this time...A REPLY! Quite happily I opened it and began to read it. It didn't take long for my smile to change to a frown. It clearly stated that my appeal was not successful. Then continued to state that any further appeals would not be considered. It finally dawned on me that I would never get my account back. My total loss from this? About 4 years of honest work, at least 70 million in items, and most importantly, it cost me over 100 friends. My final stats? 105 combat, 1500 skill total, and quite a few high skills. This would have been considered my first offense, if I had actually done it, and it got me a permanent ban. To this date I have NEVER done anything illegal in Runescape, yet I lost everything on a falsely justified ban. I have already decided I am done with this game, for if everything can be taken away without you doing anything I don't feel like starting from the beginning only for the same thing to happen. If any of my friends who I failed to have contacted please add "ye olde frog" to your friends list, for it is the only account I will ever be on. I will play for a few more days, trying to contact friends, but after that I'm gone. Though I still have a mask set, which I stored on a secondary account incase my main ever got hacked, I don't know what I will do with it. This is a farewell to all Tip.it'ers, for even though I have rarely posted, I have read just about every topic this forum has had since I joined it. This is also a warning that a similar thing could happen to you, why? I don't and will probably never know, but apparently Jagex prefers to ban innocent honest members, rather then the thousands of autoers that litter free to play worlds. So long, and good luck in avoiding a similar fate.
