I’ve just been banned from mmorpg.com for a discussion about Star Wars Galaxies.  Here’s the ban e-mail I received…

Dear <username>,

You have been issued a temporary ban by one of our moderators.

Category: Free Servers
Span: 11/02/2009 – 11/08/2009 23:59:59 [7 days]
Reason: Discussing or advertising unofficial servers or emulators for MMOs is not permitted on the MMORPG.com forums. These servers are against the ToS of the original game, and violate the intellectual propriety rights of the game’s publisher and developer.

This temporary ban was generated from the following post on our discussion forum:

Thread: Wanted: ability to turn back time
Below is the content of the post:

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[snip]

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http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3188255#3188255

Note: If the thread or post has been deleted you will not be able to view it. The above link might not work.

Thank you,

The Staff
MMORPG.COM

If you believe you received this in error or would like more information please respond to this message or send an email with the details to community@mmorpg.com

The forum post I responded to said this…

Is [sic] SWG: Pre-CU was as “amazing” as people say it was… there would be an emulator by now and private servers running it.

I have a very strong theory that SWG Pre-Cu was NOT this amazingly perfect MMORPG that ushered in the golden age.

My post was this…

http://www.swgemu.com/

This has been in development for a long time.  Reverse-engineering a game that doesn’t exist any more has obvious added difficulties.  Personally I don’t think I’ll ever play on one of these emulators simply because I don’t think the quality will be there when it comes to support and hardware costs… then again support in SWG was always a bit LOL.  IIRC 1 week response time on tickets was considered fairly good at the time.

Your “very strong” theory (way to self-promo btw) is of course correct.  SWG was never a perfect game.  It was riddled with bugs from silly harvester animations not working to more serious problems like bugs in the skill trees and jedi defense stats not doing what they said on the tin.  It also had a terrible lack of content but because it was a sandbox, players could always find something to do.  It was also ridiculously incomplete at launch and they brought in stuff like animal mounts long before vehicles which wasn’t very Star Wars like.

However… it was hands down the best sandbox game I’ve played and I am one of those sad people that try them all and usually end up disappointed.  SWG needed fixing but it was unique and had a good community.  SOE could have spent a fraction of the cost of the rebranding to fix the problems and they would have had an absolute winner.  Instead they tried to make it more like WoW, somehow missing the obvious in that if SWG players wanted to play WoW then they already would.

Sorry but imo it is one of the worst MMO crimes of all time and I’m glad SOE felt the burn of their customer base leaving in droves afterwards.  It was a punishment they deserved… that said, if they brought back Pre-CU (or even pre-NGE), I think we’d all return in droves.   Bitter but grateful.  There is currently no game out there that is even remotely close to what SWG was.

As you can see I wasn’t trolling, acting childish or blatantly making a pain of myself.  I was just taking part in a discussion that had already been started by someone else.  I think mmorpg.com were wrong to ban me over this.  They could have given me a warning or just edited my post to remove the link if they didn’t like it.  I e-mailed them back with my opinion on their actions which I’ve copied below.

Dear MMORPG.com,

I thought I was taking part in an intelligent discussion on a forum that encouraged it.

I didn’t even know there was a rule for that. A warning would have been much more appropriate since it was obviously innocent and blatantly not advertising if you read the content of my post – I even said that I would not use a 3rd party server for concerns on service levels.

My terms of service with a game that I no longer play are between Sony Online Entertainment and myself. They are none of your god-damn business and they are most certainly not law – Not in the US and not in my country. Even if you were somehow responsible for enforcing SOE’s terms of service, you’ll quite clearly find I’ve not broken them as no game company would have the audacity to try and ban freedom of speech on a 3rd party web site.

Bollocks to you and your moderator. Please upgrade my ban to a permanent one so I’m not tempted to try and engage in any other discussions on your site. What a ridiculous rule that is. When Darkfall was trying to release, you were all slagging it off so much I’m surprised they didn’t sue you for libel as you most certainly DID have a serious impact on how potential customers viewed their game, and yet I can’t innocently mention a 3rd party emulator in a discussion that was already about it? Hypocrisy!

Stick your censorship right up your arses.

Rob.