How to NOT Get Banned for NX Fraud

If you’re a member of one of gMS’ out-of-game communities or visit the Nexon forums, you hear it a lot:

“OMG I got banned unfairly for NX fraud”
“OMG they banned me for NX I paid for Nexon only wants money”

We all know the story, right?

Well, I have some news for you: There is no such thing as an “unfair” ban for NX fraud. If you get banned, the fault lies on you, your bank, your credit card issuer, PayPal, or anyone that’s ever charged you any amount of NX to your account before. The myth is, “As long as Nexon gets their money, they don’t care.” The fact is, as long as Nexon gets their money for the NX they gave you, you’ll be fine.

Now, I can’t really debunk the myth of the “mysterious NX fraud” bans that people claim are happening to them, but as a long-time user that’s charged a lot of NX to my account since I started playing some 20 months ago without being banned, it comes to me that there’s always some story behind the “mysterious” NX fraud bans, just like the mysterious unfair hacking bans that Nexon CSR “NxJoeW” used to prove wrong every time.

And so, I shall tell you now to NOT get banned for NX Fraud:

All it really comes down to are six simple rules to follow.

1. Verify your PayPal account
This is the one true thing you can do to prevent yourself from being caught by a random hold on funds by PayPal: verify your identity with them. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for everyone because you do need both a bank account and a credit card in order to do it, but if you do all it takes is one automated phone call and you’re set.

2. If you must used an unverified PayPal account, do NOT use the eCheck feature.
The eCheck feature allows someone with an unverified account to make a payment when they don’t have the sufficient funds in their account and have PayPal automatically transfer the money over, when it then makes the payment once the transfer has gone through. This does take several business days (usually a week in the US and up to two in Canada) and because of this, can cause problems with buying NX. Why? Because when you charge NX to your account, it goes through right away, then expects payment. In short, they’ve given you the NX you’re paying for, but it hasn’t been paid for yet. For that reason, if PayPal decides to randomly hold your funds, you’re hooped.

3. NEVER have someone else charge NX for you
It doesn’t matter if it’s with your PayPal account or theirs, don’t do it. In the case that it’s your account, PayPal might find out that the payment is coming from a different IP and stop the payment. (Resulting in you getting banned.) Being charged from someone else’s PayPal account poses even a bigger risk. If by some chance if a future payment to Nexon doesn’t go through on their account, or they charge back any payment they ever made to Nexon (regardless whether or not it was to your account), you WILL get banned. I do recall someone e-mailing Nexon about the issue of one PayPal being used on multiple account, and I believe that was the response. (Unfortunately, although I do remember that it was on Sleepywood, I can’t remember where.)

4. NEVER go behind your parents’ back with their PayPal or Credit Card
This is self-explanatory. Remember what FOX said about this exact issue, making us all look like credit card thieves? Parents will get pissed, or not know what that charge is on their card, and most likely will charge it back. (And by now you should know what that means.)

5. Keep a record of all your payments to Nexon.
When your transaction is completely, record the transaction number somewhere. What I like to do is keep a spreadsheet containing all my transaction numbers, with their associated PayPal transaction IDs, when I made the payment, and for how much. That way, if a payment does go awry and you get banned for it, you can go straight to Nexon and try to work it out.

6. If in doubt, go prepaid or PayByCash instead.
Both will ensure that you’ve paid for your NX before you actually get it. When using PayByCash as an alternative to PayPal, you’re paying directly out of your bank account. In addition, you won’t get your NX until they receive your payment, which means although it takes longer to actually get it, you won’t get banned if by some chance the payment doesn’t go through.

If you ever DO get banned for NX fraud:

1. If your ban is temporary, don’t think you’ve gotten off easy.
NXJoeW said this once; Getting a temporary ban for NX fraud means that the issue is not with paypal, but with the customer’s bank or card issuer, and they have to work it out with them. If they fail to, that temporary ban will be changed to permanent shortly after it expires.

2. Don’t whine to the community.
We don’t need to hear that you got “unfairly banned” for NX fraud, so don’t bother. IF you want to say that you got banned for NX fraud and you think you have a lead on what caused it, then you can ask for help, but it’s better to go right to Nexon, since we can’t really do anything about getting your account back.

3. Contact Nexon, and work with them cooperatively.
Open a ticket in customer support under the “Billing -> Banned for Billing Issue” category. Try to explain in detail what you’ve gathered up from the situation so far, and provide transaction numbers where appropriate. If you have no idea what it was for, then tell them that you don’t know what exactly happened. Hopefully, they’ll be able to guide you into what you need to do in order to get your account reinstated.

4. Contact PayPal if directed to do so.
Usually, if the problem is with PayPal, (usually with their “randomly holding funds” thing) Nexon will contact you saying that there was a problem, and also tell you the PayPal transaction ID of the payment that was stopped. It is now your job to sort it out with PayPal to get the funds over to Nexon. You may also want to contact Nexon as described in #3 once you’ve finished getting things straight with PayPal.

5. If you know what went wrong, try not to do it again.
This is pretty self-explanatory.

I’m hoping that this becomes useful to people to help them from getting banned for an awry payment. I just finally had enough with people complaining about Nexon and how they’re greedy cash mongers, when really the fact is if that was the case they probably would’ve been sued by now. Has that happened? No.

So remember, kids, if you get banned for NX, it’s your fault.

MapleStory on FOX News

A semi-interesting report done by FOX News on the negative impact of MapleStory, mainly on life’s two biggest commodities: time and money.

Oh gee.  It’s not like every other MMORPG like MapleStory is better in this regard.  Takes FOX to try to make money off of a random story… or is it really that random?

In my mind, a story like this about Maple is was completely inevitable; Something a long time coming.  Casting aside the fact that this story was done by FOX, it seems that it does on to say that it’s an easy hook, (which it is) slowly taking away the player’s time, and eventually money.

Now, the addictiveness of the game is kind of something that is all too common.  They didn’t really need to make this story on MapleStory to figure out just what MMORPGs can do.  Now, I don’t know the actual details of how much each game has an effect on another person’s life, but I can tell you this: MapleStory is by far NOT the worst game as for people getting hooked on it.  They could’ve easily substituted World or Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, or the king of “MMORPG Addiction Disorder,” Everquest.  The story’s no different than any other game of its type out there, and you’re always going to find them too.

Now, because of Nexon’s different way of generating revenue, the money factor really can cause a real problem for someone.

This problem is something different from games like WoW, FF11, or Everquest mainly because of the fact that their way of generating revenue is not by a monthly subscription fee, but through their optional cash shop items.  Because of this backend model of making income, it becomes VERY easy to go broke on this game by going gung-ho on NX.  Back in the days when PayPal was the only way to charge NX it wasn’t so easy to do this. (Mainly because of monthly charge limits imposed to prevent fraud)  This is THE one thing that does need to be moderated in this game by all players; how much money they actually put into it.

The story goes on to go about how some of these kids have gotten so bad that they’ve actually stolen their parents’ credit cards, or gotten into their paypal accounts, etc… to get it.  I believe both players they interviewed here (and according to one curious person responding to this on one of the livejournal communities, one of them is an ex-hacker due to their lack of a rank) had gone and done just that, and for that reason parents do have to be more careful, and need to intervene before it gets too bad.  Adults are more likely to be able to spend wisely, whereas kids might not now exactly what they’re doing to their parents by going behind their back.  It’s something that a parent needs to keep a keen eye out for, mainly because I believe in this sort of situation it is mainly the fault of the parent.  Nexon also said themselves in this article that it’s the sort of thing that they wished not happen, but it does anyway.

And, if it’s a good enough deterrent for kids who actually want to steal their parents’ card for NX: You’ll be regretting it later when your parents find out, charge it back, and you get banned.

The one statement that FOX made regarding the money factor that I don’t agree with went something along the lines about how the game “looks” or “seems” free.  (Or at least that’s how it came off to me.)  MapleStory doesn’t look free. It IS free.  They don’t start contacting you a week later saying that your account will be terminated if you don’t start charging NX to your account.  Putting any money into this game, or any other game Nexon America offers, is completely optional.  If you want the game to be free, then you can keep it free.  You may end up maybe putting 5 bucks into your account here or there in the future, after you’ve played the game for a while, but that’s your choice.  I’m sure that there are many people who have played this game for a long time that haven’t put a single penny into this game.

So, in conclusion, FOX is right about some things, wrong about others, and for other parts of the story I don’t think this game in particular was the best to set the example.  I don’t think this gives the game or the community a bad name, but this article was probably going to happen one day, and it did.

Patch 0.40 – Maple TV and Masteria

gMS, believe it or not, gets another first.

It was only about a month ago since we heard about New Leaf City.  Little did we know that it was coming to us in the very next patch.  They didn’t just stop there then.

As we learned with last night’s patch notes, New Leaf City was the first city on a new continent that hasn’t been seen in any version of MapleStory yet: A continent called Masteria.

That being said, I think there’s a lot more of a future ahead for gMS than just NLC.  Speaking of which, although the area seems quite bland and incomplete at the moment, New Leaf City is great.  It has a nice feel, funky music, and although the terrain and map navigation is a tad different than what we’re used to it makes things that much more interesting when trying to explore the map.  Not to mention, mages and priests around level 80 should have fun with wolf spiders, which are a lot easier to handle than most other things such as Death Teddies despite doing around 500-600 more damage on touch than a Death Teddy.

Intersetingly enough, Nexon America decided not to link New Leaf City (and the rest of what will become Masteria for that matter) via Orbis, but instead using the Kerning City subway as its link to the current MapleStory world.  Now, especially since my first login after the patch was in Ludibrium, I didn’t like the idea at first, but I guess they decided that a subway was the best way to fit it in.  I dunno why.  High level players, however, will most likely be making the trip between New Leaf City and Kerning City many times to provide their mains with the godly potions available there, and that I will get to a bit later on.

Right now, New Leaf City is made up of three areas, which judging by the layout could be expandable to six or seven, maybe more.  (Nexon really left themselves open to expand on this.)  The first of these areas, of course, is the town centre itself:

Contrary to what you might think, New Leaf City really doesn’t have much of a North American feel to it, unless you count the “MAPLESTORY” replica of the Hollywood sign and Mount Rushmore to be any part of it.  If anything, it contains scenery from around the world, including London’s Big Ben (called Bigger Ben), Paris’ Eiffel Tower, and the Sphinx.  One of these areas (Bigger Ben) is already completed while Nexon is working on the other two, and there are a few empty spots in the city to allow for future expansion.

 

 New Leaf City also sports a hair salon, plus eye and skin care facilities, much like the other “exclusive” worlds of other MapleStory versions.  This time though they decided to cram them all into one place; the New Leaf Mall.  About six new hairstyles were added as a result of the last update.

As you may have noticed from one of the screenshots I posted above, NLC also has a ton of new pots, and a lot of them are actually better and cheaper than what we’ve been using before.  One in particular, “Ginger Ale”, is one that’s definately gonna get gobbled up by priests, and it’s almost inevitable that the high levels will be parking their mules in Kerning City so they can go over to NLC, grab these new pots, go back to Kerning (since NLC currently lacks both a storage NPC and a free market entrance) and transfer them over.  Here are a couple of the new potions that have been added to the game: Two of them I switched to, and the other one of course being the Ginger Ale potion.

Bigger Ben is an intricate maze, filled with hidden portals, warps, and quite a few mysteries as well.  Each map inside seems to be constructed around such a theme.  For example, there’s an area along the top of one map which is only accessible via a hidden portal… that can only be found by people willing to jump for it.  Not a lot of people know about it yet, especially since this is the first version to get a place such as this.

At the end of one branch of this long mage is a map filled with a new monster; Wolf Spiders.  These new monsters, despite dealing over 1500 damage by touch, are quick kills and make a potential training area for level 7x and 8x’s with lots of HP or lots of mesos for potions.

 

New Leaf City also sports a jungle area that, for the most part, makes up the majority of the new, unexplored continent of Masteria.  Most maps are straightforward but also utilize a portal system to make moving around maps faster or to get to certain areas.  Some of the later maps start to get complex, actually using two layers of terrain at the same points of the map to offer two different paths.  Nexon seems to have really gone wild with their map designs when creating the first few areas of NLC.

Gryphons can be found at the end of this area which, although flying monsters, can provide a decent alternative to zombies if you can get a couple of people on the same map.  Assassins and hermits won’t be very affective here, however, and neither will bowmen unless they have arrow rain/eruption.

 

 As I had mentioned in previous posts due to its pre-patch obviousness, Maple TV also made its debut on gMS as an alternate to megaphones.  A regular announcement goes for a couple dollars cheaper than a super magaphone and displays your message, along with another character of your choosing if you wish, on the top half of TV screens placed in every town around the game.  Unfortunately, these newly-placed screens do tend to generate quite a bit of lag.  It’s usually not much more than coming across 10 or so people however.

Thats all I have to say about this patch so far.  I am VERY impressed with Nexon both with regards to the content of this patch, as it gives a good start off to a new land, and with how the patch was taken out.  This patch actually ended a half an hour early (instead of the usual 3 hours behind) and all the new content was absolutely glitch-free, despite a couple of glitches that Nexon might want to get on quickly in terms of existing content.  Hopefully a short server check in the next couple of days (or maybe they’ll wait until next week) will clear some of it out.

lawl

A new patch comes and this is what happens:

My take on this last patch is coming in the next day or so.

Mardia: What MapleStory Was NOT Meant to Be?

I’ve been hearing a lot of things coming out of gMS’ newest world lately, as I know a couple that quit Bera to get over there plus there’s been a lot of crap thrown around about it and now it’s got me fired up.  I’ve been hearing a LOT of bad things about Mardia.

Now, every world has its drama problems and their elitists.  Scania had trouble with the top guilds holding the altar at Zakum.  (This was obviously changed after Nexon posted their “Logged and Loaded” announcement, which stated that map holding would be bannable.)  Bera’s high level community was known so much for being anti-hack that hacker accusations flew everywhere and caused drama to hit even Sleepywood.  On the flip side, Broa, Bellocan, and maybe Windia had major hacker problems within their top ranks, and Khaini according to a few people I know that play there is just a cess pool of drama; so much that Sleepywood almost had to make their world-specific forum read-only as a result.

Now, Mardia is a completely different story.

Never in my 19 months on this game have I EVER heard so much crap about a world’s community in such a short amount of time.  It really is disgusting.  I’ve found 3 Mardia topics in Sleepywood’s burning zone alone.

Let’s take a look at these threads, shall we?

Thread 1 and Thread 2: Mardia’s elitist community and its stupid shorthand.

So “cc plz” is something we see very often nowadays.  Used by people that are too lazy to type it out or those that either peck their keyboards or can’t type properly over 20 WPM usually end up doing this, and it’s greatly frowned upon throughout the gMS community…. or is it?

I wouldn’t know on Mardia, because according to the first thread they take this a step worse.

Okay so, out of experience, I have NEVER, EVER, come across anyone in the high level community on Bera that’s just barged into my map where I’ve been training for hours on end to see them start killing spawn and either telling me to “cc plz” or refusing to leave when I politely ask them to do so.  You know what they use on Mardia?

“ppl2pass”

Suck it up princess.  Just because you wanna pass someone in the rankings doesn’t give you any right to interrupt someone else’s training.  Didn’t you read the announcement?  You can get banned for KSing someone now.  So, go find your own goddamn map like they do on other worlds.  I can tell you one thing; if Mardians came on Bera and started pulling that BS on the high levels, they’d make sure they’re never able to train in peace again.

“lern2____” and “LOL ___” are just as annoying.  I’m just glad they stayed in Mardia; let it become a world of it’s own that way and don’t bring that crap shorthand to other servers.  We don’t need it.

Thread 3: If you thought any other world’s Ludi PQ was bad…

…I think the person who started this thread has just as bad.  It’s not nearly as bad as what I mentioned regarding a certain twink a couple of posts back, but it’s still pretty bad.

“Oh, I don’t heal on rombots cause it’s a waste of MP.”

What?

That’s like me constantly attacking a death teddy with a normal attack because “Strafe is a waste of MP.”  Skills are a vital part of the game; Not only that but if you’re a PQing cleric and are not willing to help out your party where they’ll need it the most, you shouldn’t be a cleric.  Try being a ranger where no one depends on you instead. ;)

(Not to mention the BS that said cleric pulled later on.)

Those are the horror stories I’ve heard out of Mardia.  Now, my concern is this; Why?  What happened early on in this world’s history for it to end up like this?  It’s like it’s not even part of gMS because it’s so different and just filled with assholes.

Now that my rant is over, I thought I’d just point out on the side: With patch 0.40 starting in less than 90 minutes, there’s a lot of speculation going on about what’s going in, but without a patch info file, this is about the only thing we know is going in, and it was mentioned in my last post, Maple TV.

Here’s a quick YouTube video I found of someone using the system on jMS as an example: