Are you at risk of getting banned?

[SnowyJingleBells]

What Bugs Yavn?
1. Hacking Tools and Cheating
Nothing, and I do mean nothing upsets me more than a cheater or person who uses a tool to cheat or exploit VMK. Hacking and cheating unbalances the game and gives cheaters unfair advantages. You have them to thank for more non tradable items. If you're one of the people using a cheat or hack to take advantage of the game, watch out, we will find you and ban you. Plus, just because you find a bug in something does not make it OK to take advantage of it.
I have to also call out players who cheat other players out of rare items. I can't tell you how many incidents we've reviewed about Magic Pins that were less powerful than advertised. We're about to update the trading system so it will show the power of all magic pins, but until then beware of these cheaters and follow our guidelines for safe trades.
2. Posting Quest Answers
Sometimes it takes us weeks to research, build and test a Quest. There is nothing worse than watching all of this hard work go down the drain when the Quest answers are posted online just a few minutes after the Quest has gone live. It's fine to offer hints, but many players instead take the easy way out and just look them up before they even try to perform the Quest. You can thank all posters that reveal Quest answers for forcing us to add minimum score requirements to Quests. Sure, it would be easier for us to just sell the items but I believe many people enjoy the feeling and satisfaction that comes from completing a Quest.
3. Mules
A Mule is an account that is created and used just once or twice to gain items or credits. While it's OK to have a few different accounts/characters to play with, there are some players who have hundreds of characters, and rarely use them. If you are a player that has lots of Mules (more than 50) beware, we're now cracking down on these players and will start banning accounts.
4. Not Informing Staff of Player Issues
I've seen too many players (and even some CL's) who are aware of something they don't inform staff about. One example that comes to mind is seeing a player back in the game that was previously banned. If you see a player who was banned but is back under a new name, please inform the staff immediately. Players are banned for a reason and we don't want them back. Another issue is knowing about a cheat or exploit and not saying anything -- even if you personally don't take advantage of the cheat. To those players that DO INFORM US of these issues, I say thank you.
5. Players Not Helping Others
As VMK grows, we have more and more new players that are unfamiliar with the game. New players don't know exactly what to do and sometimes ask lots of questions. Please, do me a favor, help them out. Because by doing so, you make VMK a better place.
Wrapping Up...
There's nothing worse than to have our hard work or your game experience spoiled by cheaters or people who don't care about the VMK community. You CAN make a difference.
With that in mind I can tell you about a new program we're getting ready to roll out that rewards good deeds in the game. That's right, if we see a player do something special or out of the ordinary to make the community better you may just win a VMK Gold Star. I've asked all the hosts and mods to keep an eye out for players that go above and beyond the call of duty, the Gold Star award is our little way of saying thank you.
Now onward and upward! We have some major changes coming just around the corner, and as I mentioned before, improved trading is just one of them. You want to know more? Sorry, you'll have to wait till next week, but I will say this... how about being able to wear more pins? Would say, 15 make you happy?

ok i need get this off my chest
0. Yavn You have gone overboard on most of this!
1A. if you ban every single account that has made 50+ characters think how much you population would go down
1B. you WILL get complaints and very mad people if you ban them bc of how many mules they have
1C. Yes some players have 50+ accounts but have you ever thought of why? maybe its bc they started when it was very hard to get credits!
1D.

3. Mules
A Mule is an account that is created and used just once or twice to gain items or credits. While it's OK to have a few different accounts/characters to play with, there are some players who have hundreds of characters, and rarely use them. If you are a player that has lots of Mules (more than 50)

beware, we're now cracking down on these players and will start banning

accounts.

did anyone else get kind of scared when they read this? i mean " beware" try using kinder words Yavn! if somebody clicks on your link from another site or something and reads the newsletter you may have just lost a player already.
2.

4. Not Informing Staff of Player Issues
I've seen too many players (and even some CL's) who are aware of something they don't inform staff about. One example that comes to mind is seeing a player back in the game that was previously banned. If you see a player who was banned but is back under a new name, please inform the staff immediately. Players are banned for a reason and we don't want them back. Another issue is knowing about a cheat or exploit and not saying anything -- even if you personally don't take advantage of the cheat. To those players that DO INFORM US of these issues, I say thank you.

I inform you on things i see that should not be said or learned by little kids. just a couple days ago i reported a guest, yes a guest who was not following the values and said hi way to * bad word here *
2A. Now what do i get for reporting any bad words or anything? the normal response! and usually and hour later i see the same player!
2B. Yavn, have you ever thought about how much the " taken and bay be " thing has to do with this? Think about it! you even put it in your newsletter once and since then it has gotten worse! you have lots of players who need to reread the values! ban those who are inappropiate rather than those who have created the 50+ mules.
3.

I will say this... how about being able to wear more pins? Would say, 15 make you happy?

No it will not, it is hard for me personally to choose 8 pins and if you make room for 15 i am going to have A LOT of empty spaces.
4.

With that in mind I can tell you about a new program we're getting ready to roll out that rewards good deeds in the game. That's right, if we see a player do something special or out of the ordinary to make the community better you may just win a VMK Gold Star. I've asked all the hosts and mods to keep an eye out for players that go above and beyond the call of duty, the Gold Star award is our little way of saying thank you.

and you just thought of that now? maybe if you thought of it earlier we could have had more people trying to do the right thing and trying to get a star.
5.

2. Posting Quest Answers
Sometimes it takes us weeks to research, build and test a Quest. There is nothing worse than watching all of this hard work go down the drain when the Quest answers are posted online just a few minutes after the Quest has gone live. It's fine to offer hints, but many players instead take the easy way out and just look them up before they even try to perform the Quest. You can thank all posters that reveal Quest answers for forcing us to add minimum score requirements to Quests. Sure, it would be easier for us to just sell the items but I believe many people enjoy the feeling and satisfaction that comes from completing a Quest.

Yavn maybe we use this to help others who have not seen these movies and need help
6.

There's nothing worse than to have our hard work or your game experience spoiled by cheaters or people who don't care about the VMK community. You CAN make a difference.

yes i might have more than 50 characters (not sure) i still care about the vmk community
Snows wrap up:
Yavn next newsletter would you please be nicer?

thx for reading,
Snow

 

[Tailfeather]

I agree, Kitty.

The fact that they blasted their own members was egregious, but then to still think that players are going to flock to parks and spend thousands of dollars to just get some virtual items is silly. It's bad advertising and Disney's customer service is normally bar none fabulous.

The fact that VMK is being run so shoddily does NOT make it good advertisement for the rest of Disney's services.

I agree accounts that have not been used in a set amount of time (6 months maybe) should get an email. That, I'd be okay with, rather than an 'out of nowhere' spouting of frustration, again to a game full of players who are SUPPOSED to be 8-14 year olds.

It's like he just yelled at people's kids. Who does that?

And I agree with Snowey... taken and bay bee and mummy and duh duh need to GO. They scream pedophile to me... that's why I avoid totally. I love rooms who's owners don't allow it. It goes right around the making VMK safe thing. Why not crack down on THAT?

As for the language used, I felt the whole thing was practically one big threat.

And the gold star? I help people all the time but I don't see myself getting one. Not because I'm bitter (*eg*) but because you always see hosts award to the same folks over and over. I never see VMK Staff or hosts around outside of games...and I play alot. So I doubt the people who truly help others will be the ones getting the stars.

Plus, pin display was NOT what I wanted you to work on. Work on not dc'ing me in the middle of my 85 ghosts part of the green car quest.

Thanks.

 

[cat_herder]

No, while some of what you say is true there have been errors and they have repeated some quests. And true that as their job perhaps closer to perfection would be expected of any of us in our jobs if we wished to keep them. I will agree with him that many of these quests take a lot of time to put together and design. As the user we may not always appreciate all the particulars of the quest. Keep in mind we don’t always know who puts these together, I would imagine some are given out to staff as projects.

Now there a re a lot of ways to look at this. From a player quest stand point (where prizes are limited and put up by the player) I am totally apposed to spoilers and think hints only are appropriate. And if you every tried to put together a quest or game you know how difficult they can be. I also feel use of mules here is wrong.

When it comes to VMK wide quests, I always try to do the quests on my own with possibly up to half a dozen friends on VMK messaging or IM and always try to help people when they get stuck. I think spoilers are acceptable to have and use because these are put together in the same fashion as the chains of friends I just described. We are a community and we work together on it. Probably the harder quests to put together are the movie quests and they are also unfortunately the most likely candidates for needing spoilers. I have seen many of these movies once, but doubt I can recall and don’t think yanking out the tape to figure it out is the best plan. When multiple choices often you can guess through, if it is filling in the blank you stand around and wait for someone with the right answer. You know out of one side of their mouth they say they want VMK to be about helping and out of the other them act like it is the worst thing you can do. You really can’t figure these folks out some times. And while I disagree with the way the message has been delivered – we wanted to know so now we know. I feel this method took what could have been a good feature and breached the veil between VMK and the outside world and almost threatens the free exchange of thoughts and ideas here and elsewhere. I continue to speak freely on my thoughts but maybe we will have to have an underground spoiler chain where they aren’t posted but passed along by pm and IM and whatever other messaging and we will all get our buddies. I am half being facetious here but I can think of a few forums that might actually ban spoilers. - It’s late I’m going to sleep on it some just can't stay away from this thread.

On the quests with time limits by the time I went to our movies and pulled out the correct one the time limit would be up, much less the time it would take to watch the movie and try to find the answer.

It's THEIR JOB to create all these quests and things, they get paid for the work they do, no matter how long it take us to complete the quest. They are not creating the quest on their own personal time, like WE ARE doing then on our own time.

Hey I'm going on about 3000 hours for the green car quest, shouldn't that make him happy. It certainly doesn't make me happy.

Frankly, does anyone really care about the contents of the quest, don't we all just want the prize? If the prize was for sale in the store at a reasonable prize and in a quest at the time. I would just buy the thing.

 

[cat_herder]

Oh and one more thing on a personal note, enough with the stinky pins already! They are little more than a small image in a menu, if you must do them at least build a display board that people can put in their room and show them off. The same goes for clothes, is there something wrong with giving us a wardrobe to store our various couture in?

OK Rant over I'm heading back into my hole

I'm SO tired of the pins. I have never collected the pins or had any interested in them in real life.

 

[Tailfeather]

I like the pins, but make them resonable for goodness sakes'. I feel bad for poor little kids who want cool things and can't do it because they've made everything so darned hard to challenge the adults (and or Yavn's favorite cheaters).

I could care less about displaying more.

It's just another thing for people to put in their tags: NOT TRADING, don't ask, back off, I will deny you...

(which is SO in the spirit of VMK values...)

 

[qruthie]

There is another reason why there are many, many mule accounts that never get used. Back when VMK first started, your character's name became part of the dictionary. Many people created characters to expand the VMK vocabulary. For example, I added Hippodrome because I wanted to call one of my rooms a Hippodrome. I asked the Black Hole to add it to the dictionary but it never happened. Later on, VMK changed things and now you can only say a person's name if they are on your friends list or are in the same room as you. At least I think that's the way it works.

Hippodrome still plays VMK every so often. Usually for credit runs, buying boy only outfits and doing quests linked to the Q on the screen.

 

[Taliesin]

I was just wondering...do any of the CL have any opinion on this topic? It would be interesting to hear what the leaders have to say to this.

 

[Adventuredaz]

I was just wondering...do any of the CL have any opinion on this topic? It would be interesting to hear what the leaders have to say to this.

Some have spoken here and some in other places and still others are well known to have their own stable. They are players just the same as all the rest of us but I am not surprised that they are keeping quite because it could definatley put them at risk to speak out about it publicly.