The new MMORPG Tower of Fantasy has banned its first round of cheaters and has publicly released their in-game names with censorship. However, some players believe that the ban wave was useless because it caught the wrong ones.
This is what Tower of Fantasy did: On the official site of the MMORPG, a post was published on August 18th regarding the previously announced ban wave of the game. A total of over 10,000 accounts have been permanently banned.
In an action that is rather unusual in online gaming, Tower of Fantasy also published the in-game names of the banned players on their site. However, each name was censored beforehand, replacing every 3 letters with asterisks. They look something like this:
- M***rovIV
- U***mitedWorks
- p***forgive.me
- h***ka00
Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to guess the full user names behind a whole range of in-game names. This is especially true for the longer ones that are composed of established terms.
My account is not there yet i still got banned for 10 year!! Please give me back my account @ToF_EN_Official
— ハル (@Spring__Zone) August 17, 2022
If you are affected by the ban wave but cannot find your name on the site, check the Excel sheet linked on the site as well. It is also possible that your name is not yet included because the table receives updates step by step.
“The ban wave was useless”
These reactions exist: The topic of the ban was quickly taken up in the Tower of Fantasy subreddit, but the mood in the corresponding thread was not particularly high. The users there described the bans as useless because they targeted the wrong people.
It seems to have affected users who were working on the file “ksophon_x64.sys”, which is responsible for the anti-cheat system of Tower of Fantasy. However, this file was involved in a workaround that helped some players with crashes of their game and blue screens (via gamesradar and stealthisoptional). This means they were likely banned even if they did not actually cheat.
At the same time, screenshots of real cheaters are shown in the reddit thread, who continue to roam the game unscathed.
A screenshot shows a player with a 7.5 suppressor. However, the currently highest possible level is only 4.5.
The upgrades of the suppressor are linked to character levels and this has a temporary cap that increases over time. On the first day after the release of Tower of Fantasy in Europe, it was at level 18, on the second day at level 24, etc.
Today, August 19th, 9 days after the release of the MMORPG, it is at level 42 and can be upgraded to 5.0. (via dotesports). A 7.5 suppressor, as seen in the screenshot, is therefore impossible for normal players to achieve.
In the end, the annoyed users on reddit also pointed out that Tower of Fantasy only bans individual characters of the cheaters and not their accounts, as stated on the site. Accordingly, the cheaters can simply create a new character and continue.
This is what you can do against the ban: If anyone among you has been wrongly affected by the ban wave, you can contact Tower of Fantasy support at the email address [email protected].
However, the official Twitter account pointed out that processing of the request may take some time because the support team is currently receiving many such inquiries.
What do you think of the ban action? Did it help or was it really useless? Are you perhaps even affected? Let us know in the comments.
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