Square-Enix cracks down on gardeners, sends out bans
by Seraphina Brennan 
Jul 8th 2009 at 3:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Culture, News items, PvE, Consoles
Community site Pet Food Alpha has reported that Square-Enix is specifically targeting players who own more than one character for the explicit reason of gardening. Any level character can garden -- even right from the start of the game -- but no character can have more than 10 flowerpots at a time in their house. This has sparked players to purchase more character slots to simply expand their gardening enterprises, a common practice that has been done by players for over six years.
Players are unclear if these bans have been handed our by individuals on the RMT Task Force, or if they bans were created by one of Square-Enix's new automated tools. We'll keep our eyes on this story and update as new information comes in.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Pewpdaddy said on 3:09PM 7-08-2009
I seriously hope this wasn't intentional. Gardening is one of the few "reasonable" and dependable ways to make cash in that game. Crafting is an obvious one but c'mon, I sat one day for nearly 5 hours crafting and got about 27 skill- ups... Sounds good right... Ya I went from 20-23 Smithing skill ... >: x
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Dblade said on 3:18PM 7-08-2009
What happened is that a certain gardening recipe yielded good that you could vendor for more gil than the cost, and both players and RMT worked on a huge scale to maximize it. 15+ alternate characters and more all gardening and selling generated a huge amount of gil. There was nothing against TOS at all doing this, it was instead a problem with the recipe that SE should have nerfed.
However they chose to ban instead, and it caught a good amount of players it seems, because of the scale they were working on. To be fair, there's little way to tell whether or not a player with 2 accounts stuffed with gardening mules is using them for RMT or not. But in that case they shouldn't have banned so immediately, just flagged and reviewed each account on a case by case basis.
I think SE did this to try and remove the gil generated, but it backfired.
Muu said on 8:42AM 7-09-2009
5hours should allow you to do ~120x5=600 synths. Even at 60+ you're bound to gain 1 complete synth skill after 3-6dozen tries, so you must have been using the wrong recipes, or were expecting to skillup by desynthing (which rarely gets you any skillups).
I do wonder how widespread this thing really is, though. It's not an announced STT mass-ban, and as of last night I don't recall seeing any major thread on Nejitsu (the 2ch board where pretty much everything FF11 is covered).
THAC0 said on 3:15PM 7-08-2009
Square-Enix sucks; if a player owns multiple accounts and likes to garden so what. Very lame.
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Dblade said on 3:34PM 7-08-2009
It's not that simple. From what I understand, so much gil was able to be made from it that the popular RMT places were able to sell it for 15 bucks per million, which was like a 300% lowering in cost and the same rise in supply. Unchecked, it could have led to a reboot of the old COP exploit which lead to 10 million gil haubies. Prices on many items had been inflating recently, so they were right to worry, but they just overreacted by banning using automated tools.
The problem with FFXI is that the economic role of it has way too much impact on the game side of it. It's harder to make money than it is to level in the game.
myr said on 3:27PM 7-08-2009
This doesn't really surprise me, coming from SE.
And people wonder why I'm skeptical about FFXIV.
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Havok said on 5:35PM 7-08-2009
I agree. There's no way I'm even touching FFXIV.
Vulturion said on 3:34PM 7-08-2009
That all sounds very badly handled, especially with Final Fantasy XIV on the horizon now - no sense driving off the hard core of players who've stuck with FF XI and endured PlayOnline for years.
Multiple-account-holders (/character slot purchasers) are pretty much the hardest of that stalwart core too, so it would seem horribly naive they are going to give another FF MMO a chance EVER again after having however many thousands of hours wiped out.
Why would anyone want to rock the community of a seven year old game with a sequel incoming?
In their position it'd seem prudent to just accept any money rolling in, whether players want to conga through the towns naked or sit and watch paint dry.
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Deadend said on 3:39PM 7-08-2009
Sounds like more highhanded nee jerk banning we have all come to expect from Square Enix.
I am an old school gamer my opinion is, is that if its in the game and you don't need to run macros and hacks and stuff then its fair game.
Shouldn't be punishing your paying costumers for your shoddy programing Square.
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ringthree said on 4:21PM 7-08-2009
Sounds like the words of a banned Salvage dupper.
GameZ said on 7:31AM 7-09-2009
No sounds like the words of an intelligent gamer ... this was in no way a hack or exploit, so how can it be a bannable offence?
Like Dblade already pointed out “There was nothing against TOS at all doing this, it was instead a problem with the recipe that SE should have nerfed”
Iginio Shaw said on 4:55PM 7-08-2009
They have to look at their development team. SOE has had their development team for 5 years straight putting in a bug WITH every patch that can be exploited by their friends. When enough regular players find out about it they close it down. This practice has been going on for many years. Sounds like maybe FFX devs are starting?
This isn't some oops and maybe 2-10 times over 5 years it is like 30-50 times. Some where so obvious and even reported to developers in the beta testing of patches. Ask yourself how much extra side money was made...
Every big oops that they take way to long to fix ( never a hot fix for them ), nets their friends a good chunk of change that can be sold for real money in EQ2.
Not a bad racket to be in, as it isn't strictly illegal and if caught they aren't going to jail. Yet, can make an easy 10,000.00 per event.
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Chris said on 5:20PM 7-08-2009
Apologies in advance, I'm not usually the sort to just outright criticize Massively's reportage, however, in this case I think it's warranted.
Dear Massively, on the off chance that I have not played every single MMO that has ever been made could you please do a little work on how you present these stories. Journalism 101, hell Writing 101 details some simple questions your article should answer.
1. Who?
2. What?
3. Where?
4. When?
5. How?
If you go around leaving off answers to any one of those questions your reporting rapidly becomes incomprehensible. If you're wondering which question you forgot to ask, it's number two.
WTF is Gardening?
Including a link to some offsite jargon file is not helpful. You have to, have to, have to know that people don't click links nearly as much as Berners-Lee might have thought they would.
At some point you're gonna have to decide if you're reporting stories or just blogging them.
Oh, and if you'd like to keep these sort of critics from showing up in the comments on blog posts, articles, stories (whatever you would like us to think of them as) then I suggest you put a big fat link in the masthead that says "email the editor-in-chief".
Quite frankly, you don't get to call yourselves editors unless you actually edit something once in a blue moon. You start doing that, we'll stop publicly shaming you for typos and grammar and just plain forgetting the questions.
I'll let you slide on the typos and the grammar but if I routinely have to rely on the comments to figure out what in the hell the post was about then you're doing something wrong.
Love the site, read it daily. We only bitch because we care.
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Brian! said on 6:59PM 7-08-2009
Thanks Chris. I have been feeling the same. I love the idea of sites like Massively, but I also want them to actually grow up and be real MMO news sites, not something that feels like a bunch of teens blogging.
What I would like to add is that they answer your questions with applied investigative journalism. Call the developer, get the scoop. Contact players who were banned. Ask around. Give us more news that we can find using a google search.
Come on, be massive Massively! I am sure MMO developers love news about their games on your site. Use that press privilege as a chance to get the scoop. Be a journalist!
trafik said on 11:12AM 7-09-2009
This.
Like previously said, and doesn't just apply to this article. But explaining something more in depth may actually help me understand an MMO I haven't played, especially when it comes to a certain mechanic. (And I've played a lot of MMOs, I have played several FFs too but what the hell is gardening?)
Explaining it may even spur me to try a MMO if I like the sound of it (Even considering the subject of this article). Massively has already done this on some cases just from in depth explanations. This in turn keeps you going, because quite frankly the more people who play MMOs the more audience you have to target.
So in the nicest way possible (Cause I love you guys, your my home page for christs sake!) - Stop blogging and start reporting.
xoxoxoxo - trafik
Colin Brennan said on 11:57AM 7-09-2009
To answer everyone's confusion as to what gardening is: it's gardening. It's a profession where you plant seeds into pots and grow small trees and plants. It yields fruit, crystals, and ore/gems as a payoff.
My apologies for not defining that, as I felt that the FFXIclopedia entry had more than enough information on gardening to define it. I will take care, in the future, to define such things.
Arkanaloth said on 5:30PM 7-08-2009
This is likely one of the worst reasons to issue a ban I've ever heard of... what if people legitimately want to garden on multiple characters in order to make money for use to benefit their main and have no intention of RMT. Making money in FFXI is pretty difficult, so this measure is IMO poorly handled, they need to focus on the RMT'ing account and not issue a blanket banning that will no doubt catch quite a few innocents.
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larzjudith said on 12:11PM 7-09-2009
I completely agree with you. I quit playing this game, because I couldn't afford anything. A wealthy friend of mine was very knowledgeable about gardening, and helped get me started. If people that play the game, learn the game, and then figure out the best way to finance their stuff get banned because of it, SE is going to have a hell of a time keeping people happy. Ban your most dedicated, veteran players.... great idea. I hope this isn't the whole story.
Wootson said on 5:51PM 7-08-2009
Square keeps an eye on everyone who has lots of Gil (the currency in the game). Or better to say, a bot keeps an eye on everyone who has lots of Gil. When certain people start to acquire lots of money and do weird things with it, a bell goes off at the RMT team. People with 10 level 1 characters who are masters of gardening and then giving away their Gil are the first that come under suspicion. People that acquire Gil and buy stuff off the in-game Auction House and use it for their selfs, are not. RMT people get banned for a reason. This has been going on for years now, and Square is pretty good at it. It's actually one of the only games where I never received a /tell message from an RMT individual or company.
Maybe someone got slaughtered in the process, but they always will be excused (and maybe even get something extra out of it) if they can provide evidence for being innocent.
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myr said on 7:28PM 7-08-2009
You never recieved a RMT tell in FFXI? Seriously? Are you sure you're playing FFXI and not FF12?
I haven't played much myself in recent months, but it's generally 2-5 tells a day. About as bad as WoW.