Arno's Perma Ban

I used to play Forge of Empires, until I got permanently banned. This is that story.

The ban was unreasonable, so I naturally appealed. The appeal revealed that it was initiated out of personal vendetta, although the true reason was not given. Naturally, I got curious to get to the bottom of it. The following is my conclusion, and further below the evidence and background that you need to form your own conclusions.

Conclusion

The InnoGames community manager known as "Lady Marlena" is helping her friends win by banning their competitors (in this case me, Arno the Fabulous). She is using her privileged position as game administrator to her own and her friends advantage.

If you chose to play this game, and are a competitive player, be aware that you will be competing against the company's moderators, and they are able and willing to permanently ban players that they can't beat in-game.

This behaviour of InnoGames is especially injurious if you're planning on spending cash to buy the diamonds you need to strengthen your city, as should you succeed at building a competitive city, your efforts, time and cash will be nullified when you get permanently banned for succeeding.

Background

"Whoopass, CA", Arno's military juggernaut city on Jaims

I played as "Arno the Fabulous" for about 2 years, exclusively on the Jaims world, and I stopped at the Colonial Age. The part of the game that appealed to me the most was the GvG competition, so I focused my city development for that purpose. Every development choice was made with the goal of improving my city's GvG capabilities, and after 2 years of grinding, practice and incremental city improvements, I had build a truly unrivalled city on Jaims, at least by GvG capabilities. I had fought nearly 100,000 battles, most in the GvG mode, and had challenged every guild of consequence, including all the top guilds, successfully. My strategy was working.

Having fought a lot, I was 4th on global ranking by battles won, although I had only 13M points, while everyone above me had at least 200M points. By any measure, I had achieved great success. There was no guild I could not beat.

However, the guilds I challenged were rarely happy to see my attacks. Some were deeply offended that a player from Colonial Age should attack them and win. One of these guilds is particularly relevant to the ban. I fought "Treacherous Bastards" for a long time, initially on the Iron Age map, but as I grew stronger, on all the other maps I could fight on, given I was in Colonial. I was winning consistently against them, on every map.

Unlike most guilds, my strategy to GvG was not to amass as many sectors as possible, but to destroy my competitors' as much as possible. I measured success by how much destruction I would cause, both in terms of sectors conquered, and treasuries depleted. I would release most sectors, always holding a mean and lean position, and always moving about the maps, attacking everyone.

The enemy

The "Treacherous Bastards" guild was founded by "Sir Charles of Hamburg". This player is long time friends with "etoil1982", "It torta", and a few others. They have all been contributors to Charles' Statue of Zeus since level 4, meaning they've played together for years at this point. Sir Charles has 39M points on Jaims, which compared to my 13M points, means he's played a lot longer than I have.

etoil1982 recently left "Treacherous Bastards"

About 2 weeks prior to my ban, "Sir Charles" and his long time friend "etoil1982" founded a new small (ghost) guild PEST CONTROL". The "pest", is of course, yours truly. Immediately they started attacking my positions on every map, although strategically this does not make sense, and it didn't phase me at all. I continued attacking Treacherous Bastards. It is clear their goal was to defend the Bastards' land holdings by somehow preventing me from attacking them.

Both the behaviour of "PEST CONTROL" and the description of the guild made it clear it was formed specifically to combat me. Even the guild name, in all capitals, is shouting at me, and this anger is evident in the guild description too, where he goes on to call me vermin that needs to be exterminated for "destroying his GvG".

Note also the player "Charles the Lawgiver" which is given the title "Number 2.1". It's an idle account, the title suggesting it is associated with "Sir Charles of Hamburg". If true this is also against the game rule, whereby each player is only allowed one account per game world. This title, "2.1" also means that etoil1982, the founder, knows about the relationship between the two "Charles" accounts.

etoil1982's Guild on Jaims, on April 11, 2019 (click to enlarge)

The Permanent Ban

Around mid March 2019, some friends asked me to start a city on Langendorn, which was their main world, bring my highly regarded GvG experience to their world, and also help/coach them into being more successful at GvG themselves. After being initially reluctant to start over, I eventually decided to make a small attempt. I was planning on only bringing up a city to Iron Age, just enough so I could see the GvG maps and be able to give my friends some coaching on their attacks. They had already offered to boost me on Langendorn to bring my city up to something reasonable in a short amount of time, but I wasn't keen on taking freebies.

I got banned on March 30th, 2019, after posting the request "Looking for VF and CE goods on Langendorn, offering same goods on Jaims", and I immediately appealed. The reason given was that transferring goods between worlds is prohibited by the game rules. When I posted my ad I wasn't aware of the prohibition. Anyway, nobody responded, and there seemingly no prospect I'd be able to boost my own city on Langendorn with the vast resources I had amassed on Jaims.

My ban appeal ticket was responded by Dudettas, a "Senior InGame Moderator", who informed me that it had been passed on for consideration to someone else. This turned out to be "Lady Marlena", who is a community manager. It's not clear to me why Dudettas didn't deal with the appeal himself.

Lady Marlena explained that requesting help in transferring goods cross world is as much a crime as actually transferring goods, regardless of whether a transfer had occurred. I explained at length that there was no attempt, that there was no prospect of such a transfer even being possible, to no avail.

However, Marlena did let slip that her "problem with me" is my past complaints about offensive language. I had been previously reported for inappropriate language in global chat, and received a temporary ban on about three occasions. Combined with the fact that a permanent ban seems like a disproportionate penalty for seeking to break the rules, when a warning, or deleting goods transferred against the rules would have been more appropriate, this "problem with me" slip told me the real reason for the ban is another "problem" she's trying to solve.

While trying to appeal the ban, I have repeatedly requested that my appeal be considered by another moderator, but Marlena quickly closed each support ticket, responding that "I am stuck with her", and she is as far as I can go. Ultimately she did not allow anyone but herself consider my appeal. Also, since Dudettas initially passed my ticket on to her, I have to speculate that exercising her "community manager" role, she instructed the other moderators to forward any of my tickets only to her.

Who is Lady Marlena

Apart from being a "Community Manager" [forum post], ie a paid technical support employee for InnoGames, Marlena is also an avid player. She runs a GvG guild on Arvahall, named "Wildfire", where she is listed as "Founder". One of her right-hand men is etoil1982 (of "Treacherous Bastards" fame), and "Sir Charles of Hamburg" also plays in her guild. Marlena and etoil both have about 65M points, which Charles lags behind a bit with 20M points.


She is a competitive player, taking pride in her "very active guild", with "very experienced players", where members are expected to complete all 64 Guild Expedition encounters "in a tight race", and even proudly showing a screenshot of her guild's GE performance where they beat other tough GE competition.

Lady Marlena's guild on Arvahall, April 11, 2019 (click to enlarge)

Full Description of Marlena's Guild on Arvahall (click to show)

Welcome to the hottest guild in Arvahall. :)

Guild Philosophy
It's a simple game. We farm a little, we fight a little.
Cry with our teammate when we wake up and find our sectors gone, and laugh with them when we go and take them back :) And we will.

This is a very active guild. Our current members are very experienced. Members are expected to

-polivate on a regular basis
-paticipate in guild events
-contribute to new GB's
-minimum of 48 encounters in GE every week. 64 is expected if we are in a tight race

We actively look for players who work and play well with others and will fit well into our family.
We have a lot of fun and we laugh a lot. We support each other completely. How can you not want to be part of that? :)

If you're looking for a guild this might be your next home. We are level 49 offering 5 fp in our town halls and other
benefits and are rocking our way up the levels still.

https://prntscr.com/koqjx8 A record 133.3% in 3 and a half days. This guild rocks.

We are young, dynamic and hot . :) And we're going places. We invite you to come along and enjoy being part of the ride.

If you think you'd fit well here, send Lady Marlena, Big Al 12, or MIghtyJS a note.

Founded Sept 27, 2015

Marlena - etoil1982 relationship

Each Great Building maintains a ledger of investors all the way back to its contruction. By examining the earliest levels of the basic GB's (like Statue of Zeus), one can tell who was helping each player progress through the various stages.

After examining both the Lady Marlena and etoil1982 early levels of Zeus, it is clear that both of these two players started playing at about the same time, and were at least friends from those very early times, as they are investors on each other's first few levels of Zeus:

Here is etoil1982 Statue of Zeus at level 0 (ie, in the mud). Lady Marlena had contributed 2 Forge Points, which secured 3rd prize, one that yields only 1 medal, no BPs, and no FP. Likely this was a guild mandated help for a building "in the mud". It is customary for guilds to help members raise their newly built GBs to level 1 by donating some FP. This means that etoil1982 and Marlena were in the same guild when etoil1982 started playing:

etoil1982's Statue of Zeus "in the mud", with Marlena being a contributor (click to enlarge)

Similarily, Marlena's Statue of Zeus shows etoil1982 as an investor at level 4, which is very early on, perhaps it was an FP swap. This demostrates that early in Marlena's game career, etoil1982 was present, and that they were guildies and swap partners:

Marlena's Statue of Zeus level 4, showing relationship with etoil1982 early in her game (click to enlarge)

The investor rosters on both Marlena and etoil1982 buildings are very similar, with the same players recurring on both. This is a very strong clue that the two were in the same guild, involved in some guild swap together, when they first started playing Forge of Empires.

Based on their great buildings, Marlena and etoil1982 have a long partnership relation, going back to at least the time they both started the game. They started at about the same time, were in the same guild, and at the very least swap partners. It is typical that real-life friends invite each other to join a new-found game, so I can also speculate that these two may have been real-life friends before starting their game careers.

Summing up the facts

On Arvahall, etoil1982 and Sir Charles of Hamburg are friends with Lady Marlena, the community manager, where they play GvG together. On Jaims, etoil1982 and Sir Charles of Hamburg are my competitors, and are deeply offended by my strategy, and are plainly calling me a vermin and a pest that needs to be exterminated (from his guild description), which occurred about two weeks before my ban.

I have to speculate that etoil1982 has complained to his long time friend Marlena, about the grief I am causing him on Jaims, by challenging him in GvG, hoping that she would exterminate me, while he failed to do a dent in game.

My request to transfer goods is clearly just the timely excuse for Marlena to help her friend by removing me from the game.

Marlena is a very competitive player as Marlena, she is endowed with administrator rights in the game, and is able to command the customer support organization for the "International" market. From etoil1982's behaviour on Jaims, she was not able to teach him that GvG is just a game (he would not otherwise be so offended to losing to me). He remains her right hand ("leader") in her guild, and would likely not want to lose him by not helping him with his plea vis-a-vis my challenge to him on Jaims. She has the ability, opportunity, and motive to use her customer support position as a power poisition to further her own, and her friend's progress in the game, by permanently banning more capable competition (in this case, myself, Arno the Fabulous).

Diamonds

How do diamonds relate with all this? They are smack in the middle of this issue.

Follow the Diamonds

I would admit that in some instances, while preparing a GvG campaign, I miscalculated my abilities, and didn't have enough troops to finish capturing a sector. Sometimes, I used diamonds to resurrect troops lost in combat or to heal damaged ones. I literally "paid to win", which is what made me appear as an impossibly strong fighter, which in turn annoyed some lesser players like etoil1982, which in turn got Marlena to permanently ban me. So yes, I got banned for spending money to fulfill InnoGames' business plan, whereby players would spend cash to compete against each other. (If Marlena's boss is reading this, how does it feel that the "International" market's revenue is sabotaged by your customer support staff?)

The Current Status of the International Market

The International market (ie, all worlds on "en".forgeofempires.com) are managed by a team of two co-community managers, who are paid employees of InnoGames, and a number of volunteer moderators, who are not employees, nor paid. The community managers are the bosses of the moderators. See "FoE EN Team" post on the forum for the list of people involved and their relationships (archive at time of writing).

At the time of this writing, only one manager is active, Lady Marlena, while the other, PrincessXyster was not seen on the forums since March 27th, which predates this incident (PrincessXyster forum profile archive). So, the entire International Market is currently at the whim of one individual, and her agenda.

Why Am I Writing All This?

Many banned players are cheaters, but in this case the cheaters are the moderators. Am I upset? Do I want my account back? Yes, but no. Had I known at the outset that I may be banned for competing against moderators, I would not have spent any money on this game, and likely would not have played at all.

I am somewhat ok with spending money to compete against other people who also spend money, it seems fair in a way, and I'm certain InnoGames' business plan relies on exactly their customers seeing pay-to-win as a fair model, but if I have to compete against a moderator with admin powers, how can I compete? I'd have to try to get an admin job myself so we can ban each other. If that sounds stupid it's because it is stupid. I would never have participated, and now that I know this is how the game really works, I do feel defrauded. Also, I do not wish to play this game any more for the same reason, I have no interest in competing against administrators of the game.

So why the write-up? If you are a new player, learn from my experience, and consider if you want to compete against moderators with god powers, which you can never attain, and/or if you're willing to buy diamonds to progress in this game, to compete against the moderators.

Arno The Fabulous has left the game.