Rappelz: This is How Gala-Net Treats Paying Customers (MemberZone)
I have been a dedicated, loyal customer of Gala-Net for five years, playing their USA version of the free to play game Rappelz. In the last two years I have noticed a substantial change in the management of the game community and the game community itself. I have been a vocal venter throughout this time, making complaints about Rappelz on the game's forum to draw attention to the problems and hopefully bring about change. While other games want to hear feedback, Gala and its Rappelz community managers and forum moderators seem to punish their players for offering criticism.
I was hacked in/around the beginning of November 2011. I lodged several complaints to Gala-Net at around this time via email and telephone. After multiple failed attempts to speak with a human I ended up playing the "press 0" game and leaving messages for random employees at the company's Sunnyvale, CA location.
It was only after I had sent out emails to individuals in several different Gala-Net/Gala-Lab offices, including the board of directors, management from other Gala enterprises, that I finally received a telephone call from an individual who identified himself as "Jason" the "community manager".
I advised "Jason", in/around the middle of November 2011, that not only was my account hacked and items stolen, but that I received an email from a third party website where they sold in-game money (rupees). The third party website advised me that my order had been rejected. It seems as though the hackers obtained my personal information via the weak security of Rappelz and then attempted to purchase items with my credit card.
Jason, the Rappelz employee, advised me that the company was in the middle of a new epic that was to be released soon and therefore they lacked the resources at that particular time but upon release people would be moved around in the company to handle the problems.
Jason asked me to be patient. My account was eventually restored, however no details regarding the hacking, no follow-up regarding the identity theft- what, if anything, the employees of Rappelz were able to find that I could then pass on to the authorities.
Fast forward to Friday March 30, 2012 where I, still patiently waiting for a response from Gala, notice on the game's website a 'goodbye thread' for a GM named Kyodan leaving the company. If you will recall MMOBomb did an interview with Kyodan regarding the hacking epedemic and customer service fiasco. Kyodan's responses were 'cookie cutter' comments that failed to impress the community.
I posted a comment on March 30, 2012 with my opinion that Kyodan did not deserve the accolydes that he received as an employee of a company who failed its people, as a community manager that failed to mange the community. Shortly after I posted my post I tried to log into my account and found I was banned.
I have not received any notification whatsoever as to why my account was banned. I have sent in multiple emails to the company and once more tried to navigate the company's telephone system to speak with a human. I managed to make contact with one employee, who took my email to look into things, and after that I saw someone from gala had tried to call me back once. I have followed up with two more emails. No response. I should not be surprised. My patience snapped.
I contacted Sunnyvale, CA police and upon advising of my concerns was told to make a report to the FBI and have followed through with the recommendation as it relates to identity theft. I further stated in my complaint that I had concerns that the hacking may be from within as I felt that the failure to respond to customer emails in a timely manner/if at all, alluded to a cover-up.
As of today, the USA Rappelz gamers continue to be frustrated. The hackings continue to be epidemic despite players changing their passwords. The hackers get access to the warehouses despite the added warehouse password which was supposed to be a security issue. The company was supposed to have a customer appreciation event but could not bestir themselves to give the community a decent Easter event.
Meanwhile, players are quitting, others are begging for servers to be merged as the player base dwindles. The complaints of the gaming community are shut down by the forum moderators at the direction of whatever GM remains in game and/or their bosses. There is a policy now that all complaints regarding hacking must be put in a single forum topic- an attempt by Gala to clean up the visual pile of complaints into one little area so as not to appear as though it's a big problem. The 'out of sight out of mind it doesn't exist' solution.
After all the disposable income that I have spent on this free-to-play game I never considered it an investment, but I certainly did expect better treatment from the business I have been loyal to for five years. I also did not expect the poor quality control regarding customer service- the company having abdicated their responsibility, leaving the job of communication with the players to forum moderators (at least one of which who hasnt' played in 3 years) who provide inconsistent and at times snarky responses to the concerns of the player base.
Currently my Hidden Village Pass, purchased from Gala, is running out with no explanation. I'd gladly accept a reimbursement of all funds I have given Gala in the last five years but I suspect somewhere down the line all that the community will receive for an explanation is the comments of another GM used as cannon fodder by the company.
Thank you MMOBomb for responding to my email within the day you received it. It's been 17 days since I was banned and I still have not received a response to my inquiries. I should have told them in email I was wanting to spend more money on their game. That would have garnered some results, no doubt.
By Lixi, Fenrir Server
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MemberZone is a forum where our readers can submit articles talking about thier opinions on the latest news in multiplayer gaming. The opinions of the author do not necessarily represent the opinions of MMOBomb.com or its staff.
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Gala REFUSES to give my account back stating they cannot prove I do own the account...
This is after I provided...
Paypal receipts from where I bought gpotatoes from them since they went live ...
Past customer support tickets (which are UNIQUE ). I had my account stolen before and they got it back for me in a matter of hours....it says it black and white right on the support ticket.
and they have the ability to look up ANY support ticket ...they keep a record of those.
But...they just REFUSE to give my account back.
So...I'm telling you from experience.....and I hope this helps someone if they are deciding to play or not...
Rappelz ...Gala...they don't care about their players. All they care about is selling gpotatoes.
They just dont care.
They refuse to do anything about all the hackers breaking into peoples account and stealing everything.....it happens every day..literally. So....again....player beware.
when flamed, abused and stalked to every post anyone outside the corrupted community makes,
The CM's or game main moderators ignore all certain proof and I managed to get one mod to admit in strait up plain text that he was flaming and harassing me.
I am not alone though. I have multiple threads as complete proof it is a fully corrupt community and run by a select few people the that quite literally run the servers population so long as the volunteer mods are friends with them.
A double layer of protection for ur account if u will ;)
the same thing goes for all their games.
I got hacked in Fly For Fun about year ago where mass hacks occurred, and i'm waiting for restoration over a 8 months so clearly their costumer support does not what it should do....
My gaming comptuer was stricktly for gaming. No emaiing, no facebooking, no streaming anime *vomit*, no downloading music.
For your information I stopped downloading midget and rat people porn years ago. Unles it's a small world afterall and one of the ankle biters took my real life information and stalked me to Rappelz to cause me to be one of hundreds/thousands of account holders who over years and years of gaming there, have been hacked/etc multiple times and continued to be hacked after I was banend for complaining about customer service/hacking and calling otu attempts of Gala to obscure the identity theft/financial theft concerns I was expressing.
Nevermind the fact that gala has made people change passwords because Gala data base was hacked/interfered with/corrupted....but hey, that's my fault, you're right on that......for beign stupid enough to play a Gala game.
Accounts aren't getting hacked left right and centre.
LMAO.
I don't know about today, but I know about the situation when I first posted here.
Actually, quit thinking together.
The lightheadedness you must be feeling is a direct result of some of the assanine comments you made in your post.
The problem not being with Gala and hacking when you in the next sentence blame Devs inability to code protection.... the devs of course being employed by gala. But it's nto Gala's fault for creating a crappy system.. no no, it's the fault of the crappy workers.. that not crappy GALa hired and mentored and trained and keeps employed.
But it's not the fault of Gala.
It's mine.
For being on a porn site tha tI wasn't on.
Just stop thinking.
You need to be extremely careful with your info with Korean games. Nobody can know your account name. Your password has to be on the border of a full sentence in German. Some long string of letters and numbers that only you can know.
On to the rest - according to the agreement that you accept by using Gala's services, you're not allowed to say anything bad about any of their staff on the forums or defame the company on their forums. In that case they had the complete right to ban you, and they didn't owe you anything. No, this had nothing to do with the identity theft.
PS: In the future, stick to MMOs made by Russians or Europeans if you want security. We know too goddamn well how to do it.
PPS: Actually, quit gaming. If you think you getting hacked means you have to get the FBI up Gala's ass you're wrong. Getting hacked was most likely your own fault one way or another - visiting porn site, visiting some pirating site, visiting some movies or anime streaming site - all these are borderline sure way to get yourself hacked if you're not extremely careful.
Clearly they care more about people not contacting them than they do servicing their customers.
The items that I have purchased via their cash shop are not accesible due to the continued ban, no reason has been provided regarding the continued ban, no response has been received regarding my concerns that my personal information has been taken and so forth and so forth.
During Luna Plus' prime (when they were still Luna Online), gPotato's service was exceptional. Then several key GMs left (such as Saphars) and that's when it went spiraling. I guess gPotato was facing some internal issues and employees left for better opportunities, which caused things to go from bad to worse.
Rappelz also hid the thread on their forums that was started by another player who linked to this article/commentary.
19 days and counting. Still no response from Gala.
Its sick, just sick...
At many aspects, Gala is starting to become just like Nexon (in which if you didn't know, alot of accounts were hacked dry, and my account was no exception), in which both had bad customer service, in Nexon, i got banned by nexon just because of posting the hacker's name and IP address in their forums, even if it was a legit reason and i was not the only one who got hit by this hacker. As for Gala, they just left me out to dry when i asked on why did they suddenly ban my account just because of an email with a different region code.
Lixi is speaking the truth, everyone knows it and for those of us who enjoy this game it sux that they let such a promising game wither away......Until Gala decides to upgrade what they need to , were going to be faced with this issue.....
by thundernikk » Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:46 pm
cyberstone wrote:
Read the article, the ban seems strange, would be nice to see some topics or comments on these forums that are directly related to that person/incident.
It was Lixi...(Spelled with a "y" here lyxi would be the author search)
Should be self explanatory, but do an advanced search for author and draw your own opinions on the player.
This is how another forum moderator and representative of Gala responds to the concerns of its membership:
Re: Rappelz makes mmobomb !
by servedbyrinoa » Tue Apr 17, 2012 2:19 pm
Love how I am the main show in that article.
You guys do know that I made the decision to move all hack threads into one thread. Gala-net didn't tell me to do anything regarding those.
Also, safely in the wh remained my 155 WD with its d3 equips. So I think warehouses being hacked are a myth.
But overall have to agree, their customer service and weak reasoning, explanations and FINALLY taking responsibility after a year or two of hacks is epicly lame and pathetic.
Not only were the concerns taken seriously, but the problems have contineud to escalate and the company seems more unresponsive now tot he community than ever. They are content to push al lthe 'hacking' concerns into one thread and show more concern over a GM/Moderator being maligned than the players being hacked.
This is one example where the idiots (lower end employees/moderators) have taken over the assylum.
-Magicman
Really needs to have more security all over, I do love tho that I was banned from WoW and I never played it, sure I had an account tho it was so I could dl the game and test out a private server, I find it odd how "We are going to ban you for trying to sell your account and or ingame items for money" and I never touched the game...
I do hope something good comes out of all this for you man, karma will get them and they will be crushed!
i dont even know who this fenrir crybaby is, nor do i care... i just found it pretty funny that "it" wrote an article crying about it.
and if your hotmail account got hacked its because you're stupid and used the same passwords, since you never have to put your hotmail password for anything related to rappelz... so yeah gj on setting passwords as "password", "qwerty", "123qwerty" and so on.
ps: i totally work for gala and the hackers, this is all a massive plot to get all your moneiz and im in it, kekeke ^_^ all ur moolah r belong ta me
I am also sure muha that if you are a true player you know someone that you may call friend that has been hacked because of this by making the comments about Lixi is nothing more than you making the same comments to your friends. So think before you run your mouth....
Fenrir is the new Pantera it seems D: filled with crybabies.
favorite paragraph:
I contacted Sunnyvale, CA police and upon advising of my concerns was told to make a report to the FBI and have followed through with the recommendation as it relates to identity theft. I further stated in my complaint that I had concerns that the hacking may be from within as I felt that the failure to respond to customer emails in a timely manner/if at all, alluded to a cover-up.
ty for teh lulz ^_^
I have been hacked 4x, because of this i no longer play. No one plays anymore.