"It's Unprofessional"

This blog wasn't really planned; just a spur-of-the-moment post. Lately I've been shown some comments posted around the web about the staff on Rescreatu. A lot of them claim that we are way too strict and harsh. But tonight I was told of a comment calling us "unprofessional" because of this:

Yes, there are times when staff members will get playful with the system message. It's all in fun, it draws the attention of users not normally very active in the chat, and makes the 'scary red letters' a bit less intimidating when they do have to be used for an official reason. I suppose we could be more like oh I don't know, Neopets? And convert to an autoban system? Where even the most benign words and phrases will earn a ban? But where is the fun, the personality, and the connection to the other users in that? There is none.

Staff members of Rescreatu are not professionals. We're semi-paid volunteers. We are users just like you. Users who chose to take on the extra responsibility of helping maintain and develop the site. None of us have a background in professional moderating (whatever that is!). We have the same personalities we had before becoming staff (which, by the way, personality is a highly important factor in hiring decisions), the same sense of humor, and the same love of the game and the community. We strive to keep that connection with the userbase friendly, welcoming, and comfortable, by not being stiff and "professional".

I encourage everyone on the staffing team to stay true to their personalities and to continue to be playful like this. It would be highly disappointing to see a team of stiff, miserable staff, who are unable to be themselves, all because a very small minority thinks that is what "professional" should be.

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More behind the scenes (part one)

(I've had to split this blog post into multiple parts because of its lengthiness. Additional parts will be coming up soon.)

What I would like to show you is the process that we go through when an account becomes suspect of cheating on Rescreatu. The first clue usually comes about when we are doing our daily reviews of the logs, and come across something like this (click for full size):

The arrows indicate transfers that cause suspicion. In this particular example, the red arrows are all transfers between the same two accounts, and the green arrow is a transfer between two accounts which are already known to be separate users who are not cheating. Whether or not the users making the red arrow transfers are cheating or legit is not known yet, so next, we check out the profile for "immediate" clues (click for full size):

In this example, the username displayed on the profile is the same as another username that has registered on the same IP address. Both are blocked out in red. However, these were not the usernames involved in the suspect bank transfers. Another username that was registered on the same IP address was the one involved; it is blocked out in purple. It is now time to dig deeper. We compare the transfers of each account in relation to the other. I am not going to post screenies of that part here; what was revealed indicated that everything gained in two of the accounts is being transferred regularly to only one account. At this point, experience tells me that cheating is happening, but just to be sure, more digging is necessary. The next step is to take a look at the login history (click for full size):

All but the last two digits of the user ID have been blocked out, so that you can see there are indeed three different ID's involved here. The second blacked-out column is IP addresses. The third column shows the date and timestamp that the login was attempted. As you can see, all three accounts involved were logging in and out of each account repeatedly, mere minutes or even seconds apart. The times that they logged in and out coincide with the times they sent items, pets, and TU from the spare accounts to the main account. The example only shows logins from one date, but the entirety of the login history shows the same pattern. This is the final proof needed in this case; cheating has definitely occurred and a ban is issued. 

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Rumors!

Recently, it has been rumored that "users are hunted from the day they join the site to the day they leave"; and that the name of the department, "Support", is misleading because this activity does not support the users. A lot of concern has been generated over this and a few other statements. Hopefully this post will clear all that up!

When a new user is noticed on site, they are absolutely checked out. The word "Support" in our department means that we maintain the site and its users by providing what is needed and taking action where necessary. Wouldn't you agree that checking out new users is something that is needed? If BobbyJoeSue shows up on the chat 2 minutes after joining, advertising their hatches for sale, would you want to buy those hatches if the user's former account BillyJoeSue was just banned for scamming? Support is being provided to all of our legitimate, honest players when new users are checked out. If nothing is found wrong, we move on.

Another statement claimed that we are forced to perform "witch hunts" daily or the job is considered not to be done. This is an extreme exaggeration of the truth.

Part of the daily support staff duties are to monitor the bank and activity logs. It's a very simple duty to perform; you simply hit a button and review the 200 most recent logs in these areas. This needs to be done several times a day since the logs are limited to such a small amount. The reason this is part of a daily staff duty is because it is very easy to spot someone who is signing up as many accounts as they can and transferring the 10K from all the extra accounts to their main account.

If a support member is neglecting to perform this duty, then yes, they are slacking on the job. Finding cheaters and removing them from the game supports the honest players.

A third claim was made that users are not given any evidence found for their ban, and are threatened to be banned again if they persist in asking. Again, this is an untrue statement.

Copy-paste evidence will not be given when asked. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that the information is too confusing for the user to make any sense of it. (The next blog post coming up will show some screenshots that will make it clear why.) A summary of the evidence absolutely is given when a ban is made and the user requests it. This can be verified by Patrick, who receives a copy of every email, back and forth. Never once has anyone on the Support team threatened to ban someone over asking for evidence or questioning the decision. The only time there is a problem is when drama over the ban is started in the chat or the forums. At this point, the rule about not discussing bans would be enforced.

It is completely understandable that you guys would be concerned when reading these false statements. As you can see, however, those things were not presented in a truthful light.

Coming up next! We will be showing screenies of the process of reviewing logs when it is time to make a ban. You will be able to see why mistakes in banning rarely happen, and yes, sometimes they do happen. The ban is reversed in that case, happily. See you soon!

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Time for a resurrection!

Well it was not intentional for this blog to become inactive for nearly two years, but it did. It is well past time to revive this and get it going again.

We have a post planned that will show you some inside info soon! In the meantime, if you have ideas, questions, or concerns, please post or drop a note! We will be answering. =)

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Troubles accessing Rescreatu.com

If you are having trouble accessing Rescreatu, you can follow the steps below to make it work.

***NOTE: I am using Windows XP. If you are using another version of windows or a different operating system, you will have to do some google searching to find out how to make this work. 

I am now using Windows 7, and the process is basically the same.

You'll need to first turn on hidden files and folders in your Windows settings. To do this, open any folder on your PC, click Tools, then Folder Options. Once you have that open, click the View tab. In the View tab, look for Hidden Files and Folders, and put a tick mark next to the radio button that says Show Hidden Files and Folders. Next, UNcheck the box that says Hide Protected Operating System Files. Click Yes when it asks if you really want to do this. Also, UNcheck the box above that, it says Hide Extensions for Known File Types. Now click Apply, then Ok.

Now browse to your Windows folder, usually located on the C: drive. From there, navigate to System32 > drivers > etc. Once you are in the "etc" folder, look for a file with NO extension, called HOSTS. Open this file by right-clicking it, choosing "Open" or "Open With", and then choosing Notepad. When the file is opened in Notepad, you will see something like this

(NOTE This is what the HOSTS file looks like on Windows XP):



# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host


127.0.0.1       localhost

(NOTE: This is what the HOSTS file looks like on Windows 7):

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1       localhost
# ::1             localhost

***NOTE!!! Never, ever, ever erase OR change the "localhost" line.****

Now, on the first blank line at the END of your hosts file, copy and paste this:


38.81.130.55 www.rescreatu.com
38.81.130.55 images.rescreatu.com
38.81.130.55 rescreatu.com


Leave a blank line after the last line you see there. Now save the file by clicking File, Save. If it pops up the dialogue window asking where to save and with what extension, make sure you are saving IN THE SAME FOLDER from which you opened...the Windows\System32\drivers\etc folder. For file TYPE, choose "all files" and do NOT type in an extension.

Look in the folder once your file is saved, and make sure it still says "hosts" with no extension. If it does, great. If it does not, remove that extension - just rename it to "hosts".

You may have to close and re-launch your browser for the changes to apply, but you should now be able to access Rescreatu.

***Note: Some antivirus programs protect editing of the HOSTS file. If you are denied access to editing or saving the file, first right-click it in the folder, choose Properties, and un-check the Read Only tick box.

If you are still having problems, feel free to post here or e-mail me at contact.rescreatu@gmail.com and I will help as much as I can. If you choose to contact me, please give me as much detail as possible about the problem you are having getting this to work so that I can better help you.

***UPDATED TO NEW IP Jan 29 2012. So sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused - I didn't realize you guys were still using this. ♥
***UPDATED TO NEW IP Nov 12 2013. We upgraded to a new server last night, we now have shiny fast new hardware to run around on!

Troubleshooting Tips!
If you are unable to save the HOSTS file due to administrative rights issues, try running notepad as an administrator. To do this, right-click on your Notepad shortcut and choose Run as Administrator. From there, you would use the File > Open option to navigate to the folder that HOSTS resides in. (Thanks to Wolf for this helpful tip!)

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Small issue with email

Once again, abuse@rescreatu emails are not functioning properly. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I wanted to let anyone who has e-mailed this address in the last few days know that I'm not ignoring you, I just can't access the mail at this time.

Since this e-mail has proven problematic time and time again, I've created contact.rescreatu[AT]gmail.com in case anyone needs to contact staff about anything. =)

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Follow-up on Amnesty Week

Sadly, only about seven users participated in this event. None of the users were banned, and all of the situations were made right. We were really hoping more would come forward, because in the days following the end of Amnesty Week, over 100 accounts were banned. Activity logs were monitored as usual during the special week, and advertising of Amnesty was done during specific times that we knew these accounts were online, to make sure they were aware of the offer. All of those who were banned could have avoided this had they just decided to try and work it out.

I hope that we are able to offer this again sometime in the future, but in the meantime, anyone who wishes to turn themselves in before they are banned are welcome to do so. Honesty is greatly appreciated and will be rewarded, not punished. =)

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