I want to urge TSO to reconsider and correct a decision that seriously injured the game and indeed the reputation of BlueByte, the use of their most powerful weapon of penalty against players who had not only not injured any other players but who were valuable assets to the game.
In TSO, unlike some browser games, no player succeeds at another player's expense. (I may think I have outsmarted someone in a trade, but he probably thinks the same.) Defeating another player is not the object of the game. That being so, why play TSO, instead of playing offline? Because of community, friends, reciprocal warmth and interest. Many of us who play appreciate the fact that your success does not diminish mine, and vice versa.
The players lost to the game, at least the ones I knew, were not only long-time, active players,
they were unusually supportive and helpful to other players, friends, guildmates, and fellow traders. They created and maintained the main and most significant feature of a browser game like TSO, which is to be able to play in a community. They helped to make the game enjoyable for others. They literally invested years and in most cases significant amounts of their entertainment budget to do so.
That community, that warmth, was destroyed for many of us when our friends were summarily and unnecessarily eliminated from the game, friends who had never done anything to injure the game, except to bring into possible circulation more of one item than the developers intended. Surely that does not deserve the most severe penalty available to the game management.
The manner in which they were penalized also appears to threaten all players. They received the same letter as others who took more than the number of ISH the management wished to allow, but those who had not returned all ISH received no second letter about what to do if they protested the demands (called requests) of the original letter. They were told to turn to support, but they received no replies from support, or replies that gave no new information.
Most particularly, they were not informed that they were already destined for destruction as soon as they failed to return all the required ISH to the Star menus by the second maintenance. Appeals to support were useless. Adding ISH to their Star menus after that maintenance was useless. Could not anyone who for any reason failed to comply immediately to a BlueByte command receive similar treatment?
I like the game, I have always liked, respected, and consequently spent money on Ubisoft games, BlueByte’s included. I would like to feel that way again, to the extent that amends are possible. Perhaps TSO always intended to reinstate these players after a time. I hope that time will come immediately. The longer you wait, the closer this community is to irremediable damage. Thank you.