JUSTICE CANNOT BE FOR ONE SIDE ALONE, BUT MUST BE FOR BOTH –Eleanor Roosevelt. [Author: myschyf]
Panis started playing UO in 1997 on Great Lakes. He bought the charter edition of the game, with the cool cloth map and the pewter pin. He moved to Sonoma when that shard opened. There he belonged to a three-person guild. The other two people in the guild were his step-father and his brother. They didn’t have much time to play, but when they did they tried to fight murderers and such, being fans of the good vs. evil thing and well, there was evil to spare in those days. He came to SP “because I had a castle deed on Sonoma but no place to put even a two-story. After I started playing the reason became more that everyone on Siege was mature compared to Sonoma. Well there were less twinks on Siege and I liked that. No stat loss so you could actually punish people for being tiwnks was important too.”
While on SP he befriended a young lady named Kitty. He met her when she was new and gave her two thousand gold to start out with. Kitty had an in-game boyfriend named Desert Fox. Here is where our story really begins. Kitty and Panis became very good friends, as online people sometimes do, and he travelled to her home to meet her. While he was there, since he was there for a while and it was far from his home, he used her computer to log in and refresh his houses. He also used it log into his step-father’s accounts and refresh his houses (as his step-father is in the Navy and away at sea at the moment) and to log in to yet a third account that belonged to a friend (who had joined the Army and was, at the time, in boot camp) and refresh his houses as well.
Desert Fox, by all accounts, was a pker, an exploiter, a scammer and all-around ‘not very nice’ guy. Two or three months before Panis went to visit Kitty, Desert Fox used some racial epithets in front of a GM and was summarily banned. Desert Fox had the account information of an account that did not belong to Kitty, but that Kitty was taking care of for a friend. So he logged in with that account info, hollered at the GM and that account was banned as well. Well Desert Fox, being the enterprising young man that he is, made a new account faster than you can say ‘r0xX3R j0o!’ and went off to play UO.
In the meantime, Kitty’s friend with the banned account all of a sudden begins to get credit card charges for the account again. Just to see what was up, Kitty logs into her friends account to see if it is still banned and, lo and behold, the account is active!
The two or three months pass. Panis goes to Kitty’s house to visit and logs into his account, his step father’s account, and his friend’s account to refresh houses. Panis completes his visit and goes home. About a month later Kitty tries to log into her account and finds out she is banned. At this point, Kitty has accessed Panis’ accounts several times and thinking the worst, she calls to warn him. Sure enough, he’s been banned, along with his step-father and his friend in the Army. Now at this point neither of them has heard from OSI. Kitty assumes they’ve been banned because she logged into her friend’s banned account just to try to figure out why her friend was being charged and that the bannings are all her fault.
But wait, there’s more! On October 5th, after being banned for a couple of days, Panis finally decides to write OSI and ask why. OSI finally got back to him on October 8th. But get this. They told him he was banned because someone who had been banned had accessed his account and then asked him for information about the person who had accessed it! Now OSI has provided him with ZERO information about who this person might be. So Panis wracks his brain and begins to have a clue that Desert Fox might be involved. He calls Kitty and asks her to call Desert Fox. Sure enough, Desert Fox was banned on the same day. Not only was he banned, but his banning letter, which lists the accounts that have been banned for his crimes, list Kitty’s account, Panis’ account, the step-father’s account and the Army friend’s account.
OSI also did something else on the 8th of October. They charged Panis’ credit card for his banned account. Anyway, Panis, who had decided that their claims of this being an investigation must be true because they had charged him (I mean they wouldn’t charge him if they were banning him, would they?) replied to OSI with the whole sordid story. He received a reply from UO Account Admin on October 26th telling him that they reviewed his accounts, investigated thoroughly and that, as a service to the community, he was being permanently banned.
OK before I send you off to view the plethora of emails that OSI sent Panis and Panis sent OSI, and a credit card statement with the account and name info deleted and the date circled in nice shiney bright red, I’ve a few caveats.
My connection to Panis
Tenuous, at best. I’ve bought two nightmares from him, that’s it. I met him when, after posting on the CAT guild board looking to purchase a nightmare, he replied to my request. We don’t hang out together, he isn’t a friend of mine, he doesn’t know the Glowembers, I don’t hang out with his guild (I’m not even sure he is in a guild) and he is not a regular poster on Lums, nor does he hang out in our IRC room.
The timing of this article in connection with the last one I wrote
Purely coincidental. I thought I had refreshed my dragon on SP but when I went in last night to check it was gone. I could not claim it. So I contacted Panis to see if I could purchase another dragon. He informed me that he was permabanned. After inquiring about the circumstances I asked if he wanted to go public. As he has already been permabanned he has nothing left to lose by speaking out and he agreed.
The emails
Two of the emails from Panis to OSI are recreations. He sent them with Hotmail. Hotmail does not automatically save outgoing mail. So I asked him to recreate the mails. I told him that anything less than brutal honesty (i.e. if he was rude, recreate that; if he swore, recreate that) would damage his credibility. He said he was not rude and did not swear and that his emails read something similar to what he recreated. I believe him. You may do whatever you wish with this information.
And now the supporting documentation:
The first email that Panis received from OSI.
The second mail that Panis received from OSI and his reply to them.
After not hearing from OSI for about a week Panis gets upset and sends them this letter.
Panis’ final letter to OSI telling them in no uncertain words what he thinks of them. This letter is NOT a recreation.
(When Panis told me he had told OSI what he really thought of them in his final letter, I braced myself for the worst. I thought I’d read something full of swearing and heated statements as to the nature and genetic structure of the ancestors and living relatives of those who are employed at OSI. As you can see, this letter is anything but that.)
A slightly illegible credit card statement with an even more illegible date showing charges on his credit card after he had been banned.
(I blurred out everything that wasn’t directly related to this story. You folks don’t need to know his other charges and he doesn’t need to share that information with you. I circled the UO charge
i
n red.)
A thread on the Battle Vortex Siege Perilous boards (where the SP community regularly posts) about Panis being banned.
There’s all kinds of people posting to this thread about what a good guy Panis is. Another thing of note on this thread is a snippet about BK. BK is Blue Knight, a member of the FJP guild (Foo Jackin Pimps). Just so ya know, I was a member of this guild for about 2 days once when I got mad at the Glowembers and quit for 2 days. I have nothing against them and they were always decent to me. But they are PKs in the extreme and they don’t care who they kill. However, Blue Knight has been banned about a gazillion times and he’s running around on SP these days with his gazillionth character. Apparently everyone on SP knows this and OSI doesn’t. I could say something nasty here about how they are too busy banning decent people like Panis but I won’t.
The CAT guild message board.
This is where I first met Panis. I don’t think he’s a member of the CAT guild but CAT has a lot of tamers and they use dragons and nightmares a lot. So when I was looking for a nightmare to purchase, this is where I went to inquire. Panis keeps tabs on this board and answered my inquiry. There’s a small snippet here about Vaniir being greedy (shame on you Vaniir!) and wanting to know when his houses will decay but nothing really germane to the story. (FYI, the SP community being what it is, namely small, I happen to know Vaniir as well).