FFLASV

I don't know what Priority Club is up to now. A friend of mine just called to tell me his account was closed for improper activity.

Since the only activity he has had for the past month is this contest, it has to be related to that. He said that he won 5,000 points one day the first week, 15,000 points that same week and nothing since and that he never got above the low 40,000s on any day. The only thing "against" him is that he is in the UK where an extremely high number of winners appear to reside.

If they are taking that approach the problems are obvious. If they are looking for duplicate accounts, anyone who is cleaver is going to set them up at relatives addresses out of State rather than at their own address. Multiple similiar names in the same State probaly means a large family. If the duplicate accounts are spread over several addresses in several states, it would be impossible to find.

These contests are never perfect. What about the one a few months ago where the answers were being discussed and agreed upon within 10 minutes of the photo being posted? In that contest Priority Club probably did not expect an unlimited number of people coming up with the correct answer after working together on this board. This resulted in (I would guess) a lot more points being given away than they planned.

The issue this time is that Priority Club limited their exposure. They knew exactly how many points they were going to give away before the contest began, so it's now player vs player, not player vs the game. For some that results in a different social dynamic.

Then, of course, PC really messed up by using a company that fails to understand the most basic levels of internet security. All in all a good contest in concept, but poorly executed.

Priority Club clearly runs the best contests and promotions, but they really need to have them vetted before bringing them live.

azepine00

Wonderful - shouldn't Sponsor do smth about all correct answers it rejects?
This contest turned into a joke and PC/eprize team is to blame, not people who noticed their errors and took advantage of them.

Now multiple accounts for the same person is indeed against T&Cs but that has nothing to do with the game, it's PC's account T&Cs. They should have by now set up some kind of software to identify that given the nature of their promotions.

mooper

Ah, but you are overlooking the context within which that is mentioned. It says they *reserve the right to cancel, etc.* if any of those things (including the technical failures you cite) occur. It does *not* say that the using the technical failures to your advantage is breaking the rules... it simply reserves the right to change/cancel the contest in that event. VERY different things, and that's precisely why no one has yet been able to cite what rules are being broken by so-called "cheaters" (other than multiple accounts, which I'll address in a second).

This is a very valid point and is the one rule that appears to be getting broken on a frequent basis, and therefore should be enforced as such. However, don't presume that there would be more fake accounts if the game was rewarding the skill of trivia knowledge only. Fake account would be inspired by any configuration of the game that rewards winners handsomely, so you should be careful not to argue that rewarding fast-clickers, fast-readers, thorough-readers, etc. is the *cause* of the fake accounts. It is the lucrative awards themselves that are the inspiration. Heck, even if the game was nothing more than a random-number generator that amounted to a lottery draw, you'd still have fake accounts being created so people could get multiple tries at the booty. This is the point I keep repeating... people are so obsessed with getting the game to match their skill set so they can win that they overlook the fact that there's nothing inherently bad about rewarding people randomly, people who can click fast, or even people who are smart enough to read what their browser downloads.

ktremor

I emailed E-prize complaining about the correct answers not registering and got this reply:

Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to reach out to us. We did find some
technological issues with the game that we believe may have given
certain players an unfair advantage. We are confident that these issues
have now been addressed so that the rest of the trivia competition will
be fully in accordance with the Official Rules. Any discrepancies with
the trivia questions or point totals are now functioning as they should
and will be going forward.

We appreciate your participation!

ePrize Customer Service

Jack Burton

Haha, love it.

Jack Burton

This is very disturbing to hear. If they canceled his account due to something related to the game, then it is yet another foolish way to fix the problem, just as they did with the 50K caps.

Having said that, is this the whole story? Seems like there may be something else involved since based on what you said, it certainly isn't proof of anything that would justify canceling someone's account. Could he have been looking at the most recent cache files, and loading up those image URLs for the questions and answers? Does he share an IP address with others who are playing? Believe me, I don't care if he was checking the cache,...as he would only be cheating other cheaters,...but I am very curious if he tried this, even once.




As far as families and multiple accounts,...as I posted recently,...

It's obvious that there is up to 3 people involved here. Maybe 1 guy, his wife and daughter? Kevin, Colleen and Allison? This is so blatant that it's not even funny.

Of course, if someone wants to run multiple accounts across several different last names, addresses, etc,...then it would be hard to catch them. But Kevin here,...surely, not the sharpest tool in the shed,...created multiple accounts with the same last name, along with simple misspellings of the first names and also using initials. I'm sure he still used the same IP and home mailing address.

PC does not allow you to change the name on your account online. Seems like a bit of a process from what I read last week,...by phone or fax, along with some proof. But with Kevin here, he's banking on telling the front desk staff at check in that his PC account had a misspelling, which is why it doesn't match up with his legal ID. That's assuming that they even catch "Kevin" and "Kelvin" upon check-in, which they probably wouldn't.

There are many more examples like Kevin. Maybe if I have the time, I'll type out a few more so the good folks at ePrize can have a look.

FFLASV

I don't really care about the people with duplicate accounts or who are reading the cache unless they are winning. The ones quoted above were all losing scores, big deal. What is PC going to do? The players probably are not winning any points for PC to take back.

What I find interesting is all the winners from the UK. If you combine the population of the US, UK and Canada, the UK would only represent about 15% of the total. On many days the winners from the UK were 40% or more. As of a few minutes ago 46% (23 of the top 50) daily leaders are from the UK and 32% of the weekly leaders are as well. Either they have a large number of excellent players or.............

Jack Burton

See, we differ on perspective here. I've read the posted rules many times, and it's very clear, regardless of where the points are made, or in which context,...it all applies to the game being played as intended,...as a 5 question trivia game, with no aid or exploit. Very simple.

The exact language is irrelevant, as I pointed out. How can this company or any other detail every possible exception in the world? What if the answers were only revealed in your browser window at exactly 12:12:12am when their servers were being backed up? Should the rules then state that "no one is allowed to play the game at 12:12:12am because the answers might be revealed to the player?" If true, and they did include that in the rules, then ePrize would be alerting everyone to that possible exploit. That would certainly be idiotic and counter-productive to running a fair game.

Once again, common sense should prevail here. I do not care if every exception is stated in the rules or not. I don't expect them to be. I live in the real world. I know if and when I am breaking a rule, or a law for that matter. If I proceed down a given road, however righteous or not, I am aware if and when I cross that proverbial line. I don't need any rule to be spelled out literally. I understand intention. I understand motive. I understand that the game was designed to be played as a simple 5 question trivia game where your knowledge, your memory, the speed of your reading and the speed of your mouse were paramount to winning. The game was designed with THESE skill-sets in mind. The use of any skills beyond these 4 were not intended to factor into the game, especially not a technical glitch or technical failure on the part of ePrize.

Jack Burton

Ummm, those scores were from weeks ago, when they were high enough to win. Check the boards this week, and those same names appear, just on different days, and with much higher scores.

tmcneill

.....

tmcneill

.....

Jack Burton

Love it. Good man.

Curious,...are these just the Top 50 daily winners, or is it the Top 100 daily high scores? I know they list the Top 100 on the site and on the leader board, even though only the Top 50 actually win.

tmcneill

.....

Jack Burton

An entire family of trivia nuts?

ALL from MA.

Cuong N - 204,915
Hue N - 204,081
Tinh N - 203,489
Hung N - 200,981
Hoa N - 198,785
Ha N - 198,771
Hang N - 190,132

Serge W - 205,073
Jennifer W - 201,243


Doubtful that Serge and Jennifer are from the "N" family. But I believe this "N" family is new this week, while Serge and Jennifer have each won a daily and a weekly starting with week 1.

DragonMartini

This isn't really a "winner's" list. My name is on the daily list several times from back in Week 1 before the widespread shenanigans began. I was only able to "win" once, but placed in the Top 50 multiple times.