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Role Playing (Games)

Square-Enix Bans Over 800 FFXI Accounts 110

Posted by Zonk from the the-good-guys-fight-back dept.
wpoitras writes "It appears that Square-Enix is striking back at Gil Sellers in Final Fantasy Online. After what appeared to be an unscheduled server outtage, many players were kicked from the game. It doesn't actually mention gil sellers, but its pretty well accepted that monopolizing NM spawns is mostly done by gil sellers."
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Square-Enix Bans Over 800 FFXI Accounts More

Square-Enix Bans Over 800 FFXI Accounts

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  • uhh (Score:5, Funny)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@ g m a i l . com> on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @05:39PM (#11682955) Homepage
    It doesn't actually mention gil sellers, but its pretty well accepted that monopolizing NM spawns is mostly done by gil sellers.

    You do realize you're talking gibberish, right?

    • Re:uhh (Score:3, Funny)

      by stoolpigeon ( 454276 )
      perfect. i read it 4 times and i still have no idea what it says.

      • Re:uhh (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        gil = Money in the game
        NM = rare monsters that appear every so often (anywhere from 1 to 24 real life hours, a couple may take even a few real life days to appear) that drops rare items worth a lot of gil

      • And what about the Square Anus? Sounds like it hurts.
      • I thought Gil Sellers sounded like some bloke's name. Hi, i'm Gil Sellers. Smoooth.

    • Re:uhh (Score:4, Informative)

      by ElleyKitten ( 715519 ) <kittensunrise@NOspaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @09:13AM (#11688157) Journal
      Translastion:

      It doesn't actually mention [people who horde game money and then sell it for real money, on ebay, etc], but it's pretty well accepted that [people who, in the game, monopolize a perticular spot (not allowing anyone else there) to kill monsters that drop a lot of gil (game money) are gil sellers (people who sell game money for real money)].

      Does that make any more sense now?

      gil = game money
      gil sellers = people who sell game money for real money
      NM spawns = monsters that drop a lot of gil

      • Re:uhh (Score:3, Informative)

        by brkello ( 642429 )
        Close! It stands for Notorious Monster. These guys drop highly sought after items that can be sold for a lot of gil in the Auction House. Don't think any drop large sums of gil!

  • Silly (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Altizar ( 736406 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @05:45PM (#11683022)
    Wow, finaly a MMO company is blaming the players for caming static spawns rather than blaming themselves for having those spawns.

    And even worse, they wrote into their TOS that you can not camp any spawns or they can cancel your account.

    Static Spawn = Spawn Camping = Spawn Greifing.

    • Whoever modded this flamebait is retarded. This is EXACTLY the issue. Mod Parent up for god sakes. Companies shouldn't be using the TOS to make up for blatent game design flaws, not fair to your PAYING(key word) customers.

    • Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SScorpio ( 595836 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @06:28PM (#11683500)
      Square-Enix is not banning people over the camping of rare spawns. They are banning people over teh monolization of the static spawns through the use of Grief tatics which result is MPKs or in english players being killed in a non-PVP game (there is currently a single PVP event, but that event does not involve the static spawns).

      The main issue is that a few players who appear to be Chinese would camp this spawns 24/7 on the same characters, I don't know about you but a real player may be able to do this; however, it's unlikely they would do it for months on end. When other players would attempt to all camp the spawns, these "Gil Sellers" would do things use a puller harder monsters into a lower level section of the area to kill off the other people attempting to camp the spawns.

      Numerous people complained about these issues, and many people have left the game due to these issue. It is definately news worthy is that Square-Enix is finally doing something to combat this problem.

      • Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @06:49PM (#11683771) Journal
        I'd made a bigger post just below about this, but there are also easy fixes for the other problems you've mentioned here that I hadn't known about making that post.

        I covered in my other post that all static spawns invite abuse, and there are easy fixes for it, the simplest one being just using an area spawn instead of a static spawn.

        As for monster dropping, there's a good counter that I don't why more games don't use: Simply limit the distance a mob will pursue a target. Every mob just stores the coordinates it spawned at, and will mill around when idle in that area. When engaged with a player, it will pursue them a longer distance, but will stop and turn back. It doesn't take all that much no-man's-land between spawns for this system to stop people from dragging mobs into a lower level area. Perhaps an even easier one would be "barrier" points that mobs won't cross that denote area spawn borders, but I can think of some possible (but moch more minor) exploits of that system as well.

        The grandparent's point is that punishments are all well and good, but they can only be enacted after damage has been done. You can't ban an abuser who hasn't abused yet, and odds are an abuser can get away with considerable annoyance before he's caught. The system should be changed to prevent the grief tactics from working. Sure, the changes might introduce new problems, but it's a step in the right direction. Once the developers are willing to change the system instead of just changing the rules, they'll be more likely to change it in the future to prevent new abuses. Not only would player not have these problems anymore, but the GMs won't have to waste their time dealing with them constantly.

        • Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Maserati ( 8679 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @10:06PM (#11685350) Homepage Journal
          That's actually handled in World of Warcraft. Mobs will stop chasing you. And as a bonus, they recently took steps against an exploit involving aggroing a boss into other players. I'm not sure how that last exploit worked, something about stealthy rogues being teleported to safety. Further confusing the issue, most mobs will ignore other players while they run back to where they're supposed to be. And the toughest bosses are in instances where they belong anyway. Still, Blizzard does seem to be trying to control this kind of griefing.

          • Re:Silly (Score:3, Interesting)

            by SamBeckett ( 96685 )
            Rogues could do it with vanish.
            Hunters too with feign death (maybe).
            The transporting "exploit" you mentioned involved a rogue stealthing through an instance (monsters don't stop chasing you in an instance), aggro'ing the mob and having a warlock teleport him back to the group. This effectively "skips content" and is against Blizzard's policy.
          • Most MMORPGs limit monster chase time.

            As for the 'recent steps' you reference, training mobs into other players hasn't worked in WoW at least since alpha unless they were already in combat with the mob or it's friends.

            The change made with a rogue stealthing in, gaining aggro and being summoned out via a Warlock was a fix to an entirely unrelated bug used to 'split' a boss monster from its underlings and guards.
          • Except for the fact that this would be HORRID for FFXI's xp system. Basicly in a xp party the goal is to achieve xp chains which you get for killing monsters one after another within a period of time. So if you killed a 100 xp monster then another one 60 seconds later (it goes 80>60>40 seconds so its not easy at all) you'll get 20% extra xp or 120 xp. Now players have figured out "Well, lets setup a camp. One person pulls a mob, while the others heal their mp until he gets back." Not a bad system righ

        • Simply limit the distance a mob will pursue a target ... When engaged with a player, it will pursue them a longer distance, but will stop and turn back.

          Doesn't this just invite the old "easy defeat" trick of luring an enemy to the edge of its range, then attacking it when it turns away? One step forward, mob advances. One step back, mob retreats -- attack. One step forward, one step back -- attack.

          I remember slaying monsters in some of the early D&D video games this way. Granted, I've never play

          • WoW addresses this by giving mobs a free regen once they drop out of combat (either because you died, or because you ran away). If you kill something, you need to do it all at once, no nickel and diming to death.

      • Re:Silly (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by merlyn ( 9918 )
        in english players being killed in a non-PVP game (there is currently a single PVP event, but that event does not involve the static spawns)
        How odd. You say "in english", but the result still isn't "in english". Do you gamers know just how odd you all sound as a group?

    • Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @06:28PM (#11683502) Journal
      I've played a lot of MMOs (eight if memory serves, although I only play one of them regularly anymore), and I've found no reason to change my opinion regarding gameplay flaws: If the system is designed in such a way as to invite abuse, if it has a flaw that can be exploited, whatever, it has to be fixed.

      Banning people isn't a solution. You can't ban an abuser until after he's abused. At that point, damage has been done to the game, in a sense. You can ban him as punishment for that damage, but the flaw is still there.

      Somebody else will come along and do more damage. People will be inconvenienced by abusers, there will be misunderstandings and confusions, newbies will accidentally do something they didn't know they weren't supposed to, and abusers will fall through the cracks. No matter how many GMs you have, you can't get perfect coverage. GMs are human, and they make mistakes. And through all this, the system is still abusable, and there's a path for damage to be done to the game.

      You have to change the system so that the abusable flaw, oversight, or just plain bad design is removed, and abusers can no longer cause damage.

      I haven't played FFXI, but from the article and a couple posts I've read here, I can think of two ways this can be countered:

      A. Get rid of the static spawn for unique mobs and shift to area spawns. One of my more recent MMOs was Ashen Empires, and it did this in most situations. The boss has an extended area that it could spawn in, so parties and soloers tend to spread out in that area and move around rather than camp (they still have a couple static spawns, and there are issues with people camping them. Things have been done to remedy that, as well, though, and other changes are probably on the way).

      B. Dungeon instancing. Anarchy Online has a dynamic dungeon system that will basically allow a player to get a randomized dungeon whenever they want just by accepting a mission. The dungeon is tied to an item in the player's inventory instead of a door (so several dungeons can be extended off of a single entrance). Parties also have the added bonus of getting a "free" boss at the end of the dungeon. No camping, no loot or kill stealing (unless somebody in the party is an asswipe), no timing respawns.

      AO's system also has an added bonus that after you kill the boss, you can't sit around and wait for it to respawn. You have to leave and start a new mission, and then you have to get to, and then fight through a new dungeon (Complete with a different layout, locked doors, mines, traps, and mobs) to get another boss fight.

      The two aren't mutually exclusive either. General area spawns would make camping harder, and dynamic dungeons would draw people out of the currently overcrowded spawns.
      • I'm in the same boat, I've played many MMO's also, but I have to say that World of Warcraft has eliminated for the most part camping static spawns or camping in general. You get your quest, do it then move on.

        And the dungeons are instanced there also, so you don't have a bunch of people camping bosses to get "phat leetz".

        SO far so good for WoW. And yes, it's a hardcore MMORPG, despite what a few people say. Check it out.
      • Just wanted to point out, most of the latest crop of games use both of these approaches extensively.

        I only have personal experience with City of Heroes (great game, btw, and no, I'm not affiliated). It is, all general spawns are area spawns-- whose size and level is dependent on the level and number of players in the area, and whether they are on teams.

        Most content, though, is in instanced dungeons, which are also dynamically spawned (if another team member joins midway through, the later floors of the
        • While from a grief prevention perspective, CoH has handled the problem well, it lacks in content pretty sorely. While not having any item drops, etc might be good for that purpose, that fact also means that a player has less to work towards and gain within the game.

          World of Warcraft is probably a much better example of what can be done to prevent that type of griefing; Instanced Dungeons, as well as high end loot that is randomly dropped by mobs all over the world. In addition to this, most if not all

      • I know this is a couple days after the fact, but I've been on travel all last week and missed out on the conversation/debates here. I'm on the Gilgamesh server myself; we had 2 groups of well known gilsellers, and multiple smaller groups as well. Last I checked, the most notorious group (most well known at least) is back and happily monopolizing their drops (Archers Ring) once again.

        The others havent returned yet. We'll see if they do or if they were banned.

        But to address Point A in your post, FFXI NMs

  • Now, in english (Score:5, Informative)

    by Palshife ( 60519 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @05:45PM (#11683026) Homepage
    In the game, there are unique monsters that drop rare and expensive items, called Notrious Monsters (NM's). In FFXI, only the party that initiated the attack against the monster can engage it in combat, so there will literally be 50 people surrounding the area where it appears, and as soon as it does it becomes a race to see who can claim it first.

    The problem then becomes that the drop goes from being kind of rare to EXTREMELY RARE, and the price goes through the roof.

    Honestly though, unless the items are being used to sell Gil (in game money) I can't say I frown on it. If people are that organized and they want to affect the economy to make a better position for themselves in the game, I say go for it. As a player, I know that there are plenty of ways to sidestep the problem, and it only becomes important to people who are transfixed by the items that they cant get.

    It's a big game. Do something else!
    • HA! I love your sig

  • Who? (Score:5, Funny)

    by IMarvinTPA ( 104941 ) <IMarvinTPA@@@IMarvinTPA...com> on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @05:45PM (#11683030) Homepage Journal
    Who is this Gill Sellers guy and why does he have to be struck?

    IMarv

  • De-nerded translation (Score:1, Insightful)

    by ajservo ( 708572 )
    People are killing video game monsters to harvest money from them for the purpose of selling it on ebay.

    De-nerded even further...

    People are do bad things, and someone punishes them.

  • This is the game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jgardn ( 539054 ) <jgardn@alumni.washington.edu> on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @05:59PM (#11683163) Homepage Journal
    So, they create a game with static spawn spots. These monsters give valuable rewards for fighting them. Players learn about the spawn spots. They capitalize on it. It soon turns into a game of who can strike the monster first.

    I don't see what the problem is. They created the rules, and this is a logical progression. Why don't they remove the static spawning from the game, or make it random, or make these monsters tougher, or stop handing out rewards for camping?

    • They do make it random (on some monsters) (Score:5, Informative)

      by Morrisguy ( 731956 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @06:19PM (#11683401)
      Why don't they remove the static spawning from the game, or make it random, or make these monsters tougher, or stop handing out rewards for camping?

      When it comes to NM(Notorious Monster) spawns in FFXI, there are two type of spawns. Timed spawns and lottery pops.

      With timed spawns, once the NM is defeated, it cannot appear again until a set amount of time (Such as real life 1 hour for most of them).

      The other type of spawn, lottery pops, are tied into the spawning rate of regular monsters. For every monster of a specific type that spawns in the zone, there is a very slim chance that it will be a NM.

      Here's an example. In one of the areas of the game, there are a bunch of windmills with giant sheep roaming around them. This area is also home to a NM called "Stray Mary", which happens to be a lottery pop. Now if I wanted to hunt down Mary (which is an actual quest in the game, btw), I would have to go there and hunt down every sheep I can find until one of the respawned sheep spawns as Stray Mary.

      As for drops, it's also kind of random as well. With Stray Mary above, she normaly drops some high quality milk that sells pretty good. If you're really lucky, she'll also drop a highly desired bard horn as well (which is the kind of item the Gil farmers/sellers are looking to monopolize as well).
    • I completely agree. If you don't want people "spawn camping" make it extremely random and unpredictable where and when they'll show up.

      The problem with all these "gil farmers" (or gold farmers on other MMORPGS) is that the game's money is worthless. Unless there is a set number of coins in the world and once they're gone, they're gone...then the money means nothing. This is what makes things valuable in the real world... It'd be a bitch to program, but it would stop this kind of behavior entirely.
      • Ask Ultima Online fans about how well zero-sum economies work in MMORPGS. Anything with this many variables all depending on each other resists simple solutions.

    • Re:This is the game (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Reapman ( 740286 )
      if thats all it was, yes I would agree. But it's not just someone with a map of spawn points campin out for a few hours. It's about people camping these spawns specifically to sell back to make a profit. Which is in violation of the TOS. And not just for a few hours, try 24/7 for weeks on end. I'm sorry but that is not normal play. They have people that take "shifts" on these accounts to ensure they get it.

      yes ffxi could be designed better in this respect, but it doesn't give them any right to brea
    • The problem comes when those players break game rules by:

      a) purposely killing other players repeatedly in order to monoplize those spawn points, in direct contrast to the code of conduct
      b) violating the eula by selling virtual content online
      c) doing the above repeatedly--all day, every day, in clear violation of the eula permitting only one user per copy of the game.

  • good and bad (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @06:10PM (#11683299) Homepage Journal
    It's nice to see a MMO company actually fight back.

    Of course, FFXI is very well designed for this sort of behavior in the first place.

  • Cue that Victory track... (Score:3, Funny)

    by game kid ( 805301 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @06:26PM (#11683469) Homepage
    da da da da, duh, duh, da duh daaahhh...

    At least for the legit players, anyway.

    (Yes I know, it sounds horrible as text. Sue me.)

  • For some reason . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dgrgich ( 179442 ) <drew&grgich,org> on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @06:46PM (#11683746)
    . . . I'm struck thinking about the kayakers and other boaters outside of the Giants' baseball stadium waiting for Bonds' home run balls to rain riches from the sky. Is this what these Gil Sellers are like?

  • Few gil sellers get banned (Score:5, Interesting)

    by akypoon ( 258201 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @07:04PM (#11683935)
    I have some friends playing FFXI now. They told me on Phoenix server, the IGE employees are still doing business as usual. It seems Square only banned those gil sellers who are very, very aggressive.

    Banning 800 out of 32 servers make you wonder how many gil sellers are actually out there. Keep in mind that Square never said explicitly that how many out of the 800 are linked to gil selling activities. Players who have repeating records for MPK or using grief tactics are banning candidates as well.

    Kudo to Square-Enix PR department. Well done.

  • Spawn camping? Wassat? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Asmor ( 775910 )
    Why don't they just play City of Heroes?

    Ignore all the pettiness and boring parts of all those fantasy RPGs and just have fun. No uber items to collect, no spawns worth camping... Anyone can have a good character and all they have to do is play normally and advance their character.
    • Because that, my fine under-roos wearin' friend, is BOOOORING as HELL. I'd much rather grief a pimply 15 year-old who doesnt have the nads to return a shirt that's too big then fly around in stretchy tights.
    • Well, let's see:

      Nothing to do with the money you do make.
      No high end game content. (Getting to make a new character at lvl 50, is not exactly exciting).
      No player owned anything (i.e. apartment, super base, frickin telephone booth for that matter).
      Repetitive quests. Sure the story text changes but not much else.
      No player vs. player. (ok this should sort of be in the next update)

      Seriously, I am a CoH player and have been for about 7 months. I do enjoy the game and it's pretty impressive for me to find somet
      • Play WoW.

        Nothing to do with the money you do make.
        AH purchases, Tradeskills, and even obtaining newer skills requires you to spend quite a bit.

        No high end game content. (Getting to make a new character at lvl 50, is not exactly exciting).
        Currently, PvP is a major portion of the endgame. With battlegrounds coming up, that will definitely get a nice kick up to the next level. Also, there are several high end instances that are good for high end players to repeat, as well as instances which require

    • CoH lacks fun as well, all you do is kill stuff and level up.
  • As someone who started on the Computer Version 2 weeks before formal release - I can wholeheartedly agree with this move.

    Understand the ppl they banned were harassing other players (by MPK'ing them - a DIRECT violation of the TOS), automating aspects of the game for exploit purposes (grey area, but...) and out right modifying the game code. Since SE controls the servers, well...

    FFXI is one of the most balanced, enjoyable MMOG's I've played in years. CoH is fun, agreed. But when games like WoW fall here

    • FFXI was fun until I hit around level 63. After that I realized that I had as much XP left to get to level 75 as it took me to get to level 63. And I had over 70 rl DAYS invested already. That's a LOT of time and it just ended up being a level grind that I was no longer willing to devote that much time grinding out levels. It really was fun up until that point, though. Good luck in your travails through Vana'diel. :)

  • Gil seller? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by clean_stoner ( 759658 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @11:23PM (#11685898) Journal
    Am I the only one who has absolutely no idea what a Gil seller is?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Gil seller? (Score:4, Informative)

      by dodonpachi ( 592679 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @03:37AM (#11686905) Homepage
      "Gil" is the currency of Vana'diel, the world of Final Fantasy XI. A gil-seller is a person who sells gil for dollars.

      The problem is that they monopolize some monsters and zones that give good items. They sell the items to obtain gil to obtain dollars. So the "normal" players like me, are forced to buy the items at the ingame "ebay" instead of getting them the normal way... killing those monsters. It's possible to wait for the monster to appear and fight it before a gilseller, but unlikley.

      Worst of all, some gilsellers bring highlevel monsters near the spawn spot of the monster with the good item... so, the new foe kills you and they are alone to get the item. That is the kind of player SQUARE-ENIX is banning.

      Excuse my poor english (Spain here) and I hope this comment helped
    • It's just like quatloos, [memory-alpha.org] but in Final Fantasy.

  • seriously (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Fr05t ( 69968 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @07:14AM (#11687475)
    I needed those 50 Monster Signas! Sure you can only equip one at a time and I don't have any jobs that can actually use it, but thats why I had to sell them on the Auction House. Of course that generated more gil than I could hold so I had to sell it in real life. :P

    On a serious note - I played FFXI for almost 2 years. I had 2 jobs leveled that needed a Monster Signa (fancy staff for Bards and Beastmasters). 6 months I camped the monster that dropped it and didn't get it once because there was constantly campers there running bots. Eventually it became apparent the only way I could obtain this item would be to either farm a low level area and ruin the game for someone lower level than I, or pay real money to get the gil I decided it was time to go.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • On Midgardsormr (home of the Japanese FFXI mafia - they controlled everything including the AH prices) I think it was going for 300k-500k. That was about the same price I paid for my elemental staffs with Black Mage :P

  • Why not let the players decide... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by $1uck ( 710826 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2005 @08:06AM (#11687690)
    How difficult would it be to mark some servers as "approved for IGE economy 'enhancements'" and some servers where such activity will get you banned. The MMOG company can take IGE up on its offer to share a portion of the proceeds, and sign a contract that heavily penalizes IGE (or any other group) that violates server agreements. And if no one wants to play on the servers offering the "enhancements" well then scrap it and tell IGE to get lost. But the people who don't like it don't have to play with it and the people who do will have a "safe haven" to do it in. /crazy I know give everyone what they want.
    • That's the first time I've seen that suggested, I think it would be worth trying out.

      While some people disagree I maintain that it's not hard to spot sellers automatically (with decent transaction tracking - I'm sure /I/ could impliment it and I'm not rocket scientist) and this would remove the incentive for them to muscle in.

      While I think it's all well and good to try and design a game that avoids this sort of thing it's not always possible unless you simply decided to drastically change the game you are
  • I play FFXI currently and on my server, Bismarck, the gil sellers camp Stroper Chyme and the Ooze. Both are NOT Notorious monsters. They are normal monsters that spawn on a set interval over many spots., but rarely drop items of worth. Stroper has 2 spawn spots while the Ooze has about 3-4.

    What's disturbing is when you check the auction house and see 1 item worth 600,000 gil sold by 1 person for the whole history. They keep an artifical price hike on the item. When I started this item was around 250k. Sinc
    • If you can remove or tamper with files like that, then there is some SERIOUS bad development in the game. EVERY MMO I've played checks the integrity of every data file before starting, and compared them against server-stored values. Any file that failed or was missing is redownloaded before you can log into the game. Try to hack a data file? It redownloads. Delete it? Redownloads. Random corruption? Redownloads.
  • For the benefit of those of you who don't realize you can see the comic before the rant is posted, today's Penny Arcade has a strip on Gold Farmers of the Hinterlands [penny-arcade.com].

    As usual, the lads are perfect in their topical timing.

  • Heh... 800 people? That's it...?

    C'mon... Blizzard can whack thousands of people at a time... Get with the program S-E! j/k
  • I see alot of confusion above, and rationalazation from those not familiar with what the big deal is.

    Firstly, They banned the PlayOnline accounts, not the characters. Which means, potentially they banned 25600 characters, with each POL account having the max of 32 characters per account. So its possible that in doing this they removed a signifigant amount of money from some of the servers. That is to say, if they got the POL account that had the character with all of the gil-sellers money (unlikely), its

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