*Word of a warning, this post contains a lot of images - low bandwidth adviced*

On the 2nd of May 2011, CabalSEA's game publisher, Asiasoft was abruptly contacted by ESTSoft regarding a bug that relates to the Agent Shop. For those unfamiliar with the game, the Agent Shop is basically an in-game function that is similar to the Auction House from World of Warcraft or anything of the sort, which allow users to vend their items without opening personal shops or being online at that.

Asiasoft was only informed 10 minutes prior to the action by ESTSoft to shut the server down for an emergency maintenance regarding that said bug. Putting myself in the position of Asiasoft, I fully understand that they are given a figuratively short amount of time to do so and they have made effort in broadcasting them via multiple platforms such as their Facebook page and the forums, which happens to be at about 6.30 p.m. GMT+8 onwards, in which coincidentally I had been away from my computer, doing a vend with my personal shop.

When I return to my computer at about 8.00 p.m., I noticed that I have been forcefully logged off and think that there had been a maintenance (I was not inform as I have said that I was not in front of my computer). Knowing this was not a big issue, I decided to find out the reason behind this said maintenance. I went on their Facebook page and saw a notice that goes:

Okay, so I knew the reason behind the maintenance and decided to be as patient as I could and wait for when this would all be fixed and over. As my patience decided to feint and the time was about 9.50 p.m. or so, I decided to attempt a login, which brought to a 'Please restart to download update' loop and once again be informed of the maintenance that is still on-going.

I went back to their Facebook page and forum to seek if there were any extensions in their maintenance, at not to my surprise I see this:


All right, I go on and wait a little longer while I surf the web, but putting in a few looks in their CabalSEA Facebook page as well as the forums to get updates on when the maintenance would have ended. After 10 minutes or so, there had been an announcement over their Facebook stating the issue has been fixed and the server is finally up:


Thinking finally, the maintenance is over and I can enter to see if any of my items had been sold while I was AFK while vending my items in my personal shop. To my dismay, as I enter the game, I am still getting the 'Please restart to download update' loop even attempting this several times for about 30 minutes since the time of that announcement has been made. Again, I headed back to their Facebook page and then I saw this:


Then not long after, everyone who managed to enter the game told us that there were 2 new update patch files, update_158.dat and update_159.dat that they downloaded as they enter.


553 comments. I contributed about 5, which is more than usual for these kind of statuses suggesting a manual patch would definitely help a lot of players. Most of us who are not able to access the game seem to be from Malaysia, but I completely understand and bare with the situation for a little longer. Throughout that period, I was on the forum stating that the developers should have at least made manual patches while they were fixing this auto-patch problem which took them forever to realise that the suggestion would have saved a lot of people's time. As I attempt the client a few times, including reinstallation and re-patching, I finally was able to patch through. About awhile back, one of my Singaporean friends who happens to be a CabalSEA player as well told me his account was blocked for no apparent reason. I sympathize for this, I am sure he made no attempts at hacking or exploiting glitches from all the times I have played the game with him. Right as my patch completes, I see this announcements:


Right, no problems. As I attempted to login several times, I got this instead:



The first thing that came in my mind was, am I another one of the victims of these weird hacking phenomenon? I recalled a thread in the forum stating how there were many people who suffered from a similar fate when they discovered their account has been blocked for no apparent reason. Mind you, I take precautions when I play these games. If I absolutely need to play this game away from the safety of my own personal computer, I will change my password before going to play elsewhere and change my password when I return home. Most of the other players did take the same precautions, and yet they suffer such fate? In any case, the topic is found in CabalSEA forum at http://forums.asiasoftsea.net/forumdisplay.php?f=202 that is titled:


Direct link for that thread would be http://forums.asiasoftsea.net/showthread.php?t=913852

Having thought my account had been compromised, I decided to send an i-Box query to be enlighten on thus situation. The i-Box serves as a 'complain & enquiry' box for players who have problems for CabalSEA. It looks something like this:


I sent that query at the wee hours of the 3rd of May 2011, after discovering it had been blocked. Hoping for a reply and that this gets fixed soon, I decided to just go to bed and hope to get a reply on what could possibly be the cause for such actions, be it made by a 3rd party or even Asiasoft (or ESTSoft).

I posted a little about my concern in the thread as mentioned on what could possibly the cause of these sudden mass banning:




The following hours after I woke up from my sleep, I checked my email. It was passed noon, drawing closer to the evening when I discovered that the query has been responded by an automated mail that goes like this:


My full name has been removed for security reasons. I went through that mail, over and over again, word by word to make sure I did not read it wrong in any way.


caught for Product Investigation
ban for 7777 days
Only after successful identity verification and payment
You will be contacted by the administrator with an email on the mode of payment once we have received your documents


Those words steadily implied I have been in cahoots with a lot of shady game exploits, which I never done so in my life! If I had been doing anything illegal in the game, I would not be complaining over how defected the game has grown over the years, would I not? You can imagine the rage I felt for implying that I was already guilty without further evidential proof to support my so-called 'acts' on the breach of their policy which is very infuriating.

This does not end here. I brought this over to the forum, the following replies highlighted the events that follow (posting the ones that are relevant):








This was the last post on the thread and sad to say, I have yet to receive any notifications, email or even a reply regarding this issue by anyone. All of us are just left out in the cold and what made this worse is that the judicial system in this game is 'guilty before proven innocent'.

Even if they did find out that my account was in no way of a violation by intent, I hardly believe they would even apologize for their mistakes let alone compensate me for the lost of time for the game over the past 3 days.

This is not the first time Asiasoft had sparked me to write on how crapped up their services are, pass posts of their screw ups:

Asiasoft, Another Leader in Cyber Gaming Industries? I Think Not
CabalSEA Giving Away A-Cash! (This event never see the light of day)
Worst E-Gaming Company Ever - Asiasoft

You decide.

It took me over RM3000+ to realise that it was my time to quit.

Never have I felt so stupid in my life. RM3000+ just to realise how stupid it is to invest in this game.

Fuck it.

From now on I will not spend a single cent on online games, anymore!

The leading online entertainment service provider in southeast asia

As if.

Yes, it's true.

The forum is filled with very irresponsible moderators. Why?

When they perform an action they hardly notify people of their actions, which could conceal their true intentions behind their nature of their doing or they could be doing something shady.

Firstly, I started this thread: Need Recommendations

Asking forumers regarding other online games besides CabalSEA that is NOT under Asiasoft management. Yes, I know it was my mistake to ask this, but I saw the fate of the thread coming, getting locked. I really don't mind the topic being locked, what really ticked me off is the topic is locked and moved WITHOUT any prior message from the authority regarding their actions. HIGHLY irresponsible much?

Then, I posted this thread: CMs or Forum Mods are very irresponsible

As you can see from this post here, it is clear without a doubt no other moderators came to respond to me but Scowl and he (or she) has yet to respond to my argument.

Then I decided to create a topic on information regarding the sale on my account, and yes deleted and given 2 ban points too. I really don't mind the ban points much as I really wanted to sell my account. Then I decided to put the message in my siggie, a brief and quite straight forward message on the selling of my CabalSEA account.

Guess what?

My account was given 4 ban points totalling the amount of 6 ban points, which the forum only needs 5 to be permanently suspended. Not only did I not know for sure and confirmed that I was being banned for the signature I used, but no notification from the administration informing me of the permanent suspension through e-mail, nothing. They take so much idiotic actions such as these and not notifying people of it, is seriously irresponsible.

Their forum management is shitty, their network management for their gaming servers are beyond abysmal despair and furthermore, their in-game management personifies the meaning of futility.

Besides the point of their failure forum management, we'll talk about Asiasoft in a whole. Asiasoft has been nothing but a company full of hoax. Why? Picture this. I won an event hosted by them, titled Asiasoft Gamefest 2009 CabalSEA 'The Time Attack Dungeon Run - Lost World' (MY) which was held in 1 Utama on the 6th of June 2009.



As you can see, my character nick 'Haxter' is one of the 2nd place winner for the cabal cash prize of 200k to be split even between the 6 of us, but right until now, I have yet been credited. I checked my Asiasoft Passport, and this is what I got:

They said they would credit the prize to us within 7 working days of the announcement of the winner list and guess when was the announcement made? 10th of June 2009. What is the date now? 4th of July 2009 and they had decided to 'speed up' the process by asking us over the QBox for the prizes that we want in exchange of the Cabal Cash being credited to our account and this is what I am still getting:



Nice job Asiasoft, nice.

This is but just 1 event that they did not live up to their promise. In another event, the server had undergone a maintenance and in one of the announcement it stated Channels Optimization'. We were wondering what exactly does that mean, maybe a lagless connection or a smoother one would take place after the maintenance, but what was expected instead was something far worse.

After the 30th of June 2009 Server Maintenance, channels for CabalSEA servers (Mercury, Venus and Mars) has been reduced from 24 to 12. If they think reducing the number of channels would optimize performance for the server, they thought wrong.

There were even a lot of protest and hubbub regarding this as the effect from this action was very visible in the forum and the topic is found here. Not only the shrinking of the channels caused the player population to squeeze into the already small number of channels, but due to the increases of population per channel, the channel became even laggier than before. Players are cramped up and a lot of issues happened. Territorial disputes even happen because of this.

So much drama, so much problems, so much shit happening in CabalSEA alone. Hackers are running amock and what are the Game Master/Moderators doing? Banned none of them.

My freedom to sell or trade my account is also refrained from me. I seriously doubt Asiasoft being the top and leading gaming company for SouthEast Asia. It is the worse I've seen by far, they pretty much resemble E-Games. Who's E-Games? See, a company as retarded as that has been forgotten by people except from the Phillipines because E-Games is still thriving there.

All I know is, Asiasoft is a waste of time and money. Spend nothing on them or regret and dread your hard earned money and precious time on a FAILURE company.

To top it all off folks, here is the result from a random search which I typed 'Asiasoft Sucks' on Google (take note of the Results X of X part);