We have yet to get hit with a ban from Bandai. Got another 12 hours in of #BlueProtocol with my friend. If we don't get nuked, we'll try to hit level 50, which is the max level.
Unfortunately, Bandai seems to want to kill the game from their own stupidity and lack of care when issuing these bans. Even native Japanese players are getting hit with bans along with foreign players. This is being talked about in a Japanese forum and I have now seen several reports of Japanese players on Twitter getting banned even without using a VPN.
This person I found was a really sad case because they put in 30 hours and got shafted. Now they will just go back to FF14. Instead of keeping people coming from their biggest competitor, they're annihilating their reputation and player trust in the native country the game was made for.
This is really tragic to see for such an anticipated MMO. Bandai should undo all bans after this colossal fuck up or carefully review tickets sent in by Japanese players who got hit. I saw a ticket response that looked like it was replied using a bot and didn't offer the player any help. It was never worth it to ban some gaijins if so much of the native playerbase gets caught in the cross fire due to sheer incompetence when the ban wave was green lit. If Bandai doesn't issue a public apology about this and rectify it, I personally don't see the game recovering after this in Japan. If they're so trigger happy with the bans, people are not going to spend because they may just get banned the next wave.