Deal with it

[Demelza Flameclaw]

the people using the bs exploit had alot of money wiped out so somethign was done

[Dha'Vol]

I agree with the punishment 100% in this case. Why? Accountablility.

We are all free to make our own choices, but we must be accountable for those choices.

Those who had been around long enough to have a hoard level higher than 3 million or so had to have known that something wasn't right.

I know that if I amselling tools andI come across atool that sells for 10+ silver, there is a problem with it. I know that. I then have to make a choice. Do I take advantage of it? Or do I leave it alone and report it? It doesn't matter if it has been in the game for a day or a year. If I know its wrong and still do it, I deserve to be punished ANY WAY AE sees fit.

I do think it would be nice for AE to put up a notice when they get these reported to them. Notice: Do not do this. It is a bug and any who use it will be punished by (fill in the blank).

But they didn't.And that doesn't change the fact that we are accountable for our own actions. Those that chose to participate in this bug, CHOSE to do so. And by making that choice, they chose to pay the price AE set.

[Khoal]

The price can cut both ways. I suppose AE knows this, and is betting the price they pay won't be too high.

[Dha'Vol]

The price can cut both ways. I suppose AE knows this, and is betting the price they pay won't be too high.

Agreed.

No doubt some will think the punishment is too severe for the crime. And some will think it not severe enough.

[Walter]

I'm having trouble stopping laughing...

"How would we know it was an exploit?"

And then there was Silowyi bragging in IRC about how it's used it constantly and will continue to do so in protest to how horrable the idea of a hoard is.

So, how's it looking now, Silowyi?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Go AE!

[Vahrokh]

Actually I think that Sylowyi shout it loud to do like those who in protest go to a public square, wet themselves with gas and then put themselves in flames.

As bad as it is, it's still better than those knowing the trick and covetly amassing tens of millions with no "noise", in complete peace.

While a tree fell with noise, a forest was growing silently.

[Tryagain]

Cheating and exploiting is wrong. It is the duty of the players not to use it and it is the DUTY OF THE DEVELOPER to fix it as SOON AS THEY KNOW ABOUT IT. AE dropped the ball on this and thisn situation is theirs alone in responsibility.

So yes I believe those that USED IT should have been punished and if their logs were of any value or they actually used them they could have seen who was using the exploit and could have punished just those that engaged in it. A blanket reset to 999K was lazy and not appropriate considering AE has never come down that hard on exploiters before. Remember what they did with the guild that used the walk under water exploit some time ago..... they did nothing but return the plots to the empire. Nadda nothing else. So if you are going to come down hard at least make your decisions consistent.

Reseting a dragon's hoard who got their legit wise would be a hard pill to swallow. Seriously what else is there to do in game for Dragons ?

Can anyone confirm however that this was indeed a blanket reset ??? I'm still finding this stated fact as actually being factual.

[Vahrokh]

Curiosity: having the hoard capped at 999,999 could seem to be a big deal (and it is if you have to redo it again to 25+M).

But since 979000 is the hoard required to cover 50 levels, a dragon will be already half done for what hoard serves, that is mostly for AC.

In this case such a dragon at 1M will have 200 AC of bonus.
Doing again 24M will give him just another 200 AC plus an una tantum (I am sure unintended and later will be removed) bonus.

Talks alot on how worthless making hoard is, when you have to work 24 more times more to get the same amount of what you had already with little work.

[thefatone]

Maybe AE should state the exploit somewhere before giving out punishment. maybe some people didnt realize it was an exploit. SOme people just dont pay attention to the details.

Now, hold on. this one was what, 7777 for one spell? Right? Now, Im not a dragon so I have NO CLUE if that is too much. I dont knwo the hoard system. IF I were to start a dragon and use that wouldthat be 'me exploiting the game' because I did not know the current hoard values? I dont think so. That would be me being ignorant. Now, if I did that and then AE sent me an email saying, "hey, we noticed you are hoarding spell:super fire bomb for 7777 hoard each, We would like to inform you that using this is an exploit. Please stop, or you will be punished by (punishment here)" Then ok, I am now aware of the exploit and have been warned. Sounds fair to me.

There are certain forms in the game that give a little more XP than others of the same tier. Certian gems give more XP, ect ect. Are these exploits? or just 'the good item' to make?
If its in the game, isnt it part of the game? Who's to say? I think the answer is AE. IMO punishing people WITHOUT warning them first isNOT a good idea.
AE needs to speak up first.

Now, it is real early for me and my coffee has not kicked in yet, so please correct me where you feel I am wrong. I wont be offended.

From what I read, people were NOT told it was an exploit first.

Or, maybe Dragons had no way of NOT knowing it was an exploit because the hoard value was such a difference, like I said Im not a dragon.

[Vahrokh]

A blanket reset to 999K was lazy and not appropriate considering AE has never come down that hard on exploiters before. Remember what they did with the guild that used the walk under water exploit some time ago..... they did nothing but return the plots to the empire. Nadda nothing else. So if you are going to come down hard at least make your decisions consistent.

Actually it's good that for once AE acted like they got stones.
This is the way to go, not the past. So recalling the mild past and compare to now is of little use since how they do now they should have done in the past already.

The most correct thing would be to finally give a clear sign to the many little smarties out there and:

- zero the money to who exploited blacksmiths (their excuses at the time are a sharp photocopy of the pathetic excuses of todays wrongdoers)
- completely remove a random level 100 class to who exploited flies.
- zero the money to those who exploited vaults or trade windows in the past.
- zero the hoard completely to those who exploited the doubly valued mithril scales.
- zero the money completely to those who sold tier V stuff on pawn for extrapumped prices - at least in EU they never had a problem.
... do the same for other exploits I don't recall.

I wonder how many would subscribe this plan [;)].

[gopher65]

3 points:

1. AE should have stated this exploit would bepunished as soon as it was discovered. Anyone who kept using it AFTER that point should have had their hoards set to 0.

2. For whoever it was who asked, I gained6 lvls at the flies in 3 hours (lvls 92-98 Ranger) before I gave up on them. Quite frankly it was boring as heck. I saw no reason to continue at the purple flies simply to grind when I wasn't having fun. AE is welcome to take away those lvls:). It is more fun to hunt other places (and the drops are better).

3. I hear EQII is banning people right and left for using ANY exploit whatsoever. Be glad that you play a game that is too poor to ban people for minor offences, else everyone who used this exploit (or any others) wouldn't have an account anymore.

[Vahrokh]

Maybe AE should state the exploit somewhere before giving out punishment. maybe some people didnt realize it was an exploit. SOme people just dont pay attention to the details.

Now, hold on. this one was what, 7777 for one spell? Right? Now, Im not a dragon so I have NO CLUE if that is too much. I dont knwo the hoard system. IF I were to start a dragon and use that would that be 'me exploiting the game' because I did not know the current hoard values? I dont think so. That would be me being ignorant. Now, if I did that and then AE sent me an email saying, "hey, we noticed you are hoarding spelluper fire bomb for 7777 hoard each, We would like to inform you that using this is an exploit. Please stop, or you will be punished by (punishment here)" Then ok, I am now aware of the exploit and have been warned. Sounds fair to me.

There are certain forms in the game that give a little more XP than others of the same tier. Certian gems give more XP, ect ect. Are these exploits? or just 'the good item' to make?
If its in the game, isnt it part of the game? Who's to say? I think the answer is AE. IMO punishing people WITHOUT warning them first is NOT a good idea.
AE needs to speak up first.

Now, it is real early for me and my coffee has not kicked in yet, so please correct me where you feel I am wrong. I wont be offended.

From what I read, people were NOT told it was an exploit first.

Or, maybe Dragons had no way of NOT knowing it was an exploit because the hoard value was such a difference, like I said Im not a dragon.

- That this exploit exists since weeks is well known. Has been told rivers about it in game, on the forums, on IRC. We just left off TV and satelite.

- You have no clue on hoard value but at level 21 you have 800+k hoard while your friends struggle at getting to 30-40k.

- The formula involved was available many months ago, so who has it is 100 or almost 100. They had some time to learn the game.
Those who bought the end products instead... well they did not ask for something random. They had to ask of an exotic, beta time non standard name of a thing not available to newer players since months. Now, convince me that purple donkeys fly in the sky and I'll drink this stuff.

There are certain forms in the game that give a little more XP than others of the same tier.

Of course no one seeing all the other spells of same tier at about 144 value would EVER suspect that 7777 is a tad more than normal. Really. It's just 54 times more, come on! Who'd ever notice such a minimal difference [:)]

From what I read, people were NOT told it was an exploit first.

It's the same excuses I hear since a (long) life when someone does something illegal.
No one told me not to trucidate people on the roads with an automatic gun. And yet I refrain doing it.
On the dragon channels you would not hear of anything else some times. Would really take hard hears to ignore it.

If its in the game, isnt it part of the game?

Bacteriological weapons are in "game", why don't we encourage nor use them? They are fun.
Blacksmiths were in game, why those pesky developers removed that nice 2.5x money gain off them?
Hard questions.

If only I think that in my previous games for FAR much less you'd get banned and character nuked...

[thefatone]

Wow. You're a real prick.

Like I stated IM NOT A FUCKING DRAGON HOW THE ******** WOULD I KNOW THE FUCKING HOARD VALUES?

You're comparing a game to shooting people.

Why I be in the dragon channel?

My statement was simple.
People should be warned that they are using exploit and given a chance to stop before they are punished.

also, you're assume that every dragon is in the dragon channel, maybe some dragons dont like chatting? I dont know, just a thought.

again, just so you see it, IM NOT A DRAGON, I DONT KNOW YOUR HOARD VALUES.

[oluviel]

I was standing with a legit hoard of 6.8 million now i have 8ook. In one night i made the mistake of adding 1.2 million through this use to get 8 million.The blame should not be on us, this is ae and their nature never to speak with us on any issue. At least correct out hoards to what they were rather than punishing our every last effort over the past year to build a reasonable hoard.
There is also reports of some individuals never even using the spell and having a reduction i don't understand the logic of ae at all.

[Dha'Vol]

Maybe AE should state the exploit somewhere before giving out punishment. maybe some people didnt realize it was an exploit. SOme people just dont pay attention to the details.

"maybe some people didnt realize it was an exploit" Can one person, that knew about it and used it, honestly say that they didn't know it was wrong?

I don't mean to insult anyone here but I just don't buy the ignorance argument on this one.

[Sharduk]

From what I see here, the defense of the exploiters seems to break down into two main catagories :

1. The punishment was too severe and HV should have been reset to pre exploit levels:

If your caughtrobbing the liquor store is your punishment to simply payback the money? I think not.

I'm just glad that AE had the logs and data to justnerf the exploiters, but if they hadn'tI would have supported a roll back to ZERO HV of all dragons simply to restore game balance. If you dont understand how imbalancing a 2000 damage hit every 30 secs can be, well for me its the difference between easily gathering all my own T V tech compsor buying them or grouping to get them. Its unknown at this time what HV requirements will exist for AROP, but certainly the exploiters would have had a clear advantage in meeting them.

2. The exploit was a valid game action because AE a) did not post it and tell them not to do it anymore or b) created the bug in the first place .

My values are not determined simply by the governance of others, either written or verbal. I know that exploiting is wrong, and by the looks of the board responses, so did 99 % of the people involved.

Finally, for me there was/is an emotional investment in this exploit. I lost some friends (maybe more than I know), and have had some pretty severe turmoil in my guild.

I'm pleased that AE took the action that it did, and I'm glad thats its over.

Sharduk
100/100 6.2M HV
GM Order of the Ancients
Chaos

[thefatone]

So if I were to start a Dragon character, and that spell was the first one I was to hoard, Im supposed to know it is too much hoard value? How would I know? Is there a list of the hoard values a Dragon uses?
This of course is past tense, before I read about this on this forum.

[Senkeleron Fell]

I was standing with a legit hoard of 6.8 million now i have 8ook. In one night i made the mistake of adding 1.2 million through this use to get 8 million.The blame should not be on us, this is ae and their nature never to speak with us on any issue. At least correct out hoards to what they were rather than punishing our every last effort over the past year to build a reasonable hoard.
There is also reports of some individuals never even using the spell and having a reduction i don't understand the logic of ae at all.

So you spent however long getting 6.8 million hoard and then in one night you managed to make 1.2 million and you couldn't figure out you were cheating? Give me a break... Some people got exactly what they deserved.

[Dha'Vol]

So if I were to start a Dragon character, and that spell was the first one I was to hoard, Im supposed to know it is too much hoard value? How would I know? Is there a list of the hoard values a Dragon uses?
This of course is past tense, before I read about this on this forum.

How many new players, playing their dragons for the first time used this hoard item?

Im guessing it's a pretty low number. Probably somewhere close to 0.

[Senkeleron Fell]

So if I were to start a Dragon character, and that spell was the first one I was to hoard, Im supposed to know it is too much hoard value? How would I know? Is there a list of the hoard values a Dragon uses?
This of course is past tense, before I read about this on this forum.

There are all kinds of cute scenarios to justify the cheating, but if you were actually a starting dragon and got lots of hoard with this exploit then you really didn't lose much by losing it either.