Feldon From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:
Hey, folks,
I just wanted to post and let you know that a bunch of accounts (less than 100) got a temporary suspension tonight.
Why?
Because some of them were invited to Beta and then found a way to shortcut the gryphon quest series, which takes a minimum of five days to complete, and were able to do it in minutes. They then told others how to do it and the rest followed along, duplicating the exploit.
To be clear, this exploit was sealed up this morning and isn’t possible any longer, but these players were cheating to show off gryphons earlier than is possible by even the fastest player and to claim discoveries before non-cheating players (even going so far as to use the free transfer tokens today to claim those discos on other servers).
This kind of exploiting really ruins the chase and fun for other players and we just can’t condone it in the game.
It’s extremely clear which accounts were doing the exploiting because they were getting gryphons far in advance of what’s actually possible, and a big percentage of them did it on multiple accounts.
So, after thinking about it, we figured a fair penalty would be a short suspension. That way, when they come back to the game, they’ll have had time to earn their gryphons. Which seems fitting.
There is no word if anyone will face suspensions over exploiting Lord Bob (I’m not going to try to spell it) for tons of loot.
They got what they deserved. LoL @ Gaige for flaunting it on the forums and then trying to justify his exploits. Hope rift is fun.
No doubt the discoveries can’t or won’t be rolled back. I saw two on Everfrost within a day of the expansion going live. Cheaters suck.
Damn making them play Rift is too cruel a punishment!
Personally I think its spot on, I would have been gentler with just removing their flying mounts for a couple of weeks with some randomly despawning ones to live with for a week or two longer, but this is simpler.
To be clear, I was in beta too and never heard of this exploit, so while it may have been sent to a dev it was a closely guarded secret.
Using the free transfers to then grab disco’s on other servers is real scumbag behaviour, especially from players who likely already have many disco’s to their name.
We disco’d the mounts on AB accidentally it wasn’t intentional at all. We also didn’t use the transfers to get discos, we used them to move our entire guild permanently to AB so we could raid on a server with new hardware.
SJ’s post is a lot of fiction and very little fact.
I am not trying to sound like an ass, but HOW do you accidentally disco the flying mount? You got the disco a few days early if i am not mistaken. I kinda hate to say this but I would have to believe SJ over you.
From what I heard about the exploit, 5 people needed to be grouped and all had to do seperate griffawn quests and all would get the update. Is that true?
Of course the discos on Unrest were intentional. I was talking about his implication we used the free transfer tokens to get discos on other servers. That part of his post is completely false.
The day before the transfers became free we decided as a guild to transfer to AB to raid in a lag free environment. We transferred and a group of us (all with flying mounts) were in EFP starting our new guild. A player there asked someone for a link to their gryphon and when they went to right click examine it to link it to them that window popped up asking if they wanted to convert it to a house item, which they did accidentally, discovering the house item portion of the mount. When they went to turn it back into a ridable mount, it disco’d that portion of it.
That was how they got disco’d on the new server, it wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t like we were using up 5 transfers per player disco’ing them on every server we could.
/shrug
Also, no. Five people were not required for the exploit I used. That was an additional exploit. In total there are four I am aware of, only two of which were fixed. The exploit I used could be done entirely solo using only your personal griffawn pet. No group, no additional pets required.
Raid in a lag free environment on the most populated server? Not buying it.
AB has new hardware – so I could believe its going to give better performance if the raid can get their own instance to themselves.
Just running around AB, zoning and interacting with the broker and other things is 300% better on AB than it is on Unrest. That is definitely why our entire guild transferred there.
they should make the exploiters , especially the ones who purposefully stole the discos on AB move to the bazaar and have to play there.
Ya, because we wouldn’t cancel if they did something so out of line.
I been waiting patiently to get airborne, if i knew a way to get it done in 1 day, i would have done it. Making us wait 5 days for one of the biggest features of DoV was another one of sonys greatest fail ideas ever….
The fault lies with the developers here, not the players. Ban SJ for a week.
I think SJ was very lienient on the exploiters I would have flagged their accounts to make all their current and future flying mounts afraid of heights and thus grounded.
Which would have caused 100 people to cancel all of their accounts and go play something else. I know between two of my guildies that were suspended they have 17 accounts (one has 5, one has 12). That’s a lot of revenue lost. $680 expansion revenue and $255 a month subscription just from those two players.
LOL, funny part is that no one cares anymore.
Of course they don’t. Everyone has theirs now, it was only an issue because they didn’t. Solo questing too fast has always been laughable as far as exploiting concerns.
Anyone know what time suspensions are usually lifted, this one in particular. Is it 5 days after the email or 5 days after the account stoped working or is it midnight on the sixth day or sometime later? Please no comments of exploiting is bad or why would you go back after they suspended you for no reason.
Midnight PST or a few hours after.