Claims bug - It's time to do damage control, Daybreak

They could have "fixed" the claim issue, they left it to make $ through their store. No fix, kept the tap running. People go public with it, they fix it... Doesn't really sound like they couldn't fix it, sounds like they didn't want to. RadarX said people were working till 11:30pm, why didn't they make those shifts happen when we told them about this? MONTHS AGO, idk Machen doesn't add up... see what I did there

Tyrrany of the urgent. They didn't want to have to work till 11:30 months ago, when they were aware of it but no one was mass exploiting it. It's short sighted for sure, but not necessarily nefarious.

Closing the claim server can't be too hard, but that closes out an avenue of revenue. They gambled, they lost or did they? Then took it out on the player base. Can you ask someone to allow other players in the game a clear advantage and just look the other way? That is what DBG told us to do for months. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect it to grow strong?

For all of you saying they didn't fix it so they could make more money, that's pure speculation.

You have no idea why they didn't fix it. It could be because they were too busy and they deemed that it wasn't very widely known, so they decided the time spent would be too great at that time.

Now that it's more widely known they were forced to deal with it. I'm not saying it was the right thing to do, they should have fixed it back then. But to just accuse them of doing it to make more money when you have no idea is dumb.

Prove it the other way, Same/Same from where I'm sitting, it clearly would have cost less resources to fix this when they first knew about it. This is called the "snowball effect"

Keep trying to justify it, but it doesnt matter. I hope they get rid of all exploiters.

I hope they do too. The real issue I'm trying to highlight is how DBG as a company deals with in game issues. Its a bad system and needs to change. The people that suffer, are us the player base. The players should be outraged to learn DBG knew about this and did nothing to stop it.

How can you justify banning for a claim bug..but giving out no punishment for exploiting raid mobs ?

Curiosity? Bannable!!!

Direct, knowledgeable exploitation to gain advantage? Meh..

you got defiant in bazaar, videos of the exploit, screenshots, a tutorial thread, and people running around in defiant gear. what else is there to be curious about?

Do you really think the two are at all similar? It probably takes Radarx a couple hours a day to police the forums? It would take a much larger full time GM staff to police the game to the extent that they police the forums.

Hopefully I'm able to express my thoughts as a person who just came back to the game in April after not playing since 2001, and as someone who has played online games for over 20 years.

After 8 months of playing on the Phinigel server, I have seen so many exploits openly mass abused without any type of punishment what so ever. Even with video proof of individuals and guilds using said exploits, nothing happened. The exploits are so blatantly used by people, in every day play, that it leads most to think it is just part of the "norm" of the game. In my 8 months on this server, I have actually yet to see any exploit/cheat lead to a punishment of any kind. This kind of precedent, puts players in a very awkward position when it comes to choosing to use these exploits or not.

I personally found out about the /claim exploit when it was posted on the forums and became common knowledge throughout the server. I was online at the time of the forum post, and all I saw was a mad scramble, from the majority of those online at the time, to get the items while you could. People rushing to do so thinking that it would be taken down within minutes or a couple hours, just like the Puma mount was. The awkward situation that you are put in, is that there was risk on both sides of the spectrum. There was risk involved for participating, but also risk involved for NOT participating. The risk involved for not participating grew even larger the longer it was taking DBG to take down the /claim server, which was about a day from initial outbreak. Because of the precedent that has been set on this server, at least since I have started playing, the risk of not participating, and everyone who did being able to keep items and not being punished, was FAR to great. The defiant armor, I wasn't really too worried about as most of it becomes trivial upon next expansion release. It was all the other /claims i.e. mounts/illusion clickies/buff clickies/procs that would have really ruined the server, more so for those who chose not to claim, rather than those who did.

I thought for sure that DBG would have to do something about this and most likely take all items away and issue some sort of punishment. The problem is, there was a significant chance that they wouldn't. Even if that chance was as low as 1%, it was a gamble I was not willing to take. The player base should not be put in a situation where we actually have to question if mass abused exploits like this, will lead to repercussion or not. The player base should be in a situation where we can feel safe not to participate in things such as this, knowing that it will 100% be punished and rewards deleted.

I obviously chose to participate, and gladly received my 10 day suspension and have no problem with it, as long as this day forward DBG decides to punish all abusers of known exploits. If I wouldn't have participated, and DBG left the items on the server, I guarantee you I would have quit. I chose to participate to ensure to myself that I would stay on the server if nothing happened, all while hoping that suspensions were given out and items taken away. The risk for not participating was just far too great. All the people bashing on those who participated are just speaking from a hindsight point of view, they already know the result. If DBG had done nothing, they would be quitting the server and sitting there wishing they would have participated to stay on par with everyone else.

I don't join general chat, it's awful, although I sort of wish I did right after the election to read all the whining and screaming. But I got that satisfaction at the Washington Post. I also don't come here that often, so I really don't have a clue what you guys are talking about with defiant gear. I know on Fippy, we had an issue at one time when they started selling level 50 toons during GoD that were fully equipped with defiant, and they made an effort to remove the gear. I had one toon's gear removed and the other's wasn't. I'm sure they can do a better job now.

But early in this thread, or maybe another, I read that having more than one Steadfast Satchel is an exploit? I have three. I bought one originally, bought another with their Second Chance offer, and also transferred a character over to my account that had one. I don't see how this in any way shape or form was an exploit. I paid for the service and bags.

Well said Atabishi, long, but accurate.

I wish people would just stop trying to justify breaking the rules. You broke the rules, you got caught. Now take the punishment and stop whining. Nobody forced you to break them, you did it on your own.
Grow up and take some responsibility for your own actions.

The depressing part is the amount of people who believed DBG would do nothing, or at the most simply rollback/delete the items. It's sad that the governing body of the game which is supposed to protect the rules has become viewed as such.

However, given the level of publicity and use the exploit received, I can't believe many of you exploiters (No harm intended, I mean that in a factual sense!) were stupid enough to make the decision to claim items so casually. When general chat and nexus are being flooded with this crap, exploiting tends not to be a good idea!

The truth is you can't always appease everyone. The bigger truth is that EQ isn't exactly a blossoming community that will foresee expansion in the future. The players that currently keep the game going are mainly the subscribers that experienced EQ at its height and have a nostalgia attachment and keep coming back. Once those people are "banned/pushed away/unhappy", you essentially are killing the game. Suspensions galore. Good! Let the player base know that you will be keeping an eye out and punishments dealt for breaking rules. It allows the developer time to fix the issue at hand. However, keep consistency! Humans think on a risk/reward system and base it off experience learned. Jaywalking is an infraction that can come with a decent fine. Rarely are people ever charged and therefore it has become commonplace to commit. Banning people during this hoo-ha is excessive considering how things have been dealt with in the past.

From the sounds of things, they are only banning the worst offenders, others are receiving a suspension only.

I wish people would just stop trying to justify breaking the rules. You broke the rules, you got caught. Now take the punishment and stop whining. Nobody forced you to break them, you did it on your own.
Grow up and take some responsibility for your own actions.

Ever notice that not everyone that speeds gets pulled over all the time? Maybe because the police have more important things to do at the time? BUT, if they do have time, you can guarantee they will pull you over.

I just realized this double posted form last night, and I apologize for that.