I never said it was ok to do it every now and then. Just like in RL you might do it once or twice and get away with it, but if you do it multiple times or constantly you're bound to get caught.
Ummm, not one time in my entire real life did I consider stealing anything and think it would be OK...
I think your analogy is backward. This is more like the guy going 100mph and griping to the cop that he doesnt give tickets to all the other drivers going 10mph over the limit. When is speeding ok and when is it not ok? When the cop says so.
Please skip the witch hunt, banning and suspensions. If RoS was an unfinished release than allow the devs time to work on the fit and polish that we want as players. Having them play cops and robbers will takes away those valuable man hours. Plus, some of the blame is theirs or at least has to be ownes by DBG. Call it even once the exploit is fixed and the NPC returned.
This mechanic for lock outs has been used for years. In most missions, due to the length of the mission / HA this lockout mechanic is not an issue. But when entire mission can be completed in under 5 minutes it an be an design issue. DBG knew about this and chose to roll this mission out in it's current format. Then when players found a work-around it was arbitrarily labeled "an exploit" Based on how this issue was handled, in this case the word exploit is a euphemism for, sloppy design and blaming the customers and labeling them as exploiters to cover their a$$es.
Except it hasn't been labeled anything yet. This entire thread is a circlejerk of people guessing at what the issue is. No one knows except the developers. If it was something more nefarious than what's been posted, the people doing it also know.
Another stupid question ... Why patch the client on Jan 2, and not reboot the zone to get the NPC back up?
No “arbitrary labeling” there. No, sir! Or were you doing this... ...when you penned the work-around label?
so just on the off chance that a dev does read the boards sometime this millenium, when does the almighty governing body of Norrath believe they will feel inspired enough to fix this issue.