TBH I would be fine with some swift suspensions, if they were only aimed at people who exploited this. That is: Dropping the mission before the lockout and getting rewards and entered another instance soon afterwards. There can be many reasons why you don't get a lockout, for example if some real life stuff happens and you need to logout and handle it immediately. Should I worry about having to log out suddenly if real life demands it? would that have given me a suspension? Would starting a mission/raid and not win it, risk me a suspension, since I started it without getting a lockout?(that would destroy every practice raid ever...) I even hear some people didn't get a lockout-timer because they were dead the moment the chest was opened(maybe zoning?), and therefore got suspended too. Their ban script should be able to distinguish between players who knowingly exploited this for extra undeserved rewards, and players who did not know about this particular exploit but still accidentally triggered a "red flag" without noticing...
Ya I've seen several people post 50% lol, not even remotely close. No one in my guild was suspended. That's because no one in my guild even knew about this and wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole even if they knew about it because they knew it was an exploit.
Honestly, if this is the worst thing that ever happens in the lives of those that got suspended, they're pretty damn lucky. Some people are treating this like the end of the world, and it's starting to not be amusing anymore (and coming from me, who LOVES reading all the salt and drama on EQ forums, that's saying something). I'm sitting here, at home, on my computer right now, in the middle of a blizzard, with a dead furnace and nothing but a crappy space heater to try to keep warm while the $1700 on the spot replacement that had to be bought earlier today gets installed in the basement. I'm having a REAL problem, in REAL life. The fact is, the suspensions happened. Nothing is going to change that. Those affected have no choice but to ride it out, then decide whether they want to keep playing the game or not. It's really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.
You all sound like a bunch of spoiled kids... Mom and Dad (devs) prob got sick and tired of watching their kids (EQ players) keep abusing one exploit after another that they do not have the time or resources to fix. So mom and dad (devs) finally decided to put their foot down and said enough is enough, Time for a punishment and maybe just maybe the kids (eq players) will learn that cheating is cheating no matter how you want to label it or use lame excuses like "they never did this before" or "if they know about it and wont fix it' But on a side note I have not gotten this mission done yet and wanna personally thank all that was abusing this for holding up my progression.
Now coming with some history. If I recall right there were a guild, I think it was on Xegony, who got banished for a number of days doing this direct thing in raids to get more loot + flags per week. So it really should be known it was exploiting. Think if you go into the archieve you can find it, not quite sure there.
I believe you’re thinking of Triality on Maelin during...Underfoot era-ish? Seem to recall they got similar suspensions and cried like children at the time, too.
If the mission was not meant to be farmed for loot from the chest, they could have set up the mission steps. 1. Talk to Hortulanus to get the seed 2. Click the seed to spawn the cactus. 3. Kill cactus. 4. Hail the Hortulanus to lock the mission and spawn the chest and give the alt currency. Wouldn't that work to keep people from avoiding the lockout? While allowing people to re-run the mission to get achievements.
Most of the people I play with don't consider this a 'grey area' ... again, please stop trying to justify your cheating. Take your punishment, and get back to playing afterwords.
The most sensible solution I've seen to date. If the devs had time to alter the mission itself, this would be ideal.
I really wouldn't use a parent analogy here. If as a parent you let your kids do things for long periods of times and then freak out and punish them, that's terrible parenting and most likely in direct correlation to your laziness as a parent. The end result is your kids will have exactly zero idea of right from wrong.
The way I look at things Thursday is the middle of the week. The week starts on a Monday you have 3 days and it is Thursday you have 3 more days and you are back to Monday again.
So what's the tally on the raid guilds? Who can keep raiding and break into T2! Inquiring minds want to know!
I would venture to guess a fairly large amount of the people suspended for this were either simply helping guildmates, or going for the last piece of their vp key since all the named were perma-camped the first week or so. The message Daybreak is sending here is don't help others and just plow and KS contested mobs for progression. If they were serious about this being an exploit, they should been suspending anyone doing it any of the tasks these past few years, instead of letting it fester till now. The complete silence on their part for years, then extreme punishment, does nothing but create bad blood. And with the debacle that this expansion launch as been, the last thing Daybreak needs is more bad blood between players. Hybrids that got hit by this will have spent more time being unable to play EQ than actually playing the game, its ridiculous. Maybe if the expansion wasn't launched in such a poor state, then immediately having everyone take 3 weeks vacation, this could've been fixed without suspensions. Instead, we've gotten an expansion that the vast majority of players cannot progress in since the real problems still aren't fixed. To some of you - go ahead, keep praising Daybreak for this. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
That's very, very naive of you, if you really mean that. But looking at the 'New Member' under your name, I'd venture a guess that you don't really mean it. I'm pretty sure that most people who got suspended did exactly what DBG said and knew what they were doing. Those who were really 'simply helping guildmates' and didn't get any benefits should contact CS as Roxxlyy said.
