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

Atabashi's long response a few pages back was spot on, but misses a key problem.

Daybreak is short handed. We know it. They know it. We all know it.

They simply DO NOT HAVE enough staff to police all hacks/issues etc etc.

Would they of liked to temp ban all the people caught exploiting over phinnys life? Probably, it builds a stronger game when you know there are consequences to exploiting, and in turn creating a disincentive to ever participate, like Atabashi felt in his post.

3 options going forward as I see it.

1. Status quo. Players utilizing every hack/exploit they can, knowing that the chances of them facing any consequences is minimal b/c of Daybreaks limited manpower. Players facing tough decisions about weather to participate or not.

2. Hire more employee's to properly police your game. Im aware that costs money, us players have no clue how profitable you are, can you hire more and still turn a profit? We dont know. Mass usage of hacks/exploits are a disease on any game, and this one is growing cancerous. Personally I took a break mid velious and have not come back b/c I dont want to learn all the hacks/exploits i'd have to use to stay competitive.

3. Open the floodgates. Everything is legal, up to a certain extreme point (i'd count out of era mounts with stats totaling our entire worn gear combined as extreme)

Which one shall you pick?

I agree with this wholeheartedly. The people complaining here are the ones that KNEW it was an exploit, but they went ahead and did it anyways. Lot's of people are blaming DBG instead of taking responsibility for their own actions: "You knew it was possible for us to exploit the game, yet you did nothing! It's your fault you allowed us to cheat!"

Seriously? I can't even.

A ban for everyone that took part in this is the best way to go forward. Let all the players know that if they exploit the game, then they are invited to make a new account. If someone buys gear on the marketplace, give them a LONG vacation from the game.

I for one am NOT close to satisfied that enough was done to these sorts of players. They ruin the game for everyone. Get rid of them, and the silent majority will be much happier.

The difference between the everquest/DBG team and the player base is. You think the people of this game exist to provide you with a position. I think your position exists to provide the players with the services we deserve. I go on to make sure the players have this. Daybreak must learn they have to handle our bug tickets/reports in a better fashion. Will they clean this up and the game continue... for awhile. If nothing is done about how the everquest/DBG team manages these issues in the past, the future is rather easy to see. We will be here again... These words will be read as a eulogy, "Change or Die"

ok William Wallace

The idea that a few individuals allowed this to happen is correct, they're working for DBG/everquest. How long do you think, you can suppress information? How long do you think it takes for the entire player base to find out about this? How long do you think it takes to shut down the servers? These same players that you say "ruined the game" begged/pleaded with DBG to FIX it, they didn't. I am responsible for reporting a known issue and watching DBG do nothing while the game fell in on itself. Yet the blame falls on those that made an effort to curb this. That is much more than anyone can say from DBG.

Any update on what action DBG is going to take to actually get rid of the out of era gear/items? Or are they just here to stay and we're supposed to be happy that people at least got a short vacation?

Applause. Applause. It is about time DBG actually went forward with taking action against exploiters. A great many who abused this exploit have and frequently exploited anything in the game they could possible exploit every chance they got. So please, those who are complaining, most likely not your first offense and you deserve it. The moral of the story is, just because you cheated before on numerous occasions and got away with it, doesnt make it right. You should not have done it period. Your own fault, wish they would of been consistent about this long ago and you would of caught numerous bans for exploiting, perhaps you wouldnt of been caught up in this one because maybe you would of learned the lesson. But thankfully they finally took action. Kudos DBG, KUDOS.

Yes, because there are other paying customers who are here to play a TLP Server. IF EQ is too hard for some people with the appropriate gear from the Era - go play on the other live servers with the tutorial, easy to get gear, Mercs and such.

Holly stated that it would take a patch to remove said items from game and low and behold there is a patch this morning so let's just wait to see if said items are still in game after today... then resume complaining lol

On another note.... REDUCED SPAWN TIMERS IN VEX THAL!!!! WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS!?!?!?! THANKS PRATHUN YOU ARE MY HERO!

I don't see anything in the patch notes about the claim window bug being fixed. Is it fixed in this patch?

Pretty sure it was fixed within 24 hours of the shenanigans.

My guess is the DBA just ran something similar to this on all 3 TLP db's:

DELETE FROM PlayerItems WHERE ItemID IN (<comma-separated list of ItemID's that represent claimable defiant items that were exploited>)

Unless the DB schema is just straight-up irrational, this should be a VERY simple cleanup. Yes, it will take a bit of research to generate all of the ItemID's that were claimed / exploited, and to make sure that the list is 100% accurate and not fat-fingered (a second person should verify this as our policy for any data deletions for our MMO), but once that is done, the actual cleanup should happen in seconds.

If you got it from the bazaar, too bad. Plat sinks are good for the overall economy. ;-) Plus, let's face it, 99% of those who bought it from the bazaar *knew better*. They don't deserve bans, but they do deserve to lose their money for doing something they knew they shouldn't be doing. For the 1% who are exceptions, let CS deal with them on a case-by-case basis.

Hopefully this is what is happening, as some of these items are just WAAAAAY too uber...

I think the issue though is with numerous people who may have bought the items, then deleted them with the intention of using tokens of reclamation later on to get them back AFTER they were removed from game.


This is probably a little bit more difficult to accomplish than just pulling all of the items out of the game as you described.

They did it with the innoruuk items, don't see why they can't do it with these.

Not exactly, they are probably just stored within 2 different tables. e.g. Character Items and Deleted Items are probably stored in something like a Character_Items table with various flags showing whether they are active or deleted and shared account items such as those stored within a shared bank are stored within Account_Items. They would just need to look at both tables to make sure they clean the items from both.

They disabled all claims on the server. That's not a long term fix.

You CS majors make me giggle.

Are you talking about out of era Innoruuk kills and gear? To my knowledge there weren't many of those kills, and there are still items on server from that.

So you, at most, have to run a second query is all:

"DELETE FROM DeletedPlayerItems WHERE ItemID IN (<same id list as before>)"

This assumes that deleted player items are actually in a separate table. They probably are not. The PlayerItems table likely simply has a Deleted bit that indicates whether it has been deleted or not. If it has been, it shows up in the Recover tab, where a Reclamation token can be used to recover it (which simply flips the Deleted bit, and places the item in first available inventory or bag slot). If not, it shows up in it's assigned inventory / back / item slot location. So if this is the case, my first query would delete those items as well, even though already deleted by the player.

Either way, this is likely a fairly simple fix in DBA terms, again, assuming the schema is rational.

I have seen the P99 schema first hand, and in P99, this would be an exceedingly trivial correction.

guys and gals really... what in 2016 is so difficult that on an ancient but successful game configuration can't be fixed?? First of all we pay money for EQ, unlike countless of other games that are way more advanced and free. This means EQ "maintenance" should be priority, automatic, easy, and dealt with. To come to find out as a pure player who is not computer savvy that some super items, cheats, or hackers were even allowed in the game is quite upsetting. what is really so hard about deleting illegal EQ items, fixing a claim window bug, and making sure the game runs smoothly and hacker free? This is tainting my vacation experience time. and all this bickering of bugs and items is really beneath us.