Further Account Actions Taken Today After careful review, we have decided to move forward with the following actions to address the fallout from this exploit. We will remove all exploited experience gains. Regardless of whether someone exploited a little or a lot, all items will have the exploited experience deducted from their current totals. We will permanently ban the most egregious exploiters, repeat offenders, and dummy accounts made just for exploiting. This will be a much smaller number than we initially anticipated based on further investigation and because... We will remove all experience on items that received exploited experience in excess of 10% of their total - for the currently suspended accounts, if those suspensions are not converted into permanent bans. That means those items will be reset to 0 experience and all progress will be lost. For most players/items, this is a tremendous loss of experience that far outweighs the attempted illegitimate gains. We believe these actions send a strong message that we take this behavior seriously and that there are significant consequences for choosing to violate our terms of service. We are not moving forward with the blanket permanent bans because of the nature of the exploit and the number of first-time offenders with high playtimes. In many ways, logging in to see your experience vaporized should be more devastating than simply moving on, and we believe this action is a more proportional response. And Also Gifts! Finally, the team wants to thank everyone who did not take part in this exploit and everyone who helped us track it down. Exploiters were a small fraction of the community, but everyone had to deal with the disabled systems and confusion. We understand how frustrating those days after launch were and how frustrating it is the exploit made it to live in the first place. So, everyone (not suspended) can log in to claim another free gift to help with fortification: 6500 Ally Favor 1 Reinforced Nth Metal 1 Perfected Exobyte Mega Pack 1 Seal of Completion 2 Seal of Preservation Packs 35 Source Marks Thank you again for your patience and support. Let's get back to saving the world.
Wonder why they post about their actions but even mentioning GM enforcement gets locked and thread removed.
Kudos to DCUO. Games that do not enforce anti-cheating measures die. Call of Duty Warzone was plagued by rampant cheating (aim botting, warping, exploiting terrain) that it was literally on its way to life support. Activision had to apologize to the community and launched enforcement action.
I wish that EQ would be much more informative about what rules were broken, when they suspend/ban people. A lot of people suspect that there are too many false positives, and have no clue what they did wrong. For all we know, it could have been a lockout timer that bugged out un-noticed.... A punishment you don't learn from, is not effective. Note, I didn't say they should tell how the cheating was discovered, but just enough information to reassure players that there are enforced rules and not just a bugged script... I also whish they would tell the guild-leaders the reason for the suspension, so that we can take action. We have no information we can use...We don't even know if it was ingame-behaviour at all, or just a faulty chargeback...
Why should most of them worry here in EQ when they just give 7 day suspensions? There does not seem to be a desire to stop the cheating since it now involves their profits.
They don’t appear to validate any of the data they collect. Then when you complain, they refuse to listen.
I believe Darkpaw wants to rid EQ1 of cheaters. I believe the 32-bit client could be the limiting factor in log collection/activity detection. I'd bet dollars to donuts that once 64-bit goes live for a few months we start seeing fewer and fewer bot armies and automated groups.
That would be wonderful and I hope you are right. Another scenario could be that those third party cheat-programs, simply does not work with the 64bit client, and will need an extensive redesign, that isn't worth the effort. There was also talk about a new launcher from EG7 that had some focus on cheat-protection, I haven't heard much about that lately though...
Is anyone documenting all of the problems that the vaunted 64-bit client will cure? I hope that it will help with many things, but my hopes are not so high that I think a new EQ world will be born. In any case, when a REAL cheater gets booted it is a VERY GOOD thing. Kudos to whomever made this happen.
If they banned everyone using a 3rd party app, eq would be a ghost town. Careful what you wish for, eq can hardly afford to lose many accounts. There is a difference between straight up exploiting and cheating and an app that makes boxing less stressful for you. The afk killing people are exploiting, the people just using a program to enjoy the game more and make it less stressful to do the same thing they were doing manually is a different thing.
Translation: "Automating your characters is totally fine as long as you are tabbed out on Netflix." Incorrect.
Playing the game and having software that allows you to control your other toons, is ruining eq somehow? I can have 6 monitors, and a programmable mouse controlling 6 toons, but not a piece of software that helps me manage that? I said anyone automating the game completely is not even playing the game and that's wrong in my book. Using software to help you box, while you are controlling the toons, I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I don't use anything, I barely play, but some people on here make these guys out to be the devil himself. They are just trying to breath life into a 23yr old game. They aren't hurting you or anyone else and if they do, then suspended them for that, not using some piece of software to make the game more fun. I would probably play more, if I could make my other toons mercs for me. You guys think it would be great if everyone just disappeared from EQ. Well they slowly are and this game isn't going to be very exciting with just you.
I S B is generally tolerated by Darkpaw. (This can change at any point). Any other inputting (as opposed to read-only) software will likely lead to suspensions and bans. There has been a coterie of people trying to conflate one program with another as of late. It is probably the suggested talking point on their message boards. In essence, their strategy is to muddy the waters to lead others to think it should be all-or-nothing.
I am not a DCUO player. I haven't logged in but a few times. I can confirm that this reward is not tied to being an active player during the exploit period (because I just logged in and claimed all of the pending gifts.). I was able to log in and claim this, as well as all of the 2022 celebration stuff. Thanks for the post.
I'd say take it a step further. Daybreak should post names of all characters that were hit by each wave of bans, and what their violation was. Then we can all know who the sh*tbirds are, and maybe it'll discourage people from using illegal software so they don't end up on the public list of shame.
