Recently there have been a few exploits uncovered.  So far 8 players have been caught doing this, and I expect to find more as I investigate the logs.   

WHY do you try to ruin YOUR shard?

It is very disappointing to me to see players ruin the shard and economy for everyone by exploiting.  The most upsetting aspect of this it that no one reported this...I had to find out myself, this is truly disheartening after all the hard work we do to make this a great shard.  This kind of situation just creates a huge amount of work for me to clean up and damages the shard for months

I had to remove the level deeds from everyone last night because of the actions of a few.  I also took the clothing deeds and level deeds off the token reward stones.  They will be added back into the game soon, just by a different method.  There is no easy way for me to compensate all the innocent players for this loss, but I will try to make it right asap.

We did add a fix for this exploit last night and it will be effective at the next restart.

I banned one player over this and then I found over a dozen possible players were doing this...I assure you the players involved will be punished and I will make them compensate the players that lost their hard earned deeds this week. 

I apologize to all the players that this effected

It is a shame.. I am all for the removal of such players cause they only make it worse on everyone and are not a reflection of this shard.  Anyone caught using exploits seriously needs to be banned or at the very least stripped of everything and allowed to start over. 
Yes I wanted to sleep on it and calm down, before I did anything rash.  I want to be fair to all, but I want the punishment to fit the crime, jail and ban are not very good options

I accept your apology, but I already know who's going to benefit from the "compensation" Only the ones that "play" errr stay on the shard for 10 + hours a day, sitting at the bank so they can see the announcement to come kill a big dragon or some other such event.

Well, I play less than 2 hours a day, so I'm screwed.  And  the 15+ level deeds I had will never be compensated. 

Guess that's my fault for hording them and not using them the minute I found them....Oh well.

I accept your apology, but I already know who's going to benefit from the "compensation" Only the ones that "play" errr stay on the shard for 10 + hours a day, sitting at the bank so they can see the announcement to come kill a big dragon or some other such event.

Well, I play less than 2 hours a day, so I'm screwed.  And  the 15+ level deeds I had will never be compensated. 

Guess that's my fault for hording them and not using them the minute I found them....Oh well.

I have not been here much this past week, took somewhat of a personal vacation. However I can say that for the short term I have fixed the exploit and I know that players negatively effected by Dante's actions will be compensated as needed.

See you all soon.

I do think the cheaters should be known.. I do have some good reasons for this too.  First this has effected quite a few and rather Dante or the staff shoulder any blame, lets put it squarely on the the people who were cheating.  No longer will this be an issue about being compensated or staff removing items, it will be what it should be.. people were cheating, Period.  Second, if you choose to let some of these people stay we all should know what kind of player they are. Third, this will dispel any rumors or assumptions that are already going in full gear at this moment over who is cheating.  Like it or not a few players have already been assumed to be involved in this, lets stop this kind of stuff quickly.  Last but not least the player post above kind of sets the tone for some whispering that goes on, keep in mind every shard has the whispers of favoritism of some regard.  I have a feeling the names that are cheating will help dispel this and show no one is above being punished.

Thanks, you can have your soap box back now.

I do think the cheaters should be known.. I do have some good reasons for this too.  First this has effected quite a few and rather Dante or the staff shoulder any blame, lets put it squarely on the the people who were cheating.  No longer will this be an issue about being compensated or staff removing items, it will be what it should be.. people were cheating, Period.  Second, if you choose to let some of these people stay we all should know what kind of player they are. Third, this will dispel any rumors or assumptions that are already going in full gear at this moment over who is cheating.  Like it or not a few players have already been assumed to be involved in this, lets stop this kind of stuff quickly.  Last but not least the player post above kind of sets the tone for some whispering that goes on, keep in mind every shard has the whispers of favoritism of some regard.  I have a feeling the names that are cheating will help dispel this and show no one is above being punished.

Thanks, you can have your soap box back now.

That can be resolved very quickly, add one boolean to the player class, for the lack of better ideas.. AllowNameChange.  Then have the level deed check for that.  Or perhaps have a boolean Cheater or Felon, this way you can use it in other ways too.  We wouldn't want cheaters to get free gifts on holidays, perhaps can code the champ gates the staff used to also look for this flag. 

Lets be blunt, I think I speak for the honest player base when I say we do not want cheaters here.  This is a chance to send a message that cheaters are not welcome here, end of story.

I agree, name them...but it'll never happen.


And I never said anything about staff favoritism.  I respect the staff and all they do for the shard.  I just meant I'm not on enough to hear any announcement of compensation. 

I'm in 100% agreement with Kane...I personally pride myself on my honesty. If people cheat...perhaps a little shaming will make a good life lesson. When I was 6....I stole candy in a store....I was caught...and spanked right on the store steps...of course you'd never get away with that today. Here's what I remember-the spanking didn't hurt....the embarrassment stayed with me to this very day- I do not steal...or cheat...If it's wrong it's wrong! Even when no one is looking.

I think it goes for anyone breaking rules...if they are banned or otherwise punished-make it public. After all it's not the game you play-but the people you play it with that's important. I am selective about my friends and choose them wisely.

I find this situation disturbing.  If players had been exploiting a bug, knew it was wrong, and continued to profit from it.  Ban them.  Because of the actions of what, perhaps 10-20 players, hundreds of players are affected?  I have spent months collecting, buying, hunting, farming, weapon level deeds.  Ask any player who knows me, all I do is champ spawns, that is my pleasure in the game.  I do these spawns in hopes of finding a weapon lvl deed spawn, or at the least, collect silver to purchase the deeds from the stones.  I have had months worth of game time removed from me (all of my deeds deleted) and feel slighted. 

I do not care to know who the culprits where, but they should be banned.  I also feel there could have been another way of dealing with the deeds, removing all deeds from game seems like a knee jerk reaction, and has punished hundreds of players.  Additionally, the price of deeds is not going to be sustainable, 10 ED per deed?  I understand that has been the price to purchase from staff, but when deeds where traded for 150k-200k (given the token to gold ratio) they were difficult enough to obtain.  At current cost, the rate will be more like 2m per deed...200k-2m, THAT seems to me to be quite a hit on the already fragile economy.

In closing:  Cheating in game is similar to cheating on your significant other, if you do it once...odds are, you're going to do it again.  Ban them.

I agree.  Ban them. One bad Apple theory. I had a +50 level deed that I bought at auction 4 or 5 months ago and had been holding on to for just the right weapon. Now "poof" thanks to some idiots with nothing better to do than screw it up for the rest of us


Bill The Cat

Again, there is no easy way to handle this, there are many involved and it is not easy to punish a few with a ban and the rest get off lightly.  Also banning players that love the shard or that have donated in the past brings up a ton of other issues and really does not help the shard growth.

Jail sentences and listing their names as cheaters is also not a great solution
 
I have banned 3 players over this incident, and I expect to have to do a few more

Many players are angry and have come up with some creative punishments, but again, In trying to do what is best for the shard

After I investigate and am absolutely positive of their guilt, I will probably remove all tokens, remove all +10 clothing items and take all of their leveled weapons and sell at auction.  This way they lose all the gains of the exploit, have to do the work to get the items legititmately, and have the opportunity to get the items back at auction.  It will also be a good gold sink for the shard to get the economy back in balance

For the players that had nothing to do with this issue, I will compensate at the end of my investigation, but it will be more than fair to all

No offense but this is not far enough, As you said they cheated OUR shard.  If you don't want to ban that's fine for whatever the reason that's fine but limit it to "remove all tokens, remove all +10 clothing items and take all of their leveled weapons" is insanely light handed. 
After investigating, 3 players have been banned over this incident
In my opinion you might as well give them a reward for cheating.  Maybe I am missing something but what part of "They Cheated" is being missed?   Banning a player who has cheated has nothing to do with if they donated, they clearly made their bed and you also can't tell me they love this shard when they do everything to include cheat to ruin the fun of others on this shard.  Players that donate do not get a pass for cheating If you seriously lack the understanding for this matter, cheat on your wife and say... but I love you.  Then you will learn first hand how far that kind of excuse flies.  If you are not banning or brings up issues because some of these cheaters have donated there is a flip side of this matter.  Everyone else who has donated should know who be aware of these cheaters by name.

It is your shard and I will respect that but at some point you have to ask yourself what kind of players do you want playing here, cheating players who do anything to wreck what you have created or honest players who help your creation grow.  Yes, I am having to make some hard decisions, some involved are 2 year old players and some are new, it's not easy

Ah so that's why my deed disappeared, I kept looking through my chest for it, heard something about them being removed and figured taht was the reason.

I say ban the player, why let them continue to play here.  Unless there's something more that we don't know about the people involved and the reason they are even being considered to be allowed to stay.

I am disappointed, lost deeds as well.  I don't care for the compensation, I am just sick of players ruining it for others.  Not just by exploiting and cheating, but camping the quests they really don't need to do; just to profit.  It is sad to see players camp the one spawning graverobber camp just to fill their vendor with the brushes and never actually do the gravedigging quest;  to see them camp all the custom dojos while having already a black belt or actually not even trying to get one, to camp the makoto zento bank to get the booomerang over and over again while they dont even use the zelda sword, to kill that once a day spawning fairy thing to get the green tunic and then sell it 5-6 millions.  More than just exploiting, how many of the cheaters have ruined it for others by sporting the all +10 eval clothing and yet rulling the fel champs in god mode (preventing less geared players from doing so)?  How many have been using their ill gotten gear to throw challenges in public chat such as "50 millions for whoever comes to fel destard and kills me"?  How many have sold their +10 clothing for milllions and then mass buy everything at the auction while I standed there for hours unable to buy anything?  Whatever.  "I banned one and I'll think about what i'll do with the 12+ others, they love the shard and donate", etc. is just not going to cut it for me.  You just need to let me have time to investigate, no one is going to get away with anything  Exploiting, ruining the economy, obtaining an unfair advantage from their cheat, looking down at the less fortunate, I bet they love that!   
Yes im sorry for the frustration from some of the good players that are effected by this situation.  I am actively rescripting some of these issues and will tighten up the economy to get it back on track after this situation

I trust you Dante, and i know that you and the other staffers put alot into the game for us.  I am just very very pissed at the greed displayed by some of the player base and, after reading your post, I was under the impression that some, that you value either because they are very active/high profile, or because they donate, might get off light.

I am with PolarBear on this one, only reason I commented and felt the way I did concerning the matter as it seemed that some kind of resolution was in sight and this matter was going to be swept under the rug because some players donated or had been here for a very long time.  If it takes a few weeks to resolve because it is the holiday season then so be it, any deed I had sitting in a chest waiting for a special weapon to show up will be just as useful in a few weeks when the matter is concluded.

Thank you for keeping us updated.

hope it doesn't turn out to be one of these

http://cdn.themetapicture.com/media/funny-rich-people-vs-poor-people-jail-sentence.jpg

The Internet isnt bound by the rules of IRL

Dante said he would handle it and from past experience I can say he always does and does fairly

Bill The Cat

Dante said he would handle it and from past experience I can say he always does and does fairlyBill The Cat

hello all - just wondering if / when we might be geting the lvl deeds back that had *poofed* or do we just take them as a loss and start farming for new ones?. i had around 75 deeds in a bag also i was striped of 38 million tokens i had worked hard for over the 550 days account i have on Evo do hope them will be returned also. thanks have a great day!

So far no news as far as I know

So far no news as far as I know

kool thanks for the reply kyn. just been awile and been wondring is all i have weps to lvl up but no deeds been hiting the wind champ and geting some when i can in the mean time. have a blessed day your friend (KG).

So I joined right after this stuff got removed. Are the tokens how people get level 100 weapons?

was a way to get them on the token stone recently. 100k tokens for a +1 lvl deed - but there was issues with the lvl deed its self so Staff will be recodeing / scripting them and they will become back in game - untill then you can do the *Wepon Lvl Deed* Spawn inside wind trammle in the back. also random timer ones in the fel facet.

It's shameful to think that some of the people we happily game alongside everyday were part of this scandal. In the past weeks we've seen some people fall off the radar quietly and it leaves a sinking feeling in my chest that we were so close to some of them. While reading some of the ideas above, like giving these players some kind of mark so everyone would know who they are, I thought to myself, "would they really stay?". I think Dante and the rest of the staff have been put under too much stress for me to comfortably play side by side with these people who not only found an exploit, but abused it as well. I think we should do what domino said and spank them on the front steps of UO. But I know even after that, it still won't be the same.


As far as compensation goes, us gamers just need to remain patient Dante is always good to us.

I hear ya Mook, hopefully it will be resolved soon, and most of us have been patient.  Personally, having the weapon lvl deeds removed from not only my own stocks (hundreds), but also removed from the token stone leave me not exactly having an encentive to play much.  Perhaps that has contributed to other players falling off the radar.  We all know how addicting the magic clothing deeds are, but my personal in game vice was crafting weapons worthy of going to lvl 100 (under the name Chiappa Firearms).  With the deeds gone, tokens are less desireable for me to accumulate, the old forge has cooled.  :/

I agree to Norton. For me, most fun was leveling weapons and trading stuff. And as we all can imagine, this bug had major influence on the shard economics, so prices are supposed to go down again, when investigations are done. That pretty much takes the incentives from trading for the moment. Think more Players are of the radar and will be back when the investigation is complete, but its obvious that such an investigation cannot be done in just some days.

I too would love to see this unpleasant mess behind us but you need to understand exactly what Dante is going through here.


Dante has to read back through the logs of what each person did.  This involves sorting out every piece of information, looking at the logs for items used, etc.  Every time any one on the server does something it adds another line to the log file.  Take this times all of the people on Evolution.


Dante puts in 12 hour days 7 days a week to ensure the server stays up and people play fair.  I hate to say it but it would be hard for Dante to work harder to get this done quicker.  This turned into a very extreme mess and went a lot deeper then any of us expected.


I would love to see each one of you stick with us through this!  We hope that you understand that bugs happen and exploits are found.  We try to make the resolution seamless to all of you but this literally dumped hundreds of millions of tokens into the economy and was insanely unfair to EVERYONE who plays by the rules.

I can't wait until the level deeds are back on the token vendors! I'm having trouble getting enough to finish up even one weapon. At this point I've only gotten them from champs (which I can't solo, partly because I can't get a weapon! catch 22), events (limited), and treasure chests (rare).


I'm still finding plenty to do, mostly hunting a worthy weapon (mining a lot), working on my next belt (just got green! I think it's going to get tough from here!), and doing events/quests.


I was just asking yesterday what I should be spending tokens on. I have a relatively small amount (500k), and I'm not particularly interested in deco, so my options are pretty limited. Looking forward to having them back one day! Hopefully there's an implementation that includes them back on tokens, but not exploitable.

was wondering what the status of the investigation was?  the removal of all leve deeds has cause the price to skyrocket! ive seen prices at 500k  and its causeing players to walk into a trammel champ way past the 8 skulls required and start stealing the level deed champ ..... so sort of update or finalization to this matter would be very nice to see

I too would like to know the status of this issue, I have decided to not play untill this issue has been resolved, in part, to assist in the investigation by not creating any logs.

I too would like to know the status of this issue, I have decided to not play untill this issue has been resolved, in part, to assist in the investigation by not creating any logs.

Yep, as they asked we all just had to have a little patience and understanding as they worked through all of the issues and damage.

Thank you Kyn and Dante

Hey guys, hi my Evo friends!  Been waiting for this issue to be resolved while standing on the sideline. 

As much as I love this place and the numerous UO friends that I found here, I couldn't get myself to accept being penalised for other people wrong doings.  But more important, I was concerned about the possibility that some of the culprits would get off light because they are either long time players and/or important donators; while others would get snap banned. 

I was not hoping for the culprits to be banned or heavily punished: I had complete trust in Dante's jugement to resolve this issue and couldn't care less about the actions he would take (as long as it got these guys to realise that what they did was not cool).  I was more worried about a double standard (active/vet/donator vs new player).

Anyway, I was prepared to wait as long as necessary to see how this would turn out.  Unfortunatly, I logged in to refresh my account yesterday to find out that my account was deleted for inactivity.

Obv. my fault for not checking how long accounts were kept alive here. 

I wish all you guys the best!  Hopefully this situation will end up being resolved in a way that everyone feels happy about!

Sincerly,

Polar Bear  
12 players were banned over the issue, doesnt matter whether they donated or not, im fair in the treatment and punishment of every player.  Most deeds have been returned to players that earned them properly.  I was fair to questionable situations and added levels to some players weapon.  Page me in game to resolve any issues you may have, welcome back

Hey guys, hi my Evo friends!  Been waiting for this issue to be resolved while standing on the sideline. 

As much as I love this place and the numerous UO friends that I found here, I couldn't get myself to accept being penalised for other people wrong doings.  But more important, I was concerned about the possibility that some of the culprits would get off light because they are either long time players and/or important donators; while others would get snap banned. 

I was not hoping for the culprits to be banned or heavily punished: I had complete trust in Dante's jugement to resolve this issue and couldn't care less about the actions he would take (as long as it got these guys to realise that what they did was not cool).  I was more worried about a double standard (active/vet/donator vs new player).

Anyway, I was prepared to wait as long as necessary to see how this would turn out.  Unfortunatly, I logged in to refresh my account yesterday to find out that my account was deleted for inactivity.

Obv. my fault for not checking how long accounts were kept alive here. 

I wish all you guys the best!  Hopefully this situation will end up being resolved in a way that everyone feels happy about!

Sincerly,

Polar Bear

Ha! Ha!  This reply was so fast that I almost got a heart attack  !!!

This is what makes you guys unbeleivable and why EVO residents are, by far, the most lucky when it comes to staff"s dedication and proficiency!

Good thing that you found my account.  Fact being that I have not played since a few months, I probably just forgot my login info.

Perhaps, English not being my primary language, I have not made clear that I am not worried about getting my stuff back.  While I understand that everyone has the right to his privacy, I would like to have a general understanding of how this issue was dealt with!

Oh!  While I am thinking about it, would you be nice enough to pm me my login info ?

Danke 

Welcome back!

 

As requested I have sent you a private message with the requested information. Happy hunting.

Is it still possible to get compensation for this?


Not been able to play for a few weeks so not sure what the deal is.

Is it still possible to get compensation for this?


Not been able to play for a few weeks so not sure what the deal is.