Funcom does it again *Scandal*

[Cassan0va]

The past week there has been thousands of cries over the AoC Offical Forums regarding an exploit that was pushed to live from the test server,
which allowed players to gain PVP ranks very very fast.

A few weeks ago there were reports of a exploit on the test server that caused players to farm eachother for pvp xp..
All dandy but diminishing returns didnt go in so they got max pvp xp all the time.

Now this was pushed to live and people started doing this on the live servers obviusly.
Now this was petitioned on the live server and the response was as follows.

http://radikal.ru/F/i081.radikal.ru/...dfd8b.jpg.html

That is a screen of a GM responding..

What has happend about this? People that havnt done this "exploit" even tho the GM say its allowed have been punished,
some of the people that have been using the "exploit" lost their ranks and more, some got banned some that were rank 0 became rank 1, and so on.

The past 2 days there has been random punishments.
Funcom Delivers again.

[Acidbaron]

'hate to say i told you so'

As always if you are gaining experience or gold much easier then normally then you're dealing with an exploit.
If you intentionally doing it over and over you're exploiting and should've saw this coming, even if a follower told you so that at the *present* time there's no policy against it.

If it seems fishy or odd do -not- use it or in some cases abuse it, The GM in question also does not recommend the use of this 'bug' and neither does he approvethe use of it.

This is also the case and i quote;
"To [Esogoliath] is it ok?"
"[Esogoliath(GM)] "Ok" is not the right word"

Although i question how geniue that log is as i notice several obvious basic policy errors, if that is geniue then the GM/Follower made several mistakes.

You should've refrained from using it, after it was said that it might change very soon.
That was clearly not a 'green light' and it should've gave you the impression that your past actions weren't going to come back to you but the future use of this exploit would've.

The error was made on your end by your guild by acting naive and thinking that was a green light and second of all while i still question how un-edited that log is the person you talked should've been more clear and made some policy errors.

[Barbarious]

Players - If it seems unfair or appears to be an exploit - it probably is. Don't do it. Or don't complain when you suffer the consequences.

Fun?com - It either IS or IS NOT an exploit. If it is - ban them all. If it's not - let them all do it. Concrete Policy is For The Win.


Amusing to see people making rookie WoW mistakes both on the player end and on the company end.

Players are still in the 5 year old mentality and seem to believe that if they do something that isn't written in stone - even if it seems unfair - they are in the clear.

What they don't realize is that companies are not the legal system. They aren't required by anyone to give a f*ck. That EULA you sign when you buy an MMO basically says that the company who made your game is your god and they can do whatever they want with your account and characters whenever they want.

Lesson here is, don't be a moron.

On that note - it's still insanely bad business for any company to use wishy-washy policies and dance along the lines of what is or is not allowed. While much of the responsibility is on the player - it's up to the company to maintain their reputation and act as a fair entity.

If the bug is Fun?com's fault they need to hot-fix that within the next 24 hours or just let everyone enjoy their easy PvP XP. It's not an effing guessing game.

[Savanja]

IMO, its an obvious exploit. Nothing is more disturbing than GMs (or other minions) making official statements on behalf of a rather large company. The guy should have said "Thank you for letting us know" and taken it straight to those who make the determination.

Barb is completely right, no one is owed anything and if you do something questionable, you run the risk of losing your privilege to play the game.

[BigHammer]

I take it that you are not very up to date. FunCom could hardly tackled the exploit issue any better. They punished exploiters only and are getting massive community applause and support.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=173336

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=173248

Way to Go FunCom

[Acidbaron]

Barbarious as i stated that GM (most likely a volunteer one) made a few policy mistakes very obvious ones, like promissing a bug fix is one of them, the other is he or she should've been much more clear about it not being allowed.

So it's far from wishy-washy policies, it was just a Volunteer that went around promissing things on the spot, where he or she wasn't even allowed to do so.

Funcom stance has always been crystal clear "If you find a bug that makes you able to get more experience or gold then others normally can, it is an exploit"

So what we got here is a chat log of 'one' GM(Most likely volunteer as regular ones don't occupy themselfs with Q&A) where i still question how un-edited it is seeing basic errors are made in it.

Also the majority of the people just got their PvP experience rolled back, with the option to get it looked into if people found they unfairly got their PvP experience decreased.


Haven't seen reports yet that others got 'banned' for it.

[xain908]

when you said scandal, I thought one of those cybersex thingys.

where do you dig up these kinds of stuff? it's kinda cool that you can get info fast when the rest of the world still doesn't know about it.

I have a question. What if you accidentally did an "exploit" will you get banned?

[Savanja]

Originally Posted by xain908

when you said scandal, I thought one of those cybersex thingys.

Those are the best kind to be sure. Particularly when evidence is provided. Free porn!

I have a question. What if you accidentally did an "exploit" will you get banned?

If you do it once accidentally, immediately report it and NEVER do it again, then I would hope not. However, many innocents get caught up in those things which is why it is sometimes necessary to dispute a ban.

[chadrew]

Originally Posted by BigHammer

I take it that you are not very up to date. FunCom could hardly tackled the exploit issue any better. They punished exploiters only and are getting massive community applause and support.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=173336

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=173248

Way to Go FunCom

I agree I was afraid they wouldn't do anything and just ignore it, but they actually acted.

[Bigguzz]

So many exploits in that game it's just sad.