Recently there has been an exploit that has been discovered in skirmishes that has resulted in players earning thousands to millions of skirmish marks in an hour. Although the exploit is not known to the general public, it has been explained that the exploit is not something that cannot be performed on accident. Therefore, no debate or appeals will be accepted by Turbine for whatever punishment is doled out to those found in violation. So what punishments have been seen so far?
- All players in violation will have their skirmish stats wiped and their rewards stripped.
- Some players have received 30-day bans
- Some players have received permanent bans
Already there are those on the forums debating if the players should be banned, if this exploit can be done on accident (which as previously stated it cannot, however many posters do not read all of the thread before posting), and how they have a friend or kinmate who was banned due to someone else in their group performing this exploit. And although the thread has devolved into the stereotypical “forum post” that most of us despise, I think there is one point that is worth discussing: Is acting amorally in a game worth getting banned over?
My answer is “No”. Sure, this is only a game and therefore the repercussions of acting like a jerk or underhanded in some nature has little to no impact on you. However, there is one definitive action that can be taken against you and that is you can have your account banned. Sometimes it’s easy to forget when playing an MMO that there is someone who has authority over whether or not we can actually play the game. It’s also hard to remember that we are purchasing a service and in doing so we have agreed to certain terms of conduct and in violating those terms we are subject to having that service cancelled.
I can understand the rush that can be gained from exploiting and earning millions of marks in an hour. But maybe I’ve just gotten old and don’t see the point to it, especially when the fun of Skrimishes to me is the natural progression of exploring the content and earning the rewards honestly. To me it doesn’t matter if you were in a solo Skirmish and performing this exploit or if you were in a group and just let someone perform the exploit while you just watched and did nothing. If you didn’t try to stop it or report it, ultimately you took advantage of the situation and profited from the exploit. In my opinion you are guilty of an infraction and should accept what punishment, if any, is coming to you.
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January 13, 2010 at 10:14 am
Merric, I salute you. /bows
January 13, 2010 at 10:53 am
I suspect that the permanent bans are for those players who are unrepentant when confronted. I can imagine the scene now, GM says, “You are using an exploit for earning millions of marks!” Exploiter says, “so what? Its your fault for writing crappy code.” Sort of like mouthing off to the cop for running a red light. You are just going to dig yourself in deeper.
January 13, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Well said! One of my beefs with some of the exploits is the learning experience being missed, especially when you’ve got someone relatively new to the game with you. Learning to cheat early on doesn’t give way to learning the game dynamics, how to play your class well, how your class works with other classes, … I’m off base on the skirmish mark exploit here but baseline is the same. Skipping ahead to the end, so to speak, leaves a lot of valuable experience, and appreciation of our journey to, flat out of the picture.
January 13, 2010 at 12:37 pm
I wonder if they’ll publish the exploit once they get it fixed. I’m always curious what it takes to break a system and how somebody happens to figure it out.
January 13, 2010 at 1:18 pm
From what I’ve garnered from Turbine members, they will not. Their reasoning is if they do, then someone might find a similar exploit before they do and take advantage of it. But you never know. I have to admit that I’m curious as well.
January 13, 2010 at 1:34 pm
I don’t understand how these people thought they would get away with this when skirmish result are publicly posted – millions of marks/hour and you think no one will notice? Perhaps they just don’t care enough for it to matter, to that I say good riddance!
January 13, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Ok, speculation here…
1) You can’t do it by accident
2) It gives you _lots_ of skirmish marks
Looking at the skirmish leaderboards, you see people exploiting this for up to millions of marks per hour. Since skirmish marks are generally given out in clumps of 10-100 each, I would guess that the exploit involves some programming error that gives 1000s of skirmish marks at once. Since you can’t do it by accident, I will assume it has to do with doing something the programmers did not expect. So it is most likely something with the hacking or fooling the game client into giving you many more skirmish marks than anything you do from within the skirmish itself.
January 13, 2010 at 1:45 pm
The only thing I saw was a link to a guy on Landroval (you can find him by sorting marks/hr on the Skirmish board) who did Trouble in Tuckburough and somehow was able to capture the points 170 times when there’s only what… 5 or so points to capture? No idea how he did it, but he earned over 100k skirmish marks.
Any way you do it, if I earned a ton of skirmish points where would be the fun in doing them again? Seems kinda dumb to me. Part of the fun for me is budgeting my marks.
January 13, 2010 at 2:30 pm
2 skirmish marks for hitting the ball out of the park Merric. Oops guess that is against the rules as well. But again you are right on, we agree to abide by the TOC when we install the software and in the end what Turbine says goes…
January 13, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Skirmish marks can be traded in for some items, such as class quest items previously only available in CD or Uru, mithril flakes, etc. that used to be quite expensive on the AH. The availability of vast amounts of marks had the potential to unbalance the economy or to advantage those whom the cheaters provided their largesse due to exchange of coin or personal favor.
January 14, 2010 at 3:31 am
I to don’t get the mentality of those who choose to exploit. I would think it takes the fun out of the game, but that’s just me.
January 14, 2010 at 4:43 pm
There is a thrill to discovering or even properly executing an exploit that someone else discovered. And the “Vegas” reward of seeing the big bling of stacks of skirmish marks stuffing your backpack.
I can completely understand the desire to discover or use an exploit. Sometimes I’m willing to pay the “1 hour thrill permanently replaces 1 month of challenges” price of doing an exploit. (Read: “/godmode” in Doom II) But not always.
And yes, it hadn’t occurred to me, but Giloneil is smart to point out that it can destroy the ingame economy to have crafting items available on AH for substantially lower prices than the server is used to.