Shattered Kingdoms

It was a pretty silly move on the part of the imms to delete these characters.

Yes, they exploited a mistake by the imms, and should at the least have been docked several levels. But considering you expect people to inform you when they find these bugs, I don't think that trying to turn the informant into a pariah among their friends is going to get you a lot of repeat custom.

Best move: dock each character several levels (5-10), give them a slap on the wrist, or even remove a few stat points from them. This way they know they've done wrong, but they don't take it out so hard on their buddy.

What a silly mistake. This is a game. In the words of the joker, why so serious? Your policies would make any company in the real world fail after a few months.

Oh, and for the sake of rebutting the ad hom, I was not involved in any way, shape or form.

it's worth noting that this bug was only available at amateur status, meaning these weren't exactly established characters, to say the least.

the characters should have definitely been deleted..

but the players banned? i dont think so.

Docking 5 levels from a character that GM'd in four hours? Now that would have been silly.

Just in case if I accidentally find this bug. I don't want to get deleted. So, what is the bug?

Leave the newbie area after you train level 6. You'll be fine.

The people involved knew what they were doing was wrong and don't really even play SK, they play WoW. They probably rolled characters simply because word got around of the quest (they hate levelling, which is why they don't play SK)

Here's a thought: How about instead of blaming the immortals for enforcing the rules, you place the blame on the players who blatantly cheated instead? I will not tolerate cheating, and if I catch you, there will be a punishment regardless of whether you are a player or another immortal. There are few rules violations that I take more seriously than abusing a bug to gain infinite XP.

The punishment shocks you? Good. Take it as a warning not to cheat. Anything less would not be a punishment at all. All of these characters were built entirely around the cheat, so simply demoting them would be rewarding them for their violation.

I haven't talked to both of them, but MrPerson13 already told me he not only knew he was cheating, but also knew he would get caught eventually. He doesn't even really care. Fine, he can stick with WoW, because he's no longer welcome to play this game.

On the flipside, we will be giving out rewards to those people who reported the bug as soon as they knew about it.

While the OP was mistaken about the details of the situation, I concur with him when he finds himself dissatisfied with that kind of attitude on your part.

You're speaking as if they've spat in your face by exploiting a flaw in your game for personal amusement. As you said, they knew what they were doing and they knew they'd get caught, which might imply that they were not cheating maliciously, but capriciously, at best. Which might suggest that they aren't the kind of players worth sitebanning. You aren't talking about another Yana or Mitch, here.

I'm not criticizing you for punishing them, but your attitude about this is rotten. If you really want to keep people away, that's the way to do it.

No, these players you ban and then give cabal leadership to a couple months later.