Shattered Kingdoms

not all perm banned people stay gone, they sometimes come back and if their attitudes change, sometimes they get to stay for a while :x

haven't read anything about yana doing anything bad (?)

Uh... what?

I can't speak for Icey but I know MrP was indeed aware it was a bug and had no intention or expectation of keeping the chars involved. Deletion? Expected. Banning? Eh, unless temporary, I'd say a bit harsh. I am curious if his ban means I can't play either though since we're on the same internet. I was seriously considering playing before this whole bug thing came up a day or two ago. I'm getting to the point again where I can't sit for long periods of time at a desktop and SK I can do from a more comfy spot via laptop.

God damn guys. What the [REDACTED]?

So, cheating to level? Who the [REDACTED] cares about that, except the Imms? All you did was save some time.

~That gets you banned from the game?

But, cheating in the actual game, that affects(screws over) other players? Like uh, having a NPC backstab somebody 6 times, and then looting them, like you actually PKd them.

~That gets you a nice big, "Don't do that again!"


Seriously, who the hell cares if somebody cheats to get XP? Is that any different than the years and years where people used a Druid to spell to powerlevel, or the people now using the Yed spell to powerlevel?

I'd rather have more people to play the game with who don't cheat AGAINST other players, than worry about how the [REDACTED] they leveled.

I've probably spent 20+ hours of my own GM character's time, just helping other people level, like holding a charm in front of them, or summoning NPCs. It is [REDACTED] boring as hell.

Well, it's time for me to make myself very unpopular again. I agree with this punishment. You look at the number of characters that were deleted between the two, you look at how often they did this knowing it was bug abuse, you look at how severe this type of bug abuse is and the potential it has for other forms of cheating, like say gming someone with the bug to kill rivals or enemies of your current main out of the blue and collecting a bunch of eq and [REDACTED].

You look at the previous severe punishments for bug abuse that everyone has seen and been aware of for years, and I tell you, this is just. I really, and truly believe that this is a just punishment for some really big time cheating. But I will say this as well, I don't think it will last.

Mrp and Theicehellion are long time old school players with, presumably, plenty of friends around the mud, and I think their sitebans will be lifted in time if Dulrik can get some assurances that they will be willing to abide by the rules and take the rules seriously. Dulrik is not a miser or a mean [REDACTED] who gets off on power trips on the mud.

I don't think I'm mistaken when I say that this mud was made at least in part by Dulrik and his friends because Dulrik himself was mistreated on another mud by cheating, player favoritizing, abusive imms on a mud he was on as a player.

You must be the ********************* that ever lived. How about someone gms a char real fast through bug abuse, gets hooked up by a player friend, joins mc at gm, tells everyone who is mc, pks and jloots you by say asking you to enchant and then when you sleep bs/dual bs or something like that, gives all ur [REDACTED] to his buddies and delete delete. It won't mean much since he's got four or five other GM chars already. Possibly holding loot to pass along to another char he decides to GM.

The possibilities this bug opens up for further cheating are mind boggling.

There was nothing wrong with the punishment. Purposefully abusing a script to become GM from a newbie zone is blatant cheating and deserving of a ban. Anyone who would cheat like that shouldn't be playing this game.

Still, Dulrik fails to recognize that the veteran players here are not objecting to his treatment of MrPerson/IceHellion, but rather to his bizarre, drastically varying punishments that range from 'exceedingly light' to 'super harsh' on an apparently random basis.

Syn specifically referred to the case where a veteran player knowingly abused a pkill bug that had far, far more of an impact on the game than 'quick leveling' does - yet that player received a joke punishment in comparison to this. There are also other situations where the punishments thrown out by immortals vary drastically on whether they know that player or how friendly they are with that player. This situation is further exacerbated by the fact that the SK imm staff employs a "no-transparency" policy in order to avoid criticism.

What this did remind me of was Finney telling me that he always wished that as soon as you created a character in SK you could pick what level you wanted to start at.

I agree with every aspect of the punishment except banning the players from the game.

But I'm sure that MrP or Icey will (if they want to) sharpen up and apologize and everything if they want to play again. It seems like there wasn't a lot of communication between Dulrik and the players involved, and there definitely should have been.. at least then the punishments would have seemed more... diplomatic?

Sorry, this is a huge freaking bug. This completely unbalances the game and none of it should be tolerated. With the exception of what I've mentioned above, I applaud the IMMs for taking action.

These were not established characters, like a previous poster said. I don't think anyone's feelings are hurt over having the characters deleted, as they should have been. I hope the players will eventually be allowed to return to play if they wish, though.

And Syn, I think everyone is tired of hearing you talk about that. If MrP had GMed in five hours and come and PKed you and you were like "where did this #%$# come from?!" you'd be singing a different song. And when you ask who cares how fast people XP - you're forgetting Dulrik, who cares a LOT. In retrospect.... I care too. I'm glad people are taking steps to make the game less twinkish.

And, Andreas, just an FYI. This is not a business, this is a game, and it is free to play and run by volunteers. If you don't agree, don't play. I'm not saying D shouldn't listen to players, or that everything has to be done in a tyrannical fashion, but when it comes down to it, Dulrik banning people for abusing a huge bug isn't really that unexpected, is it? Maybe harsh, but can you see where he's coming from?

I can see this point of view as well. But Dulrik seems really sensitive about the leveling issue and wants all players to have as fair of a chance as possible. In his mind, cheating to defend Ayamao against a PK-heavy player and cheating to throw the entire game off balance are probably at way opposite ends of each other.

My thoughts: there needs to be some sort of written down crime & punishment system. If you do XXX then you get punished with XXX.... every time. No exceptions. There needs to be level of abusing bugs or forum rules: light, medium, or heavy abuse, each case decided about what "level" it is by more than one IMM. All this should be written down in the forums and in the help files.

Of course, then we're really hindering our imaginations to how people have the capability to cheat and what horrific thing they'll do/say next. >_<

Examples of what I'm talking about (and I don't mean to derail the thread, if you want to fight about light/medium/heavy bug abuse for a completely hypothetical idea system there's probably another thread to do it in):

Light abuse: dropping a charm over a city & not knowing it was illegal
Medium abuse: knowingly using a tribunal NPC's bug to kill another PC
Heavy abuse: getting to GM in four hours.

All real examples of things that happened recently, sorry, I'd have better examples but I don't know that much about cheating to come up with some hypothetical situation.

Punishments for each one? I don't know, that'd be up to the IMMs.