Shattered Kingdoms

Everyone understands that the punishment does not fit the crime. That's how a three-strikes law work. Your previous convictions factor into the scope of the new punishment.

I can see that people empathize with this player and fear they might be next for a rules enforcement. But there are no other people playing that I am aware of that have been put on notice for continuously breaking the rules and lying about it. His defenders conveniently are ignoring all of that, but it is the root of this punishment. If you do feel sorry for him, it is only because you have swallowed some portion of the lies.

Dulrik, I would first like to thank you for allowing this discussion to take place on the forums. A less transparent moderator may have chosen to lock or delete the thread.



I’m not sure if this was directed at me, but I think I was the only veteran who said they did not know that the command could be used to find out if something is in someone’s inventory. I do want to assure you that I am not trying to troll here. I don’t take offense to the suggestion, though, since I am an established troll.


This can only be true if everyone from Edoras to Finney is lying. Several players have stated that they were aware that the take command could be used in this way and did not know that using it this way would be abuse. No player so far as supported your assertion here.



If someone has been convicted of theft twice, you can’t use those past convictions as your only evidence of a third crime. Sure, if they are found to have stolen again (based on evidence), then their past convictions factor into the punishment they receive, but it is improper to use them as evidence for determining guilt.


I don’t feel sorry for him. I don’t know who this guy is and chances are that if I did, I wouldn’t like him.

I feel that you are missing a golden opportunity to prove a segment of your player base wrong. There is a growing perception that the staff are rigid, arrogant, incapable of admitting mistake, and out to get certain players.

Taking the time to reconsider a punishment that was dolled out based on assumptions that have now been shown to be incorrect would do a lot to retain players and grow your game.

Thanks for posting, Baldric. I definitely can appreciate when someone is trying to constructively communicate with the staff.


My comment was not based on any specific comment from this particular thread. But there does exist a particular segment of the veteran players that I could reliably win a bet that they would react unfavorably to even my most innocuous statement. Whether that's because they genuinely disagree with me or because they enjoy trolling the community can be hard to tell.


I can only go back to first causes here. Why does this feature exist? Everyone has admitted to knowing that it is not standard to all MUDs. Other MUDs do not let you try to take items from characters, only from their corpse (which is only slightly different from a regular container item).

SK added this feature as part of a plan to allow for characters to perform most standard leveling behavior (including looting) without killing someone. There have been quite a few threads in this forum over the years about whether you can successfully level without killing, with people telling me that it still wasn't feasible, and me going back to the drawing board to further improve upon it.

You can only loot from a character when they are stunned and the standard error message makes that quite plain. Therefore, why would you try to loot from them when they are not stunned? Only if there was something to gain from it, such as information you would not know unless you had the class-specific peek skill.

It's at least conceivable that absolutely no one has ever followed this train of logic in the past. But given how adept some veterans are at figuring out exploitable loopholes, I do not believe I was giving them too much credit. Vets always want to show off how smart they are about the game, except when it comes to getting caught exploiting something, and which point now everyone is clueless. It's too convenient.

I am not claiming that everyone knew this was a bug, but it is still my belief that Muwali knew he was exploiting a loophole, based on the way he used the command and his documented history of other cheating and lying about cheating.


I've admitted to making mistakes multiple times, but I don't get any credit for it when I do. Whenever there is an action taken that some group of players doesn't like, it still comes back to Dulrik never admitting his mistakes. Whatever. I can truthfully state that to the best of my knowledge, the staff is not out to get anyone and has only the best interests of the game in mind. But most people would prefer to believe in conspiracy theories.

Muwali was given an opportunity to avoid the ban when being confronted about it. Instead he told both Thuban and everyone else that he rejected that offer and prefers to not play a game where he has to be accountable for his actions. If he doesn't want to play any longer, and the staff no longer wants to have to continue making efforts to monitor his cheating, then a ban appears to be a mutually desired outcome.

If you wanted some evidence, by the way, to back up the claims of everyone who's commented in this thread that they honestly didn't believe that the take command was only supposed to be used for grabbing things from stunned victims, I did a search in my recent log history and found three results spread across totally different people: And I don't log everything, either.

The point being, take <item> <person> was not only well-known, it was commonly used even as an emote that let you visibly show you were trying to be grabby with something. It also -had- been used by multiple characters in multiple circumstances with groups of people in order to demonstrate that a NPC possessed something in their inventory even if it wasn't visible, like the first example (the key is in the NPCs inventory). I witnessed another example where multiple high-level NPCs of the same type in an area possess one key among them, and a character ran through them all using "take" to detect which one had the right key so that I could request it. My first and only thought was "I could have done the same thing with request," not "that should be reported." In fact now that you mention it, request has the exact same behavior, provided the NPC is sentient.


I'm just trying to make the point that a lot of people, myself included, had no idea that get wasn't supposed to be used for fun, or even for some mechanical benefit: It's certainly nowhere near as powerful as using the "peek" command, as peek works silently and also allows you to know exactly what someone has, whereas the take command requires you not only to type the exact thing you're trying to grab, but it's clearly visible to everyone else as well.

I'm not arguing that it isn't bug abuse: Clearly it is, because it's a bug, and it gives a benefit. I'm just saying that in this specific circumstance, I really don't think it's right to assume that anyone, even Muwali, is lying when they say that they never considered this to be an exploit. From the "player POV" argument, it even stands to reason that if you were looking for a specific item on a naked, non-aggro zombie, you could probably find it. Even from the "advantage" standpoint, there's precious little to gain with regard to time-saving in regard by finishing a quest even an hour earlier than you normally would have.

Has anyone already brought up that this likely goes back to the old merchant system, when the items for sale actually reflected the contents of the NPCs inventory? I'm pretty sure you could go to a shop keeper and try to "take" an item, and if they were not stunned it would suggest you knock them out. Then you could knock them out and steal from the shop.

Couldn't this just be more of a poorly implemented quest rather than an actual bug or design flaw? If the intention of the quest is to force you to kill NPCs for a random drop, then just spawn the item randomly at the time of the NPC's death.

Dulrik, I can see why from your perspective, it should have been obvious that the take command was not working as intended. I also appreciate that this particular player's checkered past made it pretty easy to connect some dots and make a quick decision on the matter.

I firmly believe that this punishment was an error, however, and I think my previous arguments have illustrated why I believe that. Explaining why this is a bug does not adequately respond to the fact that apparently no players realized it was a bug without the benefit of your explanation.

If I had encountered someone using take in this way, it would not have been clear to me either way whether it was working as intended. If I asked "OOC is that a bug? how can you find stuff in their inventory without peek?" and the other player had said "OOC I think it means you're getting handsy with the NPC, you know, patting him down and stuff. it makes sense that with some effort you could figure out if a naked man has a trident in his inventory. also, why would there be a room echo, lag and different messages if it wasn't meant to work this way? and it's not like this makes peek obsolete - peek lets you see what's there silently, and with take you have to accurately guess what's there," I'd probably have been convinced and went on my merry way.

Edoras is straight-up reviled by several players because he frequently defends IMMs on a site where they cannot defend themselves. He is quick to give IMMs the benefit of the doubt or offer explanation of IMM actions that don't involve conspiracies. Edoras also has a rock-solid track record of playing by the rules and with integrity. You could find some posts where I accuse him of abusing a polymorph bug, and I still totally think he did, but I don't doubt for one second that he honestly believed he was playing by the rules. The fact that Edoras, of all people, has said that he saw the take command used in this way, and did not think it was a bug, speaks volumes.

There is more evidence to support the assertion that the player in question did NOT know this was a bug than there is evidence to support your assertion that he did.

I will also say that I can remember off the top of my head multiple times you have admitted to an error, so I know people are wrong when they say you can't. I wouldn't spend time posting in this thread if I thought it was a waste.

I dislike Dulrik, I do not know who La.Bonnita is, and I think the staff was justified in handing out punishment here. I did not abuse this bug despite knowing about it when I played. When I was light aura I used the request command to check aura of NPCs, though, but after a bit of thought I decided that is legitimate but take to check for inventory is not.