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The mist clears somewhat?

Wenchkin

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
:coco:RELAX it is just a game,not a freaking fight against communism.:coco:


Best thing to remember when makinh up an excuse for someones actions is "the shorter the story the less to remember when questioned by 1 or more people".:scholar:you seem to be a nice person and jsu got caught doing something wrong and too embarassed to admit it.


you posted about how you didn't own runics,then later you said about 10 then you cahnged it back to only 4 runic hammers you bought at 18 mil(knowing damn well they should be 40+ mil)that was on a char and you complained that you never got to use the hammers,meaning if you didnt get banned you would have knowingly used a duped hammer to make weapons or armor.:eek:

this is not a personal attack but you wanted specifics to how you changed your story.If I turn out to be wrong about I will admit it and apologize for it.

Why dont you be mature and just admit that you decided to take chance and buy duped hammers(this is more than likely the what happend) to try and even the playing field ,wether in pvp or pvm, you actually got caught the first time you ever did that.I know I have been tempted a time or two to cheat and use a script or speed hack,but if I have to cheat at a game then why play it.Plus(like trying to sell drugs) I am too afraid I would get caught on my first attempt and for the rest of my life I would be known as a drug dealer.
Perhaps you and Betty should try to be a little mature and stop expecting an innocent player to confess sins they didn't commit, to suit you. The whole "confess your sins because all your accounts should have been banned" is (and I'm being nice here) unnecessary and unwarranted. Why should she confess to something she never did? To make you feel better? Get over yourselves. I know Uhallers often think they're special, but that's just daft.

Wenchy
 

Hemisphere

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
yes you appear to have read and understood what i said. i was unsure as to the legality and certainly did not beleive i was doing something illegal so i wished to ensure i was not doing something illegal so i called a gm. the gm appeared and asked me what i paged about so i showed him. and asked if it was illegal. he would not say it was illegal but suggested i stop which i subsequently did. i have no material in store.
i did not know it was illegal when i paged the gm and wanted to clarify if it was or wasnt. im sure a dishonest player would not have bothered paging to check?
and yes i did keep asking if it was illegal as i wanted a definitive answer so i could warn other people off if they were going to do it
So, you found a way to make some sort of cloth ingame, then as you were doing it, the thought struck you that it might not be entirely legal, so you paged a GM to check.

This was probably a crucial mistake really, and if you think about it it's not difficult to work out why. Let's make a real world comparison:

Mr X finds a small quantity of cannabis in a bag in the street. He picks it up, and, upon realising what he's found, heads straight to the police station and hands it in. I think everyone would agree that this is (from a legal standpoint ;)) the right thing to do, and Mr X would be unlikely to find himself in any trouble over this.

Mr Y happens to make a similar discovery. A straight-laced and law-abiding citizen, Mr Y is usually content with a little baccy in his pipe, and has no idea what he's found, but he can't resist the temptation of the unknown, so he smokes a few bowls of the weed. Soon Mr Y is off his face, but a sudden pang of conscience hits him, and he quickly makes his way to the police station to hand in his find. He explains the situation to the police, they give him a drugs test, and he gets a conviction for drug use and possession.

If you thought what you were doing might be illegal, you shouldn't have done it. If you didn't think before you started doing it, then you should have done. I'm not saying it's at all fair that you would be banned over a small slip when many others get away with far worse, but as far as EA's codes of conduct are concerned, banning your account would be fully justified.

You did pretty much put your foot in it by paging the GM and showing him to his face what you were doing. I can believe pretty much without doubt that you were acting in all innocence, but innocence of mind doesn't equate to innocence of wrong-doing, and although you say the cloth is no longer in your possession, if you did anything other than chuck it in the trash then the proceeds of the exploit were kept.

It's all the luck of the draw with these things, and it seems in recent years that EA have been seriously cracking down on everything and everyone that it's in their power to catch. This may not be the FAIR way to handle crime in UO, but it's no different to how things are handled in real life.

If you break the ToS, and they catch you at it, they're going to hit you hard, so you've basically got to either a) follow the ToS like a bible, b) use common sense and if you're not sure if what you're doing is legal, then stop doing it until you can confirm that it is legal. You can ask a GM about it of course, but not after you've already done it!

Edit: You could also consider a third person, Mr Z, he takes it home and smokes it with his mates, and gets away scott free! Life isn't fair, unfortunately, and the same inequalities from real life's justice system exist in UO too ;)
 

Viper09

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
In a game this old, errors will be plentiful, granted this was an error. Not suggesting anything but, hey, no one but you or the gms may truly know if it is an error.
Chances are your ban will not get lifted, and if it did, would you really go back to playing this game? Seriously, just let it go, or at least stop posting about it until you actually get some real feedback.
 

Lucy of Kenton

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
injustice is wrong however its packaged up to be. so fight injustice always
and never back down
:coco:RELAX it is just a game,not a freaking fight against communism.:coco:


Best thing to remember when makinh up an excuse for someones actions is "the shorter the story the less to remember when questioned by 1 or more people".:scholar:you seem to be a nice person and jsu got caught doing something wrong and too embarassed to admit it.


you posted about how you didn't own runics,then later you said about 10 then you cahnged it back to only 4 runic hammers you bought at 18 mil(knowing damn well they should be 40+ mil)that was on a char and you complained that you never got to use the hammers,meaning if you didnt get banned you would have knowingly used a duped hammer to make weapons or armor.:eek:

this is not a personal attack but you wanted specifics to how you changed your story.If I turn out to be wrong about I will admit it and apologize for it.

Why dont you be mature and just admit that you decided to take chance and buy duped hammers(this is more than likely the what happend) to try and even the playing field ,wether in pvp or pvm, you actually got caught the first time you ever did that.I know I have been tempted a time or two to cheat and use a script or speed hack,but if I have to cheat at a game then why play it.Plus(like trying to sell drugs) I am too afraid I would get caught on my first attempt and for the rest of my life I would be known as a drug dealer.
hello raider, i had no runics whatsoever and not sure where you heard that i had as ive said i had none.
 

Wenchkin

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hemi, if that was the case, the GM wouldn't have left her in game. He'd have said "yeah, it's illegal, you're now banned". Not patted her on the head and let her have time to sell all her items before she was finally punished. It's one thing when a GM encounters someone and has to prove they're cheating, but if Lucy demonstrated a dupe in front of him, and the GM thought it was deserving of a ban, her feet shouldn't have touched the ground. The timescales alone don't make this theory add up.

I think we're getting into the realms of the rediculous if we suggest that merely finding some bug and reporting it to the GMs is enough to get you banned.

Wenchy
 

Hemisphere

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hemi, if that was the case, the GM wouldn't have left her in game. He'd have said "yeah, it's illegal, you're now banned". Not patted her on the head and let her have time to sell all her items before she was finally punished. It's one thing when a GM encounters someone and has to prove they're cheating, but if Lucy demonstrated a dupe in front of him, and the GM thought it was deserving of a ban, her feet shouldn't have touched the ground. The timescales alone don't make this theory add up.

I think we're getting into the realms of the rediculous if we suggest that merely finding some bug and reporting it to the GMs is enough to get you banned.

Wenchy
But the GM quite clearly didn't know if it was illegal or not, which is sadly an all too common occurrence since GM's are no longer specifically posted as UO staff now (they work across all Mythic games and possibly other EA games too), so what probably happened was he filed a case report which went into the big pile of "instances to check on the next time we're doing a blanket ban", and when the case log was checked by a superior staff member, they decided it was illegal and banned the account.

It is slightly ridiculous to be banned for paging about a bug, but it's slightly different from a standard bug report when you're essentially saying "well I just DID this, and now I'm going to do it one more time to show you how I did it, and then ask you if it's okay to keep doing it". In so doing you're essentially admitting to exploiting a bug without prior knowledge of it's legality.

What was the bug to make this cloth anyway? That would also be key in determining how the situation should be dealt with.

If it were something you could honestly stumble upon without thinking, like just cutting the clothes with a pair of regular scissors, then it would seem unfair to action an account for this, but if it was something that had numerous steps and was very clearly an exploit and a bug, then by doing this you're placing your account at risk. If nothing happens and it turns out it was legal, then the risk pays off - when the bug gets fixed then you'll probably be left with rares worth millions! People do this all the time, and most of the time it pays off handsomely, but it's a pretty serious game of risk vs. reward, because EA treats every bug differently and you can never be sure exactly how they're going to act, and as I said in recent years they've been getting much more tight on these matters.
 

Fizzleton

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Perhaps you and Betty should try to be a little mature and stop expecting an innocent player to confess sins they didn't commit, to suit you. The whole "confess your sins because all your accounts should have been banned" is (and I'm being nice here) unnecessary and unwarranted. Why should she confess to something she never did? To make you feel better? Get over yourselves. I know Uhallers often think they're special, but that's just daft.

Wenchy
signed.

black betty & raider red are just two examples of a blatent kind of immatureness marauding the forums in their black and white scheme. fatiguing.
 
S

Soulstomp

Guest
so finaly after weeks of inocense , god knows how many posts you placed , playing LOTR and coming back to uo , beeing in WOY a guild that never does exploits or bugs , it seems you are afterall doing a exploit or bug , can only say as i stated many times before they should had banned all your acounts from day 1 , and that counts for all players , i will not do the brocoli dance for you but give you this !!


:lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie:
:lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie::lie:

and the storie continues ,,,
 
S

Stomp

Guest
The supposed bug involved a certain yellow NPC in Nujelm who wears AOS coloured cloth. During the invasion, the NPC could be targetted by a Demon Berzerker and would kill said NPC, as it would any yellow NPCs it encountered. The difference this time is that the clothing was seen as being in somewhat desirable colours and could be taken from the NPC corpse.
Leading the Zerker to the NPC while possibly through normal game play, was a bit of a walk off the beaten track.

The fact that the zerker killed yellow NPCs seemed to be as design, they killed without regard to who / what player or NPC they came across. Someone using this to get clothing from an NPC - questionable - which is why Lucy questioned it - to demonstrate to GM all she needed to do was lure the zerker to the right spot and let it AUTO TARGET the NPC in question. If showing a GM that resulted in a ban - I dont think so.

The cloth in question was also readily available from Asian shards, and from vendors of players who transferred cloth from the Asian shards. If Lucy was guilty of anything here, it was of showing a GM a method that was posted on stratics ( I saw it here ) which was not removed. If in doubt, we should be able to ask a GM to clarify.
 

Hemisphere

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I agree it seems like an unlikely reason for a ban, especially as no action was actually taken at the time, but then EA have lately taken the route of individual investigations followed by all-at-once bans (presumably to save on their limited resources).

It could well be that, lately, instead of reporting straight to the senior GM every time they don't know what to do in a case of possible illegal activity (which is probably almost always if you think about it), they are just writing down a brief case log to be added to a pile, and then examined all at once for the next blanket ban.

If a junior GM has to report to the senior GM every time they get stuck, then that would leave the senior staff completely swamped, and would make the whole customer support system bloated and inefficient.

I don't believe Lucy is trying to hide anything, and if there were any more plausible reasons for the ban she would be quick to volunteer them, so we must take it that either the ban was given for something seemingly insignificant (such as this), or that it was made *completely* in error. Both are distinct possibilities and neither can be ruled out unless EA speaks on the issue, which is the continued hope and point of any of these threads existing.

The other point of this thread though was to speculate as to how exploiting the bug could potentially have been reason for the ban, which is what I was doing in some detail.
 

Ender

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
I don't believe Lucy is trying to hide anything, and if there were any more plausible reasons for the ban she would be quick to volunteer them, so we must take it that either the ban was given for something seemingly insignificant (such as this), or that it was made *completely* in error.
It took until this thread for her to volunteer this information... A couple weeks after the bans happened. That doesn't scream quick to volunteer information to me.
 

Hemisphere

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The original reason stated for the ban was something like "possession of duped items" which is not at all the same thing as the current stated reason "suspected exploitation".
 

christy1221

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The supposed bug involved a certain yellow NPC in Nujelm who wears AOS coloured cloth. During the invasion, the NPC could be targetted by a Demon Berzerker and would kill said NPC, as it would any yellow NPCs it encountered. The difference this time is that the clothing was seen as being in somewhat desirable colours and could be taken from the NPC corpse.
Leading the Zerker to the NPC while possibly through normal game play, was a bit of a walk off the beaten track.

The fact that the zerker killed yellow NPCs seemed to be as design, they killed without regard to who / what player or NPC they came across. Someone using this to get clothing from an NPC - questionable - which is why Lucy questioned it - to demonstrate to GM all she needed to do was lure the zerker to the right spot and let it AUTO TARGET the NPC in question. If showing a GM that resulted in a ban - I dont think so.

The cloth in question was also readily available from Asian shards, and from vendors of players who transferred cloth from the Asian shards. If Lucy was guilty of anything here, it was of showing a GM a method that was posted on stratics ( I saw it here ) which was not removed. If in doubt, we should be able to ask a GM to clarify.

Well if that is how it was done then I'm not sure why anyone should be banned for it when people were aloud to get the spider silk cloth without being banned for it.
 

FisherNap

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Back when I was active in UO, it was always "us vs them" regarding 'them' being the GM's. Sorry to say, but GM's are like police, they need to be there to keep law and order but really they are not your friends. When you see one it's usually because you did something wrong. They can settle disputes but are not experts on the law like judges. All they want you to do is obey the rules and do the right thing, so they can see you as little as possible. They are not trained to judge, and often they are not completely informed.

In this case you paged a GM because:
-you thought you broke the rules
-you knew you used a bug
-you had questionable items in your possession
-you wanted confirmation of legality/illegality
-you were hoping for a reward for going to the authority

In retrospect, I need not remind you how you were in the wrong, but you must also now see how paging a GM was not a good thing to do. GM's are not the law, once again, they are only enforcers. If you broke the rules your best interest was to lay low and make sure you didn't break any more of them. Your conscience may bother you but it's not like real life where if you commit a minor crime you pay a minor penalty. The only penalty that can be given is banning, so why ask for it?

Also, calling a GM is not the correct protocol to report a bug.

If you have questionable items, throw them away. When purple sigil items were popular I was given a pair of sandals and a spellbook by a friend. With much hesitation but no regrets, both went into the trash barrel. Otherwise hide your items and hope they aren't found.

I used to collect rare items, every rare collector that has collected for any amount of time knows that there really is no guarantee that your items are legitimate to own. Now is one of the safest time to own rare things despite the recent bannings; back in the day GM's were delete-happy, and would often get rid of server birth rares, unlocked IGM decorations, and forgotten quest items in player possession. For that reason, almost every major rares collection on Catskills (and I'm sure elsewhere) was in locked houses, with the hopes that by restricting entry it was less likely some jealous spiteful visitor would page a GM for something you owned. Personally, I kept my collection on the small island in Yew which was recall only accessable (and number of visitors was low); still I had several items deleted once, which were probably all legal to own.

The reason I gave that perspective is because it completely surprises me that someone would want to page a GM because of something they own that might not be legal.

Finally, you will never be rewarded for discovering a bug.

Despite my position, I feel bad for your account loss, unfortunately you are not the first or last to be punished in this manner or with minimal justification. I recommend if you feel EA has let you down and hurt your pride irreparably, you close the remainder of your accounts and let your checkbook do the protesting.


Wyatt of Catskills, retired
 

christy1221

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
In this case you paged a GM because:
-you thought you broke the rules
-you knew you used a bug
-you had questionable items in your possession
-you wanted confirmation of legality/illegality
-you were hoping for a reward for going to the authority


Wyatt of Catskills, retired
I have to disagree with you. What rule did she break. if the berseker killed the npc and all she did was loot the clothes how is that any more wrong then the people who picked up the blackrock pillars that were not locked down by accident.

I see no difference, either one wasn't intended to be done. And neither was getting the spider silk cloth.
 

Hemisphere

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Unfortunately EA policy changes every day.

If you remember back to the spiders silk incident, a VERY high proportion of players did NOT make use of the exploit, despite it being incredibly common knowledge, until Wilki confirmed it as being okay.

The fact that Wilki actually had to confirm it was okay should make it clear that it would otherwise be considered "probably not okay".

Common sense (in my mind anyway) dictates that if you're not SURE something is legal, you shouldn't do it! If you do do it without being sure, then at least be aware that you're taking a gamble with your account, and do it as discreetly as possible!

Of course by trying to cover your actions then you're at least in some way accepting that what you're doing might be wrong, and if that doesn't sit well with your conscience you'll need to rectify this, but you still need to lie low and remove any possibly incriminating evidence too!
 

Lucy of Kenton

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
In this case you paged a GM because:
-you thought you broke the rules
-you knew you used a bug
-you had questionable items in your possession
-you wanted confirmation of legality/illegality
-you were hoping for a reward for going to the authority
some assumptions that were not down to me here.
if i thought i had broken the rules i would not have done it
was it a bug? i will leave you do decide.
questionable items? see above re broken rules.
next point i agree with i did seek clarification 'just in case' it was wrong, if i believed it to be wrong would i call a gm to come and see me breaking the rules! im blonde but not that blonde!
a reward? well i sure as hell didnt expect to be banned for it (if that was the reason as i will never know)
 
B

Beldon

Guest
In this case you paged a GM because:
-you thought you broke the rules
-you knew you used a bug
-you had questionable items in your possession
-you wanted confirmation of legality/illegality
-you were hoping for a reward for going to the authority
some assumptions that were not down to me here.
if i thought i had broken the rules i would not have done it
was it a bug? i will leave you do decide.
questionable items? see above re broken rules.
next point i agree with i did seek clarification 'just in case' it was wrong, if i believed it to be wrong would i call a gm to come and see me breaking the rules! im blonde but not that blonde!
a reward? well i sure as hell didnt expect to be banned for it (if that was the reason as i will never know)
Was it the beserker versus yellow NPC or was it something else?
 
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