Tradeskill Item Duping Sarym

[belguard]

There seems to be a lot of duping going for the last several weeks on Sarym server for the Porous Loam, Exquisite Marrow and Exquisite Spinnerette Fluid.

The reason I say this is because I always have a buyer up matching or very close to the next highest buyer on these items so I know it is not anyone reselling or they would be doing it at a loss since the prices are dropping almost daily. Since they made the changes to the drop rate I know these items have gotten rare. In the last couple weeks prices have dropped at least 50 percent or more due to how many are all of a sudden being sold. My trader has bought at least 60 to 80 Porous Loam, Exquisite Marrow or Exquisite Spinnerette Fluid in the last two weeks about 25 millions platinum worth. Mostly in large quantities from people who just seem to all of a sudden get a large stash and endless supplies. Most of these people also have large quantity of phosphene for sale. On Sarym there is only one guild in Solteris and they are no where close to farming status. There is no way certain bazaar bots can be selling thousands or phosphene.

If Ngreth took the time to make the drop rates on these items more rare so not everyone would have them I strongly suggest looking at some of the traders on Sarym selling them and also have phosphene for sale. If not there will be a ton of sublime augments and elegant armor for sale in the bazaar.

Belguard
Sarym

[melkorr]

I would suggest contacting the devs in a more direct way. Like the EQLive boards. Though the items are tradeskill related, any duping which is going on would not be a tradeskill-related issue.

[Wyvernwill]

It may not even be duping to be honest. I don't know Saryrn's Solteris situation for raid guilds, but if someone is ghosting the kills in Solteris, ghost farming tradeskill drops would be a joke. While it "could" be a dupe, you might also be barking up the wrong "broken" branch.

[melkorr]

Either way, it's still something worth pointing out to the devs.

[belguard]

Saryrn's Solteris progression status is there are currently two guilds in Solteris. One guild is up to arms being open and the other one just in the last couple weeks beat the sisters. This limits the amount of Phosphenes that people can sell in the bazaar since there us currently not a large player base capable of using them.

Yesterday when I initially posted there was three people selling phosphene in the bazaar. One of them went from having 850 to 1300 for sale. Everytime the quantity drops it goes back up.

Duping tradeskill items on the other hand would be much more easy to sell since at any time you can check buyers in the bazaar and make several million platinum instantly. This is getting to be a real problem.

I have submitted some information to SOE and hopefully this matter is being looked into.

Belguard

[Grayven]

Sadly, there will always be bugs that allow less then honorable players from expoiting some weakness. The best we can do is report it to SoE and let them sort it out and distribute any measure of retribution they can. I only hope the number of innocent people caught in the crossfire can be reduced.

[Bupper]

The same thing happened last week on Quellious. I spent a couple of hours trying to petition the person doing it, whom EQLive showed to be level 80, 300+ AAs, about 7 days total "played" time, created in January 2008. I watched this individual go around to every buyer in Bazaar, selling dozens of Porous Loam, Exquisite Marrow and Exquisite Spinnerettes at a time (I saw their buy lines disappear one by one), then heading out again somewhere for a few hours, anon. Unfortunately, I suspect my petitions never got through because I couldn't solve the horrible in-game interface.

[melkorr]

Ok, I understand there are bad people out there, and that so long as there are rules, there will be people who break those rules. But:

1. Not everyone who levels fast is breaking any rules. I can powerlevel a lowbie from 1 to 50 in a couple nights.

2. 7 days playtime is more than it looks. That's how long they've been logged on, so if I assume 4 hours a night of playtime, every night, it's actually 42 days of earth time. Not counting weekends, thats 8.4 weeks, which is realistic for someone leveling alts.

3. Just because someone found a spot to get rare drops, doesn't mean they're breaking the rules. If someone's found a good spot to farm drops, it's perfectly possible to horde large amounts of items. It could also be someone playing the bazaar, and buying up supplies when prices dip for a day or 2.

I'm not saying that these people aren't cheating. I'm saying that judging them after an instant's glance, like seeing them sell items, or noticing that it only took them 168 hours of actual time playing to advance to level 80, will turn EQ into a cheater witchhunt.

Something needs to be done about people who ruin the game for everyone else. That something does not include resurrecting McCarthyism in EQ.

[Bupper]

.I'm not saying that these people aren't cheating. I'm saying that judging them after an instant's glance, like seeing them sell items, or noticing that it only took them 168 hours of actual time playing to advance to level 80, will turn EQ into a cheater witchhunt.

Something needs to be done about people who ruin the game for everyone else. That something does not include resurrecting McCarthyism in EQ.

This was no instant's glance. I first grew suspicious when someone sold me 10 porous loams at once, though I was not the highest-priced buyer. I then noticed that this someone also went around selling to several others in Bazaar and that all the buy lines paying above 100k for porous loam, exquisite marrow and exquisite spinnerettes were bought out. Then about 10 hours later, I noticed the same thing happening again. The same individual again sold 30+ more porous loam and other rare tradeskill drops. I followed behind him as he visited buyer after buyer, and watched their buy lines drop with /barter. Meanwhile, I looked up the seller in EQLive.

Yes, it is possible to get level 80 and several hundred AAs legitimately with less than a week's total playing time. Yes, it is possible to hoarde tradeskill drops for a long time and then suddenly decide to cash out for tens of millions in one day. But is it McCarthyism to petition what I observed?

I have no power to ban anyone. I have not mentioned any names here. It was my responsibility to our community to call attention to these suspicious actions and to encourage the GMs to investigate. Unfortunately, I had to give up after struggling for a couple of hours with the in-game petition system, because of travel commitments. Since I returned to town a few days ago, I have not seen this character online. Meanwhile though, his EQLive profile has been turned anonymous.

[melkorr]

I was not specifically referring to your post. Yes, I do believe I would of petitioned had I seen that, and you're right, it does seem very suspicious.

It just seems that people have begun to associate any gains in the game which are the least bit expedient with cheaters. I do think cheaters are a big problem in EQ, and I think Sony needs to do more to stop people from wrecking the game. What I don't think is that everyone who levels fast or hordes tradeskill items is a cheater.

It's not just here, but between these boards, the EQLive boards, and ingame chat, people that do anything that others haven't accomplished are increasingly being labeled as cheaters.

[belguard]

Well in the last two days I have easily bought over 30 porous loam, exquisite spinnerette and marrow from just one person probably could have bought a lot more but ran out of platinum on buyer. Sure they all could be perfectly legit and the person is just trying to dump their stock. Unfortunetly I do not believe this is the case since this is the same person I watch auction large quantities of these items during last weekend. In which the quantities they where auctioning went down to almost nothing so I don't see how they could have acquired such a large build up in such a short time again. Also person just logs in auctions quickly then dumps rest on buyers.

I know I can't report evertime(did) I suspect something is not right. Maybe I should just accept it and make as much elegant armor and sublimes augs as I can. I easily have enough to fill up 8 bags worth of sublime augs and full sets or armor.

Belguard

[belguard]

It saddens me to report that the situation on Saryrn remains the same. Still mass quantities of porous loam, exquisite marrow and spinnerette fluid is being dumped into the market. I think these items are becoming more common then the items below it. In a few months everyone will have elegant armor with sublime augs.

I know a lot of people including myself who are frustrated over the increase number of exploits people are being allowed to get away with. You ask people what is the reason they log in to play and a lot of them will say to play with friends. Well a lot of my friends are leaving over these exploits, item duping, ghost killing then I will have no reason to log in anymore myself.

Sony needs to figure out a way to detect when items are being duped or mobs being ghost killed instead of spamming us with daily LoN news. I really don't understand how they are making money off that since I know the LoN starter sets and booster packs are being duped then being sold for cash.

[thomenthechanter]

Was today's emergency patch to fix the problem on Saryrn? ;D

[Nolrog]

Was today's emergency patch to fix the problem on Saryrn? ;D

I don't think so. There were a large number of recipes that weren't working at all. Something about how the servers not booting properly after the DST restart.

You should /feedback this in game, and maybe send one of the devs a PM with as many details as you have, so they can look into it.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Monday's bounce was to fix bad file loads on the servers. This happened to affect tradeskills.

Today's downtime is network maintenance. They are replacing a major switch.

Tomorrow's downtime is a DATA (no code) patch. Without code changes, there will be no fix to this type of bug

They decided not to try and combine today's downtime with the patch because it could mean the servers would not be up until the evening.