Dupping - any word on roll-back?

[binlaen]

Ok, I hear theres a "aaa" and "haversack" duplication going on. Has anyone got any confirmation on this?
Will this mean another roll back for servers or just individuals?
Bin

[Ngreth Thergn]

It is more likely to result in individual player bans or rollbacks. It would be exceedingly un-likely that a server-wide rollback would happen. The results of that are far worse than any influx of platinum.

[binlaen]

Good to hear, your always right on top of it Ngreth, and we appreciate it.

Bin

[Catweazel]

This is your chance as a community to report suspicious quantities of these items and to be careful when purchasing them if they seem like a bargain "too good to be true".

As an example, there were 3 people selling 8AAAA +2Holepokers, 6AAAA and 3AAAA respectively all within a few hours. Leatherfoot Haversacks were in such numerous quantities people were buying 40 and 50 at a time between their alts.

If the patch on Tuesday was meant to fix the dup bug, it either did not work, or these people waited a few days before bringing out their stash.

Of course they could have just camped the nearly 100 gnome bolts, 80 small bricks of unrefined ore and 20 or so shadowmane pelts....and waited for this precise time to make them all.

[Dyllwin]

I think I've just been an unwitting victim in the Haversack dupe I sell em on Cazic, and found one person with a couple at 3k each. I bought them to resell thinking he was just offloading a few he had on a mule, and bought the next few he put up as well. When he brought out yet another ten tokens, I realized something was up and came here.

Is something being done about this? I don't want problems on my account because I fell for someone selling at low prices....

[Abazagaroth]

What's really sad is how every single time this happens, there are always people that get away with it and manage to keep their ill-gotten gains, even if they are rolled back. I won't say how, though any eq vet should know. I just wish that loophole would be fixed.

[Bobaten]

No, what's really sad is how long this dupe was allowed to continue after being reported. This bug went in a month ago (7/5) and was reported on the eqlive boards the next day. After I reported the thread as containing a dupe exploit it was moved/locked. I was suprised the patch on the 12th didn't fix it, let alone the patches that followed. I wouldn't expect any roll backs just because the bug was around for so long.
The dupe itself is so obvious that I have run into the situation that creates the dupe 4-5 times in the last month just doing normal skill ups.

[Tobynn]

Dupe sellers are rampant in bazaar on Bristlebane. The prices of containers continue to plummet almost hourly as all the cheaters try to outsell one another. Out of curiosity, my tradermule spammed looking to buy Tae Ew Sacks "in bulk" and had two different people in tells within a few minutes time, each one apparently able to provide my requested 40 sacks on the spot for such a sweeeet deal. Ran the some routine next day on my buyermule, looking for package deal on 24 AAAAs, and again arranged a ridiculously cheap purchase price. Woot! Its my lucky day! Not.

I'm not stupid enough to purchase any of it and suffer the resulting consequences. I genuinely hope there is more than just 'talk' that occurs to penalize anyone who played a part in this mess. Reports were shushed, locked and hidden. Its too bad the whipsmart people generally arrange to dodge the severity of an exploit rollback, leaving only the unwitting and unsuspecting to experience the complete effects of the hammer coming down.

Makes me sad in the pants, to think that some fellow tradeskillers may have jumped on this wagon. /whimper

Edit: To remove my accusatory emotional outburst attitude problem!~

[KyrosKrane]

I just spoke to Fairan (formerly known as Nome), the current lead programmer for EQ, earlier today at the Fan Faire. The issue was definitively identified and fixed just two days ago -- according to what he said, it took them a while to nail the exact cause. There's going to be a patch on or around Wednesday to correct it. It would be sooner, but Fairan himself is in charge of handling patches, and obviously being at the Fan Faire, there's not much he can do until he gets back.

It's not "cheating" in the sense that there's no hacking or 3rd-party software involved. It's just exploiting, which is taking advantage of unintended behavior in the game itself. As to what will happen to the exploiters, I don't know. Fairan did mention that they're able to track the dupes, and that customer service folks have been monitoring the situation. He said that rollbacks are unlikely, but CS does have the ability to selectively remove items that are considered improperly gained. He mentioned that verified cheating is usually an automatic ban, but exploiting is considered less severe, so the penalty isn't always a ban.

[Alaene_CT]

I got caught out by this, in a big way... I'm always keeping an eye out for AAAA, and after a very long period of scarcity a few appeared in the bazaar on CT just three or four days ago. I spent almost 2 million plat on what I thought was a great deal as someone claimed to be selling their hoarde in order to pay off a debt.

Within 5 minutes another toon appeared, with another dozen AAAA at equally low prices. I was instantly suspicious and petitioned, giving the names of the parties I'd transacted with. There have been increasing numbers of vendors selling large quantities of AAAA in the bazaar ever since.

After reading the above I'm not anticipating an acceptable outcome. I guess I'll wait with baited breath until we see what happens.

[Unapuma]

I had picked up a bunch of tae ew hide sacks from someone who claimed to be retiring a monk- very cheap. Now that this thread came up (plus several posts on EQLive that seems to vanish to mod only section before I could read), I wonder if I'm holding the duped bags and not legimate bags.

If SOE is going to remove thye duped bags, will there be any compenstation for the unwilling victims like full refund, taken out of the duper's pocket?

I had planned to use the bags for my monk with a couple on my main but it's sitting untouched in the bank for now.

Looking back, I did notice there were many AAAA for under 150k (all seems to have vanished though) and someone was offering them for 90k. I think it costs more in vendor only items to make than 90k would cover. >_< Currently there is no leatherfoot haversack and very few tae ew bags.

Oh yeah one question: if the bug was in place for about a month, why was it the posting on EQLive, the volume on Bazaar, etc didn't flare up until a few days ago? Someone blabbed the duping details in public?

[Bobaten]

Well just because I've known about the bug for a month, doesn't mean that the people who chose to abuse it knew about it for that long. Even the posters on EQ live where I originally read about it described it as an annoying bug, missing the fact that they had actually discovered a way of generating infinite items. I've been watching the bazaar for a sudden spike in AAAA's and Haversacks since then, and I still have yet to see any appear on Prexus As of a week ago(when I went on vacation), there was still a buyer offering 125k each for AAAA's (which by the way cost under 20k in vendor parts, 90k would still be a slight profit including buying the farmed parts).

[Tobynn]

90k! Wow, they're still selling the expensive ones on your server!

We've got a couple different bazaar bots in /auction selling AAAAs for 50k a pop, and the spam is incessant. Unlimited supply, doncha know ~

[Yroc Morf]

Errors like this need to be addressed ASAP.

It is easy to strip dupped items from people (perhaps). but how are they going to roll back AAAAs that are combined into augs.

EQ will just stick their heads in the sand once again, and those who took advantage purposely or not will benefit from the exploit.

[Ngreth Thergn]

While I understand frustration at "letting people get away with it" I expect they will be looking for some sort of threshold and dealing with it. We don;t announce things like that.

But yes some people that only abused it minorly will get away with it, simply because the people that only minorly abused it will realistically be detectable over someone who legitimately made a number of those items, and int he end we would prefer to let a few guilty get away instead of punishing many innocent people.