Dupping - any word on roll-back?

[Yroc Morf]

The thing I don't understand is.. why are the servers still up. I would think this should be subject to an emergency patch at the least to stop it from happening even more and creating a huge mess.

I hope those who dupped will get banned. There is no minor occurance of dupping. Only buyers can be seen as legit depending on the circumstance and those who don't have the last bloods would be full of it and should be punished. People don't buy 10 AAAAs when they don't have 10 LBs.

[Yroc Morf]

Perhaps punishement should equal .. face some sort of consequence.

Furthermore...

Is this problem limited to tradeskill bags? If not, I may unknowingly be contributing to the problem when I don't want to do that. I look at EQlive site, and you would swear no problem exists.

I don't mean to vent on you Ngreth cause I have been following these forums for a long time and I know your awesome. I just don't see why the problem is covered up like some sort of conspiracy.

EQ message of the day at the very least should say there is a problem, and what it impacts so legit players can protect themself and not contribute to the plat vendors.

[Gaell Stormracer]

those who don't have the last bloods would be full of it and should be punished. People don't buy 10 AAAAs when they don't have 10 LBs.

AAAAs are also needed for Bazu augs (and, at a stretch, for Discordant and Chronal stones, although anyone who really went to buy an AAAA + mechanoinstructions for THOSE really need their heads examined) - I doubt the Customer Support people have time to investigate all that stuff in detail. All in all, looks like it'll just have dented the market for those items lately.

(I guess that all this was caused by some sort of bug with Caerlyna, the bag-to-token conversion NPC?)

[Unapuma]

The reason servers can't be taken down is because first: they have to find the bug that's being exploited, revise the codes to fix the bug, test to make sure it works without opening up new exploits, then push it to live. That can take days if not weeks to resolve. The infamous beta npc fiasco were much easier because the fix was to remove the beta NPC. The current bug seems to apply to all vendors (around 100,000 give or take a thousand).

Since removing all vendors would cause a lot of problem, SOE had to contend with letting the bug run loose and having GM watch for suspicious activities and checking the logs for those who may have slipped under GM's noses.

What I don't understand is why didn't SOE change the bags themselves to be unsellable to the vendor. Some items exists in game that are dropable but can't be sold to vendor (like vegetables), making those bags unsellable would have all but stopped the bag bug exploiters until a patch could go in.

As for the EQ Live forum, posts have gone in there but those were quickly moved out of public eyes because it was too revealing in the exploit detail. Had SOE left those posts in, it would have been like waving a banner that implies this exploit is permitted, then a swift kick in the player's bum when their account gets suspended or banned for the exploits.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

FWIW this has not been occurring on The Nameless. No one with large amounts of haversacks, no one selling AAAA other than the 5-6 usual manufacturers, and I havent seen a tae ew bag sold in bazaar for months.

[Bobaten]

Is this problem limited to tradeskill bags? If not, I may unknowingly be contributing to the problem when I don't want to do that.

Pretty much any tradeable bag can be duped (even lore bags). It's just that the vast majority of bags that people care about are made by tradeskills (the main exceptions are the coin weight reduction bags).

[binlaen]

Ok Ngreth, heres my question, sonys petition is so confusing as to be useless. How do we report to sony to get them to pop into the baz, currently theres 45 aaas on my server, know 3 legit sellers, rest never seen before in my life. The 6 ive never seen have most of the aaaa at over 100k less than normal. HOW do we get a dev or someone to pop in and see if its legit gear. I stay away from aaaas myself, just hate exploiters.

bin

[Frango Mint]

FWIW this has not been occurring on The Nameless. No one with large amounts of haversacks, no one selling AAAA other than the 5-6 usual manufacturers, and I havent seen a tae ew bag sold in bazaar for months.

Personally, I disagree. I have seen a large number of AAAAs available on The Nameless in the bazaar recently at prices suddenly at half the previously going rate. It looks very suspecious to me.

[Nolrog]

Ok Ngreth, heres my question, sonys petition is so confusing as to be useless. How do we report to sony to get them to pop into the baz, currently theres 45 aaas on my server, know 3 legit sellers, rest never seen before in my life. The 6 ive never seen have most of the aaaa at over 100k less than normal. HOW do we get a dev or someone to pop in and see if its legit gear. I stay away from aaaas myself, just hate exploiters.

bin

The only thing you can do is to /petition them. If they say something like "yeah, I duped", then you can /report them as well. This is not a dev issue, but a CS one by the way.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Frankly my only answer is the one Nolrog implied. Send a petition, like the interface or not, it is the only method.

And people touched on the why, there is no "fast" solution that we could have used. The server would have been down for DAYS which would be even worse, and again, punishing the innocent, in that case MANY more innocent people.

As it is, the first report of the dupe I saw was days after the patch.

to make the bags unsellable might have been possible, but would have been a total nightmare... I can think of a few solutions... make the bag no-trade, which has its problems, and would have taken the servers down for 4 to 6 hours, punishing innocent people. Or I could have altered merchant markup on all bags to a ridiculous level, say 10k, which again would have taken the servers down for 4 to 6 hours, and made it difficult to buy any bags or tradeskill containers for a while.

There just ended up being no good solution for a "Right Now" fix

[Yroc Morf]

I did petiton this issue and I got a response.

Greetings Yroc,

Thank you for contacting Sony Online Entertainment. This is GM Fenhum at your service. I understand that you are concerned about the players duping the Haversack. I am sorry to hear that you came across such an unfortunate issue in the game. We are looking into the issue and I assure that appropriate actions will be taken against the players who are found violating the rules of the game. If you come across a player whom you think is duping the item, please provide us the name of the player so that we could look into the issue. I am leaving the request open for further communication, please get back to us if you have further query or if you could provide us the name of the player indulged in such activities. Your efforts and help in such kind of issues is highly appreciated. Wish you good hunting, and safe travels.

Regards,
Game Master Fenhum

So I proceeded to send them a list of the players I suspect are duping AAAAs and haversacks. I figure the GMs can sort them out by looking at their logs although I could not recall the name of one player on Bert who was selling them in /auction only the other day. I am guessing some of those who are selling likely bought them from the cheaters. Either way, I hope GMs take the time to rectify the situation properly.

[Rawckett]

Hmmm, didn't know this was going on. No wonder why I haven't been contacted by my normal contact to make any AAAAs in a while.

[Itek]

Ok, here's a reality check for folks.

I bought a Ta Eae Hide Sack a week or two ago in the bazaar. It was the only one for sale, it was 50k plat. It most likely was legit.

I did not know about any possible exploit.

BUT...

What if the bag I bought was exploited ? Will the bag be removed ? What about all the gear I have in the bag ? Will my honestly earned and spent plat be refunded ?

If you can make a plausible fair solution to that problem, times hundreds of people for thousands of transactions your name is Soloman.

Player-wipe. It's the only way to be sure. (That's a !$%!#$ JOKE for the humor impaired, not a serious suggestion. Don't, repeat DO NOT, pretend it is an actual suggestion.)

[EonBlue]

To be honest I'm happy that AAAA prices are finally realistic. Previous to the exploit AAAA's on bertox have been 350-500kpp each, no thanks to the people who buy them up and sell them at a higher price. Unfortunatly bertox is the only server in which you could flood the market with an item and it goes back to a realistic price as opposed to a cheap as hell one. They are 150kpp-280kpp on baz, 30 or so on market; I consider 200kpp to be realistic. It's a shame crafters are being screwed but paying 200k OVER normal price is pretty lame too. (they cost what 40k-90kpp to make?)

[Ngreth Thergn]

(they cost what 40k-90kpp to make?)

assuming no fails an all drops are "free" (you got em "yourself", etc.) about 18k.

You should expect some fails in there though. There are many combines.