I see lots of comments about buggy code, not their fault etc etc, but after one youtube search, its clear that pretty much nobody in this thread has seen the video or knows what actually happened.
For those wondering, the guild actually dumped a bunch of metals and lumber into the sea, in an effort to get the boss to stay in a specific area (which turns out, worked). The boss didn't glitch, the players took specific steps to ensure the boss would not be movable.
Now....is that an exploit?....considering that its a "sandbox" (i use that term loosely here..), I would chalk that up to "clever use of game mechanics", but it also seems like a member of the guild tried to actually blackmail Trion afterwards, thus the permaban.
Everything I just wrote took all of 45 seconds of internet usage to find out...
Funny enough, because these tactics were commonly used in Ultima Online. Back before the game turned into a brofest, there really weren't any mobs that took entire groups, or raids to kill them. But without use of placed objects, like crates or chests, some of them would be incredibly difficult to kill and you'd likely burn up all of your resources trying, if you attempted it solo. There was a mob area in an ice dungeon that actually had a small room inside, where you could cast spells through a small hole through a wall, if you were standing on a certain tile. Almost as if it was designed like that by the developers. Origin was apparently okay with these tactics, though, killing one of those creatures didn't really come with a 'server first' type of recognition either. Nor did they typically drop such epic loot. UO was more of a grind for power though, as it's economy was set up quite differently.
What I'm trying to get at is, the tactics seemed quite similar, but one company bans while the other accepted it as a viable tactics. Not that it matters, if you make use of an exploit in most games, you could be in trouble. Considering the power of the loot and the reputation of a server first, it seems as though a temp-ban would be reasonable, along with deleting the loot. Perma-banning a lot of people who may have not realized what they were doing was a big deal is a bit overboard.
If they had been smart, they should have submitted a ticket to the devs saying what happened and no one would have been banned. But they chose to bragg about it.
From what is posted above they created the exploit.
Let me get this straight, you found a bug, you exploited the bug, you went online in facebook and posted a video bragging about it and you question why you got banned? Shameful what the devs did, how they dare to do such and atrocity? What a nerve they have to humiliate "innocent" players like that, shame, shame, shame!!!!
(SARCASM FULLY AND TOTALLY INTENDED)
Bla bla bla!
Now take it logic. A full guild taking on a boss fight. They even uploaded the video on youtube. All of them were on TS. Now, do you really believe that they knew how to exploit the boss and do this intentionally? No! If you want to exploit something, you go "duck" . You do not upload, nor make it public. Think LOGIC. The boss got stuck in a bad animation or some kind of a bug. Anyone would have killed it and this guild even made everything public.
Some quotes from their forum :
"we put 10s of 1000s of golds into legit attempts all week. No freebies for a random east raid because the fish decided to break."
Originally Posted by KRAANIMAL
Even if you didn't do this on purpose, by continuing shooting after the glitch happened, you took a conscious choice to take advantage of a game glitch. Therefore this should be considered exploiting.
Trion, what are you going to do about this?
Reply : Let me ask you this: Have you ever run GHA? What do you think the consequences should be of virtually everyone who has ever run that dungeon? Also keep in mind that people running GHA did the glitch intentionally. I'm unaware of anyone else doing what happened to us. We're unaware if it's even able to be replicated, or even how to do it at this point. We'll need to review the film to see if we can find exactly at what point it happened to search for anomalies.
Also, keep in mind that boss did react, did hit, but didn't actually used all his skills. So that is a boss code bug.
And, please, stop with this bullshit that they should have stopped hitting the boss if they saw he didn't used X skill as it should. OF COURSE they keep hitting it and in the end killed it. I mean c'mon! You just don't wipe out several times in a week, and spend resource to kill it and in the end, to say to the lots of the guild members who participated in the event "Hey guys? ... please stop hitting, let's wipe. The boss does not use his standard skills" . COME ON!
Trion decided to perma ban those who participated in an attempt to "look good" in front of the community. Every company with a bit of a head, would just remove the loot from the players, and make everything public about the boss bug and announce a fix "as soon as possible" . I am sure that neither Trion nor XL knows what really happened. They will go like "A...let's restart the server. Things will get back to normal" and bum! Easy fix.
Trion can't wash their hands with this stupid mass perma ban. They are bad! Period!
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy? Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
If they had been smart, they should have submitted a ticket to the devs saying what happened and no one would have been banned. But they chose to bragg about it.
What I've been thinking as I've pondered this whole thing -- sure, go ahead and finish the fight, exploit and all. HOWEVER, seeing that it took more than a little while, have several guildmates submit tickets explaining the exploit, etc. My guess is that Trion might not have even taken away the loot, let alone banned everyone/guild. But because they knowingly exploited then wrote / bragged about it and then attempted to "blackmail" Trion into giving them some sort of in-game compensation, the hammer hit. I just hope those in the surrounding areas were carrying umbrellas and wearing raingear to avoid the spatter.
Really?
The video is public. Read the forums from Trion and you will see the members from that guild are talking about this BEFORE the bans. Is their stupid game, they should read their forums. Is their bug. They didn't hide nothing. What else the guild should do? Contact Trion in private? NO! Make everything public which means they had nothing to hide and wanted people to know how they killed the boss.
About the "blackmail". Are you serious? Even if they attempt to get something back, I think they had a point. They found the bug. It's not a common bug. No one could do that again . IF it was a bug which will in the end ruin the game economy or some short, then yes, you MAY got a point. But no, it was a boss "bug" which, I am pretty sure that if they want to replicate the process ( or anyone else ) they will not be able to do it.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy? Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
I haven't been a fan of Trion since Rift went F2P. However, in this situation, Their hands truly are tied. Trion does not have access to the code, they cannot fix this bug. XL has to be the one to fix the bug. That leaves Trion in the position if being stuck with this bug. Since they cannot fix it, all they can do is manage it. That's what they've done.
I haven't been a fan of Trion since Rift went F2P. However, in this situation, Their hands truly are tied. Trion does not have access to the code, they cannot fix this bug. XL has to be the one to fix the bug. That leaves Trion in the position if being stuck with this bug. Since they cannot fix it, all they can do is manage it. That's what they've done.
Exactly the point. I hate Trion with all my soul but cheating, abusing exploits have not place in MMOs. You (in general) who support the guild position are wrong.
I haven't been a fan of Trion since Rift went F2P. However, in this situation, Their hands truly are tied. Trion does not have access to the code, they cannot fix this bug. XL has to be the one to fix the bug. That leaves Trion in the position if being stuck with this bug. Since they cannot fix it, all they can do is manage it. That's what they've done.
Exactly the point. I hate Trion with all my soul but cheating, abusing exploits have not place in MMOs. You (in general) who support the guild position are wrong.
So Trion are totally blameless, even though from reading all these post. It seems this is a known bug/exploit in KR version that got carried over here, but XL refuses to fix?
Let me ask you this. If you own a car dealership, and you buy cars from Ford to sell on your lot. Notice that there is a problem with a certain Ford series. Point it out to Ford, and they refuse to fix it. But you keep selling it, and refuse to put pressure on Ford to fix it. Do you seriously believe you are blameless in it?
It does not matter if they exploited or not. When you agree you carry a product. You carry as much blame and guilt as the creator of it. It's Trion job to get on XL about fixing it or using their own resources to fix it. If they can't even manage that then they need to turn it over to someone that can.
In War - Victory. In Peace - Vigilance. In Death - Sacrifice.
So Trion are totally blameless, even though from reading all these post. It seems this is a known bug/exploit in KR version that got carried over here, but XL refuses to fix?
Let me ask you this. If you own a car dealership, and you buy cars from Ford to sell on your lot. Notice that there is a problem with a certain Ford series. Point it out to Ford, and they refuse to fix it. But you keep selling it, and refuse to put pressure on Ford to fix it. Do you seriously believe you are blameless in it?
It does not matter if they exploited or not. When you agree you carry a product. You carry as much blame and guilt as the creator of it. It's Trion job to get on XL about fixing it or using their own resources to fix it. If they can't even manage that then they need to turn it over to someone that can.
It's not about them being blameless, it's about the guild being not smart.... a company is responsible for bugs yes, but if there's a known bug, exploiting it is doing nothing more than asking for punishment. That's just the way it is. Been that way since I can remember, I remember the cries over temp bans in SWG for exploiting the over-spawn in the Singing Mountain Clan nightsister caves. Even after multiple bans people were still going there... Players simply never learn...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
So Trion are totally blameless, even though from reading all these post. It seems this is a known bug/exploit in KR version that got carried over here, but XL refuses to fix?
It's pretty simple. Don't cheat. Well, that's it for that topic.
I seem to remember some test where someone left a wallet out in public to test people's honesty. A good amount of people in certain cities returned the wallets but less than half of all the wallets were returned over all.
One could say "you don't want to be stolen from don't lose your wallet".
Obviously this is not stealing but what you are saying is that players can't be honest and have to be protected from themselves. Doesn't say much about he people in this hobby does it if they can't be good community members and not take advantage of the situation. Especially since there was a lot of work that went into glitching this boss.
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It's never too late to do the right thing. I would do the same. Ban the fluff out of those idiots. They seriously used a known exploit to kill the boss,and then instead of deleting any loot and contacting support to report it, went on to ask Trion to rune their armor(??!!!!) and give them in game rewards for the time they spent making a video that explained the exploit. This is beyond f@ktard. Even if it was just one guy attempting the extortion,the whole guild deserves to be banned simply for allowing such sh!t brained players to lead them.
Hmm, having now watched the guild video, the bug took effect at between 70 and 65% mob health. The mob could no longer path because of junk they dropped in the water, so when its hate list cycled to, well, anyone, it couldn't move, and just sat there like a fat, rubbery, tuna-smelling pinata.
My earlier point, though, I think was valid. They understood the fight's mechanisms and likely could have done it without dropping stuff in the ocean. I don't think they needed to exploit, and that's the dumbest thing of the whole situation.
Hmm, having now watched the guild video, the bug took effect at between 70 and 65% mob health. The mob could no longer path because of junk they dropped in the water, so when its hate list cycled to, well, anyone, it couldn't move, and just sat there like a fat, rubbery, tuna-smelling pinata.
My earlier point, though, I think was valid. They understood the fight's mechanisms and likely could have done it without dropping stuff in the ocean. I don't think they needed to exploit, and that's the dumbest thing of the whole situation.
Well they actually wanted to brag that trion won't do anything to them because they spend a lot of money in AA and they did brag in game which were screen shotted and sent to Trion, they literally were begging to be banned.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
I haven't been a fan of Trion since Rift went F2P. However, in this situation, Their hands truly are tied. Trion does not have access to the code, they cannot fix this bug. XL has to be the one to fix the bug. That leaves Trion in the position if being stuck with this bug. Since they cannot fix it, all they can do is manage it. That's what they've done.
You make a point. Unfortunately, it is not the one you are trying to make. Yes, Trion is left with managing the matter. Point being, they haven't been doing a very good job at managing the game overall and that is why Trion is being criticized for their response in this matter. You can't, on the one hand, say that this is a sandbox so all types of unruly behavior is acceptable, and then punish a guild for behaving in an unruly manner to get ahead.
An argument could be made that the blocking and limiting of Levi's movement at sea in an effort to kill it and pillage it can be seen as much of a strategically tactical move as the blocking of players from crossing a bridge, where they are left with no other remedy or alternative, before they are pillaged by the perpetrators.
Since it's initial release Trion has attempted to portray AA as basically EVE at sea. A sandbox type atmosphere where unruly pirates lie at every corner and everything goes. Players get ripped off in land purchases, sheisty land barons go unpunished using obvious exploits, completing runs through TP exploits etc and so forth. None of it has been dealt with assertively in the past. Instead their community has been condition to accept this type of douchy behavior. This is why the AA community is repeatedly heard resonating the precedent Trion themselves set when all of this anti-social behavior was being presented to them, that this is a sandbox and anything goes.
Trion's inconsistency in managing AA is one, if not the, major reason that AA receives so much criticism. I think that the major consensus about AA is that it is a good game, ruined by poor management. Their failure to manage the game in a fair, proper and consistent manner is exactly the reason why this punishment by Trion is being received with so much criticism. They are, in essence, reaping what they sew, and they have only themselves to blame.
I wonder what these posts would look like had the thread been "Guild exploits Boss, Trion/XL lets them keep the cred and rewards"...lol
Trion has done that in the past, on more than one occasion, with their buddy raid guilds. They've had raid guilds they hand picked for testing find exploits and use them on the live server after the xpac launched. They've had top raid guilds repeatedly massively exploit game mechanics, to the detriment of the game community, gave them a week ban and let them keep their gains because it was too convoluted for them to sort it out.
Everyone in the guild who exploited this should be disciplined, but a mass blanket perma ban seems a little excessive given their inconsistency in this area. This seems much more like a PR move. If they were seriously concerned about players exploiting they would make more PSAs about bans in Rift and AA for other dungeons and raids. People run exploits daily, on the dailies.
We are bringing up Rift's recent "we quit and going to WoW" dram here now? That guild was quite a good raiding guild but they were bunch of assholes, when i was playing on eu servers during SL time we suddenly saw someone quit that guild and join the one i was in. he was invited in the guild by their leader despite constantly telling that he can't be hardcore raider. He said it would be for 2 weeks and they needed a good healer, their healer was getting baby or something, so he was literally begged into joining and finally the raid day came, he was fine with doing 2 runs for nearly 3 hours but at he was at his limit and said "i can't do it anymore" and the amount of trash talk they spilled toward him were outstanding, they even brought it on game chat. They were assholes but i can assure you they never were the kind of people who would knowingly exploit something. Even the latest drama regarding the t3 raid, they thought blocking with pets were part of design and did not bother reporting it to trion but when they started streaming it after raid went live and Trion saw it, shit just hit the fan and they as usual started using nasty words in pm towards ocho and raid lead designer and finally getting forum banned.
And you are expecting Trion to make daily report about banning bots in dungeons and raids in Rift or AA? Well that would make an interesting report for sure but just as you are saying it now; you would say :" this is a PR move, thousands of people exploit everyday but they are only banning 100!!".
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
I haven't been a fan of Trion since Rift went F2P. However, in this situation, Their hands truly are tied. Trion does not have access to the code, they cannot fix this bug. XL has to be the one to fix the bug. That leaves Trion in the position if being stuck with this bug. Since they cannot fix it, all they can do is manage it. That's what they've done.
Exactly the point. I hate Trion with all my soul but cheating, abusing exploits have not place in MMOs. You (in general) who support the guild position are wrong.
So Trion are totally blameless, even though from reading all these post. It seems this is a known bug/exploit in KR version that got carried over here, but XL refuses to fix?
Let me ask you this. If you own a car dealership, and you buy cars from Ford to sell on your lot. Notice that there is a problem with a certain Ford series. Point it out to Ford, and they refuse to fix it. But you keep selling it, and refuse to put pressure on Ford to fix it. Do you seriously believe you are blameless in it?
It does not matter if they exploited or not. When you agree you carry a product. You carry as much blame and guilt as the creator of it. It's Trion job to get on XL about fixing it or using their own resources to fix it. If they can't even manage that then they need to turn it over to someone that can.
This decision is pure .. "political" . It was a BUG, not an exploit. I think they need to check out what an exploit is and what a bug is.
Exploiting a bug is still exploiting.
I dunno, if I were doing a raid or dungeon and the endboss suddenly starts to bugg I would probably kill it anyways instead of playing the entire thing another round (and it could mess up again)... In that case it wouldn't really be an exploit. I would have reported it as a bugg afterwards (even though I would have been a bit pissed if they would have removed my loot after reading the report since it wasn't my fault that I couldn't fairly kill the boss). But banning people for not reporting a bug is really tough.
If on the other hand they knew how to get the boss to bugg and actively exploited it they do deserve getting banned but that isn't the same thing at all.
Since I am not really sure which way it happened I can't say if it was fair or not.
This decision is pure .. "political" . It was a BUG, not an exploit. I think they need to check out what an exploit is and what a bug is.
Exploiting a bug is still exploiting.
I dunno, if I were doing a raid or dungeon and the endboss suddenly starts to bugg I would probably kill it anyways instead of playing the entire thing another round (and it could mess up again)... In that case it wouldn't really be an exploit. I would have reported it as a bugg afterwards (even though I would have been a bit pissed if they would have removed my loot after reading the report since it wasn't my fault that I couldn't fairly kill the boss). But banning people for not reporting a bug is really tough.
If on the other hand they knew how to get the boss to bugg and actively exploited it they do deserve getting banned but that isn't the same thing at all.
Since I am not really sure which way it happened I can't say if it was fair or not.
The allegation is that they were dropping materials in the ocean, which "physically" created barriers, so as to restrict the mob's movement. At around 16 min in the guild video, they are heard being celebratory because the pathing had been limited and for all participants to "not move", else it might free the mob from the exploitive practice.
This decision is pure .. "political" . It was a BUG, not an exploit. I think they need to check out what an exploit is and what a bug is.
Exploiting a bug is still exploiting.
I dunno, if I were doing a raid or dungeon and the endboss suddenly starts to bugg I would probably kill it anyways instead of playing the entire thing another round (and it could mess up again)... In that case it wouldn't really be an exploit. I would have reported it as a bugg afterwards (even though I would have been a bit pissed if they would have removed my loot after reading the report since it wasn't my fault that I couldn't fairly kill the boss). But banning people for not reporting a bug is really tough.
If on the other hand they knew how to get the boss to bugg and actively exploited it they do deserve getting banned but that isn't the same thing at all.
Since I am not really sure which way it happened I can't say if it was fair or not.
The allegation is that they were dropping materials in the ocean, which "physically" created barriers, so as to restrict the mob's movement. At around 16 min in the guild video, they are heard being celebratory because the pathing had been limited and for all participants to "not move", else it might free the mob from the exploitive practice.
Again, an argument could be made that it is as much strategically tactical as it is exploitive. What they did is really no different than what RL fishermen do to fish at sea. They trap them limiting their movement before reeling them in and killing them.
So using the environment to give you a tactical edge is exploitation? As I said before something that should have been fixed long ago is on the Devs not the players.
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Again, an argument could be made that it is as much strategically tactical as it is exploitive.
I agree, though it was clear that they were exploiting the situation, I could very well see people saying "let's use the tools at our disposal to block it off much like any sandbox game would allow.
I think it's their behavior during and afterwards that is a larger issue.
They could have reached out to Trion to make sure it was legit. And if they then indeed tried to blackmail the developers (what idiot would actually think that would work?) then that would mean that they knew what they did was a huge exploit.
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Comments
Funny enough, because these tactics were commonly used in Ultima Online. Back before the game turned into a brofest, there really weren't any mobs that took entire groups, or raids to kill them. But without use of placed objects, like crates or chests, some of them would be incredibly difficult to kill and you'd likely burn up all of your resources trying, if you attempted it solo. There was a mob area in an ice dungeon that actually had a small room inside, where you could cast spells through a small hole through a wall, if you were standing on a certain tile. Almost as if it was designed like that by the developers. Origin was apparently okay with these tactics, though, killing one of those creatures didn't really come with a 'server first' type of recognition either. Nor did they typically drop such epic loot. UO was more of a grind for power though, as it's economy was set up quite differently.
What I'm trying to get at is, the tactics seemed quite similar, but one company bans while the other accepted it as a viable tactics. Not that it matters, if you make use of an exploit in most games, you could be in trouble. Considering the power of the loot and the reputation of a server first, it seems as though a temp-ban would be reasonable, along with deleting the loot. Perma-banning a lot of people who may have not realized what they were doing was a big deal is a bit overboard.
From what is posted above they created the exploit.
Now take it logic. A full guild taking on a boss fight. They even uploaded the video on youtube. All of them were on TS. Now, do you really believe that they knew how to exploit the boss and do this intentionally? No! If you want to exploit something, you go "duck" . You do not upload, nor make it public. Think LOGIC. The boss got stuck in a bad animation or some kind of a bug. Anyone would have killed it and this guild even made everything public.
Some quotes from their forum :
"we put 10s of 1000s of golds into legit attempts all week. No freebies for a random east raid because the fish decided to break."
Trion, what are you going to do about this?
Also, keep in mind that boss did react, did hit, but didn't actually used all his skills. So that is a boss code bug.
And, please, stop with this bullshit that they should have stopped hitting the boss if they saw he didn't used X skill as it should. OF COURSE they keep hitting it and in the end killed it. I mean c'mon! You just don't wipe out several times in a week, and spend resource to kill it and in the end, to say to the lots of the guild members who participated in the event "Hey guys? ... please stop hitting, let's wipe. The boss does not use his standard skills" . COME ON!
Trion decided to perma ban those who participated in an attempt to "look good" in front of the community. Every company with a bit of a head, would just remove the loot from the players, and make everything public about the boss bug and announce a fix "as soon as possible" . I am sure that neither Trion nor XL knows what really happened. They will go like "A...let's restart the server. Things will get back to normal" and bum! Easy fix.
Trion can't wash their hands with this stupid mass perma ban. They are bad! Period!
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The video is public. Read the forums from Trion and you will see the members from that guild are talking about this BEFORE the bans. Is their stupid game, they should read their forums. Is their bug. They didn't hide nothing. What else the guild should do? Contact Trion in private? NO! Make everything public which means they had nothing to hide and wanted people to know how they killed the boss.
About the "blackmail". Are you serious? Even if they attempt to get something back, I think they had a point. They found the bug. It's not a common bug. No one could do that again . IF it was a bug which will in the end ruin the game economy or some short, then yes, you MAY got a point. But no, it was a boss "bug" which, I am pretty sure that if they want to replicate the process ( or anyone else ) they will not be able to do it.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
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Let me ask you this. If you own a car dealership, and you buy cars from Ford to sell on your lot. Notice that there is a problem with a certain Ford series. Point it out to Ford, and they refuse to fix it. But you keep selling it, and refuse to put pressure on Ford to fix it. Do you seriously believe you are blameless in it?
It does not matter if they exploited or not. When you agree you carry a product. You carry as much blame and guilt as the creator of it. It's Trion job to get on XL about fixing it or using their own resources to fix it. If they can't even manage that then they need to turn it over to someone that can.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I seem to remember some test where someone left a wallet out in public to test people's honesty. A good amount of people in certain cities returned the wallets but less than half of all the wallets were returned over all.
One could say "you don't want to be stolen from don't lose your wallet".
Obviously this is not stealing but what you are saying is that players can't be honest and have to be protected from themselves. Doesn't say much about he people in this hobby does it if they can't be good community members and not take advantage of the situation. Especially since there was a lot of work that went into glitching this boss.
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Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I would do the same.
Ban the fluff out of those idiots.
They seriously used a known exploit to kill the boss,and then instead of
deleting any loot and contacting support to report it, went on to ask Trion
to rune their armor(??!!!!) and give them in game rewards for the time
they spent making a video that explained the exploit.
This is beyond f@ktard.
Even if it was just one guy attempting the extortion,the whole guild deserves
to be banned simply for allowing such sh!t brained players to lead them.
Hmm, having now watched the guild video, the bug took effect at between 70 and 65% mob health. The mob could no longer path because of junk they dropped in the water, so when its hate list cycled to, well, anyone, it couldn't move, and just sat there like a fat, rubbery, tuna-smelling pinata.
My earlier point, though, I think was valid. They understood the fight's mechanisms and likely could have done it without dropping stuff in the ocean. I don't think they needed to exploit, and that's the dumbest thing of the whole situation.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
You make a point. Unfortunately, it is not the one you are trying to make. Yes, Trion is left with managing the matter. Point being, they haven't been doing a very good job at managing the game overall and that is why Trion is being criticized for their response in this matter. You can't, on the one hand, say that this is a sandbox so all types of unruly behavior is acceptable, and then punish a guild for behaving in an unruly manner to get ahead.
An argument could be made that the blocking and limiting of Levi's movement at sea in an effort to kill it and pillage it can be seen as much of a strategically tactical move as the blocking of players from crossing a bridge, where they are left with no other remedy or alternative, before they are pillaged by the perpetrators.
Since it's initial release Trion has attempted to portray AA as basically EVE at sea. A sandbox type atmosphere where unruly pirates lie at every corner and everything goes. Players get ripped off in land purchases, sheisty land barons go unpunished using obvious exploits, completing runs through TP exploits etc and so forth. None of it has been dealt with assertively in the past. Instead their community has been condition to accept this type of douchy behavior. This is why the AA community is repeatedly heard resonating the precedent Trion themselves set when all of this anti-social behavior was being presented to them, that this is a sandbox and anything goes.
Trion's inconsistency in managing AA is one, if not the, major reason that AA receives so much criticism. I think that the major consensus about AA is that it is a good game, ruined by poor management. Their failure to manage the game in a fair, proper and consistent manner is exactly the reason why this punishment by Trion is being received with so much criticism. They are, in essence, reaping what they sew, and they have only themselves to blame.
And you are expecting Trion to make daily report about banning bots in dungeons and raids in Rift or AA? Well that would make an interesting report for sure but just as you are saying it now; you would say :" this is a PR move, thousands of people exploit everyday but they are only banning 100!!".
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
If on the other hand they knew how to get the boss to bugg and actively exploited it they do deserve getting banned but that isn't the same thing at all.
Since I am not really sure which way it happened I can't say if it was fair or not.
Again, an argument could be made that it is as much strategically tactical as it is exploitive. What they did is really no different than what RL fishermen do to fish at sea. They trap them limiting their movement before reeling them in and killing them.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I think it's their behavior during and afterwards that is a larger issue.
They could have reached out to Trion to make sure it was legit. And if they then indeed tried to blackmail the developers (what idiot would actually think that would work?) then that would mean that they knew what they did was a huge exploit.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo