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Action For The Ravager's Exploit


EricMusco

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Hey folks,

 

As I talked about in my previous post we needed to finalize our data and ensure that we were ready to move on appropriate actions for those players who abused the Ravager’s Exploit. Since we have been a bit more open in our process regarding this particular exploit, we thought it would be best to bring it full circle and tell you specifically what we are doing to those players. As of this post, our actions against players has begun. Here are the types of actions we are taking based on the severity of their exploits:

  • Received a warning along with anywhere between 1-7 days of in-game suspension time.
    • Anyone who received an in-game suspension will also lose their forum privileges for the same period of time.

    [*]For our most egregious offenders, they will have received a suspension up to a permanent suspension.

Inside of those categories of player’s it is also possible they could have very specific additional actions taken against them including:

  • Removal of inappropriately obtained high-end gear and crafting materials
  • Removal of credits and commendations

We know that one of the gameplay impacts from this exploit was an influx of crafters being able to make items which they reverse engineered from ill-gotten gains. Any player who exploited (regardless of severity) and gained a crafting pattern is likely to see that pattern removed.

 

So all of you know what to expect, this is an example of the messaging sent to those players who are receiving an in-game suspension:

 

 

Dear Customer,

 

We are contacting you regarding your account for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. This is to notify you that we will be taking action against your account for a violation of our Terms of Service. After a thorough investigation, we discovered the following Terms of Service violations:

 

This account participated in looting the final chest of the Ravager’s Operation without legitimately completing the content. By doing so, this account was able to acquire high-end gear, commendations or crafting patterns, or crafting materials, in a manner violating our Terms of Service and the related Rules of Conduct, specifically:

 

“… you may not engage in any of the following behavior:

 

Exploit any bug in the Service to gain unfair advantage in the game and/or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through the public posting) to any other user of the Service.”

 

The action taken against your account is a <TIME> suspension and the removal of any learned crafting recipes from the use of this exploit from any characters on this account that participated.

 

It is important to note that should this account partake in any future exploit, it will receive a more severe action up to and including permanent suspension.

 

We appreciate your continued participation with SWTOR and remind you the game needs to remain fun and engaging for everyone. To prevent future situations where you may encounter a potential exploit, we encourage you to review our Terms of Service and Rules of Conduct which can be found here: http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/, and here: http://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/rulesofconduct

 

 

If you feel that this action has been applied in error, please contact swtoraccountdisputes@bioware.com.

 

Sincerely,

 

<i>Star Wars ™</i>: The Old Republic™ Terms of Service

 

We didn’t take these actions lightly and reviewed every account to determine where we could be lenient. From our end, this was a no win situation. We feel responsible for allowing the exploit to occur and remain in the game for an unreasonable length of time, but we also cannot and will not condone cheating. Thankfully, a large majority of our players didn’t exploit at all, but unfortunately, some of those who did have been with us for a long time, even all the way back to launch. It breaks our hearts to see a few of those loyal players partake in the exploit. Still, it would be unfair to not punish those players, and so we had to take action.

 

We have all learned some valuable lessons this past month or so, and we’re hopeful to catch these types of situations long before they get released or very quickly thereafter. Please continue to do what you can to notify us quickly should we create another situation where someone can benefit by exploiting a bug in the game.

 

We appreciate your understanding of our position and hope you’ll continue to enjoy your time with us. We have a lot of great additions coming to SWTOR this year and we look forward to sharing them with you.

 

-eric

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it shall be an interesting time on the forums over the next few weeks. more people complaining about the exploit.

 

im interested to see what level of punishment the gamers i know will receive. I might have more free time on my hands lol

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I wonder if any of the twerps who accused anyone who questioned their demands for draconian punishment of "being one of the exploiters" will have the guts to publicly apologize to those they accused who are still "somehow" posting here despite the punishment including a forum ban?

 

Nah, they won't.

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Way to make a mountain out of a molehill.

 

Now that that's over, how about you stop wasting resources on this nonsense and direct them at identifying and fixing bugs in the game.

I agree with Max on this Eric.

 

This was a minor issue that was no worse than you guys leaving Ultimate comms as rewards for 55 Ops. If you are so eager to ban players over it, you should have had the prudence to remove the loot, rather than letting it fester for 4+ weeks, including a week AFTER you made a post about it.

 

I'm glad so few people did it, but I think your reactions to this are terribly inappropriate.

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I wonder how long it'll take for me to stop seeing people with the 198 chests in my pug ops ;)

 

Uh, 198 chest piece is 140 Ultimate comms obtainable by everyone without ever stepping foot in an Op. Unless you are referring to the 198 set bonus piece of course.

Edited by ZETA_SCORPII
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I agree with Max on this Eric.

 

This was a minor issue that was no worse than you guys leaving Ultimate comms as rewards for 55 Ops. If you are so eager to ban players over it, you should have had the prudence to remove the loot, rather than letting it fester for 4+ weeks, including a week AFTER you made a post about it.

 

I'm glad so few people did it, but I think your reactions to this are terribly inappropriate.

 

It doesn't sound like they were eager to ban anyone. In fact, it seems like the banning was the most limited response.

 

Removal of the ill-gotten gains is likely the most common punishment.

 

Again, I agree that letting this get to the point it did over the weeks was bad management of the game, but this response seems entirely fair.

Edited by azudelphi
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WOOHOOO!!! 1000% support this. I have zero sympathy for people who do stuff like this. Its is quite different than say the nefra mechanics, naked bolster, or even the free stim use exploit, as this had major impacts in the game and was extremely obvious. With others you still had to do the content (albeit made easier) to get the rewards. In this case it wasn't, you simply showed up and poof you got rewards.

 

I think permanent vacations should be used more often, in instances like this.

You choose to accept the risk of consequences when knowingly and willingly participating.

 

Using the excuse of "they left it in there so long its their fault" is just a way of personally justifying it so you can make yourself feel better. Granted anyone who did, isn't even reading this, but oh well. Good riddance!

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100% supported, I had access to this for four weeks and never set foot past Bulo because I had some self restraint, any who got suspended deserved it.

 

Even the ones who I happened to be close friends with, the exploit was the cause of a bit of a rift with my usual group of friends, I'm glad we can put it behind us and go play Smite for 1-7 days :p

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I agree with Max on this Eric.

 

This was a minor issue that was no worse than you guys leaving Ultimate comms as rewards for 55 Ops. If you are so eager to ban players over it, you should have had the prudence to remove the loot, rather than letting it fester for 4+ weeks, including a week AFTER you made a post about it.

 

I'm glad so few people did it, but I think your reactions to this are terribly inappropriate.

 

see the difference is, is that you still had to clear the content to get some kind of reward. If they choose to reward ultimate coms, so be it (they decided to reduce the reward later) was it a bug, potentially but unless otherwise stated nobody knew at the time.

 

with the ravegers exploit it was obvious, and required zero content clearing to get the reward. Those are not apple to apples comparisons. Walk into a bank and find a bag of $50,000 and you walk out with it , probably going to jail. Get over paid, and depending on the amount or severity may just be allowed to keep it, and will be corrected in the future.

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As of this post, our actions against players has begun.

 

So 15 days after you closed the exploit? I'm guessing it was a bit more widespread than you wanted to let on.

 

We didn’t take these actions lightly and reviewed every account to determine where we could be lenient. From our end, this was a no win situation. We feel responsible for allowing the exploit to occur and remain in the game for an unreasonable length of time, but we also cannot and will not condone cheating. Thankfully, a large majority of our players didn’t exploit at all, but unfortunately, some of those who did have been with us for a long time, even all the way back to launch. It breaks our hearts to see a few of those loyal players partake in the exploit. Still, it would be unfair to not punish those players, and so we had to take action.

 

Have to admit, I am impressed you are acknowledging this. Still one has to wonder if there has been action taken internally for allowing this to remain as long as it did.

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