Shattered Kingdoms

lol @ 'tar-ds' being edited out in my above post.

The bug has been fixed. Therefore discussion on this topic need not continue.

pork chop sandwiches.

I'm sorry I thought I said something to that effect also. Mark me down for that basically, I have nothing against these players but I would feel extremely bitter.

I mean, call me old fashioned but I play by the rules. Where is you people's sense of sportsmanship? What if this happened in your favorite sport? These dudes just got busted using roids and they have been disqualified. Will it end their career? Probably not, thankfully this is an online game.

As to the difficulty of levelling, have you ever played f'ing tabletop? This is not a graphic MMO or a console game. Levelling is part of the game. There are very few games period, where the creator wants people to instantly get to the last level. Is that so hard to understand?

The worst thing that could happen, probably to D, is if people took from the example set by these people.

100 hours spent levelling, 500(or more) spent rping, pking and exploring. What is the problem?

Yeah, I didn't mean that everyone was saying this was no big deal, I was directing my poo-poo at everyone who was. I know there are others who feel the same.



I think this is a a great point. If players kept their characters longer, they'd be much more satisfied with the leveling to endgame ratio. I haven't had to level in a year and a half (I have leveled alts, but did it in little spurts when I felt like it) because I plan to keep my main until age death. When I don't feel like leveling, I play her. I spent something like 200 hours leveling her, and I'll probably have close to 2000 hours on her by the time she age dies. That's 90% of her play time spent doing whatever I want (while leveling her I did a bunch of RP and was restricted to no religion spells until I was almost mentor since I had to wait months for a religious investment, once I hit mentor I stopped actively leveling her, so estimating my leveling time at 10% is probably too much, but whatever).

The thing with Jon is that he didn't do it to zomglvl a char to actually PLAY that char and thus cheat anyone else's 'playing experience'. He knew the bug had been reported and would be fixed. He simply did it out of sheer curiousity at how fast one could feasibly GM given that this was likely the fastest any char could have ever even tried. The chars would have been deleted no matter what - whether by D or by him - I would have insisted on it. So, yes, he expected the deletion either way. Temp ban from the game sucked but was even acceptable/understandable. PERMANENT ban from game AND the forums? Ridiculous.

This whole thing just turns me off playing. I have always, always tried to support the staff and particularly D in their decisions and push for the best for this game. I laughed at people who suggested to me that D has a massive hate on for MrP because he owned the old unofficial website/forums (which have been obliterated for the very reason D hated them in the first place for quite some time now). Unfortunately, this recent situation does seem to substantiate that conspiracy theory line of thinking because of its seeming excessiveness and that possibility just really makes me sad.

IMO, anything up to the point of permanent banning from the game and especially from the forums would have been reasonable. The rest of the finger pointing and crucifying and such from everyone just seems like an excuse for various others to have an example made or direct attention to whatever cause they're pushing or to feel better cause they're not 'those' kind of people.

But, whatever, I know it's just my opinion and it really doesn't matter for much to anyone except me but I still have a right to toss it out there regardless of who hates/loves me for it the same as anyone else. I'm just really getting sick of people trying to make him out to be some sort of ZOMGHAXCHEAT0R who's never done anything but skirt the rules and make the game unplayable for anyone. I reiterate what he said in one of the posts he made that got deleted - aside from that stupid website, he's never done ANYTHING to earn the crappy reputation as a twink or underminer or whatever other bs smears people have made in reference to him. So for those who want to continue such unwarranted lameness, find yourself another scapegoat.

Just to make it clear, I'm pretty sure I've ever said anything against Jon personally. There is no hate on my part, I'm just enforcing the rules. The very fact that a lot of people thought this was no big deal is exactly why I refuse to allow it to be trivialized. It's a lesson people need to remember.

It's really simple - If you exploit bugs, expect consequences you won't like.

What if you just as a whole exploit the game?

I'm not saying it's 'no big deal'. I disagree that it's the huge fiasco that it's being made out to be but I agree a punishment was deserved. Banning from the game, whether you or anyone else believes it or not, would have sucked and would have been taken as such but it would have been reasonable. Permanent ban from the game and (especially) the forum was just overboard. I especially stand by that in light of other recent admissions of more rampant and impactful cheating and bug abuse that've been going on that apparently have Imm sanction. Just really stinks of bias and a 'show of force' and I hate feeling validated in saying that. :/

Once again, I don't sanction any cheating. People who bring me accusations of cheating will have it investigated. Even Redman, who doesn't seem to like me very much, should be able to admit that I investigated and dealt with a cheating accusation that he brought to me within the recent past.

People just seem to assume that immortals "sanction" cheating when the reality is that we probably don't know about it, or even if we suspect, we can't prove there is wrong-doing going on. If you see cheating going on and you aren't reporting the evidence that you have, you are part of the problem. If you think a specific immortal is deliberately turning a blind-eye to cheating, I want to know that even more.

As a player, it's easy to believe in conspiracies, but Java, you more than most should know how things work and that I mean exactly what I say.