I am temporarily suspended!!?

Subject: Re: I am temporarily suspended!!? Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:48 pm

I dunno, someone got banned/deleted from game and anyone who traded with him got suspended.

But he's totally innocent?

e: I don't mean to be argumentative or point fingers. I just find it surprising that people are willing to give others so much benefit of the doubt. Meteor himself has admitted he has hacked into the game -- whatever the purpose or reasoning behind it was, it has definitely led to a lot of pain for unrelated players and I am pretty certain a huge skew on the economy as well.

☆ Join date : 2012-09-17 Posts : 124

Valhades wrote:

SeraphShaun wrote:

clocksprocket wrote:: Exactly, which is why posting the vulnerabilities publicly (which would allow more people to exploit them) would force Silicon's hand -- like Valhades said, taking the server down and rolling it back 24h or however much, after fixing the security hole, would do a lot more good than allowing the same one or two people to run the whole game economy.

your point is rather valid, but I am rather surprised that you came out with that.

Always had a impression that you are a mild manner lady.

I think I can understand where you come from Very Happy

I think that anyone with a genuine vested interest (either monetary or time) in the game, and not their own assets, would feel that way. Top 6 star cards have gone from 2,000 TE to 3,000 in the span of only the last two weeks, surely you can't believe that is natural progression of value. If I had to buy all of my six stars with Time Elixirs legitimately I would need over $25,000. The obvious fact of the damage is that boxes are worth far more than Time Elixirs; new players cannot realistically buy enough Time Elixirs to afford anything, you're better off buying boxes and selling the contents.

There is a surprising number of players that fail to see the harm that gtmeteor() has done to the game. His posts repeatedly paint Silicon Studios as the villain and vindicate himself, feigning ignorance when he clearly knew what he was doing. Silicon Studios was generous in this situation by not deleting the illegal TEs and tried to keep uninvolved players out of the matter, even if it meant letting them keep hacked Time Elixirs.

I for one would like to see the community recognize the real antagonist in this scenario. Bugs, flaws, exploits happen -- It's an inevitable part of software development. It's the individuals who choose to aggressively pursue exploits for profit that destroy games. In the hacking world, there is a reason that private and 0-day hacks remain secrets. The more well known an exploit is, the faster it will get patched.

Just like politics, it's easy enough to disguise greed as philanthropy if you're well enough articulated.

I agree with your points but this is all really speculation. The economic system is unrealistic. Thousands of TEs for 1 card when you can buy way cheaper outside ...heh.

SS has not released anything from their end and we all can do is sit and wait.

But no doubt about it, there is a small group of players who are controlling the market. Inside-traders if you will, just like stock markets

☆☆☆☆☆☆ Join date : 2012-10-01 Posts : 1038

clocksprocket wrote:: I dunno, someone got banned/deleted from game and anyone who traded with him got suspended.

But he's totally innocent?

e: I don't mean to be argumentative or point fingers. I just find it surprising that people are willing to give others so much benefit of the doubt. Meteor himself has admitted he has hacked into the game -- whatever the purpose or reasoning behind it was, it has definitely led to a lot of pain for unrelated players and I am pretty certain a huge skew on the economy as well.

i din claim that GT is innocent... but i also din go to say that he's guilty. for me... i dun have any facts to say whether he's innocent or guilty.

he exploited the game -- which he claims is due to poor design. dun we all at one time or another?

like when we realise how we can get morrigan by purposely not completing quests? or how we sometimes farm for XP on certain quests?

again, i m not out to defend anyone here... but to state that we should not be going around witch hunting when we dun have concrete proof of anything.

anyone who suffered inconvenience... i think they should address it to the developers instead? even if they're investigating the issue, it is not 'right' to suspend people indefinitely... not when this is due to their ineffectiveness in the first place.

all they have done so far... it only makes people think twice about spending more money in this game.

☆ Join date : 2012-10-01 Posts : 83

Don't really want to contribute, but my two cents is

Just because you know how to evade taxes doesn't mean you evade taxes.

☆☆ Join date : 2012-09-28 Posts : 220

did you pay tax for those two cents?

☆ Join date : 2012-08-14 Posts : 135

this is going to damn me, but at this point, i don't really care if silicon unsuspends my account with the way they handled this

GT, you ruined the game when you sold your hacked TE's on the market... you claim that you haven't made a single profit from selling your TE's?

You made thousands off of me in the past month for purchasing your hacked TE's while you spammed people's walls on an alternate account... and i KNOW others have contacted you for TE's

For example:
in one transaction, you told me that you didn't have any potions and then all of a sudden you have THOUSANDS? doesn't make sense i don't care how good your "trade network" is it's impossible to get that quantity in such a short period of time without hacking the system

we were practically held hostage to your system for the past month...

☆ Join date : 2012-09-17 Posts : 124

cuddytime wrote:: this is going to damn me, but at this point, i don't really care if silicon unsuspends my account with the way they handled this

GT, you ruined the game when you sold your hacked TE's on the market... you claim that you haven't made a single profit from selling your TE's?

You made thousands off of me in the past month for purchasing your hacked TE's while you spammed people's walls on an alternate account... and i KNOW others have contacted you for TE's

For example:
in one transaction, you told me that you didn't have any potions and then all of a sudden you have THOUSANDS? doesn't make sense i don't care how good your "trade network" is it's impossible to get that quantity in such a short period of time without hacking the system

we were practically held hostage to your system for the past month...

*whistles*

There's no getting out of this for GT this time. heh

☆ Join date : 2012-09-12 Posts : 71

My curiosity is killing me! bounce

☆☆ Join date : 2012-09-09 Posts : 155

Itstoocold wrote:: My curiosity is killing me!

Beating a dead horse here.

There is nothing new to say regarding this situation. Suspensions have been lifted, gtmeteor() is either gone or on a new account, and anyone that is still suspended is probably permanently banned for RMT.

Subject: Re: I am temporarily suspended!!? Sat Oct 27, 2012 9:27 am

I know a member whose investigation took til now but is getting unsuspended probably within the next couple of days.

☆☆☆☆☆ Join date : 2012-09-24 Posts : 954

It is not the player's job to police the game. It is Silicon's job to police the game.

Yes, he hacked and possibly sold cards for RMT, I for one could care less even though I lost 'value' quite a bit since I was holding mostly TE when the market for cards spiked overnight.

Trading is about risk, those who had mostly cards when the market spiked won over those who were holding TE. Just like the stock market essentially.

Considering how long gtmeteor has been controlling the market, the real question to ask is why the hell did it take them so long to take action and when they did why the hell did they do it the way they did it?

No warning, no explanation, and for some people they are 'still' suspended up to now pending 'investigation'. Not even a 'sorry we locked you for no good reason other than our automated system flagged you for a simple and easily explained normal game function'.

Considering Silicon is 'supposed' to be policing the game and making sure there is a fair environment for players where the rules are clearly laid out for all of us to abide by, how does what they have done so far contribute to the overall feeling that we are 'in' a fairly policed environment?

To clearly spell out what I'm saying : gtmeteor is guilty of RMT/hacking. That no one can argue. He admitted it, we pieced it together anyway, great. I'm more concerned on how long it took Silicon to 'fix' things and how terrible their 'fix' actually was.

☆ Join date : 2012-10-02 Posts : 84

Maybe I'm missing something here. What other evidence do we have that he was suspended for hacking and not RMT other than that he said so. Also if there is an exploit, how do we know that other people aren't still doing it?

Subject: Re: I am temporarily suspended!!? Sun Oct 28, 2012 8:40 am

He would regularly trade people thousands of elixirs at a time, and always had more to sell. That's basically impossible without hacking into the game somehow, unless you want to tell me he spent thousands of dollars buying TE legitimately through the store for $1 each... and reselling at ten cents... yeah, didn't think so.

☆ Join date : 2012-10-02 Posts : 84

Well he said that he found this exploit about a month ago. Why would he still buy packs if he could just hack TEs and buy any card he wanted? And there have to be many people who spend hundreds of dollars for straight TEs. Where else would these thousands of TEs come from top players burn for every ranked event? I'm not saying it wasn't true tho, just asking if there was more confirmation.

☆☆☆☆ Join date : 2012-09-29 Posts : 592

KillianBlack wrote:: Well he said that he found this exploit about a month ago. Why would he still buy packs if he could just hack TEs and buy any card he wanted? And there have to be many people who spend hundreds of dollars for straight TEs. Where else would these thousands of TEs come from top players burn for every ranked event? I'm not saying it wasn't true tho, just asking if there was more confirmation.

All speculation but I'm assuming that if there's an exploit with the TE, the money which he earned from selling cards and TE, which is confirmed by some people, is used to buy the card boxes. This is possibly to cover his tracks.

☆☆ Join date : 2012-09-09 Posts : 155

Let me be clear that he did not pay for all those card boxes he opened. To avoid giving away the details of the hack, I'll say only this: The vulnerability that allowed him to obtain infinitely many hacked TEs is the same as the one that allowed him to open infinitely many boxes. The rare card report obviously draws a lot of attention to yourself so you can make an educated guess as to why he switched to buying 6*s with TE.

☆☆☆☆☆ Join date : 2012-09-24 Posts : 954

Market control and to be less visible as Valhades mentioned.

☆ Join date : 2012-10-02 Posts : 84

Lol well that explains it all doesn't it.