TC Bulletin and Policy Change 10/18/09

[rubadum]

Cmon guys, give them a break. Remember the devs are unpaid people working for you, to bring something back which was once lost.

If you want to criticise and complain, go pay $13 a month to SWG Official, where you can compain all you like. Personally I applaud the work and decisions made by the EMU team, especially their resolve to listen to the criticisms of the community and make tough decisions when they have to.

Keep up the gr8 work.

[torbjorn]

Originally Posted by rubadum

Cmon guys, give them a break. Remember the devs are unpaid people working for you, to bring something back which was once lost.

If you want to criticise and complain, go pay $13 a month to SWG Official, where you can compain all you like. Personally I applaud the work and decisions made by the EMU team, especially their resolve to listen to the criticisms of the community and make tough decisions when they have to.

Keep up the gr8 work.

They're not working for us at all.

On a side note, since you don't need me, or any of the other dozens of testers I know, I can just leave now and wait for suncrusher? You have an official testing team now, so we can all just leave and wait for 1.0 server code to be released.

I'm sure I, or my friends, are not the only people who are going to be leaving, and I guarantee you suncrusher will be empty when it goes live.

It's nice to know SoE is back to running this thing.

[mijom]

Originally Posted by torbjorn

You have an official testing team now.

They've had it for long time now, it's called QA. Your acting like they will be unbanning everyone who got banned instead of few select ones who will not be part of Official staff and are under monitoring.

Originally Posted by torbjorn

I guarantee you suncrusher will be empty when it goes live.

[mpv]

Originally Posted by torbjorn

They're not working for us at all.

On a side note, since you don't need me, or any of the other dozens of testers I know, I can just leave now and wait for suncrusher? You have an official testing team now, so we can all just leave and wait for 1.0 server code to be released.

I'm sure I, or my friends, are not the only people who are going to be leaving, and I guarantee you suncrusher will be empty when it goes live.

It's nice to know SoE is back to running this thing.

You can't please all the people all of the time. You need to give the dev team a break and trust that they know what's best for the continued development effort.

What they have achieved so far is nothing short of spectacular and comparing them to SOE is a kick in the teeth they do not deserve.

As far as SunCrusher goes I disagree with you that it will be empty. I think it will be the best funded and most active server, with the strong probability that it will most accurately reflect the game as it was intended.

The current problem with hacking will hopefully be mostly addressed before live and with the development knowledge in this current team should give the best chance for future protection against hacking (imo).

[torbjorn]

Originally Posted by mijom

They've had it for long time now, it's called QA. Your acting like they will be unbanning everyone who got banned instead of few select ones who will not be part of Official staff and are under monitoring.

Ashur was banned for speed hacking/exploiting while griefing a players.

why should he be unbanned?

[Ferren]

Originally Posted by torbjorn

I'm sure I, or my friends, are not the only people who are going to be leaving, and I guarantee you suncrusher will be empty when it goes live.

It's nice to know SoE is back to running this thing.

I lol'd for days

[Oru]

I think there has been some miss-communication. We are definitely listening to the community and that is why we were very serious about the zero-tolerancy towards the exploiters. After we made the decision, we have realized that this will hinder the project while we are in development. That being said we lighten the policy up so we give a second chance for them so they can help fill in these holes. However this does not mean they can cheat, grief or exploit anymore! These things will go privately and not on the public test center. In case they are caught again, we say goodbye to them for good.

I hope this will help understand why we have come to this decision. Besides our will to step up against hackers, this will benefit everyone in the long run.

[torbjorn]

Originally Posted by Oru

I think there has been some miss-communication. We are definitely listening to the community and that is why we were very serious about the zero-tolerancy towards the exploiters. After we made the decision, we have realized that this will hinder the project while we are in development. That being said we lighten the policy up so we give a second chance for them so they can help fill in these holes. However this does not mean they can cheat, grief or exploit anymore! These things will go privately and not on the public test center. In case they are caught again, we say goodbye to them for good.

I hope this will help understand why we have come to this decision. Besides our will to step up against hackers, this will benefit everyone in the long run.

This is chance number 3? maybe even a higher number? For ashur.

How many will he get? Editing the client is against the EULA (SoE's EULA), and that is what Ashur has been doing.

[zetlaux]

Originally Posted by Anakis

As we are still in the Development phase, I don't see a zero-tolerance policy on exploiting being very helpful. From a Development perspective, we NEED players to find these exploits and hacks and inform us about them, so that we can code the server to prevent their use in the future live servers, like Thoop said.

We cannot have players being afraid to find and report such things out of fear of being banned/deleted. We all know that once this is live, there will be plenty of those types hacking away and disrupting play on a live server if they can. We need to find and fix these issues before we get there.

We are definitely not giving the green light here for the exploiters to run wild. What we are saying is that you won't be banned, no questions asked, if you perform an exploit on the TC.

How I interpret this policy change is like this. It is okay to perform an exploit on TC as long as:

1. Your actions are not griefing other players.

2. You immediately (and privately) report all details of how you performed the exploit to the appropriate staff and do not tell anyone else about it.

3. You DO NOT continue to perform the exploit on the TC, even after reporting it.

You find it, you report it, you keep quiet about it to your friends and you don't use it again.

Unfortunately, we have had staff members misbehave in the past. If you think that Staff are not watched for these sort of things, you are mistaken.

I couldn't have said that any better. The whole time I was reading all of this zero tolerance posts, I thought to myself, "Great. So we're going to wait for Suncrusher for all these exploiters to come out of their shells."

I trust the developers. After years of work put into this project, I doubt they are ready to throw it all down the drain quite yet.

[Kyrm347]

I hate Exploiters (yes I mean hate), but I also know that playing a MMO means that by default I am choosing to enter a game where I must share that game world with those who see nothing wrong with exploiting... even if it is against the rules. Even though I am perfectly willing to follow each and every rule to the letter does not mean all others will do the same... This is a fact of MMO gaming, and life overall. Therefore I am pleased to have read this announcement.

Originally Posted by Thoop

It is more of a, "Hey, if you hack, you are going to work with us so that we can prevent other people from hacking if they use the same method. Otherwise we're going to ban you and delete all your stuff."

Since we are still in development stages and there are still going to be wipes, the main goal is to write code that will prevent these hacks. So if we can do it now, before we get to v1.0, then that is beneficial to all of us after v1.0.

The main point being, we are still in development and we want to write code to prevent people from using these hacks. We are trying to improve our code to make it so these hacks will be of no use.

This makes sense in a twisted sort of way... and since the gaming world is usually a twisted sort of place, then while SWGEmu is in development why shouldn't the Dev Team use the services of Players that have the ambition, skills, talents, and the mindset to help them identify and fix potential exploits? Even if I hate how these Players play the game, These Players can find exploits that my pointy little mind would never dream of. Just make sure you have a "surveillence Droid" watching these Players close, you know... use common sense flavored with street smarts.

I cannot make a judgement call as to whether Ashur is or is NOT an exploiter, but if the Dev Team believes he can be an asset on the Exploit Team, then so be it. The important point is that now is the time to identify the exploits and squash them. Thank you Dev Team for being open minded enough to consider using the talents of all kinds of Players. Kudos.

[kalaminu]

Originally Posted by Leodextrin

/emote grabs popcorn and intently watches

let whatever happens, happen.

*pulls up a chair and starts pinching the popcorn whilst watching collective panties getting in a bunch*

[Fierce]

I couldn't have said that any better. The whole time I was reading all of this zero tolerance posts, I thought to myself, "Great. So we're going to wait for Suncrusher for all these exploiters to come out of their shells."

I trust the developers. After years of work put into this project, I doubt they are ready to throw it all down the drain quite yet.

What he said

[Valkyra]

Originally Posted by Oru

I think there has been some miss-communication. We are definitely listening to the community and that is why we were very serious about the zero-tolerancy towards the exploiters. After we made the decision, we have realized that this will hinder the project while we are in development. That being said we lighten the policy up so we give a second chance for them so they can help fill in these holes. However this does not mean they can cheat, grief or exploit anymore! These things will go privately and not on the public test center. In case they are caught again, we say goodbye to them for good.

I hope this will help understand why we have come to this decision. Besides our will to step up against hackers, this will benefit everyone in the long run.

Frankly, I don't agree with any of this. At all.

Ok, so why was there no post of any kind made about this in the staff forum for the entire staff to decide upon? It's pretty much just what the higher-ups decided, as I only see them posting in this thread how this is a great idea.

Maybe people don't know this, but a ZERO-TOLERANCE policy is just that. ZERO tolerance. It doesn't mean you can just ban people then go back and say "Oh wait, let's unban these griefing hackers, OH WAIT! Let's give them a staff position to find our exploits! The community will never know."

These are not the kind of people to be given staff privileges to. Sosko, one of the leaders of STORM, crashed the SWGEmu ventrilo several times, harassed members via Ventrilo exploits, then he comes on the IRC and ban evades MANY times, spewing his slander, lies, and rage.

But wait, you guys see fit to not only UNBAN them (which goes against the policy we enstated as a TEAM in the first place), but give them staff positions, since OUR QA TEAM WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH IN FINDING EXPLOITS.

So let me get this straight again.

"I'm Ashur, a retard that loves to flame on the forums, cause a TON of grief in game too and I love hacking! I was banned because of this, but I kissed enough ass to not only get unbanned, but get a staff position too!"

That's EXACTLY how it seems.


There's so much wrong with this.

A. You don't just make such an important decision to those who have higher leverage in the staff.
B. You don't go back on a global policy that we all decided.
C. STORM guild is retarded, full of griefing hackers, EVERYONE KNOWS IT, and you unban them and give them staff positions.


...

This has to be the biggest troll of all time.

[Fierce]

Originally Posted by valkyra

a. You don't just make such an important decision to those who have higher leverage in the staff.
B. You don't go back on a global policy that we all decided.
C. Storm guild is retarded, full of griefing hackers, everyone knows it, and you unban them and give them staff positions.

co-co-co-combo!!!!

[kalaminu]

Originally Posted by torbjorn

They're not working for us at all. <---- No. You're right. They are working for themselves and generously letting US play the game THEY have reverse engineered!!!

On a side note, since you don't need me, or any of the other dozens of testers I know, I can just leave now and wait for suncrusher? You have an official testing team now, so we can all just leave and wait for 1.0 server code to be released. <---- Well if that is your attitude.....cya, don't let the door hit ya on the way out!!

I'm sure I, or my friends, are not the only people who are going to be leaving, and I guarantee you suncrusher will be empty when it goes live. <---- The only comment I got for this statement is HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It's nice to know SoE is back to running this thing.

Seriously. Where do you people get off moaning at these people that are developing this game for us to play again in it's true form before soe took too much lsd?

If you don't like their decisions, tough sh!t, move along.

Seriously you people do my nut in.