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Lagavulin View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 00:24
The case against odd, as laid out by SC, seems pretty strong to me, albeit circumstantial.  

I have a great deal of sympathy for the idea that players could have received 500M or more Gold and not known it.  I pay very little attention to the gold in my cities unless I am running in the Red.  And that is something I rarely do.

One of the banned accounts, deghoul, bought two prestige scraps from me.  At 70M and 75M iirc.  At the time I wondered who his main was.  It never occurred to me that there was a cheat or that he was cheating.

So I am, very slightly, concerned that some player got caught up in the Great Ban who did not know there was cheating going on.  But its only a twinge of concern.  In this instance the action of the Devs looks appropriate to me.
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Alcie View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 00:32
Originally posted by G0DsDestroyer G0DsDestroyer wrote:

Originally posted by Jejune Jejune wrote:

Again, amazing work by the devs, and just an incredible thing to read. I still believe that the outside gaming community should know about this story and how the game developers caught the conspirators.

On a personal note, I found Brock's IGM about frauding the game really disgustipating: "they are equal to( 515 GBP) OR( 823 USD) hahahahahahaha" ... Brock converts 15 Prestige Scraps into 1,125 Prestige for his account. 

Yeah, hahahahahaha -- you're a thief. A real-life thief.


To be correct here... Brock wasn't the one who said that in his igm, that was a message sent to Brock from deghoul, at least that's what it looks like to me

from SC's post:
<div style="line-height: 16.7999992370605px; : rgb255, 248, 229;">From: deghoul [mCrow]
<div style="line-height: 16.7999992370605px; : rgb255, 248, 229;">To: Brock Fairly [Roads]



Brock was honestly worried about delif/deghoul/etc. possibly breaking rules and getting other people in trouble for quite awhile. I conversed with him about this. I guess he was a little too nice to turn him in even after he may have known there was a real issue.   I do not completely know if Brock was at 'real' fault or not. But this is illy, not a police state.

I do know Brock was a kind and honest person and also not the one doing the exploit.

delif/cnenc/etc. liked to talk random trash which we tended to ignore. Again, this is illy, people are nice here, we tend to give the benefit of the doubt.

On a different note: cnenc once bragged he could hack the email system. He liked to brag about all sorts of things.. I tended to think he was making it all up but his actual hack makes me think perhaps not. This also worries me even more about putative cicumstantial evidence... The only thing with email I personally saw him do was some small thing which seemed like a minor bug I never got around to putting a ticket in for and forgot about. But it worries me that he may have been able to (and may have done) more. reading other's emails lately?


As to all of you saying 'yay devs, you are wonderful, clearly no one would be so stupid without being a conspirator' To you I say:

1. This is a friendly and trusting game.. to a fault perhaps.

2. You say that until the devs over-reach again and it happens to fall on you this time.



Edited by Alcie - 15 Nov 2014 at 02:24
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Lagavulin View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 00:48
Alcie makes a very good point about this being a friendly game where we give other players the benefit of the doubt.  

It would be very difficult for me to turn someone in except in the face of overwhelming personal knowledge.  Even then I can see myself telling that person "don't do that" rather than turning them in.

This is not RL.  This is an escape from RL.  Though the individual escape will take different forms for each of us.  Turning someone in breaks the Third Wall between RL and Illy.  I can easily imagine that making 'turning someone in' a thing hard to even think of let alone follow thru with.

But I will say again.  Stormcrow's recital of the sequence of things looks, to me, very bad for odd.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 01:07
Credit where credit is due - the devs have acted on this exploit/hack with considerable vigour and transparency. That's not always something that you see, particularly the latter, but it is always a welcome sight.

The problem with transparency is that it's never fully transparent. We can't see what the devs see, only what they're telling us. This inevitably leads doubt as to the veracity of the claims. I'm new to the game, so perhaps I'm more willing to trust that the devs wouldn't go on a banning spree, particularly in the wake of the Moka incident, without being pretty sure of things. So even though their explanation has a few holes here and there, I think it's reasonable to assume that their assumptions based on the entirety of the evidence (which is obviously not wholly reproduced here) are largely correct.

What isn't clear though is if the people who received gold between 8 and 23 Sept received permabans or not. If this was the extent of their involvement then permabans seem overly harsh.
"May have been the losing side, still not convinced it was the wrong one." - Captain Malcolm Reynolds
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 01:36
the devs will not be swayed, so there is no purpose in having an opinion on the rightness of their arguments.

i will miss Odd, another vet ejected from the game. we did not always see illy events in the same way, but afaik he was always honest with me.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 02:55
To receive THESE amounts and not question is complicity, especially using it for prestige buys on the market and improving your score. 
The scrolls/parchments/tomes were exploited with unearned gold.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 03:00
Say what you will about iwasgoldgenerator, at least he was honest :P

But yeah, good riddance to cheaters. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 03:08
Originally posted by Alcie Alcie wrote:

To re-quote:

1) We firmly believe that Odd was a primary player in this exploit conspiracy, and that he dissembled and lied - even to his own alliance.

2) Odd received Billions of Gold from CDD.

3) Odd inviting delif to join the alliance. It's pretty clear that Odd and delif had prearranged delif's immediate alliance membership via out-of-game channels.

4) Odd has never, ever igm'd delif/deghoul (or vice versa).

5) Odd know who delif/cnenc is.

6) One of the [Roads] players who got in touch with details apparently got an earful about sharing information with the GMs and "naming names", especially cnenc. Odd didn't want us making the connection between delif/deghoul and cnenc - and therefore looping back to Odd.

__

my response: _____________________________________________________
1. I firmly believe Odd was not involved in the exploit conspiracy.

2. I may have received billions too.. not totally sure because I don't pay attention to all the comings and goings of caravans.. I definitely got a fair chunk though. cnenc/delif made it a point to give gold to people who had helped him on his current or past account.


3. I knew cnenc was delif before Odd did. I believe I recruited one of cnenc's characters first in fact.   and the fact that he was cnenc was fairly public, although not ultra public because the details of whatever happened to cnenc's previous account were not public, although the fact he had done that 11-town glitch was well-known.

4. Odd never emails many people except in alliance-alls. I certainly had plenty of contact with and about delif.

5. see point 3.

6. I feel like they are quoting this last one about me and in which case they massively mis-read what happened. Odd was not even involved at all. Someone in roads (not Odd) yelled at me for trusting the devs with names even if I was just defending people. I now see that person was correct and I should not have trusted the devs.   If this quote was unrelated to me, there is however also a general sense that naming other people's alts is impolite in this game and people often get reprimanded for it.

7. There isn't a 7, but if you are going on a banning spree, ban me too. I knew more than Odd. And yet I did not know there was an exploit. I suspect the same goes for most (though not all) of the people who were just banned.

8. The devs are acting as judge/jury/executioner and pretending that they know people better than they do and that circumstantial evidence = facts. From what I just saw them say about Odd, I can only assume they are fundamentally are horrible at investigating.

9. delif/cnenc cheated. he should be banned. Perhaps a few others did things they shouldn't have done. These should be warned and punished. perma-banning is not a good solution, especially as your net was so wide it clearly captured innocents.

10. Odd is a great guy but the devs clearly underestimate how clueless and distracted he can be

11. I am sure the devs think they are in the right here. DEVS-- you are great peopel (usually). But, as I said before, I firmly beieve you are terrible investigators, at least in the sense of interpreting and judging. You have done a huge wrong here while trying to do a big right. I hope you make ammends.


12. Just to be clear... Is it illegal to know someone is an alt of a person who (may have--but you never tell us normally) previously been suspended? You let that person back in the game making it seem like he was an allowed player...

13. feel free to ban me. I don't think I deserve it, but I do think I deserve it more than Odd merely for knowing more.
So you knew all these things were going on and you didnt report it, send an igm to the devs, or open a petition?
You honestly thought cnenc was generating THAT much gold in an honest capacity AND you knew one of his previous alts had been involved in a previous in-game scam? Really?
Maybe I misread your post above, but if not---then yeah... I don't see why you are still here.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 03:33
I am really sad at the loss of players I respected and care about.

To the remaining players in Roads, I can only imagine your sense of loss and perhaps even bewilderment.  It is my hope that the Illy community will stand with you during this time.  I intend to.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Nov 2014 at 03:39
Your right Rill.  it is sad .  
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