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cinderboy

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German publisher Frogster has suspended a number of Runes of Magic players for seven days pending investigations into "exploiting".

Frogster, however, will not say what the investigations are for specifically, nor how many people have been locked out of the free-to-play, micro-transaction-powered MMO. Those caught in the net have been similarly left in the dark.

"We had to suspend accounts for an investigation because we had a case of exploiting," a spokesperson for Frogster told Eurogamer. "Since the investigation is an ongoing process I cannot give out too many information at the moment. We will release a more detailed statement during the next days.

"At the moment we are checking thoroughly how far every user is involved in this case of exploiting," the spokesperson added, assuring us users haven't been banned "randomly".

Interestingly, while suspended users cannot enter the world of Runes of Magic, they can continue to spend real money on diamonds - an in-game Item Shop currency.

The result of these bans is unrest among the Runes of Magic populace, illustrated by a 103-page to-and-fro between customer and company on the official forums.

The disquiet revolves around lack of communication, which the vocal members of the community feel is harming the reputation of Frogster and game.

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Mordar

did they ever explained the exploit?, like a deal with diamonds or regarding macro/addon usage?, I've seen some crazy addons going on

Epix

http://forum.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=75425

Dear Runes of Magic Community,

the great success of Runes of Magic not only manifests itself in the fact that we have a large and truly great community but also the in a growing number of cheaters, botters and spammers.

Thanks to our Customer Support Team, our voluntary helpers and your vigilance we have managed to keep these offenses at bay. This vigilance enabled us to permanently close more than ten thousand accounts.

In the course of our efforts of removing cheaters and bug-exploiters from the game, last Friday we initiated another wave of account suspensions. We were investigating a bug-exploit that allowed users to illicitly gain a large amount of in-game gold.

On some servers this caused the game's economy to tip over and several items that were traded in the Auction House - like Diamonds, our Item Shop currency - were way overpriced. Of course this in turn meant that players who did not use the exploit were at a disadvantage.

In the course of our investigation we had to temporarily close several hundred accounts to examine how the users holding these accounts were involved, to remove the gold from these accounts and to stop the cheaters from obfuscating their actions.

The first findings indicated that most of the suspended users indirectly profited from the exploit because they had an unusually large amount of gold on their accounts because they took gold from the actual exploiters. After the end of the initial 7-day suspension period and after removing the gold, these accounts have now been unblocked.

The actual exploiters (i.e. players that actively used the exploit) will remained banned from the game.

We would like to point out that users whose accounts have been suspended temporarily and who acquired Diamonds via the Yusho system, will find that the Diamonds have correctly been credited to their accounts. Should there be additional need for clarification on certain questions, our customer support will gladly be of service.

We will continue our rigorous efforts against players who think they have to use cheats, external software or other tools to gain unfair advantages over other Runes of Magic players who are playing the game as it is supposed to, now and in the future. Additionally we continue to ban gold farmers and spammers from the game.

We hope this statement will calm the commotion of the last few days and that you understand that we had to take action quickly. Please understand that during the time of that investigation we could not divulge more information about this.

Finally, we would like to thank our players that helped us during our investigation.

With best regards
Your
Runes of Magic Team

This explains it.

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Pok

That's a bit on the rough side since a lot of the trading is done via the auctionhouse in that game. How's someone to know if the gold they were payed was 'illegal' using that system?

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cyber7chink

Well, it was not targeting all transfers. Those who used the Yusho system are the ones under investigation.

WTF is a Yusho system?

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Mordar

oooh, now I get why 50 diamonds were prized at like 200 million gold or so in the auction, I'm not lying here

it's the whole trading diamonds for gold and vice-versa, you then have to check via paypal or credit card to receive your diamond, this is done to avoid mass trading of diamonds by means of hacks, exploits and so on, guess people found out an exploit or a hack and started doing those mass-trades

which in turn hurts the in-game economy because you see people buying diamonds at cheap prices (because they have the gold to do so), scamming the site or "yusho system", getting their diamonds, doing whatever they want with them, tearing up to T6 and so on, then reselling the diamonds at astronomical prices, like the 200 million gold for 50 diamonds I mentioned

Azriel2k3

You know that's typical of just about every F2P company out there when a "exploit" that could cause an issue like the one found in RoM is used. If you read the 9 page thread about the reason behind the 7 day temp bans it shows nothing but the community mods and mentors passing the blame onto the players (even if they are 100% innocent, due to the fact that stuff's sold via an auction house), and still stating that regardless of the fact you can't tell if the money is duped/exploited money you should still be punished for it. I do understand the companies standpoint in it but I think it was just poorly handled in the end, blaming your community and punishing the innocent is a good way to ruin a game.

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Marik

Oh no! Frogster is gonna become the next Aeria! D:<

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Oraigin

Bullsh1t company.

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Mordar

this could be avoided if only yusho had actually cared about the community that played the game and devicing means to keep hackers and exploiters in check

but heh, like any F2P company, it's all about the micro-transactions crap and how people spend 2 thousand dollars in less than 2 months