MMO Fallout

Color me intrigued. There’s a bit of a hubbub going on around The Old Republic over an issue I can’t quite wrap my head around. If you haven’t been following the blogosphere, a few players pointed out to the press that they were temporarily banned from The Old Republic for looting chests on high level planets with a low level character. Patiently, I opted to wait for more information to come out before writing a story. For starters, the emails were shady looking, there was no true confirmation to their authenticity, and even then there was likely more to the story than we had been told.

There is, but not in the manner you would have assumed (glitches). Stephen Reid (of the Bioware Reids) went on the forums to discuss the bans:

To be completely clear, while players may choose to travel to Ilum earlier than the recommended level (40+) and may loot containers if they can get to them, in the cases of those customers that were warned or temporarily suspended, they were systematically and repeatedly looting containers in very high numbers resulting in the game economy becoming unbalanced.

From extensively reading Reddit and the thread linked above, I’ve sussed out that two categories of accounts were targeted: Gold farmers and exploiters. The former, permanently banned, were using throwaway characters to exploit the somewhat sparse grounds of Ilum and gather vast quantities of credits (and crafting materials?) to sell. The latter, who had received temporary bans, were “systematically and repeatedly” looting containers.

The issue here is that there is no mention by Stephen Reid of an existing bug, but the offenders are described as exploiting the system, and this is what is confusing people because it paints the picture as Bioware banning players for spending too much time camping, and in Reid’s case, being rude by taking all the loot for themselves. The discussion by Reid goes on to reference this as outside what Bioware considers “normal gameplay,” and is thus punishable.

The actions taken by these accounts – and again, this is a relatively low number – were not ‘normal gameplay’. Everything you have listed above is what we’d consider ‘normal gameplay’.

After twenty four odd pages on the linked thread above, someone finally pointed out the exact nature of the exploit: In Ilum, when control moves from Republic to Empire and vice versa, the loot boxes respawn immediately. Seeing the potential for profit, players have set up a system on servers where they simply trade control back and forth with guild members out on the field to collect the boxes. This is what Bioware is referring to by banning players  for exploiting the treasure chests, and in that case I would support the temporary suspensions as long as Bioware is warning the players beforehand, which they appear to be doing, or if the activity is truly as impossible for a legitimate player to stumble upon as is being claimed.

The issue here isn’t that Bioware is slapping offenders on the wrist, but that their explanation for the offense itself is painting an inaccurate picture in player’s minds, one that is not endearing to Bioware’s case. In any case, this exploit needs to be patched out.