Iceband

Your scenario is a prime example of whats wrong with this fucking game and sony.

1. A dev just doesent forget to remove that kind of exploit from the game, they fucking choose to leave it there, probably for their buddies to use.

2. No one posted their real life phone number, adress, kids/wifes names etc. Infact they didnt post anything that was not given out as information to other people, or could be found using a simple search engine.

The devs RL names have been avail from sony the entire time. Their ingame names were given to people, that was their choice. I could give you my social security number right now, and "ask" you not to tell, but in the end, if I got fucking screwed, its my own damn fault.

As far as uttering in vent about an exploit....yes, they would deserve every bit of ass raping they receive from people, for 1. Being fucking stupid enough to "utter it". Think before you speak comes to mind. and 2. Another reason WHY TESTERS AND SOE STAFF SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ON LIVE SERVERS, just test.

Rhoe

Talk about failing... where did I say this thread was started by anyone affiliated with EQ2flames.com? I do believe that I stated that it appeared someone was upset after being removed from the Influencer Program. And that the people behind this site have previously given cause for this action... yet SOE continued on until now.

If I'm wrong on that, then so be it. I did say I wasn't inclined to read all of the pages of the discussion.

Regardless... is there really any excuse for outing all of the devs and giving their personal information to the masses?!? I personally don't care what any of you think about the development team, the company, or the players. None of that matters at the end of the day, because it has no direct impact on them when you think to yourself that they are fucktards.

But when personal information is handed out on a public forum, where anyone and everyone can and will use it - usually not in a responsible fashion - and it will have a negative impact on someone's life... that is wrong on so many levels regardless of the reasoning behind it.

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Vindruil

All of this ranting and complaining has been heard and seen since flames was launched almost. It really changes nothing, except maybe help a few people get some sleep at night. You can scream, holler, yell, and complain until you are blue in the face, but in the end it does absolutely nothing.

This is almost equal to sticking your head under water and screaming at the top of your lungs. When you pull your head back up, do me a favor and tell me who could hear you. I'm sorry did you say something? Pretty much what we deal with on a constant basis, and this is how it is always going to be. People don't like to hear that, they like to dream and imagine that Soe will wake up to what they have done and want to mend their ways with the community. People dream a lot of things, a good imagination doesn't exactly solve our problem does it?

It's nice to know that the trak strat was given before hand, but honestly what does that do? Prove that Npu has been given raid strats since the start of the game? Honestly I try not to judge anyone anymore, because it is just too stressfull to waste my time judging people I will never meet in real life. Which leaves a few questions that are in the back of all our minds.

1. Obviously Npu figured out the trakanon encounter somehow, but how many of the members actually knew what was going on? Hell I know if it was me being given the strats I could play it off so damn cool that you wouldn't even know that I knew in the first place, and would think that I was just damn good at figuring encounters out. Now it's quite obvious that not everyone is as damn good as I am, so I won't insult anyone's intelligence by trying to say just one person knew. But seriously, how many?

2. If it took this long for someone to finally bust Npu for using strats to kill mobs, how many other guilds fall under this same category that are posting right now to belittle npu? Seriously how man pots are out there calling the kettle black and getting their kicks seeing this flame post? It almost disgusts me because people do that in real life they are jerks, but to further yourself down the food chain and to actually do that in a video game... I don't have a term that describes that type of person.

3. Someone needs to elaborate on this dev stealing from a guild bank, because soe is down at the moment and I couldn't check any of those links.

Honestly I could stand outside the White House and rage against the machine as far as Bush being elected, but people would probably just throw things at me. I guess there is a difference though.. the government doesn't go around and censor people. Which would be entertaining to watch the secret service bust in on Bill Maher and sack him for talking bad about the democracy we have.

We could have a massive account cancellation, which would basically just be hardcore raiders and soe would be more than glad to see us go. Than they could actually funnel money into making the raid content to be that of the new hello kitty mmorpg. We can all hold hands and sing kum by ah my love... no just no. This is the way it is, because we don't own the game, we don't even own our own characters, check the soe disclaimer before you ever sign onto anything. Which is why I don't blame mindwarped for selling his toons on exchange as fast as he can, before it really hits the fan.

Basically it's going to boil down to the fact that there are no better games on the market. Conan I have heard nothing but bad reviews about and warhammer is going to be great... at first. Than it's going to turn into another wow mmo, why? Because there are just too many little kids-immature people who are drawn to those games. If Soe did anything right, they got the right kind of people into their games. I'm not saying we are all immature but atleast it's tolerable.

We get to sit back and ride it out. Wait for soe's reaction, response to what is happening. And basically that's all we get to do. The servers could come back up and we may not have a game to log into, that's not really our decision, it never was, and never will be. So go ahead and scream at the top of your lungs, because you're just going to drown from your own saliva. Which is pretty gross... if you ask me. The thing that really scares me.. is that there's probably somebody out there who is on the verge of committing suicide from the stress and depression that soe has put on the players since day 1.

Play the game to be the best you can be, which is far too simple even for the simple minded people. My attitude is not negative by the way, it's just what it is. Facts speak far louder than any truth will, and the fact is that we as players can do absolutely nothing except wait for soe. We are all here not because we love this game, but because there's just nothing else to do. And if you do love this game... than you scare me.

Anyways, I will be sticking around to see what happens. As I said I may not even have a game to log back into, who knows.

And if nothing changes.. well then. Here I come hello kitty mmorpg!!!!!!!!!!!!

Iceband

This translates to:

We cant disprove you, so were going to come up with lame shit about how we dont want to try cause you wouldnt beleive us.

moron.

Lorak

SoE turned me into a newt!!

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salle

Leorra is quite right.
LFG has previously deleted all posts relating to "outing" devs' unofficial accounts/characters to reduce flames or ingame problems for them.

But seing as he had outed the test to unrest debacle (wasn't it with some hints from a soe employe even that led him onto it?) instead of "utilizing the channels provided to him by soe" ... this was reason enough for them to cut their ties with LFG and the largest and most dedicated eq2 fan site/community.

LFG then just simply stated he would not moderate people based on how damaging a post would be to SOE or its employees. (or "FFA on SOE" as he put it)
Hence a member of this board wrote a post collecting all that the community knows about the devs endevours in game with their unoffical characters.
This led to some rather intresting insights about how much favoratism has been going on over at SOE towards certain guilds.

This only goes to show how much LFG was holding back the community in an effort to keep the relations with SOE open. They only have themselves to blame for what has happened.

So the more information in this post SOE would have liked never to get out, the more they should realize what a foolish act it was to disown LFG and this community.

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"The ultimate lack of self-preservation is probably to call the tank a chicken." - Ravengash

Rhoe

First, what exploit are we talking about? I was referring to the dev giving information on how to access a zone that isn't live yet. How is that an exploit? Second, no dev could just "leave it in there" for their friends. You can bet someone else will find it. Don't think for a minute the devs don't have characters all over the place...

And I know the dev's names are available. But not their character names, servers, and guilds. Not only has this thread caused more drama than it deserved, but the lives of people that weren't even involved have been affected.

Craig Dalrymple is not a developer - he doesn't make the decisions about what gets put into the game, how it gets tested, or who gets to do the testing. Yet his information is on the list.

Emily Taylor has no involvement in any of this as far as I've seen... she's the tradeskill developer. Not the raid developer. She has no influence in those matters, yet her information is on the list.

That is just a couple of examples. You guys want to be mad at SOE, fine. I'm not the person to say you can or you can't, or that it's unfounded. But to pull people in to a situation merely because they're associated with a company is bullshit. Focus on the ones you're upset with, not everyone just because you can.

And I still say that publishing this information is immature, no matter what the excuses are. It's not anyone's business, no matter what.

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Irulana

For some people EQ2 is a competition (rightly or wrongly) and in my experience companies exclude their own employees, their families and anyone with a relationship to an employee from taking part in that competition, why should THIS competition be any different. Simple way to stop this shit from happening is to write it into contracts of employment that no employeee of SOE or member of immediate family should possess or have access to a "live" account.

As far as Rhoe's last comment is concerned my answer is simple, yeah no one is perfect but there is a huge difference between making an error in judgement and knowingly and willingly giving priviledged information out which will benefit one's own live guild.

The fact is that it is in no ones interests for any dev or employed tester to be in any live guild situation.

It's not good for the dev because if guildmates know you are a dev/tester they WILL expect you to give them little titbits and little titbits soon become bigger.

It's not good for the guild who the dev/employed tester is in because if and when it becomes common knowledge that they have a dev guilded then the entire guild and all it's achievements are called into question.

It's not good for SOE but they don't give a shit about us so personally I couldn't give a flying fuck what's good or not for them.

Faeth

I could be reading you wrong, but you still appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that the SoE "backlash" of kicking LFG out of the Influencers Program was as a result of this and other threads that you see here.

This is not the case!

I took the time myself to read the posts, and what actually happened was (correct me anyone if I get any of this wrong!):-

1. An individual poster to these forums posted up the in-game identity of ONE developer.

2. LFG as owner and runner of EQ2flames, removed this post as soon as he saw it and asked people not to post such info here.

3. LFG posted up a poll proposing that it be made a site rule that that sort of info should not be posted, and subsequently made such a rule.

4. The aforementioned Dev, on seeing the poll - accused LFG of posting the poll to increase traffic to the EQ2flames site, upping his advertising revenue. They then ran crying to the Community Manager at SoE.

5. CM sends LFG a PM, accusing LFG of using the "priviledged" information he gained from being a member of the Influencers Program to post up such information to his site, and revoked his membership.

All the posts you now see here are as a direct result of the CM's actions towards LFG. They all occured AFTER that action.

Saying that EQ2Flames deserves the SoE backlack because of what you see posted here now, is getting the order of events arse about face.

I'll admit it's a shame that this has resulted in all dev's in-game and RL info being posted up - as many of these probably had nothing to do with the actions the CM took, but the fact is - to quote many a child - "They started it!" :-)

I also think it's a shame that one person here had to ruin the relationship that LFG had built up with key people at SoE by posting that one dev's info up.... and that the particular dev would not listen to reason when LFG tried to sort it out with them... but hey ho.....

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Iceband

I was referring to this statement you made above:

Let's say that you're an internal tester, and a regular player of the game. What if you were in-game one night and one of your guild mates found a bug that gave them 120pp every time they typed /sit while on their horse at the bank? And what if they didn't really find it... you did. And you had sent it to the devs to be fixed, and they forgot.

And you uttered that in vent with your guild listening, thus causing them to get all sorts of uptight with you for screwing them out of something you could've avoided?
sorry for the confusion