However, the general view that we as players are all likely to cheat at the first opportunity isn't true; unfortunately I find this is a prevailing view among those who're in charge of keeping cheaters down in mmorpgs. I can understand the need to be suspicious due to those few who ruin it for the rest of us, but the prevailing idea that everyone can't be trusted is a bad one.
Whenever possible, GMs try to give players the benefit of the doubt in questionable situations. We hope players do not attempt to take advantage of this trust, and provide their full cooperation.
We want this game to be good for new players and old, RPers and gamers, so we need the economy to not have billions of circles. Wiping is a drastic measure and we don't do it without a lot of thought, debate and discussion about the best way to undo the damage caused by our bugs (sorry!) without hurting the innocent. We do our best to find and fix bugs we find, but this is a huge and complex game and it is very difficult to keep up with innovative players. :-)
Just the immediate quotes I could think of. It's wrong to think that all players are cheaters, and it's wrong to think that this is what the dev team thinks
So don't.
I was merely responding to the general feeling behind the original post, with my thoughts on it--I haven't interacted with the GM and Dev teams enough to make any broad assumptions of my own about their view of players. When I said:
However, the general view that we as players are all likely to cheat at the first opportunity isn't true; unfortunately I find this is a prevailing view among those who're in charge of keeping cheaters down in mmorpgs.
I was not overtly pointing fingers at the Planeshift Dev. and GM team, which I have not seen in action for long enough to point fingers at in any way (good or bad), I was speaking from my experiences in other mmorpgs, and how it was a prevailing view among many that I've played that all players are bad and out to harm others as soon as someone looks the other way.
I can say that the general feeling behind the wipe seemed to be more "well, even if they didn't cheat then, they probably cheated using this method before, so cut back their money" then a "well, we screwed up, and a few bad people abused it, so we'll cut things back a bit, sorry guys" on the receiving end of the posts and decisions. I am not a Dev or GM, so I can't write from their point of view.
As I can only speak from this point of view, and not from the others, and although it's likely that it wasn't at the level that this decision was made, the way it was delivered (Vengeance, had he written his post much more apologetically--more "So sorry, but because of a single person causing trouble, and that a small group of people have been abusing this bug for months, we've been forced to do a wipe to return stability to the economy" and less "oh, and by the way, we wiped, here's why", would have left a better impression of the Devs in general in my mind, and likely the other players minds as well--I realize it was sort of apologetic, but it could have been written much better then it was) and the point that there was not clear "other" as far as who's fault it was (at a basic level, it was the fault of the one who caused all the trouble--I mean at a more sort of "who to blame" level; Many are to blame in the end, but that they weren't pointed out by the Dev team as a sort of group means that it seems like the Dev team just assumes that players are all going to manipulate bugs)meant that the perceived "other" as far as who's fault it was becomes all those effected by the wipe, not just those who were the total cause for it--both leave a sort of bad general feeling.
Edit as to not have to write a new post, as it is just a clarification on my thoughts of the wipe as a whole:
I think that the wipe was necessary, important, and am not talking about the wipe itself--I'm fine with that. As I would be fine with being pulled into the police station if I vaguely resembled the description of someone wanted for their having taken part in the crime: better that I am stuck in a police station for a few hours then a criminal runs around on the loose. Losing a small amount of money is a small inconvenience compared to the problems that massive inflation would cause. What I'm writing about isn't disagreement with the wipe, but the way it was announced and the like.