I could not restrain myself, so I will give you my opinion on this. You won't like it.
What is this all about? We had a inventory code rewrite. A bug was left in the code. That is to be expected and it will not be the last bug. It will most probably not even be the last money making bug.
The code runs on a public server, so people will use it and find the bug. So far so good. Because it is a public server, you will not only have your role playing friends trying the code but the complete mix of people who play with very different intentions. The roleplayers are the people who you want to play with. But there will always be the people who only play for the thrill of advancing their characters and even those who play to find and exploit bugs. They will always be here and it is completely wasted emotions if you feel hurt by their doings. Live with it. They will stay here longer than you.
And by the way, they are the best bug hunters, so you even want to keep them as testers. This is the way it is done in the security industry all the time.
Now a money making bug has been found and exploited. As I said before that is neither surprising nor will it be the last time. What are the consequences? Lets look at what you can do with all the money: You can buy training but only if you have the necessary progress points, so you have solved only half of the problem. You may have billions of Tria but it won't help you much. Oh, you could buy a guild house. Well, that is another thing only half thought through and a problem I better not go into now. Probably the worst thing you can do with all the money is ruin the market for the few things that are traded in game. But that will equalize itself fast after the bug has been fixed. It is only a small shock for an economy that hardly was balanced in the past and will not be for a long time to come. So what is the point of all this excitement? Why even bother with a few cheaters?
Now how is this problem handled? The server is shut down for fixing. That is surely the right thing(TM) to do. We are told, that there is a sure way to find the cheaters and that their accounts will be deleted. Well, this sounds like overreacting to me. A cheater will have a new account in no time and if this is his or her main intention in the game the deletion of the old account will only be a minor nuisance. If the way to determine cheaters is not absolutely foolproof and you cannot really separate them from people who found the bug and maybe never noticed, you will hurt only the people who you punish wrongly. Only think about all the guilds where large sums of money are currently collected for the guild treasure by members working day and night to get enough money to have perhaps a chance of aquiring a guild house! Punishing only one player wrongly will do more harm than anything you can gain by punishing the right people. I can only hope that you are totally aware of this.
Why don't you keep it behind the curtains? If you know who cheated you also have their mail addresses. Therefore you can handle the whole affair silently perhaps with the announcement that these people have been or will be dealt with.
And now this abysmal thread. Who gave you the right to judge your players morally? Who gave you the right to start a witch hunt which brings forth - as you can already read in this thread - all the bad things in people even down to denouncing others? This is an outrage and completely unresponsible and being in a position of power you really should know better than this!
Perhaps you should all take a step back and rethink this whole affair. It has gotten way out of perspective!
P.S.: No, I don't like cheaters but I also know that they are unavoidable and the faster you learn this lesson the better you can sleep in the future.
