by jorb » Mon Sep 28, 2009 5:03 pm
I do not really believe in punishment as a means to improve behavior. The reason I decided to reduce burgingham and Lockerdeboss more than the others had nothing to do with the killing spree, and everything to do with their stats. The killing spree was more work for loftar, and that is also what it was. It did not influence my decision. Burg and Locker simply had meaner stats than the others. Xybb would have gotten that reduction as well, if it were not for the fact that he tried to help me.
I have absolutely no way of knowing what stats the characters had before the exploit. That data was lost the minute they started crafting the first items influenced by Niebelungkohl. When I made my decision, all I had to go on was guesstimates.
I believe it to be established that they all did exploit the coal. The only question I am uncertain on is the extent of the exploits. There is no data available that can determine the extent of the exploit. I have to make an estimate. The better characters got nerfed harder. In a sense, this could be considered an enormous injustice, and I have a great deal of sympathy, at least for burgingham, for feeling that way.
Burgingham, I know you've been playing a lot. Probably a lot even before the exploits. I know and understand that this isn't fun for you. I do not hold it against you that you consider my decision unfair.
I agree also, in hindsight, that I could have handled it better than I did. My intent when I made the original post on this subject was to alert the players in question to the fact that I would try to do something about the issue that had arisen. The reason I announce-posted, rather than PM:ed, was that I was unsure of what characters were involved at all. I didn't really know what people I needed to talk to. There was also the issue of bugged items entering a more global market, and I felt there was a legitimate public interest to protect by informing the entire player base.
I, wrongly, assumed that the exploiting players understood that I did not intend to delete their characters. Deleting them would have been easy, and I wanted to come up with a better solution. My hope was that they would lay low with those characters for a while, and not invest more time and energy into them before I had had the chance to come to a decision, and perhaps also to see some of them come talk to me about the situation. Since I hate making these calls, I postponed the decision longer than I should have, which was wrong of me. I also threatened to delete them, which was a call I was obviously not willing to stand by in a more sober mindset. Mea maxima culpa.
I should have been much more explicit about all those things.
I am sure I have bungled up more things in the process that I'm not even aware of. Maybe I shouldn't have taken the server down at all. Maybe I shouldn't have made the call to resurrect those slain. I would not have decided on resurrection if the killers had not been bugged. Burg and Locker could have killed those people with or without exploits.
I would also like to remind everyone that the characters of Wayneville should now be treated as guilt-free, non-bugged characters. Their punishment has, in my opinion, undone their crimes. I will not post their stats, although I have mentioned a few of them through other channels, which I shouldn't have done.
The world is still, and will always remain, corrupted by the Coal of The Niebelungs. The high quality items have entered the market in the quality ranges below 100, and scattered to the seven winds. Nothing, save a complete Ragnarök, can ever undo that damage. If the radiance of a thousand suns...
With all that said: I quietly stand by my decisions. The desert encroaches. Woe unto him whose desert lies within.
"The psychological trials of dwellers in the last times will be equal to the physical trials of the martyrs. In order to face these trials we must be living in a different world."
-- Hieromonk Seraphim Rose