Elder Scrolls Online Guild Banks Close Thanks to Dupe Bug
A post on Reddit reveals that a "game breaking" bug has hit The Elder Scrolls Online MMORPG. ZeniMax and Bethesda have responded by temporarily shutting down the guild banks on the North American and European megaservers. They also released a patch (v1.04) that addresses the issue to some degree, forcing players to stack items in their inventory first before placing them in the guild bank.
But that may not be enough to solve the issue.
According to various reports, a dupe bug was found in the online RPG, allowing players to duplicate in-game items and sell those items to vendors for money. Players have thus taken that falsely-earned money and purchased equipment and other items they previously couldn't afford. That throws the in-game economy completely off the tracks.
"It is so simple, in fact, that it is possible to do it by pure accident," reads the Reddit post. "Players in full legendary gear, billions of gold (From duping mats and selling them to vendors over and over), and so much more. Money, items, etc is completely worthless."
"Unfortunately this bug has been well known for over a week now (Actually, since launch!) and its ramifications are so bad that there may be no way to really recover without something drastic," the post continues. "I believe simply banning people isn't enough."
Just last week, ZeniMax revealed that it has already banned "thousands" of players determined to cheat.
"This is only the beginning of our ongoing efforts to keep the game free from botters, speed hackers, and gold spammers," wrote community manager Jessica Folsom. "We want to thank everyone who has sent in-game reports about these individuals in ESO—your reports helped us identify many of the accounts we banned today. Please continue to report any botters, gold spammers, and speed hackers you see in-game, and we'll continue our efforts to keep them out of Tamriel."
The question that all ESO gamers probably face is: what now? What will ZeniMax and Bethesda do to deal with all that money and ill-gained armor and other possessions? Perhaps we'll find out over the next several days.
When you sign up for the game, you agree to follow their terms of service. Cheating doesn't even need to be in fine print. People are morons and they want to ruin the game so they can get some virtual coins short term. Stop taking away all blame from the people who actually abused the glitch.
Blizzard practically endorsed it and essentially all, but told players how to easily dupe 10 marquis gems over and over any time their value met a certain AH value break even point threshold.
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/compromised-diablo-iii-account
When you sign up for the game, you agree to follow their terms of service. Cheating doesn't even need to be in fine print. People are morons and they want to ruin the game so they can get some virtual coins short term. Stop taking away all blame from the people who actually abused the glitch.
Edit: And just to think.... this game is based around PVP lmao now what you going to do with a bunch of dupers running around with infinite health potions an legendary armour just smacking you around like a rag doll? well I'd quit if I were you. Tell them to make the games they were famed for..... single player rpg's jumping on the MMO bandwagon was a huge mistake as it's already a dying genre unless its Free 2 play from the get go an even than 99% of them struggle to stay afloat financially.
We often hear economists on news programmes talk about the supposed
natural long term balancing effects of, "market forces". I think it would be
an interesting experiment if all those who have been cheating in this way
were simply moved into an entirely separate but otherwise identical MMO
where the bug is left in place, see what happens, see how that realm's economy
and structures evolve. Probably not feasible as it'd require twice the no. of servers,
etc., but it just intrigues me from the point of view of the way in which companies
create these virtual environments with a set of rules that are intended to control
the game world in various ways.
Sometimes the most interesting events in a game can come from aspects of
how the game can be played which were never intended by the game designers.
An old article explains what I mean:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/reflections.txt
An example in the sporting world would be an alternative olympics in
which athletes could do whatever the hell they liked wrt body enhancement,
drugs, etc. The standard Olympics is of course supposed to be drug-free,
which really is a bit weird because normal people in everyday life typically
consume all sorts of daily additives, even if it's just vitamin pills. Which do
you think would be more popular over time? The normal Olympics? Or the
alternative in which someone can run the 100m in 5 seconds?
the latter for sure. I'd be like seeing comic book heroes for real.
Anyway, just a thought. Don't ban the people who are cheating in ESO. Move
them into an identical but separate version where such behaviour is A-ok, let
that realm evolve in its own way, like an ESO version of Escape From New York.
That way, the players involved keep paying their fees to play the game, they get to
play the way they want, while those who want the normal rules can continue in the
standard realm. The time currently being spent by staff trying to identify offenders
could instead be used to run the other realm.
Ian.
Okay, of course they should fix it, but seriously, Bethesda has a terrible track-record at fixing the many, many bugs in Elder Scrolls (and Fallout) games.
When you sign up for the game, you agree to follow their terms of service. Cheating doesn't even need to be in fine print. People are morons and they want to ruin the game so they can get some virtual coins short term. Stop taking away all blame from the people who actually abused the glitch.
But you are wrong and he is right. This duping issue was reported in December during the beta, by thousands of users up until launch. Zenimax however doesn't care, and they are locking down users who use this exploit and freezing their account.
Do you know what that resulted in? Users who are banned can't close/suspend their account payments through the site without calling their card issuer/bank to block transactions! THIS IS LITERALLY ROBBERY. You can't possibly be wanting to stick up for them, you're sick.
When you sign up for the game, you agree to follow their terms of service. Cheating doesn't even need to be in fine print. People are morons and they want to ruin the game so they can get some virtual coins short term. Stop taking away all blame from the people who actually abused the glitch.
But you are wrong and he is right. This duping issue was reported in December during the beta, by thousands of users up until launch. Zenimax however doesn't care, and they are locking down users who use this exploit and freezing their account.
Do you know what that resulted in? Users who are banned can't close/suspend their account payments through the site without calling their card issuer/bank to block transactions! THIS IS LITERALLY ROBBERY. You can't possibly be wanting to stick up for them, you're sick.
These are 2 completely separate issues. regardless of when ZOS first knew about this issue, anyone who signed the TOS knew they were exploiting. The fact that they chose to spend money on the game and CONTINUE to exploit believing ZOS wouldn't ban them if they hadn't already is utter stupidity and hubris.
The fact that they can't discontinue their subscription is a separate issue with the website not being properly developed to provide limited access.
The web side is a separate development track that looks like it was incomplete. ZOS doesn't have any excuse for not completing web development for these situations but you can't conflate that with the ban not being legitimate. 2 wrongs...and such.
Legendary VR10 stuff that people have now will be obsolete in 2-3 content patches when the blue stuff you get from new content is better than the legendary stuff players have now. the REAL problem is players who didn't make legendary gear and are hoarding the upgrade materials they got from exploiters on the cheap. However, that's not really much of a problem either because they will eventually get destroyed through use too. those players who didn't exploit but bought cheap mats will have made a small profit in the long term but nothing gamebreaking.
Legendary VR10 stuff that people have now will be obsolete in 2-3 content patches when the blue stuff you get from new content is better than the legendary stuff players have now. the REAL problem is players who didn't make legendary gear and are hoarding the upgrade materials they got from exploiters on the cheap. However, that's not really much of a problem either because they will eventually get destroyed through use too. those players who didn't exploit but bought cheap mats will have made a small profit in the long term but nothing gamebreaking.
You clearly haven't played much MMOs. You know some people will just abuse this to hell and just save their trillions of in game currency dollars right? "Oh new set came out! it's -only- 25 mill on the set". I don't know how Bethesda is going to help the economy recover at this point. Maybe they should just relaunch the game with a clean slate.
If they can't even cancel their accounts due to yet another bug in the website, you can bet those people will be getting all of their money back, and ZOS will be paying charge back fees on top.
You clearly haven't played much MMOs. You know some people will just abuse this to hell and just save their trillions of in game currency dollars right? "Oh new set came out! it's -only- 25 mill on the set". I don't know how Bethesda is going to help the economy recover at this point. Maybe they should just relaunch the game with a clean slate.
If you can just buy everything you might want in game then they've already made a huge mistake as far as MMOs go.
I think the game still has plenty of potential but ill wait till three months have passed and hopefully some things will be different.