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Here is Nefer killing another player via exploit. Many tribe members are often online during these sort of FL attacks, but they often encourage each other to talk in external chat.
The list would go on and on but we just don’t have the time to scrub all the names and compile a huge list.
They keep up an image of only doing good in the community (which everyone can see) and then convince people that others they disagree with are using exploits or must be killed for some reason. They have infiltrated other tribes with alts and purposefully concocted reasons why the tribe should be destroyed. They have even planned to invite players to the game for the sole purpose of killing them after helping them to a certain level. Many former players can confirm this pattern, they help you when you are low level, and if they like you and you frequently agree with them and take their side then they will let you live. To this day many are still afraid of speaking out in game or on forums because they know what happens.
JVH as a game developer should never have to provide proof like this, he asks for his players trust. Those who know him know that he hates authoritarian admins and has a strict code of ethics for himself. He was harshest on admins in the past who showed any sign of corruption because he truly believes it does real damage to a community and he really does care about the players. After a wave of complaints and lies from certain FL members we are being made to look like the corrupt ones, while knowing the truth, this is painful to say the least. He actually likes several Frost Legion members and defends them.. but had to finally step in when the exploits became too much. I know some have seen the good sides of FL and naturally default to their side – I’m just asking the public to consider that we see such a different world than what is actually shown in game.
For transparency let me know if you have any other questions. I really didn’t want to have to post any of this.
Goblin
Posts: 99Neat. Where is the part where I lied about what I did? Or refused to cooperate when approached?
It just sets an interesting precedent I think, which all future players should pay attention to: You can be retroactively banned regardless of cooperation for using features that were at one time, part of the game.
Goblin
Posts: 99Also worth noting after some consideration, plotting to add people just to kill them…? Interesting. In total, frost legion had 19 members. One member, Captain, left to solo play after a bug led to me killing him while i wasn’t even online. He stayed on fantastic terms (as evidenced by his writing of a memoir naming our most active people) with us, and later rejoined. The other player who retired from the tribe, Rick Asther, suddenly had a meltdown of some nature, spouted some pretty vile stuff, and joined our minor rival tribe merry men in the space of 36 hours.
A small piece of this that isn’t well known, is that nearly every member of Frost legion believed in this project enough to contribute to it’s success financially. this has less eloquently been pointed our by other members but i would like to emphasis that it was voluntary out of faith that there would be a decent discussion leading to a brilliant future. After a discussion on the forum led to some feelings of disenfranchisement, we as a group decided it was time to move on and put a close to pledges. Not every member of our tribe was quitting, but every player concerned with this “justice” were committed to leaving the game on a higher note.
Less than a day after the majority of us made that choice, these iron clad punishments of multi-week suspensions were enacted, and without warning, publicly posted on a wall of shame. A stickied post is as much an announcement as any. The people who were banned included myself, and every other member capable of defending our tribes keep. Remember, you stay logged in this game, even if you are banned.
At it’s very core, I think it is quite odd that the moderators tribe, who evidently has some neat ties with merry men, decided that the time was right to attack us soon after the public post was made. A battle was then fought over the course of 6 hours against our non combative members we had left, and our lower leveled/less active players. An exploit involving building stairs up from a lower level through floors was used to bypass walls several times in this war. This will remain unexplored and unpunished in my opinion, despite being done well after the new stance on bug abuse. (if you are curious, take a look at the log where robin says “tada!”, walls were circumvented at that point. we also have a nifty video of robins follow up attacks with magic stairs appearing from nowhere, but cest le vie). The battle ended when the last remaining legionary who was capable of defending themselves awoke, and romped SPKrylos who has joined the melee.
You know what though? It’s a non issue. If you explore our castle, it’s empty. all of us are dead. the power curve is restored to make non content implementation easier than ever to get away with. I love that you went the extra mile here Ivana, and explained exactly what our nature was to everyone.
Everyone who enjoyed being killed by the two dedicated players of Zemsta? My greatest mistake was not allowing that to continue.
Everyone who complained of being bored got to enjoy linkler drama, where he was used to destroy hotel. (/s). Where he was used to destroy Ginyu. (/s). where we “let” players up level up, simply to destroy them.
Frost Legion spent 1000’s (yes) of collective hours, and hundreds of dollers well spent on trying to run an evil empire, which subjugated the masses and generally tried to make the game a shittier place. I know i personally enjoyed taking a shovel to those roads we made, as potholes make everyone a bit angrier.
For players in the future, I write as a warning to you should you be enticed by such sultry phrases as there are no rules except the ones the players make; In the post above, the developer appointed forum moderator just spent a considerable amount of time in an effort to pass judgement on how a game with no rules was played as an appeal to emotion (logical fallacy), completely irrelevant to the posts she was answering.
It took the admins banning me and my friends (a game first, even the 100 jew guy who made the hitler accounts wasn’t banned), announcing it publicly on the messageboard, and effectively staging a raid which used exploits to try and take us down. That still failed. Odovir, a simple carrot farmer, lived well long enough to hide our treasures in one place, and allowed us to die in dignity.The game has rules when it’s convenient. Take it from a guy who has followed this developer since late 2004. Play this newest iteration of a chatroom where you hold spacebar to hit things with muted expectations of what is promised.
We appreciated your cooperation and how you’ve been one of the most civil FL players throughout this discussion.
Obviously the problem was withholding and abusing the exploit up until you were confronted by JVH after multiple complaints. Only then did you start cooperating.
The hammer update from July 28 made it clear that this was no longer a feature. The ability to harm other players with a hammer through disconnects should have been reported ASAP. Not kept secret and abused by multiple people in a tribe.
I know you are already aware of all this and tend to use the ‘ignorant of the law’ defense, which honestly I prefer to open hostility lol. I just wanted to make the details crystal clear so the public understands why these bans were put in place.
Just for the record, in these situations if any evidence can be produced to prove a ban was in error we will take it very seriously and update the community.
Goblin
Posts: 94Here’s how I see it:
1. In any game, it is expected of all players to know the rules before playing. At the time, there was but the one rule to report exploits and not use them.
2. An exploit for a game is a flaw in the game that allows it to played in a manner that it was not intended. We are not intended to be able to attack through walls. To argue otherwise would be truly desperate.
3. Players found an exploit and used it without reporting it, thus breaking the only rule in this game. They had their accounts temporarily suspended at a later time, when it was proven. There isn’t any space to use the word “retroactive” here, unless someone would like to argue the rule didn’t exist when it was broken.
Let’s just get over it. It happened, I’m happy suspensions are proven to occur, and I hope they come back to the game afterwards.
I don’t mind telling you exactly how we got where we were. It’s clear cut legitimate game play. First we dug under your wooden wall and came up behind Dyrir to keep him from repairing. Next, we broke your measly 50k health arrow towers, and made a staircase in their place. This is how we got down inside the walls the first time, and this is also what destroyed your floor tile. As any non-amateur base builder knows, stairs destroy floor tiles. After smacking the wall for a bit some FL members started fighting all the low levels who were just hanging around mostly. More fighting ensues, Jabu logs in, some deaths happen. After Jabu went down Valduk had to retreat back into the base, so it was back to destroying the walls. But oh, surprise! the walls had all been repaired and even enhanced with dragon scales, looks like we were back to square one. Or were we?! You see, your amateur defenders neglected to re-tile the floor after they broke the stairs. It was a simple matter of escape roping up and building stairs for my friends to follow. Then all we had to do was watch Valduk have a mental breakdown about how much he hates cheaters(lol) as we chipped down the walls where they couldn’t repair.
Penguin
Posts: 3Neat, was thinking you had become a vegetable, what with all that never leaving your base stuff.
Skeleton
Posts: 119Normal chat:
Rin: Ive seen you have many enemies. what was that Linkler guy about?
Oracle: no clue
Oracle: at all
Rin: hm
Oracle: but it’s ok. he doesn’t really do anything bad
Rin: anyway
Polar Bear
Posts: 27haha funny how you’ did not kill me even once, none of you, you play like you write robin, bad.
Only treat was SPK he was tough. i have no idea what others were doing but were dying to a lvl 28 guy that cant do close combat. also lame 2v1 noob baits were seen. hehethe stair thing, if the dev says its not an exploit its not an exploit; but what do i know im just a noob that was killing you.
first you wanted linkler (from what i heard?) then you wanted odovir or spk did… then you wanted to raid king lol. so here is the thing. linkler was not in the base for starters. odovir is unkillable hes a mangod. and kings vault is emptied by us. good job. nice raid. gg. you can have the lali ho haha they are more easy for your skill level and something to feel good about.
its quite sad giving in what you say and what you finally done. well waisted time among us all. all that work for??? pretty much nothing.
you got me who quited because its fucking boring man, and you have fl that quited becase of bans. and you have robin that gloats about an failed/attempted base raid. haha. but true story
Jeloucy overcomes you does it not. is it that bad.to the people that were defending:
we did an amazing job boys giving in the fact that we were in a not good possition just 2-3 of us. the base itself was against us becase king was useless, we defended against them, odovir woke up, that gave me elan again. a mighty fine defence. they went away rekt and probably butthurt by, as he says amateur defenders and i trully am a amateur defender idk about others but i know i am, fisrt time i defended a base this size LOL. DENIED. it was a good desicion to quit the game. from my part and im sure FLs talked about it too.shit now im gloating ah well.
Wolf
Posts: 23Dear friends,
I have been reading, analysing and reflecting on everything that has happened in the last few days. I loved this little game and I loved James vision but sadly my gamer-creator trust has diminished too far for me to be able to continue to have fun with the game. I will not go into long analyses of why and how all I will say is that I wish the creators the very best and that the put this down to experience.My advice would be to initiate a server wipe out sooner rather than later and delete a lot of the forum posts so that future generations can retain their trust to game creators.
If such a reset is done at some point I would like to think that many including myself may return.
Reset the game and post it on Kongregate, you will get a huge player base from there.
I depart from this game with smiles, I made good friends, and had lots of fun sailing the seas and driving people mad with my puns. Thank you James and Ivana and who knows we may meet again in the not so distant future.
May the winds always be at your back, may the fish be plentiful.
*jumpstarting Grandpa Starman’s old spaceship* BOOM!
El Capitano este muerto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd2LHyFxz5s
Polar Bear
Posts: 45website revision system
My asking for verification from a third-party source was deliberate; you are biased in this discussion. I’m not asking for the sake of discussion either, I literally don’t remember seeing anything other than what was in the page I posted earlier in the entire time I played. Showing the revision that changed the text to what I posted earlier would do much more for your credibility than a revision from April.
I know it probably seems like I’m nitpicking here, but specificity on these sorts of things is extremely important for a game that has “no rules.” It is absolutely not enough to say “well you should have known you couldn’t do that, it’s obvious” when things like macros, bots, foul play, etc. are allowed, and even when the rules are explicitly stated it’s generally still good practice to specify the expected severity of punishments for breaking them rather than throwing out month-long IP bans without warning.
Because I don’t feel it’s been stressed enough, I’ll stress it again. Unprecedented month-long IP bans without offline immunity and high penalties on death. I really don’t know how to convey how fucked up that is, except to say that any mainstream game that did that to a significant portion of its playerbase would, along with the reputation of its developer/publisher, die overnight.
As for the evidence, all you’ve really shown is that Julius and Nefer may have used the exploit to kill a total of six people. Keeping in mind that death penalties were drastically reduced with the latest update and that they wouldn’t have been able to loot anything at all with this exploit, how can you justify 3 and 5 week bans? Are you (and more importantly the rest of the playerbase) aware of the precedent this sets? The top tribe was wiped out within a day because of them, any one else would have been wiped completely off the map in a matter of hours.
In a matter of hours. For six kills.
An even more disturbing precedent is doling out multi-week bans to both Sephi and Sir for simply having knowledge of the exploit. This is straight-up Orwellian. You’ve created a precedent for causing players to be completely wiped off the map simply because they knew about a bug. Not even withholding, as Sephi passed the information to Julius so that he could pass it to JVH, just knowing.
Once more for emphasis. Players can know potentially lose everything they have for simply knowing about an exploit. They don’t even have to actively spread that knowledge, as you guys can eavesdrop on all their chat.
JVH as a game developer should never have to provide proof like this, he asks for his players trust.
Trust is not given, it’s earned. JVH should want to provide proof like this because it allows him to do just that.
we are being made to look like the corrupt ones, while knowing the truth, this is painful to say the least.
Consider that you actually are the corrupt ones, and that your idea of truth is misguided. Speaking as a bystander, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that this was an attempt to push FL out as a reaction to their pulling funding.
You are not infallible. Legal and justice systems exist to protect the accused from the accuser, not the other way around. Failing to provide such a system leaves your playerbase open to abuse, whether intentional or not, from you and JVH.
And since it’s come up:
To this day many are still afraid of speaking out in game or on forums because they know what happens.
It’s easy to see FL as a group of evil dictators enacting some master plan and stomping out those who get in their way, but that’s bullshit, and to understand why you need to think about what an evil scheme in ML would actually accomplish. The only things that are actually worth anything in ML are experience points, territory, and resources, and of those only territory and resources are finite to any significant degree. FL never held massive swaths of land, nor did they horde resources in a way that would keep them from other players (they only ever had five chickens, for example). They also didn’t prevent people from gaining experience or kill people for amassing power.
So when they did kill people what would it have been for? The only real options are attacking FL property or the property of its allies, griefing, and hits called by players outside the tribe. That’s it, every shady action FL has ever done falls into one of those categories. The sort of atmosphere you’re talking about, where people are afraid to go about their business or afraid to talk in /b because FL may be listening, has never existed, because there’s literally no reason for FL to care what you do or say unless what you do or say presents a threat to FL. And if what you do or say does present a threat to FL I think it’s entirely reasonable for FL to monitor you more closely, just like it would be reasonable for a solo player to closely monitor someone who he or she knows has been planning to attack them or their base.
Speaking from experience, this sort of thing happens all the time, throughout the entire playerbase. Everyone lies, schemes, and plots where their self-interest is concerned, because this is one of the few games where failing to do so presents the possibility of extreme loss. The only reason you saw complaints when FL did this is because they were the most powerful tribe, and that doesn’t give you grounds to treat them differently than everyone else.
Skeleton
Posts: 119My trust of the developer is roughly the same as before the issue. In the moderation’s place I would have been less talkative with the player base. I think that considering a third-party source would be a recipe for drama. I also think that moderating is not about making people respect rules, it’s about creating and maintaining a certain mood.
I agree that punishment is harsh but consider that it has been meted under the low-penalty-upon-death algorithms, and the kills — at least, the kills of the alts of mine — have been committed under the high-penalty-upon-death algorithms, as far as I recall.
Everyone lies
They shouldn’t.
By the way, Oracle made a non-negotiable deal with me that I shouldn’t bring up the Akmore issue in general chat or with Frost Legion members. In fact me and some alts of mine have been killed because I tried to explain the situation to Jopah. As far as I recall he declared it void later but I don’t feel like further inspecting the logs now.
Polar Bear
Posts: 48Hey Left! I just wanted to clear a few things up for you since I was online and witnessed those 6 deaths specifically. Although I thought nothing of them at the time. They were actually before the update that makes you lose less experience upon death. So those players, maybe more, suffered greatly.
I’d like you to keep in mind that I’ve been neutral with Frost Legion throughout the whole thing. I have a few friends there. Or at least I did before we assaulted the base.
Frost Legion would feel “personally attacked” by anything said about them on the forums and boom. The wrath of Frost Legion would be envoked. That is type of thing that she means when she is stating that players were afraid to speak their mind.
There actually is no evidence to suggest that the admins want Frost Legion gone due to pulled funding. I doubt that was even a consideration.
I’ve played several games where players were permanently banned for using exploits. Final Fantasy 11 was one such game that banned the top 20 players in the world for using an exploit. Such a thing is not uncommon at all. Also, from a legal standpoint, the game is not owned by each individual player. They were nice enough to provide proof. Legally, they are under no such obligation.
Goblin
Posts: 94I feel like Left’s last post is needlessly exaggerating so I’m going to touch on a few points I disagree on.
month-long IP bans
That’s actually a single (as in ban, not bans) month-long suspension for Julius and it’s because he was able to create new accounts from his IP and continue play during his ban.
all you’ve really shown is that Julius and Nefer may have used the exploit to kill a total of six people
She proved the rule was broken. That’s all she wanted to show. I don’t see the problem here. The real problem you have is with the severity of the ban and I feel like you should focus your argument on that. That said, and this is just my personal opinion, but it doesn’t matter if they’re the top tribe; if a player caused another player to quit by using exploits to kill/loot them, a suspension is actually very lenient. It doesn’t matter how many hours one player spent over the other, all players are equally subject to the same rules. That’s what makes a game fair.
doling out multi-week bans to both Sephi and Sir for simply having knowledge of the exploit.
Well, again, ban, as in singular. And for Sephi, not for Sir. Should be using straight facts if you’re going to argue. And again, personal opinion, but the rule was that you need to report an exploit if you know about it. It’s simple, straightforward, and was broken.
The sort of atmosphere you’re talking about, where people are afraid to go about their business or afraid to talk in /b because FL may be listening, has never existed, because there’s literally no reason for FL to care what you do or say unless what you do or say presents a threat to FL.
Final note, but I think you might honestly be blissfully ignorant of the state of the server. I’m a part of an out of game communications thread because people suspected FL could even read /t chats. It’s paranoid, I know, and I said as much, but that’s literally how bad it is to them.
Friendly died and hotel was robbed for what exactly? The answer FL gave was: “because Friendly probably quit”. Hotel still had active members still playing the game, chatting, and were on every day repairing the place, Friendly said she’d be back in a week or so, but FL still came and killed our cherished leader and stole from our shared vault. To say that FL needs a reason to attack someone, even when they don’t present a threat, is ridiculous to me, as someone who’s witnessed it first hand.
And to be very VERY clear, I don’t even CARE about that outside of for RP reasons that died with Native IV. As a player, I feel that it’s fine FL robbed us, that’s truly something part of the game and it’s fine with me. What I do care about is you acting like it doesn’t happen unless provoked. It does, and that’s reality.
Skeleton
Posts: 119What does pulled funding mean?
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