Mendicant Cheating

[Ironsides]

Yes, it's really disgusting the lengths some people will go to gain an unfair advantage at a free online game with no win condition.

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Give a man a gun and he'd rob every fisherman he comes across.

Human nature.

[Ironsides]

What if the player of Mendicant is the player of Twinblade?

What if you are too? How would I know? Maybe I am one of a small handful of real players and the rest are all accounts of some troll in the Yukon?

[Perth]

What if the player of Mendicant is the player of Twinblade?

What if you are too? How would I know? Maybe I am one of a small handful of real players and the rest are all accounts of some troll in the Yukon?

Yes, what if the whole game is just an experiment by Tom and Tom plays every account/character except for you?  8)

[Vellos]

Yes, what if the whole game is just an experiment by Tom and Tom plays every account/character except for you?  8)

This isn't the case?

[Glaumring the Fox]

Could you imagine what type of genius Tom would have to be to write out my forum rants everyday?  :o


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a4gyJsY0mc

[Stabbity]

Tom is Tom, Tom is all.

[Phellan]

Tom is Tom, Tom is all.

Tom hath spoken.

Clearly.

[Marlboro]

More Toms for the Tom throne!

[Perth]

Hail Tom!

Tomking of the mighty and numerous Toms!

May his Tomspring populate the earth for a thousand years!

[Chenier]

Irrelevant. The onus is not on the players.

Orly?

Seems an awful lot like punishment.

Make a distinction between players and characters. No locks or reprimands to the players' accounts. Destruction of Aurvandil is not a punishment to the players, it's fixing a mistake that they let happen. They aren't entitled to ill-gotten gains. Nobody is. The players would then be free to rebuild Aurvandil if they want, without any sanction whatsoever, provided they can do so in a fully legitimate way.

One thing to note is that although Mendicant cheated, the resources he conjured weren't achieved due to cheating but merely by playing competently. The same resources could have been achieved by any realm, potentially. The main victims of his cheating, and those that I feel have the most right to complain, are the nobles of his own realms who were denied any power, due to his and his puppet accounts hoarding it for themselves. Those nobles were most assuredly being cheated and lied to. That would include Aurvandilians, Barcans and Madinianites, as far as I'm aware. Realms that didn't host him or any of his multis weren't abused in the same manner; in fact they were hardly abused at all. All they had to put up with was an enemy that was more competent than usual, which is a possible scenario for any realm to find itself in, cheaters or not.

Bull!@#$. No pity for the guys who get to inherit a superpower on the world's edge surrounded by crippled neighbors, who CHOSE to live in a tyrannical realm for all this time. Played competently? Easy when you run so many accounts. Let me run 20 accounts and see how efficient I can make my realm. No need to be a genius.

Oh, you mean those positions that they now get to inherit, along with all that nice land?


::)
Yeah, they were tricked into many glorious victories and growing into a great realm. Ok, yes, they were deceived. But they are better off for the results in terms of character gains. Compare that to other realms that Aurvandil has "influenced".


Well, as a legitimate player, it also troubled me greatly when I witnessed the level 5 walls in Barca being torn down to nothing. That is literally thousands of gold and many, many months of RL work. And Barca is and always has been poor, so that was the major achievement of the realm.

Not to mention the starvation that decimated the Barcan capital down to about 1/3 or less of its prior population after Barca lost three of its most productive farming regions to Aurvandil. Again, many, many months of RL work.

And now the same has happened to the walls of the Terran Capital, so I hear (excluding everything else, that has already been mentioned).

And all of the food that was denied to D'Hara in the process, which caused the greatest starvation the continent probably saw and turned our super-wealthy realm to a miserable few regions.

Dwilight is changed forever. And it disgusts me that everywhere I look, I see Mendicant. EVERYTHING on Dwilight is the result of Mendicant. ALL of it. All I see, everywhere I look, is fruits of cheating.

[Lorgan]

Make a distinction between players and characters. No locks or reprimands to the players' accounts. Destruction of Aurvandil is not a punishment to the players, it's fixing a mistake that they let happen. They aren't entitled to ill-gotten gains. Nobody is. The players would then be free to rebuild Aurvandil if they want, without any sanction whatsoever, provided they can do so in a fully legitimate way.

If they can continue to pose the threat they have posed without the contributions of a cheater, they deserve what they've gotten. If not, then bye bye Aurvandil.

And all of the food that was denied to D'Hara in the process, which caused the greatest starvation the continent probably saw and turned our super-wealthy realm to a miserable few regions.

You mean the long winter? Seems you're giving the guy a little too much credit to me.

[Scarlett]

EVERYTHING on Dwilight is the result of Mendicant

Not Terran. To anyone who says that Terran should get back what it lost, Aurvandil just happened by. Terran is responsible for its own weakness, and many of you have commented on it: the realm has not been a solid, cohesive place in months and months.

It was circling the drain for a long time. Aurvandil just came by and jiggled the handle.

[Indirik]

There's no denying that Aurvandil had a big effect on the island. But then, so does any large realm. Some by the acts they take, some by merely existing. Others by dying. I think that the moot's impression is colored by proximity to Aurvandil. Up in the north, things aren't anywhere near so different. The idea that SA would have fractured and splith without Aurvandil's threat is wild exaggeration. It would have just found something else to do. Maybe Asylon would have reached for the red shirt a bit sooner. Maybe Swordfell would have happened sooner. It's impossible to say, really.

[Chenier]

If they can continue to pose the threat they have posed without the contributions of a cheater, they deserve what they've gotten. If not, then bye bye Aurvandil.

No, they don't deserve any of it. Madina could perhaps have killed them right off the bat weren't it for the cheating. They wouldn't have ever had the Barcan lords defect to Aurvandil, beginning the war in the first place. They might not have done as well against the first front set up by the 'moot against them. And it goes on and on.

You mean the long winter? Seems you're giving the guy a little too much credit to me.

During the long Winter, they had food. While Barca had a lot less than it ought to, because of the lands looted and the lands taken. Barca could have fed itself otherwise, and maybe even D'Hara. And had Mendicant not provoked the war himself, there are good odds Aurvandil would have been more willing to trade the ridiculous surpluses they had, instead of hoarding it. They had a huge impact on the 'moot's starvation during the long winter.

Not Terran. To anyone who says that Terran should get back what it lost, Aurvandil just happened by. Terran is responsible for its own weakness, and many of you have commented on it: the realm has not been a solid, cohesive place in months and months.

It was circling the drain for a long time. Aurvandil just came by and jiggled the handle.

Yes, Terran too. Point in case: it didn't break up until Aurvandil occupied their capital. Maybe it would have eventually broken up anyways, sure, but not at this time, not right now. I never suggested anywhere that any of the 'moot realms get any compensation whatsoever, though. The damage that has been caused is irreperable, we can't pretend like it never happened.

There's no denying that Aurvandil had a big effect on the island. But then, so does any large realm. Some by the acts they take, some by merely existing. Others by dying. I think that the moot's impression is colored by proximity to Aurvandil. Up in the north, things aren't anywhere near so different. The idea that SA would have fractured and splith without Aurvandil's threat is wild exaggeration. It would have just found something else to do. Maybe Asylon would have reached for the red shirt a bit sooner. Maybe Swordfell would have happened sooner. It's impossible to say, really.

Tell me, would Allison have left the church if she had nowhere to run to? And whatever the answer, many people have put great efforts to keeping SA in the same direction, and many have commented that it may not otherwise be so united. Would we have seen Astrum against Morek? Maybe not, but that's not the point either. And to claim that they had an impact as "any large realm" is ridiculous. Morek's impact on Dwilight is rather minimal. They could have more impact, but they chose not to. Same with Astrum. Mendicant had impacts on almost ALL realms of the continent, he had accounts in the Lurias, in Iashalur... He crippled three realms with Aurvandil, destroyed another.  What did Astrum or Morek do since Aurvandil was founded?

To say that it had a "big" effect is an understatement. Mendicant single-handedly caused the most changes on Dwilight by himself, with the help of whoever didn't mind playing in a realm with a lot of fishy behavior.

The Zuma have sacked capitals for basically nothing on many occasions in the past. And hey, they have "alien minds that we could never understand". Why not just go raze the damn thing to the ground, lest we leave Dwi as a testament of how much one can pull off by cheating if he wants to.

[Lanyon]

Because Chenier as much as you're preaching that it would be only fair to see all 60 or so noble's hard work AND REAL LIFE YEARS thrown down the drain in the blink of an eye, it's not. I'm not going to say we didn't benefit from the cheating because we did. What I am saying is I've put in a lot hard work in the is realm and it's not fair to see that taken away from me because of your petty rants about how life's not fair.

You can try and argue back that Dwilight would be radically different without Mendicant. Who's to say it would? For a long time we have still had an overwhelming amount of nobles. There's no way you can prove one way or the other unless of course you have a time machine.