Mendicant Cheating

[Astinus]

I was asking for clarifications whoever had investigated the issue exactly to understand how many of the Aurvandil's achievements can be related to the multies cheat.

If the Mendicant's web of gold hoarding characters were so deep that everything done by Aurvandil wouldn't have happened without it, I beleive that BM game experience might be seriously compromised if it's so easy to cheat on such a scale for so long.

Can we have an official statement on what was cheated and by who?


PS just read the replies about power being hold mostly in multies: the issue there is those multies actually seemed to play and had interaction with us other Aurvandil's players and even between them. That's the reason why I beleive the actual people who cheated were not only Mendicant's player but a group associated with him.

After all I suppose they were good at their cheat, otherwise we'd expect to have them caught without having the need to infiltrate Dustole in the realm, don't we?

[Indirik]

Secondly, I did not propose compensation, Chenier did.

If anything the players of Aurvandil suffered the most, for, unbeknownst to them, they were merely pawns in the mad schemes of one man. If anything, they should recieve compensation.

Please, just stop.

[Kwanstein]

Please, just stop.

If you would take a look at the context of that quote, you would see that it is in response to the very post in which Cheneir asks for compensation. Not only that, but the phrase "if anything," which is used twice, suggests that I am not genuinely asking for compensation, merely demonstrating a point by doing so.

[JeVondair]

Fact: Mendicant Cheated.

Fact:Mendicant was directly and solely responsible for all diplomatic correspondence with other realms

Fact: As a direct result of Mendicants actions, the map and diplomacy of all Dwilight was severely and irreparably defected. It was not localized. Even Luria and D'Hara had to put aside there differences to combat the threat. If you subscribe to the multiverse theory, Rynn might already be riding down the streets of Luria's capital as a victorious conqueror were it not for that and given Alice to Machiavel as a conquest of war. jus sayin.

Fact: For both diplomatic and military reasons, Barca lost regions to Aurvandil, Terran was effectively destroyed, a Duchy of D'Hara was illegally colonized.

Fact: Tricked or not, the players in Aurvandil were "lured" into the most powerful military machine in the game that simply may not have been nearly so successful but for Mendicant's cheating.

[Scarlett]

Fact: (etc.)

My character's city and realm are falling down around him because of Aurvandil. But none of your facts lend themselves to an easy conclusion.

The principle here is not 'what degree of remedy is necessary' but 'why should the developers, whose job is development, intercede?'

So the Zuma invade Aurvandil. Aurvandil nobles all get on ships and sail to, I don't know, what used to be Terran. New realms, easy pickings. They take some regions. Then the players whose regions they took complain about how this wouldn't have happened if the developers hadn't 'fixed' everything.

Or the devs try to 'reset' the place to how it was a year ago. How would this even work? Pages and pages of bitching about how this or that detail is wrong. What about all the politics since then? Pretend it never happened?

Not only would this be an impossible task, it would be an awful precedent. I'm grateful that these guys were caught. I expect that nothing with the name 'Aurvandil' will have an easy time of it going forward, however damaged non-Aurvandil realms are because of them. But we're the players and we've got to figure out the way forward. Not pray for lightning bolts.

[Penchant]

Nobody forced them too.

This is very relevant. From what I have heard, a similar environment happened in Eston, just with no cheating involved. For years, the same group of characters has held almost all the power, yet there are no calls for compensation for Eston's players. I am with Scarlett, quit your bitching and move on with the game.

[Phellan]

I am with Scarlett, quit your bitching and move on with the game.

Yup.   And my Realm was fully annihilated and destroyed by Mendicant and his posse, its name tarnished, the whole nine yards.   

You know what I'm going to do?  Crush Aurvandil - and to do that, I need to get back to playing.

[Ironsides]

I can only imagine how akward the other four nobles felt.

I hated it.  To the point that I almost quit BM after Aquilegia nearly collapsed because of one stupid guy. If it could happen once, twice, who is to say it isn't happening right now again in my very own realm? How could I know? I had no idea the first time. I hate multi-cheating and the paranoia it causes me as to if somebody is cheating or not.

Please please please find a way to stop multi-cheaters! Maybe train dogs to sniff out players to confirm they are human...wait, that's Terminator 

I would also like to know which families were included in the list of accounts controlled by Mendicant. I am shocked, but not surprised.

[Vellos]

I hated it.  To the point that I almost quit BM after Aquilegia nearly collapsed because of one stupid guy. If it could happen once, twice, who is to say it isn't happening right now again in my very own realm? How could I know? I had no idea the first time. I hate multi-cheating and the paranoia it causes me as to if somebody is cheating or not.

Please please please find a way to stop multi-cheaters! Maybe train dogs to sniff out players to confirm they are human...wait, that's Terminator 

I would also like to know which families were included in the list of accounts controlled by Mendicant. I am shocked, but not surprised.

Same here. Twinblade had tons of accounts in Irombrozia. Since then I've been paranoid about multis and tend to regard any large influx of accounts with a degree of suspicion.

[Anaris]

After Twinblade, we were able to use the traces he had left in the DB to build some better semi-automated cheater-checking tools. This led to us catching a lot more multis over the following period than we had been able to before.

Since then, we have added a few more pieces of data to the list of what we log (nothing personally identifiable; for that, we'd have to actually ask, and trust that it's accurate!). Once we get some more time, this will let us enhance and refine the aforementioned semi-automated cheater-checking tools.

At this point, it would be very difficult for someone running a multi group the size of Twinblade's to run under the radar without it essentially being a full-time job for him.

[Indirik]

Which, for at least one person, it was...

[dustole]

So, since we are talking about compensation...   Why not give Allison the bounties on all those Aurvandalians?   Or, make my game more interesting and add all those bounties onto Allisons. 

I think I like the second idea better.  I could be pimping around Dwilight with about a 5k bounty. 

[Glaumring the Fox]

What a !@#$show... This is annoying on so many levels. This sucks for Dwilight and it sucks for BM.

[Anaris]

What a !@#$show... This is annoying on so many levels. This sucks for Dwilight and it sucks for BM.

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.

[Zakilevo]

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.

Kind of sad and pathetic really