Dear friends,
today we’ll talk about one more step towards making our game fairer for all the players involved. It should also remind everyone that the administration of the project hasn’t gone anywhere along with punishments for cheating players.

What was exploited?

After the necessary fixes in the patches of August 15 and 16, we can let everybody know exactly what the exploit was:

1. AOE magic that applied buffs apart from dealing damage gave excessive XP in PvE even though the buffs had no effect on mobs;
2. AOE magic combined with low Magical Attack allowed to deal minimal damage to mobs and gain XP, circumventing the penalty even though the damage was nearly completely mitigated by mobs’ defences;
3. AOE control powders that have close to no effect on mobs gave as much XP as buff applied to targets in PvP;

Degrees of Exploiting

We thoroughly analyzed EU server logs since 01/07 to 16/08 (137 gb) and after debate within the team, we decided on the following way to choose the punishment measures for the offenders:

1. High degree of exploiting. Includes the characters who abused AOE control powders. I.e., in the said analyzed period of time they were actively using the said powders to level on mobs, which clearly to everyone allowed them to gain XP for nothing. It also included players who took their time to level up on castle guards who only gave XP for applying buffs to them.
2. Medium degree of exploiting. Includes the players who abused AOE magic in general (mostly “Hailstorm”) while having very low values of Magical Attack that did not exceed the Magical Defense of the exploited mobs. It allowed them to stay in low-level locations and gain high amounts of XP while casting the spell below their feet, killing neither themselves nor mobs.
3. Nearly nonexistent degree of exploiting, it includes measures that will simply adjsut the amount of XP that players gained to what they should’ve gained without the exploit. It includes players who played fairly using T5-T9 powders in high-level locations but who still gained more XP that they should have.
4. The most important mitigating factor was gaining XP from different sources. I.e., if a character straight after leaving Rivulet Island levels themselves up with Hypothermia, they will get a higher degree of punishment.

Punishment Measures

1. We decided against permanent bans because the time we’ll set players back with is much more valuable than the game copy.
2. All the character on the offenders’ list will have their XP set back according to their degree of exploit (from 15 to 90% of XP gained in the said period).
3. Characters created exlusively with the idea of abusing in mind will have most of their XP set back.
4. All accounts on the list will be blocked for 2 to 14 days.
5. We also consider that the higher the XP, the more difficult it is to gain XP since the level of mobs is the same as in T2 counties.

We understand that there will be resentment on both sides of the barricades, but we nevertheless appeal for your understanding.