The flip side of the argument
First, let me just halt right here and dive in: there is no "flip side" and there is no "argument."
Framing this as an
argument paints a picture inherently apologetic and a narrative inherently disposed to forgiving and forgetting.
Painting with shades of grey--rather than black and white--this cheating is not really that bad? No one was harmed, is that it?
Or, is it that so many people took advantage of it that punishment would be bad publicity?
The concept of a "flip side" to an "argument" about cheating is predicated on the notion of cheating like this being
excusable and therefore
permissible. Is that what we are to make of this viewpoint?
This is cheating, plain and simple, and it's a particularly contemptible and unforgiveable form of cheating, at that.
Why? It devalues the time of other players--those who are "honest" and "law-abiding," by impacting the economy, and providing free wealth to those who choose to be both dishonest
and to accord themselves special treatment above the rules that everyone else plays by.
Perhaps cheaters and/or their defenders feel as if everyone else
is cheating, and that they aren't breaking the rules everyone else plays by, because no one else plays by them. Aside from being plainly fallacious, however, this angle is fundamentally threatening to the structure of an honest game: not everyone
is cheating.
Secret cheating like this may or may not be widespread. but changing the rules post facto to accept it is a slap in the face of everyone who wasn't cheating.
It's possible that there are few players who haven't benefitted in some way from others cheating like this--perhaps this cheating is so common that interacting with active cheaters by joining almost any run or engaged in almost any trade in the game, makes you complicit, even unknowingly.
Perhaps everyone you've interacted with has been cheating or benefitted from it. I can't rule that out without knowing how widespread this cheating is/was, but if this is the case, then there should be a relatively short list of people who
didn't cheat or
didn't play with the cheaters, or swallow ill-gotten gains from cheaters by trading with them.
However, if this is all going to be just water under the bridge, I think some public disclosure of the details involved in this issue would be appropriate. Perhaps we don't deserve to be provided with at least a token effort at getting everything out in the open, but perhaps we do. It's normal for exploits to be quietly fixed, but this seems like a case where the cheating involved deserves the attention of some sunlight.
I'm not interested in naming and shaming as much as--per this thread--curious about what goes on amongst cheaters and their cliques. In the past, sometimes we've discovered publicly; other times, only from word-of-mouth. Nonetheless, it's always nice to know more about it.
On that note, since it appears that this cheating was patched, any cheaters that want to step forward and talk about it should feel free to do so--or are you afraid of being punished retroactively?
Surely you're not ashamed or embarrassed of your cheating; after all, everyone else was doing it too, right?
Back to painting this picture: there are plenty of greys blended in with black and white when it comes to cheating, exploiting, and abusing as a subject.
However, when it comes to item manipulation, there should be (and historically has been?) a hard line drawn in the sand.
If, as some may suspect or have been led to believe, this cheating is so rampant and widespread that it's impractical or undesirable to mete out punishment, I'll let staff speak to that.
As a bystander, however, there's zero tolerance for this, in my opinion.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people who
haven't cheated in this way are willing to tolerate it, but that's probably because:
a) their friends did
b) they think "everyone else" was doing it
c) they think it's existed for so long that it's just "part of the game" and was never fixed so it's okay
d) they benefited from others doing it, even if only tangentially and/or marginally (playing with someone who has bots that were cheated to free subrace status is still a material impact in the game--else, why would anyone do it? for the wings or monster skin?
)
e) some combination of the above
Notwithstanding, it's cheating, and cheating to benefit with tangible ingame resources. This is not "exploiting" by taking advantage of an overpowered or bugged class feature, or discovering a loophole around randomized PL stats.
(I admit that there may be some comparison to be drawn between
feeling like we
deserve chosen PL stats, and
feeling like we
deserve to ignore subrace book restrictions, but there is a clear difference in impact)
Let me ask a question, before continuing: What exactly gives someone the notion that the rules don't apply to them? From whence comes a sense of deserving special treatment?
Is it a reward for being cunning? Cheaters that discover a particularly clever way to cheat have beat the system and rightfully earned their spoils?
Rather than ill-gained, this free loot is deserved, by virtue of figuring out how to get it? After all, the exploit is there for anyone to find and use, so it's fair game?
Should we be
thanking the exploiters for being modest about it? For not abusing it
too much? Was there some honorable and respectful thought process involved?
Perhaps the exploit could have been abused to greater extent, but people decided to be
reasonable and only cheat a
little bit?
Were they
responsible with their cheating? They only cheated as much as they
needed to and no more? Well, let's give credit where credit is due!
the rules in question were made when the mod had a consistent population in the high 10s or 100s and L50 requirements encouraged/forced more experienced players to continue to exist in the content below the Hells, which were, at the time, the end game.
Actually, from what I can gather from researching old threads, the subrace restrictions were largely kept in place over the years, because of economic concerns, and a desire to combat the creep of power and increased subrace availability that came with more players farming more subraces and getting wealthier and wealthier--so wealthy that new players were able to acquire largely-worthless subraces as handouts, without investing much (or even any) time and effort in the server--completely skirting the idea of "earning" subraces in the first place.
There was a feeling of subraces being too easy to acquire, and there was too many in circulation; subrace books had become devalued. Therefore, a financial instrument was created to pull more subrace books from the economy and enforce an artificial feeling of rarity and value.
This system was not solely the idea that newbies should have to earn them by accruing an arbitrary amount of XP before passing go--and this system was definitely not intended to enable vets to create a dozen alt accounts and cheat their way to the subrace tags that they feel like they are
entitled to).
Ironic then, isn't it, that cheating to exploit a loophole in the system which was implemented to preserve subrace value and enforce
earning subraces as a
reward for time investment, results in bypassing the restriction and getting the equivalent of free subrace books, thereby defeating the economic balancing device and reducing the value of subraces?
Of course, we are to believe that this is okay because these cheaters already
earned the subraces before, and they disagree with the system
requiring them to earn them again and anyway, that system is
outdated so cheating past it is just
smart, not really
cheating?
(Incidentally, the motivation to avoid
earning subraces--especially by those who feel they
deserve them for
free--has been a repeated source of cheating across the mod's history. Therefore, it's absolutely no surprise to see it once again rearing its ugly head)
It was also a time when multi-box was the exception, not the rule.
I completely fail to see what this has to do with supporting your position. Are you saying that before multiboxing became common, it made
sense for people to
earn their subraces...but, once every player suddenly became the owner of a bot army, they
no longer should be
required to
earn those subraces?
If your assertion is that the mass advent of box army as the norm, justifies the
need to cheat--that it justifies the
need to equip those alts with subraces that people are too lazy to earn
properly, I respectfully disagree.
I find the idea that cheating to benefit yourself once you get so greedy that it becomes an
unfortunate hindrance to
not cheat, to be completely noxious, and I find any support for this greed and dishonesty to be rather disingenuous.
Although this entire topic is begging for real-world analogies and metaphors--of the sort I'm sure anyone can easily think of, since crime, stealing, and feeling deservedly above the law are common in any society--we need only focus on the intellectual bankruptcy required to feel
justified in cheating to get free items because greed requires you to do so; because
not cheating is
inconvenient.