All item duplication exploit (do not name players please)

ummmmmmmmm not to be really rather well i dunno but in any case would it b a bad thing if i did buy a few of the bracers at rock bottem prices (even if they are cloned ) cos i do like tormented wepons and while slack for those who have got them ummmmmm i dunno if i should really limit myself as well yea i never understood the whole prestige thing i just get things cos they look good (tho that nomraly goes hand in hand with prestige) but yea just wonderin if it would be just callous to buy a few armbracers for personal use??

the test was done not to make money for ourselves but to figure out how the exploit worked so we could pass on that info to anet. that alone shows our motivation for doing it as if we were doing it for profit, we would have immediately duped some higher priced items.

This exploit won't have massive impact to economy if those duplicated items flow to the markets little by little like I'm guessing they are and have been.

Dupers wouldn't propably want crashed economy either, it would just make trading harder for them.

I wasn't being facetious. ~_^
I was being serious. Fenix deserved a "thank you", but I can see now how it could have been looked at in the wrong way.

Whoopsy.

Ok one more before I hit the sack. I read this:
And thought they meant this:
"Sorry but I had people confirm that they (the dupers game wide) did this with red dye (as in, they [the dupers] had mass duped red dye to make a profit)"

I simply thought the moderator meant that they had heard on IRC that the dupers had mass duped red dye. I guess poorly read on my part, and a little poorly written. But thanks for jumping down my throat.

imo, i dont care about ppl getting 500000k from this, economy cant get worse in a way.

getting the reconnect feature back is far more important to me than random cheater's cash. Keep in mind that those guys can only make cash using that kinda crap. I'd rather enjoy my selfdropped k's

edit:
kk, i think we got each other's point

I understand our reasoning fully, I really do. I guess im just the paranoid guy that would leave the actual testing of the flaw to anet and keep my account safe

The problem will be when the ppl with 500000k start ebaying that amount. I think that would be 500x 50 = 2500 USD.

That is not something that should be encouraged.

And about that Fenix or somthing duping the red dye. It doesnt matter wether he has proof. It is common knowledge now that ppl have duped armbraces. He reported how he did this to Gaile and she works on it now (even past her bedtime). If u want to know the proof of it, u prob find out how he did it as well, which should not be in these forums.

Dont blame anet for this and start flaming them saying ur going to WoW. U got what u payed for. That is NO FEE per month. If ur not happy with that fact, go over to WoW.

I just think one thing, If a group of people who made this game couldn't find the bug, and you just could find the way it works to solve it in a few hours.

Only two thing are possible, you are a really really really smart guy. Or you were aware of the bug, and now you want to be the hero of the day. Anyway, you are really smart.

Yeah, me and Enko never intended of profiting from this, since we both make more than enough money as it is. Due to the fact that things were dupable, the ways we made money would have disappeared due to the market being flooded. We tested it, sent pm's, and it's being fixed.

I think it's kinda funny that people are attacking us for being ZOMG HAX DUPARZ, when it was the guys who made 1000+ armbraces which got GW in all this mess.

Let's suppose that I were to find a duping bug, and have no ethical qualms about using it to cheat extensively (this is, of course, not the case). What would I do with it? I could buy a lockpick, duplicate it a zillion times, and sell them back to the merchant to effectively have infinite cash. I could buy several perfect weapons to equip all my characters and duplicate them enough to equip all my heroes. I could buy one of each relevant insignia or rune and then duplicate them enough times to equip all my characters and heros. I could buy a few sets of prestige armor for all my characters.

And I could do all of that without the general public noticing, as it wouldn't show up as a blip in prices anywhere. NPC vendor prices are pretty stable. I once bought 100 of an insignia at once (to equip 20 hero monks), and the price didn't budge.

But equally important to this analysis is that there's nothing really there to be noticed. The impact of these actions on the game economy would be pretty much zilch. Indeed, it would probably be less than buying bulk runes and insignias to equip heroes as I've been doing recently, without using any exploit of any sort. What I have equipped on my characters doesn't affect the game economy.

Sure, with a duping bug, I could dupe and sell thousands of ectos, armbraces of truth, or whatever. But even apart from ethical considerations, I wouldn't, because there's no reason to. Seriously, what motivation would there be to do that? To maliciously mess with ArenaNet? To demonstrate prowess in cheating? To get more resources for myself would not be a motivation, as I could get whatever I wanted by relatively minor duping already.

Now let's take a more insidious case: a gold-selling company finds out about a duping bug. What would they do with it? Dupe thousands of ectos and armbraces of truth, to flood the market with them? Hardly. They wouldn't want to be caught. They'd duplicate lockpicks and sell them to vendors, and get all the gold they need to sell online that way. They could probably cut prices to attract more business and undercut competitors. But still, the impact on the general economy would probably be minimal.

The game doesn't have much of an economy, but it's because ArenaNet wants it that way. If the game did have a solid economy, it would necessarily entail chances for players to seriously mess up and lose a lot of resources. Players would do so and demand that the company change the game to protect them from the consequences of their economic idiocy. Or at least that's how it played out in Puzzle Pirates.

Unlike some games, there isn't a whole lot you can do with vast amounts of cash here. For a game that isn't largely based around the economy, that's a good thing. For scandals like this, it means that not much harm gets done unless someone actively wants to do a lot of harm.

Perhaps there have been people duping stuff for months. Even if so, the net effect on the economy probably wasn't much, until people started duping stupid amounts of very rare items. That last category of people necessarily consists either of idiots, or of people who want to be caught. Such people don't strike me as being the most likely to have tons of accounts to be able to launder stuff to the point of it being untraceable. As any police officer can tell you, criminals can be really, really stupid.

And let's not forget that ArenaNet does have the right incentives here. Catch the people duping stuff and ban them from the game, and if they quit the game, great. ArenaNet already has all the money they'd ever get from such people. If they buy another account to play again, that's likewise more money for ArenaNet.

Sure, this is a nuisance. But it doesn't really change a whole lot in the game. So please, calm down, and look at recent history. It was only three days ago that people were hyperventilating that the changes to favor would mean virtually no one would ever have favor ever again. We can already see how that worked out.

someone posted a small description that it involved reconnects that he "heard from a friend of a friend" a while back in this thread. we went from there and extrapolated. it also wasn't that hard since its the same type of dupe exploit that was used in Diablo ONE.

One can not speak for Anet, but I generally liked it if someone found an open door on any server I worked on if they told me. Yea, it generally caused a lot of work, yes it sucked - but MUCH better than finding out the really hard way (as with this). I would have simply sent it, I know some sysadmins do not feel the way I do but I can't fault you for it either.

Personally I do not think this exploit was in wide enough knowledge long enough for a long term rollback (a short term - maybe, but even then I wouldn't do it). I will not say it is new, if the first ones to find it were smart they could be "rich" but not in a total economy shattering way.

This would be counterfeiting were it actual goods and that attracts a certain type of person. That type - as we see - is greedy (and usually not that forward in time looking either) and simply selling lockpicks to max their storage gold and have a reasonable sum of ecto isn't enough. In fact, waiting a normal amount of time for a rare mini-wasn't enough - the type of person who abuses this generally had to have it all and have it now. I would bet that outside of a guild or two it hasn't been known for very long at all and those guilds keep it "reasonable" (though still worthy of a HUGE ban stick).

The first type of person isn't going to ruin the economy, there are too few of them, the latter will. As far as I can see it wasn't until fairly recently that it became prevalent enough that people noticed - if you *had* to do a roll back I would do no more than a week.

Hopefully Anet has logs and these people are hit with a really large ban stick. For the most part ambraces are high end items and most people trading in them read forums so the likely hood of them being dumped into the market now is pretty slim - the dupers are stuck with them. Yea, they may sell them off in ones or two but there will not be time to do so. Even if this has been in the wild for a few months it can't have been *that* destabilizing as the economy hasn't been that unstable (well, outside of high end and that isn't worth a roll back). Of course, check ecto/ruby prices and see if they drop as dupers unload them (if they do too much then the possibility of a rollback increases).

Personally I'm going to find it amusing when the dupers start showing up here complaining about their unfair ban, and you know that is going to happen.

they should just take the servers down for the day, look through for anyone with more than 1750 armbraces, and flag their account for further study . ..

That's a valid point... Why haven't they shut down the servers temporarily? I think the community will complain for a good while... But it's for a good reason.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10185761

Heres someone who is most likely a duper from 2 days ago. regardless, i find it hard to believe someone farmed a full stack of armbraces legit, as that is about 15000 ectos worth, if each armbrace was 60e each at prices from 2 days ago.

Before u say anything, look at tile, it says WTS 250 Armbraces.

Well, that would fix the economic problem this thing would cause DIRECTLY. BUT, since when Anet fix things directly anyway?

stop throwing out inaccurate accusations. before you throw out accusations, get some proof.
and if he was a duper, what would it help this thraed & the community (other than people going PANIC and spamming him like hell).
go on, tell me i'm a duper too, i have armbraces.

ecto most likely didn't dupe (at least i hope he didn't). he made a crapload of money reselling the asian mini pets.

QFT, glad to see I'm not the only voice of reason here

Why shut down the servers when they already disabled the means by which the exploit worked, way to overreact there.
The 'community' always complains so thats not exactly anything new or unusual.

anet must reroll right now otherwise if they wait for one month to reroll theres still gonna be duped armbraces.........
another solution is: remove all torment items/armbraces from the game..................
the end justify the means

This is what I think of the suspect and what it comes down too. All of what is stated below is my opinion, and should not be taken likely as truth.
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What we know is that original person who the OP pointed too is not the original suspect here. This second hand offender probably was the original suspect’s bane in all of this. Why would anyone make such a blunt idiotic move and show off all those armbraces in the first place; if he/she knew the chain reaction could blow their cover?

The original suspect probably found this exploit and started to use it on his/her own time. I am guessing this person had a guild or something to an extent. However whatever happened, was that either his/her friends notice he/she was making a big profit; so they asked the 1st suspect how. From there it’s either was bragging rights or something else; so the 1st suspect had a system to make sure him/her did not get caught. Probably sold things one at a time, and never in the same place.

At last though the word started to circulate and finally this person (the second hand offender) made a really dumb move to the OP’s insight. However the 1st suspect by now knows what’s going on though, unless he/she has been off for awhile. I mean the news has spread about it now.

Has it been going on for awhile? Probably, yes. Is widely spread enough to destroy the GW economy? No. The reason for it is because as I have stated before the 1st suspect probably did things in a smart directive; figuring out a system which would only make himself/herself extremely wealthy (but keep it under wraps). If this person went hog wild with the exploit; then yes you might have already seen some bad fluctuation in the GW market. This would have either made A-net aware of the problem, or someone else.

Galie is right though; this person will have a panic attack, and make one stupid move that will get him/her caught. I would ask if you guys do keep tabs on what gets thrown out by a person, via the innovatory trashcan.

wow, this is serious stuff. the duping probably just got out of hand recently, id say a short rollback would probably make a huge dent in the number of duped items out there, like maybe a week.

It really depends whether they log trades or not. If trades/origin of items are not logged items then they cant trace much. They could only say that certain items are suspicious, but never they could state 100% illegal. Knowing that we have stacks and such, I would guess they don't keep too much track of trade, dc etc. However if they just state that it is most likely that u used an exploit (100 ambraces gained prior/after a dc it is clear what will be the result ---> EXIT.

I wasn't "overreacting". I was just going with Enko's oppinion.

VOTE ROLLBACK!!!

I think its ridiculous that this exploit has been there for more than one month now. First leaks on it were so unbelivable that the community drowned it, but why didn't Devs investigate it? I know searching database is highly resource-eating, but eb=ven a slightest possibility of such dupe to exist is enought to make that call and search database for any account that has 20+ armbraces one week after DoA is released! And nothing, nothing was done.

Edit: Rollback?? No way! you guys seriously want an one month rollback??
My vote is, just dump Armbraces.. Make them cost like um, one gem each kind at the ghost. Sure, Tormented Weapons will loose their value, but they ain't got any at the moment anyway.
My condolences to those who farmed for them tho.

I'd say the duped items should be deleted which could prove quite painstacking for the devs or ambraces should be made unstackable. Reroll isn't an option.

Pff farmed my butt of just get my tormented shield :/. No wonder the gw economy has been down to crap *eek* My guess this dupe is the same as a good farm spot. First just some people know it, then gradually more and more people do the same thing, which brings down the value of the item rapidly. Only instead of a specifik item being over farmed, any item was duped :/. I really wouldn't want to be anet right now. Rollback piss of a lot of players, do Nothing piss of a lot of players. I certainly wouldn't want to lose any of my achievements of the last few days/weeks/months. And people afk nine rings would be pretty pissed too ^^. Maybe after bugfix the economy will settle a bit more :/

I think you should ask the entire community how they feel about a rollback first, I'll bet 90% of the players would just quit and never buy another anet game again. I personally have made a lot of progress on my titles, completed missions, traded and sold items etc... The loss of something of this magnitude is simply unacceptable to most people. Think of the impact! The damage done from a rollback would be far worse than the damage done from this exploit.

We also do not what constitutes and "item" in their code - there is no reason why they can not have a semi-unique identifier. Then again, there is no specific reason why they do either.

I know in a past project I worked we needed some way to keep thing mostly seperate - a collision was to be somewhat avoided but wasn't really bad. We added a 16 bit identifier that was a hash of several things (process ID and time stamp). The assumption was that this gave is 65538 identifiers and that was enough even under excessive load - models showed that we had a collision something like once every few million runs under twice the estimated top load and a collision just meant that it tried again.

So, does anet doe something similar? That is one byte per item, heck even if they went with one bit the chances of having 1250 Ambraces of Truth with all the same state is pretty much zero - yet a dupe would do so. Were I to do an online game and this did not cause a storage cost issue (and it may very well, I do not know their margins) it would be something I would add, especially on higher cost items. Though it would be much more difficult to do with stackable items, I would be fairly surprised if the dupers limited it to just them.

I guess what they do now is make or break for GW:EN. i really hoped this wasnt possible, but there is no one this screws more than a-net...

[QUOTE][Dont blame anet for this and start flaming them saying ur going to WoW. U got what u payed for. That is NO FEE per month. If ur not happy with that fact, go over to WoW./QUOTE]

I have to agree with this. I get a laugh every time some one ends a post with an "I quit, I'm going to WoW" statement. Just go. This is a pay in advance game, you've paid already. You're quitting reduces lag, feel free. Whiner.

I was in game this morning, and someone was driving me crazy trying to buy my Kuunevang. I was tempted to sell, but it didn't seem right. I'm glad now I didn't. Kudos to A-net for their quick response.

Funny thing, I was watching high-end forum a while back and someone was selling a Vizu. I remember thinking that I would love to have one, but I have never had close to enough ectos/plat for anything remotely like that. Heck I dont have enough plat to keep all my heroes in runes and insignia. And all this time I have 4 personal computers in the house and all 4 have GW on them, and I have 3 different accounts so that me and my kids can all play together. So all along I've had the means to own Vizu and never realized it. The thought of a ban would keep me honest anyway, but it's funny to think about.

I am connected right now in Ascalon intl district 1.

The trade channel is full of ads such:

WTB the best items pm me.....

and of course strangely lots of:

WTS req9.......all the best skin rare max items.

I dont mind i dont make bizeness LOL

Indeed, people who advocate a rollback probably have an agenda for doing so, most players wouldnt like to lose their accomplishments, however small or large, I would imagine. If only looking at myself, I'd have less money, less titles and a definite feeling of having wasted my time the last month.

they're able to dupe anything though, not just armbraces. This wouldn't be good because what about the other duped items?

All you people that would quit because of a Rollback are just plain selfish. You don't want to lose all YOUR little accomplishments but you don't look at the big picture here. Rollback would be the only thing to do right now until A-Net can think of something else to do.

They can't remove all the Torment Weps/Armbraces because most people sold them already and because some people actually spent their time and money getting them.

They can't make them untradable seeing as most people sold them for a lot of cash.

I don't see any other choise A-Net has other than to Rollback.

A rollback of even a week would bump me from mid-rank 6 to rank 5. Screw this game if they do.

I've been reading every post of this thread and it just keeps getting longer.
People are talking about a rollback for a month. That's just ... insane. Although Gaile's later comments would indicate that they wouldn't do a rollback, at least not a very big one.

It's a good thing this exploit has been (supposedly) fixed now, but has the damage been too large already? People have reported insane Ambrace amounts for a much longer time now than a month, which is kind of scary when thinking how long this has been going on.

If not rollbacks, then bans maybe. But what about people who have bought and sold these duplicated items, maybe just a few of them? Is a casual player responsible for trading with an item duper?

[edit] A rollback would set my personal economy back an insane amount. I've been farming a lot during the last month and got a lot of stuff I wanted. It's not just the stuff, but the effort as well.

thank you for follow up & link for more info Gaile,
Yesterday [sunday12th August] i was in ascalon city inter dis1 while things where going a little "heywire" with people offering HUGE amounts of ambraces for rare mini pets & had sense to take a number of screen shots over a period of time, ill be more than happy to forward the original screen shots to you & hope this helps you to sort matters out, obviously it may not pinpoint everyone, but think a few of the major culprits are easily spotted!