The Great Red Jailbreak of 2014
 

Recently, on February 6th 2014, a number of banned accounts were accessed on Red 1999. These accounts were never unbanned, but were instead able to be accessed via an error that occurred during the February 5th hotfix. This exploit was attended to immediately, and there was approximately a 24 hour window where accounts could be accessed.

During this small window, a number of accounts were accessed and immediately stripped of all items and gear. We believe this firmly implies that the players who logged into these accounts were aware that the ability to access their banned accounts may have been an exploit, but did not report it. Out of all the accounts accessed, only a single person who got gear off an account mentioned it to the staff prior to the bannings.

After much discussion, we as a staff have decided the accounts banned in that wave will remain banned. Any account that received items from a banned account will remain banned.

The exception to this is characters who were merely used in a quick transfer (IE, the items went to you and then were immediately transferred to another character). If you were not the end recipient of a 'banned item', then please petition on the petition/exploit forum and we will provide instructions on how to have your account unbanned.

Thank you, and enjoy your weekend!

goog

this reaction image never gets old

Lot of respect for the GMs doing this. These people deserve to pay for their damaging intentions.

then again, kind of shitty in a lot of ways - the items were tracked down, so why keep the accounts banned instead of just deleting the items?

edit: or allow for a petition to be made where the player admits they received the items, and lists the items - sort of an admission of guilt and in exchange an account reactivation?

Because why would you transfer items off of a banned character without first saying something to GMs unless you know you're doing something you shouldn't be doing? There are probably a couple of exceptions, but for the most part there was a lot of whistles being thrown into doo doo that day.

Or... people could just not be total crapbags and knowingly take advantage of a situation.

Zero tolerance for deliberate and malignant exploitation. Good on the staff for following through.

Because they would be sending the message that it's okay to break rules/do things that are obviously wrong, as long as you say you're sorry after you've been caught.