And the SOE apologists need to quit saying that people who deliberately bought something were automatically cheats and intended to abuse the system.
I wasnt aware of this aspect until recently, but talked with someone who was online right after the servers came up:
Some people have never seen the beta server...MANY people have never seen the beta server. This player had never seen the beta server.
Some helpful people in pok were OOCing that there was a GM event behind the bank.
When this player went to look he saw a group of strange merchants...plus he saw a GM standing there. The GM wasnt doing anything (was probably trying to figure out what was going on i suppose), didnt respond to players at all.
So it did indeed look a LOT like a GM run event about to unfold.
Btw, the GM did nothing for 10-15 minutes, stood there plainly visible then eventually vanished. One little server wide message at this point would have saved a ot of people.
So yes...there really were some people who thought it was a real soe event. I think they must have been more than a little naive on most servers to think that, but at least in one case I probably would have fallen for it too.
Some people who were on beta knew exactly what was going on, with rumors of a GM event flying I know some of the people I play with would have bought some items.
Try it, ask some of your guildies/ friends who arent hard core, who arent in beta. Tell them what it looked like, and that people were saying GM event. I did, and I found all too many would believe it.
Heh, for that matter one of my very hard core friends said he would have thought it was a SOE special event intended to draw people away from the big splash the D+D game was making last week. The one where they were offering people a sneak peak to play the online D+D game thurs-sat.
I am happy soe is trying to do something to make up for this nightmare, the double exp weekend will help a few of the people they have hurt. A few. A little. Its going to help a lot of my guildies, my friends...but its not going to recover the lost items and pp that a couple of them lost through quite innocent transactions for normal bazaar items.
A few people undoubtedly tried to take advantage of the situation, and given the unforunate soe response the ones who really tried to abuse the sytem probably did manage to make a killing. And many, many inocent people got hurt.
Again, for those who harp on the need to punish the criminals:
Dont you think the criminals were probably smart enough to sell some of their ill gotten goods to normal pok merchants, then buy them back with another charcater?
THE NATURE OF THE ROLLBACKS VIRTUALLY GUARANTEED THAT THEY COULD GET AWAY WITH THEIR LOOT!
Can I make it any simpler than that? What soe did had almost no chance of stopping any person who meant to abuse the system. From square one, what they did was meaningless to stop the abusers. What it did do was crush anyone who WASNT trying to abuse the system but got too close.
By its very nature the rollbacks could only catch the people who didnt mean to cheat.
No one has answered this because there is no answer...the rollbacks are inherently indefensible.