Today Mythic suspended and/or closed around 250+ accounts caught using cheats in DAoC. Sticking with their policy of “moral integrity” and good principles that they like to flaunt in public.

This while the game (still) needs concrete work to reach that integrity that is present on the public announces but not in the actual game. Still today DAoC is plagued by buffbots, aka the “legal and supported cheating” and another manifestation of blatant hypocrisy. Or, as Sanya says:

At one point, the perception had been expressed on the part of some of our players that one had to have radar to be competitive. As the steady decline in the number of radar users has shown, the reality is that this is no longer an issue.

This describes perfectly the buffbots, not the radar cheats. The need of buffbots to be competitive isn’t an idea of a few players, nor a perception. It’s a fact. The ruleset expects and supports the use of buffbots. With the time they became a normality. Even if they break those vary basic rules that the game itself would be supposed to follow in the case the moral flaunts were more than an actual marketing tool.

If Mythic closes an account for cheating, it’s possible that the player will buy again the game and all the expansions in order to go back at its addiction. The hardcore players are today the most faithful subscribers Mythic has. Of course they aren’t banning credit card numbers because they like a “sorry” player coming back and sending them money. But if they stop the “legal cheating” under the form of buffbots they are going to lose that money. The players would be required to play 15$ (the declared monthly fee) instead of 30$ (the actual monthly fee). Could they afford this risk? Especially now? For this very simple reason the buffbots cannot be “an issue” like radars cheating.

Soon Mythic will launch a “casual server” that will offer various benefits, like experience points capped for each day, the removal of a design-disaster like ToA and the limitation of ranged buffs. Of course this won’t stop the unbalance in PvE but Mythic doesn’t care. They are just executing what the players ask and in PvE the “legal cheating tool” isn’t disrupting the experience of other players, so tolerable.

When Mythic flaunts about its integrity remember that it’s just a facade.

If they open new servers where cheating through buffbots is partially solved they aren’t doing anything different than SOE opening servers where you can buy stuff with real money. This while speaking of “creative corners”.