Posted 19 April 2014 - 04:18 PM
The punishment was jointly decided by myself and Oracle. I use a standard of a one-month ban for auto-training and multi-pcing, regardless of who it is - mainly because I struggle to remember who is who, so all I see is a cheat. The 100m XP loss was also my idea, but implemented by Oracle because I do not have access to the relevant commands. I did not even look at the character stats (other than current level and XP), nor was I interested in them.
I don't intend to perm-ban players if I can help it, nor do I intend to impose an indeterminate ban period, because it might as well be a life sentence in the eyes of the perpetrator. Plus this game does not have player numbers in the thousands, so every player lost hurts the game. At the same time though, we want to show that circumventing the system is not tolerated.
The other reason for a month's ban is that it gives legitimate players a chance to catch up, hence reducing the effect of the unfair advantage gained.
The perm-ban listed by Oracle was perfectly justified, because the player gained illegal access to a staff crit (and the actions in question would break UK law as described in the Computer Misuse Act), which is not only a gross violation but also potentially leaves the game and its economy at the mercy of said person.