DramaQuest - Mischief Plat Dupe Exposed

In this episode of DramaQuest we interview the principle actor behind the 2021 Plat Dupe which impacted Mischief, Thornblade, Mangler, Aradune and Firiona Vie. This person implicates several other individuals in this and other major RMT efforts, details the rough methodology behind their dupes, how much platinum they duped, how much IRL profit they made, and claims to have met Darkpaw Games staff for meetings in person.
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[@arsfrags3475]

Ruined economies and robbed people "for fun", but then blames it on the company for being insecure. When there are those who profit due to hacks/exploits, there are victims as well. The Krono was purchased with real $$ and stolen with duped plat. The same thing happened with the Oakwynd dupe. People who left their Krono up for sale over night were wiped out. He's not wrong about the poor state of the game, but just because the state of the game is bad for 1 person doesn't mean that 1 person should go out and ruin server economies. I have hopes that one day they will crack down on all the cheating/exploiting... I can say that Oakwynd will be my last TLP (yeah yeah we all say this) until they start taking cheating seriously and start banning instead of suspending. With the state of how the game is now, they should just make available every piece of raid gear and free levels through the DB store.

[@suineg2024]

The Krono was purchased with real $$ and stolen with duped plat.

[@MichaelJohnson-ot3if]

@@suineg2024 I appreciate you coming on and basically spilling the beans - it gave closure to alot speculation I had around this time (much I was spot on about). However, I think your perspective may be a little warped as to how and who benefited from this. Yes, there were certain market players that benefited by taking advantage of this by selling high/cleaning out the market when the price spiked. The victims however were those that spent real life money to buy krono, put them up for sale at the market value in platinum - went to work/bed only to come on later and find the 10 krono they had up for sale for 30kpp each are now selling for 1mil+ each. The 300kpp they got from it with the intent to buy gear is no longer even worth 1/3 of a krono. That 60kpp fungi tunic they were hoping to buy as part of their 10kr sale is now priced at 2mil. When a giant amount of plat is spiked into the economy, prices of EVERYTHING go up - not just the price of krono. Basically the person who spent $150 on krono in hopes to sell for plat to buy gear is now left with pennies on the dollar of what they spent. Those are the people that were robbed - not the market players that got to sell krono at an extermely high price over a short window. Would love to see you on again though and perhaps talk about more of your experiences, such as meeting up with EQ staff. Would also love to hear some more detail about the FoH forum aquisition and interactions with people of that guild. That type of lore is always sought out!

[@clwnthr]

​@@MichaelJohnson-ot3if "Robbed" might be a bit of a strong word when talking about people spending real money to essentially buy in-game items, though ;-)

[@kyleNoxiousEQbarto]

totally agree. I was doing what they called "legit" RMT, mostly for fun, but I was still playing the krono game. When the dupes happen, I am not moving enough for it to just ruin me, but the loss of 50-150$ to a poor person who is just trying to play the game for free, its a lot lol

[@clwnthr]

@@kyleNoxiousEQbarto If you're poor and just trying to play the game for free, don't throw 50-150$ into it then 😉

[@Vindaven]

Interesting conversation! One note: While he points out that so-and-so servers weren’t touched with his plat dupes…. It should be pointed out that Krono is transferable cross-server. So folks could still buy cheap krono on any of the servers. So it does affect the entire game’s economy. Just in different ways.

[@FacelessZaide]

Very good point!

[@suineg2024]

I discussed that it had far reaching effects on the entire economy regardless. Just enough rumor of it made prices change for the entire economy.

[@casrogue]

This is why Kronos needs to be non transferable or stop selling them. Make them vendor sold non drop

[@drowningin]

Precisely how rmt get money to different servers. Give it to a character, and pay for a server transfer

[@ravanta]

@1:06:30 he just starts spitting cold hard facts about the player base

[@dluxx7378]

Mmmm just because some people don't look to exploit doesn't mean they don't know how the game works.

[@clwnthr]

This is why the live servers will never really thrive, and why e.g. Project Quarm is doing so well. Passionate developers as well as a passionate community, also contributing on a lot of fronts by themselves. Of course there will always be cheaters in any game. That's just people. The trick is to not letting it affect the rest of the players, or at least as little as possible. Quarms instanced raids is a good take on this, as it gives every guild their own playing field, more or less unaffected by other guilds. There are pros and cons to everything, of course, and a lot of guilds and players really didn't like even the idea of instancing at first. But if you ask anyone on Quarm now, they'd say that it's the best thing they've ever experienced (at least as raiders in EQ) 😉

[@FacelessZaide]

Yeah Quarm is a great server

[@Adinirahc]

Not a good look for DPG's. Doesn't really feel like the "Year of Darkpaw" to me, so far. Feels more like wait and see if they screw up the TLP's this year (yet again) and/or actually address so many of their recent issues. They missed a big opportunity this year, not jumping all over a 3/16/24 TLP release IMO. People could get really fired up for a solid 25th TLP(s), but those chances seem to be fading fast. They seem really out of touch with the community. Almost indifferent.

[@drdroop2163]

From the outside it seems resource constrained is the more likely culprit. The dev team is SMALL. Absurdly small for a MMO. I doubt they even pay well enough to attract high-end talent either. Unless they go on a hiring spree over a couple of years I doubt we'll ever see EQ get the love and attention it deserves.

[@andygluehere8266]

Faceless and Amtrack....possibly the most classless people I ever played with in my life... MQ2 and exploit clowns... don't join if you actually want to enjoy the game , we gave discord recording of what they did to the delvs, and they didn't care.

[@FacelessZaide]

Probably because your discord recording just shows you don’t know what’s happening.

[@andygluehere8266]

@FacelessZaide well they used their in game names , and people synced them with the logs. This was from Selo ... EQ didn't do anything

[@andygluehere8266]

@@FacelessZaide and the whole Daddys little secret scam on Mischief

[@FacelessZaide]

@@andygluehere8266 what did DLS do?

[@andygluehere8266]

@FacelessZaide the plane of sky fiasco, that was Mikes idea, but he made alot of folks mad because his crew cashed in first

[@martynmedia]

Zaide you're becoming the 60 minutes of EQ! 🍿🍿🍿

[@FacelessZaide]

I’m doing my best! I am just a random guy with my own biases and issues though. I encourage folks to come to their own conclusions about these things

[@chuckfreeman1336]

@@FacelessZaide But claiming to be a an idiot that had no clue his members were screwing the entire server. Yeah, so why didn't the Devs involved tell you? It seriously pisses me off that you are Ex-Navy.

[@MolluskCreature]

@@chuckfreeman1336 Pretty much anyone that puts "God" in their name is a psychopath. The cult of personality around this asshat is insane. I get that power corrupts, I'll give him that, but this entire video is just a sad admission to being an antisocial leader.

[@archon5951]

eqmule put in a rat and it was sending in game mails to gm's telling them when someone was using MQ lol

[@FacelessZaide]

We could probably do a whole episode on EQmule and that whole era by itself!

[@archon5951]

@@FacelessZaide guarantee it lol 😂

[@dmitryw.2209]

Thank you both. That was depressing as hell. There is no way Darkpaw ever learns from it. Also, there is a ton of post hoc justification for ruining the game. There is a lot of "look over there, those guys are sinners too; so I am OK" nonsense justifying ruining the game. Nonetheless, it clearly lays out what we have all known for years. The game is cancer. I'd love to see Darkpaw respond but they won't. They probably don't have the ability to make the necessary changes.

[@FacelessZaide]

To their credit I don't know what they can really do. If their detection methodology can't "see" the issues then when people reported it (I posted about it on FoH, in the official discord and DM'd a few devs directly) they probably just have to ignore it right? I remember a lot of people like straight up made fun of me when I originally brought this up in 2021 and assumed I was just rumormongering.

[@dmitryw.2209]

How do you not see Krono prices triple in a week? Or maybe better put... do they not know there is an auction price website that tracks Krono Prices for each TLP? @@FacelessZaide

[@kyleNoxiousEQbarto]

I have seen a dupe on every single TLP so far. It would be wonderful if it didn't happen when this new server comes out next month, but that may be asking to much. My names Noxious, and I like free plat to. =D

[@chrislittle7701]

Bertoxx is trading around 5.5 mil right now. I run 6 accounts and making enough plat to legitimately purchase krono to keep them running each month is hard. gotta love that inflation.

[@darczee1]

Mortalis!! On venril sathir, I was on that server. Tolpan, the bard was amazing in that guild.

[@seanscott1933]

Not sure if they can monitor the plat, BUT....what I can tell you is that they can track large multiple purchases in the bazaar if the amount of items purchases aren't spread out over a period of time. For example, if someone goes and buys all the high ticket items from the bazaar all at once, there's a good possibility that a GM may come and have a "chat" about how you acquired so much plat so quickly. I can't confirm this, but the person it happened to did lose all the items he bought and got a short suspension. From my understanding they couldn't actually prove anything, and that's why he didn't get perma banned.

[@Waggabagaboo]

I enjoyed the half price subs from the black market and that even insular dkp guilds could benefit from the mischief situation cuz getting the actual items into the economy was the payers targets

[@chuckfreeman1336]

There are tons of possibilities, but only one that explains him not being prosecuted under corporate law after this video. These guys are in collusion with Daybreak itself on the side. On that note, vote now, who here seriously believes that a Russian mafia owned company, with a Chinese CEO, transferred this company to a legitimate unassociated corporation? Who's the sister company? Fox news?

[@jessemaccharles-hf2fk]

Love your podcasts zaid. ~Gnom-Faceless~

[@chuckfreeman1336]

This wonderful guy, who was all for helping the community, but had 800 dollar dinners? Were the waitresses playing EQ or something? Were you helping the community with just the tip?

[@drdroop2163]

It'd be interesting if Jenn Chan would answer or address some of these harder hitting questions. I like the EQShow well enough but everything on there are these softball PR questions for fun. Those of us who love EQ want to see it succeed. We want to see it evolve and grow in the best way it can. I believe that open dialogue and connection with the community gets us closer to that then not. Bug bounty, even if it's just digital stuff in-game, would be awesome. I don't think you can have a bug bounty without enough qualified devs to fix them though. I suspect that's the holdup with EQ. We could identify 100's of bugs/exploits but at the end of the day how many of those could even get patched? Probably not many.

[@dmitryw.2209]

I wish Jenn Chan would weigh in on this as well. Just some kind of a positive statement talking about them paying more attention and increasing perma bans for people they catch.

[@deuzsama]

How the hell do you get Looselin? Why? What's wrong with people?!

[@classicmmoguy]

I'm certainly not naïve to the cheating that has gone on in EQ for quite some time now, but this story really offers a glimpse at how deep the rabbit hole goes, and how oblivious and/or negligent DBG has become. Well done.

[@Nimnommonster]

Vacuumer, was his barter name on Mischief, automated most of the time, really shook up the system as he set his max price higher and higher... Was a great many people lost krono at that time. Fair enough they got plat for them but within a week the plat they got was near worthless. Due to the inflation. Crazy. I watched it real time, and thought, jesus this guys got unlimited plat. And he really did!

[@suineg2024]

Wasn't one of ours.

[@archon5951]

Can we just admit that those people who considered themselves "elite" or the "best" were more then likely exploiting and just call it what it is lol plain cheating.

[@FacelessZaide]

Yeah being "elite" in EQ is really weird. I know there is some skill in EQ but it's really hard to put my finger on it exactly because overall the game requires so few APM it's almost more like a game about knowledge and if you can pay attention and press one button properly.

[@archon5951]

@@FacelessZaide I think if people would go back to No Gina, no Nparser, nothing extra. Just the game and you, they would see the skill difference. With those programs it’s just something telling ya when to hit a button and timers.

[@clwnthr]

Guess that's why people enjoy e.g. solo enchanter/necro challenges. Much more of a challenge than actual raiding.

[@HazenDemietrie603]

Justifies his cheating because he was trash player hah

[@FacelessZaide]

Some people just end up viewing it as the normal way to play the game and they assume everyone plays that way after a while :( I hope DPG really cracks down this year.

[@suineg2024]

Nope, just a trash player. Just cheating sometimes.

[@gangaskan2255]

i remembered the powater out of bounds from back in the day. i used it to fish and made alot off that.

[@LuoJi-WF]

Incredible reporting. Thank you for bringing this to us.

[@gardenofseeden]

Faceless|virtue was insanity. It felt like I was in a fortune 500 guild.

[@FacelessZaide]

That guild was an absolute machine, and up through like mid PoP as "Greed is Good" it was probably one of the craziest economic powerhouses EQ has ever seen. I am glad I got to experience it.

[@TheQxx]

Krim knows one thing and its the hustle.

[@AllenS99]

I was in Dargons / TxM, and even we were getting 1+ million plat splits per raid as early as Velious. The PoGrowth minis dropping Vulak loot was ridiculous. This whole story being unraveled makes sense as to how those splits came to be and it's quite fascinating.

[@scottblanchard3457]

if they dont get pinged, someone get in there and get the rest of the database for emu lol

[@The_Norse_Hunk]

Been playing on and off since 99, was never in a super guild (as you can tell by this question, lol...) but what is the "7's" you reference about 15:52? I've always loved the game, and will play it until they disco the servers completely.

[@FacelessZaide]

7 is a veteran AA ability that you used to only be able to get by having an account which was a certain number of years old. It temporarily gave you a MASSIVE DPS buff and was absolutely critical for winning DPS races on raid content in TLP eras where it was available. It's more widely known as "Intensity"

[@The_Norse_Hunk]

@@FacelessZaide Thanks for the explanation!

[@jsega-di6lu]

It's more than just duping, on Live servers, for many years now, there are bots running 24/7 just farming plat (e.g. plat itself, blue diamonds, etc.), just like the SG bots on TLPs but even easier because there are such high plat-value drops, not to mention expansion-wide rare drops to sell. So yea, the game will never be fixed regardless of dupes. This is why people don't believe darkpaw when they said the dupe only accounted for X% of the total plat, they have no clue. I believe it, because again, regardless of dupe there are bots running 24/7 farming on every single server, as soon as a new TLP pops there will be bots farming. I ran bots on EMarr for a while and made plenty of krono. I was a small-fry compared to these more serious botters. I never even got suspended. Needless to say that gets boring after a while. At this point when I play a TLP I can't even stand boxing, just a single character for fun. I wish they could effectively deal with this but I have no hope. A few GMs that were tasked with this full-time could clean it all up but they refuse to pay for real in-game customer service as they used to. It is what it is

[@chuckfreeman1336]

Let's start with the few undisputed facts in this odd tale. Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg was placed under sanction by the US Treasury Department earlier this month for "malign" and "destabilizing activities" in various international affairs. Vekselberg, whose US assets have been frozen, is the owner of technology investment group Columbus Nova and its parent company, Renova Group.

[@zorgonox8479]

But ultimately MQ2 is not 'allowed' on Rizlona - as far as I know. I missed that leak. I'm guessing the 'no third party' - 'boxing good'/'automating bad' stuff was incident clean-up?

[@dluxx7378]

I love EQ and have been playing on and off since 2000, but this video basically validated what I always assumed was happening. I intend to play fair always. While I'm sure I've benefitted from cheaters, I never want or intend to be and because of that I'm always behind. I always have to play longer, harder, put up with more shit than a good many people who are just cheating their way through the game.

[@chuckfreeman1336]

Dudes like, I had no idea who did this, but is a IT expert explaining how this could have happened. The other dude is telling everyone you have to be warned 4 times, so who cares, then advocates harsh punishments for those that do the same thing. My advice is to shorten and review your story before posting it. Anyone could wreck this story if they wanted to. You would have to be a fanboy to believe this.

[@adamb306]

Next do the legend of Sonwee, the guy on oakwynd who tried to force a server rollback after the depot dupe went on for a week without being fixed. Dude was openly advertising for like 8 hours in global and giving out +2 million plat per player who traded him!

[@homelessbird2819]

I’ve never played EQ but I’ve really been enjoying these interviews - and consuming EQ content. Thank you for these videos, sir!

[@jschram84]

I played in a top raid guild on Thornblade and we didn’t hack or bot. We played the game straight up and had a blast and were in the top 2 from launch through Omens of War. People like this who hack and exploit sicken me, they taint the experience of everyone else and they ruin their own experience. They don’t love the game, they just love themselves and it shows.

[@FacelessZaide]

Every guild has people who are cheating. Every single guild. Most guilds don’t cheat from an organization level, like leadership isn’t pushing it or building plans around it etc. Idk if you’re talking about Cowboys, or Camels or Gnomehub btw but all three definitely had people who did significant amounts of cheating.

[@jschram84]

I was in Gnomehub, who was cheating from them? I quit playing a OOW, but was with them the whole time. I played Spunie a Bard main.@@FacelessZaide

[@suineg2024]

Snoop was in your guild raiding as well to sell items from Thornblade. Some of them were server transferred over to Mischief.

[@jschram84]

@@suineg2024 transferring a character and selling items that were legibly obtained is not cheating. He’s talking about full on automation bots.

[@suineg2024]

@@jschram84 snoop plays no characters by hand. None.

[@ztjaenisch]

I got suspended 3 boxing ~lvl 40. Meanwhile I buy gear from people boxing entire raids....

[@packnaught954]

I've love you know who it was that just straight up took pity on me when I was trying to solo in PoFire and PL'd the shit out of me with a mix of 30 wiz/chanters on Mangler

[@Earwaxeater88]

Cool shirt! Where do I get frog merch

[@FacelessZaide]

It’s from a brand called Rare Loot! They do a lot of cool EQ apparel

[@sabra401]

Next level genius to this guy is a high school graduate

[@andrewhinkle160]

This episode was great and reminded me of the ghost kill era when i had a old buddy doing some mq2 plugin developing who was way ahead of his time.

[@frankthebank22]

It's always funny to me how Elderan is this constant source of botting, but he still takes time to post population his "data" on the official discord as MadMax. Also how often he rollercoasters from pretty accurate info to insanely dumb takes.

[@ndmx1000]

What a great episode Zaide. Probably one of the best. Can't wait to play on the TLP this year.

[@sethchestosky9903]

❤ Super interesting video. Feel free to ask me what i what do with unlimited plat anytime! 😂 The mega twink on a busy server is always a dream of all eq players.

[@HoopleBogart]

Good thing about TLP's is that maybe Faceless will go play there instead of Quarm. (hehehehe) love Dramaquest tho, thanks zaide.

[@FacelessZaide]

I have bad news

[@einer1314]

Looslin forever. Brad didn't know what he was talking about.

[@Tassy989]

I think you mean Luck-lin.

[@MrThundermaul]

Looslin lives on

[@LumieX]

@@Tassy989 What do you call the shards you farm for VT key? Loosid shards or luckid shards?

[@orcblood9999]

@@LumieXI think it’s a stretch to assume lucid is a derivative of luclin. There are several items titled ‘luclinite’ in the expansion- wouldn’t that make more sense to use as the name if that’s what they were going for? It’s fun to theory craft this stuff.

[@LumieX]

@@orcblood9999 I mean it's only a single letter off and we clearly pronounce lucid shards as loosid shards so logically Looslin makes more sense than Lucklin /shrug

[@JeremiahCommons]

I think we need some new live servers that you can transfer to but cannot bring things like plat or that aren't no-trade items. This way we can remedy some of the plat dupping and bring this game back to a non-cheating scenario. I know a lot wouldn't want to leave their original live servers. Though I would be all for transferring to a server where things haven't been manipulated.

[@JeremiahCommons]

of course, after they solidify the anti-cheating aspects.

[@brianlovesjesus7056]

With the current state of the game and as someone who just returned to the game you cant get a group at all. Maybe that changes at 100+ but how can you play this game anymore? While I dont agree with cheating how the heck do you play the game with no one to group with?

[@andrewhinkle160]

I was late to Mischief and it was still popping in TSS with grouping and extremely helpful people. I imagine Teek is going to be very successful with the same random loot rules.

[@Horzzo]

Just found your channel. I love the server history episodes man. Keep up the great work! Our stories of our Everquest journeys should be shared with other Norrathians.

[@FacelessZaide]

Thank you for the kind words! I am passionate about trying to save our history, even the bad parts.

[@Horzzo]

If you ever do a dive into Sullon Zek I'd probably have some good and bad memories to share. It was ruthless there at times and probably why I enjoyed it somehow even though I never "griefed the greenies". @@FacelessZaide

[@VBQX]

Feel free to parcel Refuge on mischief 😊

[@Keybz]

Wild video, good job

[@FacelessZaide]

Thanks Keybz! Good to see you btw!

[@djbillyebundy8964]

What i gathered from this is there are a ton of addicts with a spending problem. I cant even bring myself to buy 1 krono and its not due to lack of funds by no means, i just never understood the mentality of pay to win. That defeats the whole purpose of playing for me. The only having so much time to play and i don't have time to sit here for x amount of hours excuse is just that, an excuse for those to rationalize their spending on paying to win lol. Go do something else that you do have time for and you'll get a lot more satisfaction from it learning or completing a project or game on your own.

[@micker9830]

It's more fun to be powerful. Wouldn't you rather have a raid weapon, than a group weapon or pet focus? It's tempting for people.

[@djbillyebundy8964]

​@@micker9830just play on an emu server then and make your character as powerful as you please.

[@thanniss]

Oh was the guy who asked about the plat the same one who made millions of dollars off eq and wow and everything.

[@FacelessZaide]

That’s a first heard for me

[@LumieX]

@@FacelessZaide he's talking about Yantis I believe.

[@FacelessZaide]

@@LumieX ah that makes sense! Thank you!

[@stanosherkanor8416]

Fascinating discussion! Thank you both taking the time. So many more questions...

[@chuckfreeman1336]

There is only one reason a corporation wouldn't prosecute these guys. I'll give you 100 guesses and the all start with Devs

[@nfefx]

delusional

[@williamhunt6577]

Zaide you are obviously a Squealer

[@keithruffner7168]

lol Zaide acting like his guild doesn’t cheat you know they do when he accepts 10 million and never calls his name out, yes he said there was a dupe but that’s it. And the other dude is garbage period

[@FacelessZaide]

C O P E

[@keithruffner7168]

@@FacelessZaide just the facts man

[@johntthurmon]

@@keithruffner7168 you are spitting facts and zaide is pure cope. This swing guy is a cheating piece of shit and zaide is JUST LIKE Vicious from thornblade. They let their officers cheat so they never get banned. They are users and abusers. All pieces of trash

[@FacelessZaide]

@@johntthurmon I can feel your impotent rage.

[@johntthurmon]

@@FacelessZaide lol you are such a joke "zgod". Deleted my comment? Just proves us all correct that you are a cheating scum bag that NO DEV TEAM should ever listen to. You ruin every server you play on, for the whole community

[@xasx999]

Darkpaw needs to bring Zaide in as a consultant, seriously. Thanks for the content and actually putting it all out there like this.

[@FacelessZaide]

It ain’t much but it’s honest work ;)

[@johntthurmon]

Zaide runs one of the most toxic, cheater heavy guild on each tlp he infests. They should study him for tips on how to defeat this scum behavior

[@Mildain2000]

23:40 stopped listening here. To think that logging plat transactions in a game with a few thousand players would amount to "petabytes" of data is just... lol

[@FacelessZaide]

A guy being wrong about data doesn’t change the story of what happened.

[@MolluskCreature]

Watching these guys think they're good at Everquest has been like watching kids bumper bowl.

[@FacelessZaide]

It’s wild to say this while he says he is bad at Everquest like ten times in the video and the topic of “skill” isn’t even brought up outside of that.

[@MolluskCreature]

Good job buddy ya did it.

[@johntthurmon]

You are so correct mollusk 😂😂 they are complete morons. Cheating and think they are special.

[@MolluskCreature]

@@FacelessZaide It's not that wild. You and everyone like you, including your cult followers, peacock your exploits like it's skill. There's a very large population of players that watch people like you with a 10 foot pole. I get that power corrupts, I'll give you that, but you're the proverbial canary in the coal mine when it comes to games to stay away from. I like that games like Everquest exist for people like you to exploit, because every minute you're exploiting Everquest is a minute you're not spending trying to cheat on games I like to play. I award you no points, and may actual God (f***ing joke you call yourself God) have mercy on your soul.