Lost Arkhas been around for almost three years now, and while their track record for exploits and glitches hasn’t been squeaky clean, there have been only a couple of instances where players have abused some of the unintended systems. Unfortunately, there’s a major exploit that has been going around for the past two weeks that has largely gone unnoticed by the public, at least until this weekend.
While the exploit was apparently something some players found out about early on in the Ignite Server’s existence, it has mostly been kept under wraps until some content creators got ahold of this information and tested themselves. This put a huge spotlight on the issue that most players didn’t know about, but the few that did were benefiting off it immensely.
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The Exploit
While we normally wouldn’t detail the means of exploiting an oversight such as this, this is no longer something that’s available to the public as Amazon has taken measures to curb anyone from doing this anymore.
How Ignite Servers apparently works is that any character on the servers is considered to be under the umbrella of new, and thus will automatically get the same express pass-esque treatment upon loading in. Because of this, the servers are completely segmented from the rest of the world, having their own ecosystem that doesn’t allow the use of the marketboard or buying in-game currency with real money.
Unfortunately, while the servers were supposed to be separated from one another, someone found out that you’re still able to access the stronghold of Ignite Server players, and if they moved to one of their strongholds, that character would be treated as if they’re new. This means that all the reward boxes that are tied to their item level would immediately unlock, giving them access to everything they weren’t supposed to. Worse yet, this could be repeated as leaving the stronghold and reentering reset the process.
It’s alleged a small group of players had been keeping this quiet for some time, and reports are now coming in that there are millions of (bound) gold in some accounts that shouldn’t be, along with essentially infinite resources, such as honing material, transcendence tickets, gems and quality taps, just to name a few.
It’s alleged a small group of players had been keeping this quiet for quite some time, and reports are now coming in that there are millions of (bound) gold in some accounts that shouldn’t be, along with essentially infinite resources, such as honing material, transcendence tickets, gems, and quality taps, just to name a few.
The Lockdown
As soon as this information made it to the masses, it was quickly made aware to Amazon Game Studios, and they took swift action. Within a couple of hours, the boxes that Ignite Server characters were unable to be opened, and will be until the foreseeable future. This leaves a lot of concern considering the Ignite Servers were supposed to allow players to transfer their characters over to their main roster starting next week, but for some players, this might put a hold on things because they’re unable to actually progress.
On top of that, newer players to the Ignite Servers will be completely restricted, not being able to actually do anything until a fix is implemented. This completely defeats the purpose of the Ignite Servers, as it will no doubt drive away potential players.
To limit things even further, Amazon has also locked down Stronghold access to every single player in the game. This is a massive issue because Strongholds are everyone’s personal little island they put together, and have a lot of resources and features players use on a daily basis. Not only that, but any character that was in their Stronghold before they were locked down is inaccessible. When you try to swap to that character, it will go into an infinite loading screen. Amazon has announced that the best way to resolve this is to contact theircustomer support, but that will take time because they are no doubt swamped with requests.
Why characters weren’t ejected from their Strongholds automatically is beyond me, but this couldn’t come at a worse time considering players are preparing for the new Aegir raid tier that is supposed to release this Wednesday.
The Punishment
While this is still a pretty fresh wound, there’s no word on what kind of punishment will be handed down for anyone who used or abused the system. With that said, this is something Amazon can’t ignore. This is one of, if not the biggest, exploits we’ve seen inLost Arkand the players that took advantage of this to an extreme level should be reprimanded.
While gold seems to be bound, meaning they can’t circulate it into the economy, they never actually have to spend a single gold piece to improve their characters. Everything is essentially handed to them, which kind of defeats the purpose of a community-based MMORPG. While the perception is that Lost Ark has been somewhat struggling with its player base due to burnout and other issues with the repetitive formula, we wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon Game Studios would lose more players to not doing anything than actually punishing the exploiters.
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