Then how did you learn of it, if they ONLY ever told BioWare?

So you'll take the word of someone who is breaking a legally-binding contract (the NDA) over that of the people who, without breaking an NDA, claim the bug did not exist during the first week of 3.0 on the Live servers? That's an odd choice in my opinion.

Apparently, people keep needing to be reminded that you did not need to be a raider to do the exploit. You just needed to: Have a L60 character, Be a subscriber or have an ops pass, and Know someone who had done the exploit. So lots of non-raiders may have done the exploit, if nothing else than for the creds, mats, and schematics.

That's not necessarily true. People have reported that the bug that enabled the Ravagers loot pinata was introduced one week after 3.0 went live to fix a different bug that prevented anyone who was dead at the end of the fight with Cortani or at the end of the fight with Ruuger from getting any loot. So while the no-loot bug may have been on the PTS (maybe?), the loot pinata bug apparently was first introduced on the Live servers.

Counting blue and green scrap tokens and CM Certs as having no value, and vendoring the rep tokens, I am getting the purple Java Junk for 1350-1600 credits each. So conservatively, my grade 11 purple mats are costing me 1500 (Midlithe Crystals) to 4500 credits (Adaptive Circuitry) each. Perhaps for slicing, crew missions are competitive - you'd need to average a crit every 3 or 4 missions for that to be the case. But for Treasure Hunting and Diplomacy, the Slots are cheaper.

Everyone in a decent guild probably has access to one. I do in both of mine.* Gives people something to do while looking for a pug or waiting for a Q to pop. *I also have my own 3-machine bank which lets me burn 500 coins in about 20 minutes. Life is too short to be pulling the handle on only one slot machine.

And how long a discussion do you think that can be? This thread pretty much went through all the options and potential consequences there of in the first couple of days. But perhaps they are waiting for management to approve, that can take a while sometimes ... few managers want to be the person who approved the action that sank a hundred-plus-million-dollar-a-year business.

It's fallacious to presume your own preferences extend to many or even most players. It's also innapropriate to group scammers who swindle other players with exploiters who just got extra rewards from the game, without depriving anyone else of those rewards. Many players, including at least a few who did not exploit, are happy to play with (overgeared:)) exploiters. In fact, it's conceivable, given how many people have exploited over the years ("it was Garj"), that most players are perfectly fine with exploiting as long as it doesn't deprive them of something they earned. They may, in fact, view PvE-area gankers, ops loot ninjas, and players who dash in and click the object while you are fighting the mobs (none of which is an exploit) as being more annoying than Ravagers, Nefra, or Garj exploiters. I do. That said, I suspect that if you really "don't want to play with scammers and cheaters," you don't want to play any MMO. In the online world where the worst punishment that you will receive is having to go scam or cheat in another game, they abound.

There's nothing special about Tuesday. The sword can drop at any time until BioWare says "we've done what we are going to do and that's the end of it."

According to the best data on odds we have, if you spend 20K credits on 40 chips, on average you will get 5 of each color scrap, 12,750 credits worth of rep items, and 1 CM certificate. So, 5 of each color scrap and a CM cert for 8,250 net creds.

Little late to be outraged, anyone could have predicted this the minute the slot machines were announced. Using macros was common during the Nar Shadda Nightlife event, but no one cared because the loot there was bound or BtL. Detecting click macros theoretically is not that hard, but the code would have to be instrumented to do it. Odds are it isn't instrumented because the overhead wasn't justified by the effect click macros had on the game ... prior to now anyway.

Not true. Read what Eric Musco wrote. He never said they could "track stuff," he said: No where did he say they could track, for example: which random items were dropped, what happened to mats that dropped, what the tokens that dropped were redeemed for, or the movement of armor, mods, and.or enhancements from one shell to another. Maybe they can track those things, maybe not, but he didn't say they could. So the accusations that the CS reps were lying is uncalled for.

BioWare may prefer people not do that. They may want to keep the details of sanctions as confidential as possible to minimize negative reactions from people who will think the sanctions were too severe or too lenient. By publicly admitting you cheated, you make what sanctions you receive more visible. Imagine someone admits "My toon DirtyRottenScoundrel'NotMyRealName was the first to smuggle the lock to Pot5 and I made 100 million credits off it." Imagine that toon keeps showing up every day and does not appear to ever be sanctioned. Some people would really be cheesed at BW, right? TL;DR: public confession may be bad for BW and may increase the odds you are sanctioned.

For normal leveling, it helps some. But for 55 -> 60 leveling it is pretty substantial, and will make a noticeable difference. With max Guild bonus, 25% XP boost, max Legacy Class Mission XP boost, max Legacy FP XP boost, and max Legacy Exploration XP boost, if you do all the bonus missions and dailies you will be 60 or an Oricon mission or two short of 60 at the end of the storyline, in my experience.

Most of your credits and all of your profits came from other players, not thin air. That money was earned somehow, right? So, taking into account you and all the people you sold stuff to, the total amount of money all of you have is now less by the cost of the chips minus whatever credits you got by vendoring (not GTN'ing) items -- that's over a million credits, right? Oh, and the GTN tax sunk some credits too. Pretty good credit sink.

One nice thing about these machine is that a guild can install a bank of them on their Flagship so that all members can benefit, or a group of friends can set up a bank on a Stronghold that they all have silver keys too. So at least the benefits are not restricted to those with either sufficient real money or sufficient credits to buy the machines themselves.

1 Hypercrate + 6 crates. 3 slot machines, 1 Ice Tromper, 3 Lergo mounts, 3 Czerka mounts (cool, police cars!), 1 Statue:Naga Shadow and some other stuff.

The Ravagers exploit was harmless compared to whats going on with the Contraband Slot Machines now. Sure, what is being done with the machines violates the ToS. But odds are no one will be punished and the effect on the economy, on purple grade 11 mat prices for example, has been dramatic. I guess BioWare did not notice all the ToS violations that happened at the NS Nightlife event, or didn't stop to wonder what the effect of making the prizes unbound would be. Well, I'm off to install another slot machine on our GF, and then back to my NS SH for a little quality time clicking my two machines installed there. Later!

RaveGate. Says it all, really.

Yeee-ah. Need I point out that Raider and Exploit have the same number of syllables? Try "RaidGate," "LootGate," "TOSgate," or "BugGate" if you want something shorter.

But are they both licensed? If SWGEmu starts making a noticable dent in SWTOR revenue, BioWare is likely to ask Disney to shut it down. And Disney, ever conscious of its need to actively protect its Star Wares brand, probably would.

Just hit the "Report" button when you see a rude or offensive port. Such posts violate the ToS, and BioWare is pretty good about removing them when warranted.

To paraphrase Guardians of the Galaxy: Guard 1: He says it's called "RaiderGate." Guard 2: Who calls it that? Guard 1: Mainly himself. You didn't need to be a raider or even know a raider to do the exploit, you only needed to have the SoR expansion, have a subscription or ops pass, and know someone with the lockout.

Outside of raids, lots of people do not see any issue with rushing in and looting a chest or clicking a quest objective while another player is fighting the mobs that were defending the chest/objective.* It's the same attitude -- "I want the reward even if I did not earn it" -- and it is common; you see it in RL in slackers who goof of at work but still expect a full paycheck, which is probably more common and more "wrong" than loot ninjas and game bug exploiters. Anyone here racking up salary as they read the forums ? (I'm not, BTW, I only get credit for hours I actually do some work.) *This is why I usually click first and fight the mobs second. You get trashed a bit while you are clicking, but it is generally survivable if you know what you are doing.

Same as always, this varies according to the raid lead. Most raiders I know would see the presence of over-geared members of the raid as allowing more less geared players to participate, not as an excuse to kick people. YMMV.