This official news post is copied verbatim from the WoTMUD website. It is copyrighted by wotmud.org.
Admittedly, it's always been a pet peeve of mine: cheaters actively harm the game, through the time it takes for imms to deal with them. That time can then not be spent on rule-abiding players.
Never has that been as obvious as the past few months, when Cerys and I have spent at least 30 hours tracing shenanigans and following up on them. That's 30 hours that could've been spent improving the game, or in case of imms even playing the game.
As such, Staff has decided to take a harsher stance on cheaters and rulebreakers.
As of now, everyone caught majorly cheating or majorly breaking a rule can expect that character as well as any of their alts to be barred from ranking into bonuses for a period of 6 months RL. Everyone who was caught in the past 3 months will also have this rule applied, but the term changed to 3 months. These people will be mailed in the following day.
Ranking into bonuses includes:
- Mastering.
- Rank 8 bonuses.
- Shawling.
- For Gaidin, attaining the rank where one becomes eligible to bond.
- For White Leopards: attaining the rank where one gets clanned weaves.
- For other bonused clans: attaining the rank where one gets said bonuses.
While missing the 5/15 min rule by a few seconds, nor a mendbug abuse warning will result in this being applied, more severe and/or repeated issues will result in this rule being applied. Perhaps that way the more selfish amongst the players will think twice and stop being such a time sink for Staff.
Since we often do catch people after the fact, sometimes weeks or months later, you can take this opportunity to self-report and the instances reported will not be held against you.
EDIT: the reroll abusers we've caught from March onwards and other problem cases have been mailed.