Reduced XP for Freakshow now

here's a great -rep from the guy with such atrocious reading comprehension-

I am on the pro-nerfsledgehammer side apparently, but I'm actually curious in seeing some examples of MMOs that leave exploits open and remain unbalanced.

AC was historically epically bad at fixing exploits. They would, but they also had no way to go back and un-do the damage, no log of who started it so bans would have meant half the server population, and it usually took them a month or two to fix it, in which time everyone and their brother had done the exploit. I'm not talking small stuff either; I'm talking producing in-game cash via crafting in total safety at absurd rates, full-afk combat botting (they've still never solved that), item dupe bugs, and probably more. It didn't really effect balance either way, but it did screw with the economy something crazy.

What's really funny to me here is the blame-the-farmers. Heads-up folks: farmers don't care about the XP or Inf off the mob. It's a drop in the bucket compared to a purple drop, good pool A's, salvage, merits, or tickets (your pick).

Unless we've got proof that the IO/Enh/Salvage drop tables are altered by these changes -- any xp/inf nerf is meaningless to farmers. Good job fixing those farmers up good!

I can't think of any MMOs off the top of my head. If you look at games in general or even just focus on the games with a large online component, though...

Diablo comes right to mind. Game mechanics weren't so much as issue (though, I seem to recall there were many) as security. The cheaters and abusers prospered while the greater playerbase became jaded and experienced a great deal of erosion. I don't think Asheron's Call, an actuall MMO, ever had a significant period of time where anything was ever balanced. Even despite the wide-open character development available you basically had to be one of thousands with specific skills or you'd be considered a gimp. Crafting skills AND combat skills on a single character!? PSHAW! That doesn't even address the problem with content rewards, which is related to this thread's original post. There was always one specific area or dungeon everyone went to, despite the fact that the world was seamless, populated, and larger (acreage wise) than the entirety of WoW including all expansion landmasses.

I guess I can't think of too many off the top of my head. Countless smaller MMORPGs that don't exist anymore.

We see what happens with prolonged periods of inattention to balance just in small time-frames in this very game, periods of months where some specific content or powerset is badly overpowered or generates rewards outside a reasonable range. I'm not sure why anyone could possibly, logically, argue that MMORPGs without balance changes would experience less churn that a MMORPG that doesn't do balance.

Edit: Whoops, I took too long to type that and someone beat me to it. One of those exploits mentioned above was bad enough that they rolled back servers by days. I also resubbed last year for 3 months and many of the problems still exist to this day. Particularly botting.

Edit: Oh, yes. Here's one: Star Wars Galaxies. It was a huge joke long before the complete overhaul. The game had huge balance problems at the start, continued to have huge balance problems, and then even better... transformed once people figured out how to unlock Jedi. Hologrinding. That was basically what the game became all about. Finding the fastest way to grind your way through career after career after career in hopes of eventually getting a Jedi of your very own.

Lest we forget the jerk hackers, and what has gone to the americans.