XIV: Oh Shit, The Entire Hospital Might Be Dead On This One

I read a political/economic blog that's about to go down for good that characterizes the US Dollar as having one form of lesser STDs while the rest of the world has a killer virus.

That might be an analog for Final Fantasy XI vs. XIV right now.

Reading a massive BG thread on what might be a game-killing exploit:  Some players figured out how to change the database on player's on the PLAYER SIDE.

This means:  They could be whatever level, with however much gil, items, crafting levels, etc. and so forth and so on.

Word is:  This actually was discovered during the latter stages of the Beta test!!!

We're talking complete hackage of the game here.

And NOW, there's word that characters on XI are being deleted with no cause whatsoever -- the characters are not being banned, hacked, or anything, at least that we know of.  The characters are just... gone!

Basically, players were giving themselves gil, according to the cheaters, and selling them to RMT for ridiculous amounts, probably making a massive penny in the process.

But, as one person so well put it:  The game is fucked.  You rollback again, you're basically now on XIV-3.  You don't, and you basically let everything stand.

Wow.  Just -- fucking -- wow.

ETA:  And, yes, BG:  What they did to get money for the added gil was quite illegal under California Law.  We're talking felonious grand theft here.