Mini Update/Hotfix: No auction order for Limited Items

Today the option to place orders for limited (L) auctions was removed from the auction house without any futher information from MindArk.

Mini Update
18 Mar 2008

It is no longer possible to place auction orders for limited items.

Originally Posted Here

Since this is pretty vague, i did some research in order to gather more information about this action.

I first started by searching on google for a possible explaination for the removal of this function and if a bug/exploit was the reason for removing it. After 2-3 hours of searching on google, i haven’t find anything usefull.

So i decided to call MindArk and ask if there is more information about this case. As always, they wheren’t pretty cooperative all got was that this feature was disabled for security reasons and may be re-enabled again in the future.

While that’s not much information to start off, it told one thing: The reason for the removal of the order option for limited items seems to be connected to a bug or exploit and was removed until a permanent fix can be applied.

So i decided to checkout some of the popular cheat and exploit forum and comunities, to see if there is more information about this bug. Going through a few of the free accessible cheater comunities, i haven’t found anything suspicious.

Since i don’t have any payed subscriptions for the other forums and comunities which can only be accessed for subscribers, i decided to use some of my old contacts i’ve met in my online gaming career from who i know that they were active in this underground cheaters comunity.

It took them a few hours, until one contacted me and said that he maybe found the reason for the removal of this feature.

The real reason behind the removal is a bug with the orders. This bug happens with (L) items which have a very high TT value (TT > 1000 PED). If you use an insane markup percentage, the money necessary for the order will turn over negative. And if you increase the markup even more, the numbers will eventually become positive, but below TT value of that item.

You can see the prove on the picture below it. It is still in tact in the current client and can be tried too (you can play with it to see that this bug is for real, just don’t press “Order” if you don’t wanna risk your account. MindArk may monitor this and ban/log such attempts). My contact said that it was confirmed from several people in this subscribers only cheater forum, that it was possible to put order for Items with very high TT value for 1-2 PED in total (1 PED fee for the order + 0-1 PED for the itemitself).

With todays fix, the ability to put any limited (L) order into auction was disabled, effectivly stoping this exploit from working. As pointed out from Support this will probably be only a temoprary workaround until the real bug is fixed or the system is reworked.

But it’s unknown how long this bug exists and how much damage may be already caused by it. But it’s good to see that MindArk reacts and stop it from working, even if it negativly affects some people who often order (L) items. But this is a necessary sacrifice in order to prevent exploiters from abusing the system to gain unfair advantages.