Too many mushrooms have been fed shit and kept in the dark too long. Allow me to enlighten the situation with Teek & EQ under Darkpaw Games. If you try to post something like this on their official forums, or talk about it too much in game through General Channels or OOC, you will be banned by this company.
1. Incompetence vs Corruption
It is a well-known fact that corruption and fraud are endemnified and institutionalized in our culture. Many gaming companies are now duping currency in their own game to buy back their own product and resell it in the aftermarket. @100kr per day globally in Everquest 1, you'd be looking at a nearly quarter-million $ a year non-taxable racket. The temptation of that kind of money is nearly impossible for gaming companies to overlook, once they began to understand how easily they could exploit their own games. As the old saying goes, "follow the money." Or be a naive fool, continue to live in your childish escapism and fantasy, and ignore the hard facts about the reality of our world. When a company performs a series of incompetent activities repeatedly, a pattern of corruption begins to emerge. We see this a lot in our financial system and corporate systems. Our Federal Reserve system that creates the money, our DOJ and FBI, the banks, the college of corporations, all feign incompetence, when in reality they participate in corruption. This is why after the 2008 financial scandals nobody was found guilty. Like the Devil says in The Devil's Advocate, "nobody's guilty!" Because the corruption and fraud are now endemnified and institutionalized in our culture and western civilization. Even the current President of the US feigns incompetence constantly, to mask the actual corruption taking place under supernational liberalism in our world. It's a common tactic communism and now neo-liberalism has used since Bolshevism.
There is virtually no regulation or oversight in the gaming industry at the moment, making it the perfect environment for an aftermarket RMT racket to be initiated by gaming companies like Darkpaw Games. It is the year of Darkpaw Games indeed, as they themselves said. Krono are disappearing in Everquest. If you fail to notice and report it, the Krono simply vanish down a memory hole. This level of brokenness and incompetence leads us to believe everything going on at the company involves incompetence. JChan, like Biden, represents the bumbling, incompetent "leader" who couldn't possibly smell like a rat or be competent enough to engage in a sophisticated aftermarket racket. Their decision to reimburse these "missing krono" with duped platinum--that is platinum created out of nothing--seems like another move that's either based in incompetence, corruption, or both. But the fact remains that this complete lack of oversight and regulation creates a ripe environment for corruption to take place. It is highly likely that Darkpaw Games is masking their duping activities behind real, created, and artificially leaked dupes and exploits. This is a common tactic. Like when you create a false flag scenario, you are also running a wargame, drill, or artificial scenario that mirrors the actual false flag you are running. For example, during 9/11, NORAD was running simulations of planes flying into American landmarks. This is a simple fact that is almost unknown by the idiot public. This happens far more often than people realize. Such a wargame scenario was also being ran when the London train bombings took place...on the same day. Why do plebs historically always drink the sand in the desert? Is it because they believe it is a mirage of water? Or is it because they don't know the difference.
Now if you want to trace the corruption in-game, it's very easy to do. You can see that the majority of the buying activity is being done by 1 entity in game 247. This entity has done this same process on past servers where duping and runaway krono prices were involved. This pattern of activity didn't begin until Darkpaw Games took over the EQ IP. If it was Darkpaw Game's intention to stop such activity, they could easily do so, since it's often reported. But what this company actually does is censor all talk about it on the forums, and ban anybody in-game that talks about it too much in ooc and general chat channels. They are deliberately protecting their racket through censorship and moderation of all communications in-game.
The modus operandi of the operation is as follows. An anon level 1 shows up in EC Tunnel on Teek every day and spams WTB Krono for about 10% over the daily average as recorded on TLP Auctions dot com. This toon has no affiliation with any of the known top-tier farmers on TLPs, AE PL groups which have been established for years, and never sells any loot whatsoever. They have an infinite plat pool, and never run out of plat. They spam WTB on a macro timer that averages 20 seconds to 60 seconds, nonstop, often for 12 to 15 hours per day. They vary the names they use somewhat, but also reuse the names a lot. Common names that have been used by this "entity" on Teek include: Chengsim, Shinyu, Isellcheap, Kaitokid, etc. By changing names fairly regularly, this creates the impression for the vast majority of plebs (aka our mushrooms) that it's different entities engaged in the same activity, when in reality it's always been 1 entity doing all the buying. This entity doesn't just have "reimbursed" platinum--this is duped platinum that is endless and ongoing--and I've personally been tracing it since the price rise over the historical average began. I foresaw that this would take place on Teek, because this is the new trend of TLPs under Darkpaw Games.
The historical average price for a krono in the Kunark era was 25k-35k maximum, accounting for all the usual AE PLers, who generate far less raw plat than the plebs (aka our mushrooms) seem to think they do. I also accounted for the increased vendorable armor drop rates, etc. Tower drops 0 platinum, etc. The popularity and increased loot drop rates of Teek do not explain the activity of this "entity" that is doing all the krono buybacks in game. It is highly likely (read 99.9% certain) this entity is Darkpaw Games rebuying all the krono in their own game. It's so obvious at this point, you have to deliberately put your head in the sand to not see it and understand what this activity represents. Vote with your head! Vote ostrich! This isn't "Frank the Bank" or some insider being randomly given plat according to some loopy ass story and conspiracy theory, this is actual ongoing activity being repeated on TLP servers year after year. The back-end of the cash grab scheme that is every new TLP each year.
2. Effects of Missing Krono & the Reimbursement "Strategy"
Krono going missing fundamentally breaks the integrity of the game on so many levels, especially when you consider these are revenue items on Darkpaw's balance sheet (once they are consumed or go "missing"). There's something so broken about the game at the moment, that none dare call it a conspiracy.
Even if you don't believe Darkpaw is duping platinum in their own game and using it to buyback krono in an aftermarket racket:
Reimbursing krono with platinum has the effect of stealing actual time spent earning wealth in game away from all players globally, and specifically steals more time from players who invest more time and energy into accruing wealth. The more platinum you earn or farm, the more this negatively impacts and steals from your invested time and energy. The integrity of a game's economy is fundamental to the integrity of the game itself. Even the EQ Emus and garage boxes have more integrity than EQ Live under Darkpaw Games now does.
So essentially this company has a broken game on their hands. Krono are going missing. There's zero transparency at Darkpaw Games, and they always hide behind "security" clauses, just like our politicians do, so we'll never know the full truth of why it's happening or the full extent of it. Their community manager's job description is to feed you shit and keep you in the dark. But what we do know is this, the onus to notice these missing krono is completely on you, the player, even though these krono were payed for with real-life money and are treated as a future revenue item on their balance sheet. Even when you report these missing krono, you will be reimbursed with platinum, not the krono that was paid for with real-life money. This platinum is created using elf magic! This platinum is also often not sufficient to outbid the Darkpaw buyer that spams WTB krono 247 paying 10% over the daily average. As I write this Chengsim is online spamming WTB Krono for 150k each. I'm pretty sure at the start of today, they were reimbursing a krono with 145k. So this reimbursement fell 5k short of being able to outbid the WTB spammer that is spiking Krono prices daily on Teek. This Darkpaw agent will be online every day doing this on Teek until the bazaar opens, and by then they can just buy them all up incognito, as I'm sure Darkpaw Games is already doing on every other server already. So the amount of platinum they reimburse you with is barely or not-quite-sufficient to cover the actual in-game cost of a Krono at the moment, which is usually 10% over whatever TLP auctions site lists it as. Meanwhile the net effect is a constant krono drain on the server, increased panic that causes sellers to hoard their krono instead of spend them, and causes resellers to more aggressively exploit the situation by also buying krono and reselling them for exorbitant prices as the available krono pool tightens and sellers become scarce.
Even if what Darkpaw Games is doing is legal, it's corrupt and shady at its core. It steals time & wealth from all players on the server involved. It mocks your intelligence, which unfortunately wasn't much to begin with. And tbh, I'm convinced now, based on how naive and disinformed most people are about this situation, that it will continue until EQ or Darkpaw Games is shut down. Most EQ players really are mushrooms. They are like meth addicts, chasing some digital high they perceive this game gives them. What that high is seems different across the board, but the reality of the state of the game in 2024 is simple. Deplorable, torched, a dumpster fire. In other words, "the year of Darkpaw." Note: It takes a lot of hubris to take a game you didn't create, and which you do nothing but fuck up, exploit, and release trash content for year after year, and then call it "your year." End side note. End rant. Flame on.