We take reports of bug abuse very seriously. Not every bug report,
however, leads to the discovery of an actual bug. Sometimes (frequently,
even), reported bugs turn out to be nothing more than misunderstandings
or even deceptions perpetrated by other players. Unfortunately, in two
cases during this war there have been loopholes that were exploited in
such a way as to impact the overall balance of the conflict.

In the first, a group of people including several members of the
Renegade Legion exploited a tactic that allowed them to engage and
defeat a large division of troops. This was alluded to in announce post
135. As the tactic has been seen before and prohibited by
administrators, and as the people using it knew this to be the case,
they will be held responsible for its use. After an exhaustive
investigation including interviews, scrutinizing logs, and examining
backed-up data, I've found conclusively that this happened on one
occasion, destroying 156 undead scourge.

The second was easier to track down, and I addressed it partially in
announce post 137: double teaming divisions. However, I've now found
that the Deepwater Alliance combined actually lost about 200 more troops
to this (now fixed) tactic than their opponents did earlier in the war.

There was another alleged bug that was reported quite a bit as an abuse.
In it, 350 Shallamese troops were sent to their slaughter by a
traitorous Shallam militia member. This in itself would not be cause for
administrative intervention - after all, espionage and shifting
loyalties are an inevitable part of war. It was reported as a bug
because members of Shallam believed the traitor should not have been
able to take command of those troops at all due to his militia rank. To
investigate this claim, I essentially went back in time (to a backed-up
version of Aetolia from a time right before the troops died) and
observed that every one of those troops had no assigned commander at
all, making them available for any militia member to command. This
agreed with the statement of the person who arranged for their death, in
fact. So either Shallam had not been in the habit of assigning their
troops commanders (and misremembered that fact), or there's a sneaky bug
out there that causes troops to spontaneously forget their commanders.
As I can't determine which is the case (though please let me know ASAP
if you can reproduce such an occurrence), I've decided to assume that an
unknown bug was involved and restore those troops to life.

So, here's what I've done about all this. Between Shallam, Bloodloch,
and Duiran I've distributed a total of 700 troops. For their
participation in a known prohibited combat exploit, Spirokai, Alastra,
Maliquai, Daelar, Razhan, and Akhilleus will be under forced divine
grace for an Aetolian year.

If you have any questions or comments about any of this, please feel
free to contact me at varian@aetolia.com.

-Varian

Penned by my hand on the 12th of Lanosian, in the year 124 MA.