Can anyone confirm that there was truly a hidden banker in Befallen in the early days of the game? I never saw it myself, but heard about it many times. Was it just a myth? Or was he really there? If he was there, was there really some exploit/easter-egg involving him? Was he behind a fake wall? Just curious, not sure why I just remembered that story.
This was an entertaining thread: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=1&mid=1109487684419362445 The banker in Befallen is #4. Turned 1000 copper into 1000 platinum. This could have been a bug. Or a reward for dragging your encumbered body through Befallen to him. It made me think of the exploit NPC in GoD though. There was an NPC where if you would give him your anniversary XP potion (can't remember if they were 10 or 20 dose), he would hand back a recharged version. He wouldn't accept any other items. Definitely someone on the inside helping to create these exploits. Not sure how some of these could have existed through bugs or oversight, just way too specific.
This banker existed, and the flood of platinum that entered Norrath through the exploit was the primary reason Sony added the casino. The casino was a way to absorb the platinum that was ruining each servers economy.
It was a tool used to test changes to befallen through the zone revamp that was sadly retracted, it was a fun change. But the banker was accidentally left in (or accidentally reactivated through event) until it was leaked and soe closed it down quick.
The Befallen Banker was a legend to explain the sudden influx of plat on server. On Karana, one night every high end item in the Bazaar disappeared. A few days later they all came back at absurd prices. I know because at the time I was saving up for a White Dragon Helm for my Wizard (ft2 boots quest). I had been doing so for a long time, trying to get 100k saved. I was close. Then all of the helms, along with other high dollar items disappeared. And when they came back days later, they were around 300-500k, never to come back down in price again. And shortly after the real world money value on plat hit rock bottom. But as I said, that's just evidence that something happened. Something where suddenly some people got their hands on a LOT of plat and destroyed the economy with it. The Befallen Banker was the popular story at that time, causing a huge commotion. But it was never really proven or disproven. Anyone who talks about it like its fact is talking out of their ass. They just don't know for sure. They just read the same story as we all did and forgot to do so with a grain of salt and leave open the possibility that it might not be true. There was however another exploit at the time that could explain it. I know because I used it on the test server just long enough to see that it DID actually work. And sadly, Sony was slow to fix it despite knowing full well about it. That exploit was a Smithing item made with a low skill. I forget the item exactly, but the cost of the mats was far enough lower then the finished result item vendored for. I logged on the test server, /testleveled to 25, killed a few wisps for a Greater Lightstone, then headed over to PoK. A short time later that 4pp from the Greater Lightstone turned into 200pp. I proved to myself that it worked, and logged. My personal income rate with it as wasn't the most optimal, but others could do much better with it. Add onto that, this was the early days of macroing/botting. And that's what people did. They botted the combines, buying, and running around. And some even ran multiple accounts at the same time while botting it. I forget the exact plat per hour rate of the exploit, but it was enough to cause the damage we saw, I was certain of that. And as I said. Sony left it in WAY to long while knowing full well it existed. After that I relegated the Befallen Banker to just a fantastic story. Perhaps even one made up by the exploiters just draw attention away from the true source of the plat influx. It made for a much better story, and while Sony knew of the Smithing exploit, if it was as widely known about as the Befallen Banker story, Sony would have had to act much quicker due to many more players jumping on board and doing the Smithing exploit. The original exploiters were making a lot of real money off of selling that plat, and they wanted to milk that as long as they could. I know as much as I do about this for the exact reason I mentioned. The plat influx effected everyone, but for me it was a kick in the dick. I was very goal oriented in the game back then to keep me grinding forward. Initially the Carrot on the end of my stick was getting Manaburn. And sadly that got nerfed after I got level 60 and grinded half the AA for it. I never got to experience the non-shit Manaburn on live. =( I think I stopped playing shortly after, and returned a little after PoP came out. Eventually I found a new goal. Those sexy, sexy FT2/17int/110mana boots. I was in a bad family guild, and those were the one attainable piece of awesome I could actually achieve. I wasn't a hardcore raider. I didn't have the friends to group with to see me be in the right place at the right time to win the roll on things I could sell to make that kind of money easier to come by. I was doing it 1k at a time, scratching and clawing the whole way there. And finally when I was close, fate intervened again and that economy crash happened. So yea. I couldn't brush off the whole ordeal very easily, and followed every discussion and lead I could. I didn't find out about the Smithing exploit until weeks, or months after the economy crash. But when I did, it had apparently been in quite some time. I was partly disappointed that the Befallen Banker suddenly seemed more like a piece of well timed fiction, as the Smithing exploit fact explained the plat influx all on its own. But I guess I at least found my closer. I never really did get my helm. Not truly. I retired shortly after Omens, and only got the helm years later during a free Veteran month when it was old trivial junk.
IIRC this was an exploit put in by a rogue developer/GM that they eventually found out. It wasn't an accident. But a deliberate scheme by someone on the inside to make $$ through RMT and cheat. It would have made a better legitimate honey pot for them to trace player transactions from and ban/delete/remove all that plat from the servers.
I dunno about the banker, but, I genuinely found this on accident one day grouping there and googled it. Not sure if it's in the Befallen on our server but I remember being so confused and laughing and taking a lot of time to get screen shots and stuff as if I had discovered something nobody else had. Not too far into befallen there's a "mound" I'll call it and if you climb to the top and break the clip plane with camera angles there are a bunch of pictures of someone's cat. A strange little easter egg.
