Over the weekend it came to light that a significant number of players were exploiting Salvage to farm multiple thousands of alexandrite per day. You can see one of these players discussing this
here. Initially it was thought that perma-bans were issued, as with the prior Salvage cheating, but this was not the case, and they were merely suspended... I saw one of the most obvious offenders back in Port Jeuno tonight.
I am extremely disappointed at this outcome. While it would benefit me personally to have lots of cheap alex towards my wife's Glanzfaust, this exploit was damaging to FFXI. There were two direct results of this cheating:
-Legit players who depended on alex farming to make gil saw their farming devalued by scummy cheaters. Some of them were so flagrant as to sell 5k or more of it per day, and the constant undercutting hurt players who were getting their alex honestly.
-Some of these players took advantage of the exploit to make multiple mythics. Even though these weapons were acquired by dishonest means, they managed to keep their ill-gotten gains. I won't group with cheaters, but it still sucks to see players benefit from this kind of dishonest behavior.
This level of cheating, where some players profited billions of gil fraudulently, it's just not acceptable that they should keep their accounts as if nothing happened. It isn't right. Period.