To the second part, where exactly are the shards coming from then? DD? Even if you accumulate shards from selling bits and bobs on the shard exchange, aren't the people bidding on your items buying shards? Since every auction takes a third of the shards out of the economy, someone has to be buying them."
Those "extra shards" are coming from the same place as the extra ottos boxes, or the extra card crunchers, or all of the myriad of things that exist in game, that were not created by SSG. I know players with bank alt toons still stock full of "extra things" that were not purchased from DDO, but talking about that, runs you the risk of getting suspended or worse.
I saw a gearset with 14 pieces of gear, and ALL of them were the major bonus's. So is that the luckiest player in the world, or did they do something hinky?
There are two different kinds of "features" in this game, ones that don't effect the $$ SSG makes and the ones that do. The ones that don't are often ignored as they aren't worth the time/effort/resources that it would take to fix them. Tell me you have never seen a player "quick recall" from a quest. That Feature has been around 10? years, it costs SSG NOTHING, and as its probably deemed inconsequential, it doesn't get changed, but yet its not working as intended. Now Features that cost them money, should definitely be squashed, and I have no issues with the hammer coming down, that's paramount to stealing.
But if you want all the extra features to go away, and to have players report bugs to be fixed, then maybe keep Lamania up for more than 48 hours, and if you know that its buggy before you release it, then don't release it. But that's not the SSG way. I can't remember an update that wasn't buggy, and if my poor memory is working right, they knew about most of the bugs before they were released, and chose to do it anyway. 2nd thing is maybe offer an incentive to players to report "features" to get them changed. I stopped reporting bugs back in 2022? after i put a bug report in, for something significant, and 6 months later i got a standard form letter thanking me for the report, and that it would be investigated. When players who report things see their efforts to report stuff go unanswered for 6+ months, then you start to wonder why its worth the effort to do so.