I find it slightly amusing that they actually admit that first they act and after that they start thinking (start talking) I'm sure there will be massive increase of in game botting -> causes horrible lag, loading times etc. to us players. Let's face it none of their "anti botting" measurements have worked, playing have just gotten worse for us players.
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someonediesMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,257Arc User
I am betting it won't be long till people botting start running scripts in game rather than on the gateway. I am also betting that it will be much worse for the servers but hey, you never know.
It's already happening, haven't you noticed the increase in lag / rubber-banding? Since the gateway went down, the game turned into a lagfest, sometimes it's barely playable, while before i had pretty much 0 lag. The boters won't just sit and wait till the gateway is back, they'll just switch to an in-game profession bot. Disabling the gateway permanently or removing the leadership from the gateway once again will do nothing to combat boters running RMT businesses, it'll just annoy real players, just like most of the anti-botting measures implemented so far.
I have no doubt that's true.
Dead 🔪
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ichimaruginxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 230Arc User
After just getting back, it is my understanding that Gateway was brought down due to extreme botting activity. There was no set date on when it would be back and we still don't have a set date. We're currently in discussions to see what can be done before bringing it back.
@strumslinger Maybe disabling the profs that botters love to bot for now? Players use gateway for many purposes, for example SCA is a good one, and also for bidding etc.
And right now, many players are facing a problem with not being able to aquire SCA companion items - sure you can farm your SH HEs for stuff but the drop requires quite some effort unlike buying them off AH and also the type of companion item dropped in HEs are dependent on the GH ranks. Bidding ingame is not as convenient compared to Gateway. Not to say those poor guild officers who need to look at the inactive accs - gateway was a tremendous help for that!
Disable Leadership like you guys did last time - I'm sure legit players won't mind logging in per day just to set up leadership for a week or two. That will give you guys time to figure out a solution while affecting players' gameplay minimally.
After just getting back, it is my understanding that Gateway was brought down due to extreme botting activity. There was no set date on when it would be back and we still don't have a set date. We're currently in discussions to see what can be done before bringing it back.
@strumslinger Gateway and the beloved SCA is down for 6 days and likely much longer and all communication is a 2-liner with a rumor "it is my understanding" on the 6th page of a 2-word topic in the bug forum. Announcement? News? What does PR stand for?
Imaginary Friends are the best friends you can have!
Bots - the excuse for another nerf. Well play and well plan, Cryptic. The AD invocation nerf was not told. The Gateway shutdown was not told. We more or less can say goodbye to Gateway now. It was planned all along.
Before I move onto the main bit... pretty sure they had talked about the RAD change in Invoking for about a month prior to the patch it was implemented in and also in the pre-patch released patch notes, many of us in game already knew that the change was coming weeks before Mod10 patch dropped. It also wasn't a nerf but purely a change that required players to actually do something to receive said RAD, hell if anything it's increased my RAD income as to claim it I'm having to run dungeons on alts if I want it or salvage... which means I'm picking up the RAD for that on top on alts I'd maybe not do anything with apart from idling for xp, on average that means rather than 3k or so for an alt that day I'm actually picking up 15k even if all I do is 2 CT runs.
It's already happening, haven't you noticed the increase in lag / rubber-banding? Since the gateway went down, the game turned into a lagfest, sometimes it's barely playable, while before i had pretty much 0 lag. The boters won't just sit and wait till the gateway is back, they'll just switch to an in-game profession bot. Disabling the gateway permanently or removing the leadership from the gateway once again will do nothing to combat boters running RMT businesses, it'll just annoy real players, just like most of the anti-botting measures implemented so far.
I'm that EU player that seems to annoy American and Aussie players.
I always had nice smooth connection simply by doing the bounce out to task manager / shift client to "above normal" priority, no packet lag between zones once I found out "patch on demand" was a default for some reason and nice smooth animation even in PE unless it was one of the REALLY full ones.
Since the gateway went down...
Rubber banding both in PE and elsewhere, packet loads in the million for something as simple as zoning to the stronghold, partial render fails and subfloor displays even in non-PE zones; for those curious checked with the console commands /netgraph 1 to enable and /netgraph 0 to turn it back off, and tracemon and procmon ( in bootlog ) among other things to check it wasn't my machine or pipe causing the issue ( mainly because the couple of times before it's been transient and down to my AV doing either timed updates or an emergency hotfix due to a massive exploit for some software I'm using ) and generally any render fails or zone loading freezes were due to massive and I mean MASSIVE packet loading spikes on par with WOW xpac launch days from back when I played it.
So for a move designed to either alleviate in game server stressing or Gateway server stressing it's actually added to the issue.
*Onto the personal opinions*
Lack of communication:
As folk have said fair enough and thanks for the info as soon as you had it @strumslinger and @kreatyve , it's been understandable to us that work in businesses with compartmentalisation that you've been able to supply what you can when you can... Kreatyve due to his not being a direct employee and Sturmslinger due to the simple fact you were at PAX and also had various other issues to also be dealing with.
What isn't acceptable as folk have said is the simple fact that not one other member of the management or technical teams even posted something as simple as "We have discovered issues with the Gateway being exploited/causing massive server lag/suffering attack by blue monkeys or whatever was the issue", not the day it went down... hell not even till today.
If I tried that on an event build or concert job I'd never work again, I'm expected to not only notify other departments or technical teams but also if it will impact the public in any way to inform the public; doesn't matter if it's the band are ill so the concert is being rescheduled or simply "We had a power issue earlier and doors will be moved back 20 minutes, sorry for the inconvenience."
At all times as a Stage/Production Manager I'm expected to keep clear communication to ALL affected by any issues, not just my teams or the touring entities, and in a timely fashion. Trucks late, tell folk... truck's broken down, tell folk... generator has blown, tell folk... bands' plane is delayed, tell folk... it's not rocket science and neither was this.
Someone, even if it was the fricking teaboy in the server offices, should have simply came on and said "We have issues with the Gateway that are needing resolved, it will be down until further notice. We will post more details once we have a clearer picture of the scope and scale, along with an estimated timescale for return." No need for a full Resolution Timescale, just "It's borked, it'll be down till we have it sorted" would have been enough.
bang... job done, most folk happy and takes about oh... 2 minutes to type.
QOL
I'll admit I'm one of the folk that didn't see the point of the Gateway at first because when I looked at it originally I thought it was a login to one or other deal, if you were in game you couldn't be in gateway and vice versa. That got sorted out by a helpful guild ( yes they exist ) and I started exploring what it could do.
Sure the professions thing is handy as is the AH access but here's the thing, the AH I'd be doing on a specific toon anyway due to having the item drop while playing unless it was profession based and I'm not at that level yet on any of them and professions was generally a play for 30 mins to an hour then tab out and check if anything had finished. I can still do this, but in doing so I'm causing transient loading on your login and handling servers as I pop in and out of over half a dozen toons to check, rather than idling an already resolved login and bouncing to a separate process on MY machine.
What I actually used it for more was:
1) mid zone selling junk from full bags, now I just head to a vendor. 2) SCA when not in game to get companions some xp. 3) Damaran Shepard... gotta have my Bork Bork
As folk have said the real fix is not to scrap or hobble the Gateway but to actually balance and enhance it.
Simply remove the shorter jobs that have no real use or extend them but also increase their returns porportionately, e.g. scrap "Feed the Needy" in leadership beyond tutorial level or make it an hour long using 6 resources and give 6 times the xp; and on top of that add some form of queuing mechanism to the process ( even 3 or 4 tasks would be enough ) so that those who actually enjoy or use the professions system ( which in turn needs an overhaul badly... I'm new to the game and even I know that there's no point to anything past JC, Alchemy, BIS and Leadership ) can for example on an inactive toon jump on once and queue up a day or so of jobs or even for say Alchemy queue up the needed parts for experiments without having to bounce multiple times just to check things are ready.
It's a nice idea, a relatively stable platform and if you'd just take the short time to tweak a few QOL issues with it would be a draw to new players, as it is it's causing more and more dissatisfaction for both veteran players and new players.
Okay, I really want someone to explain this to me. So since day one on this game there have been instances with bots running wild. Like thousands of an instance of a map with a node. Thousands of numbered characters that only log in at certain times to pray, etc. Yet... a gateway that has been botted and used fairly for YEARS is now a random high traffic zone?
There is maybe 5k players on NWO at one time, xbox saves the number by bringing in more people. If you eliminate all the bots, I'd bet it is less than 5k by a long shot. You realize there used to be hundreds of thousands all using the gateway, I'd say roughly 30-40% of the playerbase bots the gateway. Rather than making up bs, being "cryptic" as you normally are why not fix the root of the problem?
Your game is simply not rewarding to "play". A script that runs around and does HE's using dragonhoard/fey blessing makes more money than any content you have in the game. A script that does professions has/still does make more money than actually playing the game. Your content is so slow, there is ZERO economy which you will see when the gateway rp drops out and prices go up through the f'n roof again.
So now... the one thing that kept this entire game afloat is now down. I think your biggest win was the gateway. It keeps people off the game and believing it still is the mod 1-5 it used to be. Now you have forced a lotta people to play again and they are in for a rude awakening lol. I'm glad I made all the AD I'll ever need for when I feel like stopping by. Sorry to everyone else who missed one of the most fun games I've ever played. #moredailiesplz #colorfilteroldmaps #DnDw/noD #BOE/BOP/BOA/KMA
I hope they get it sorted with today's downtime but I won't hold my breath. Would be nice if they do so we can do the event SCA :
[quote]Sword Coast Adventures will also feature a special dungeon to battle the Fire Giant Grumthrox and Medallions of Battle might also drop from all challenges within it.[/quote]
I hope they get it sorted with today's downtime but I won't hold my breath. Would be nice if they do so we can do the event SCA :
[quote]Sword Coast Adventures will also feature a special dungeon to battle the Fire Giant Grumthrox and Medallions of Battle might also drop from all challenges within it.[/quote]
I guess they used last Battle for the bridge news and only changed date.
News flash - The gateway has been subject to extreme botting from the beginning. Browser scripting is just too easy.
In the scheme of things, who cares though? Mostly you get refinement items which just causes people to spend more $ on wards. Plus, it kept profession botting out of the game itself.
Eventually you are going to find that point where forcing people to waste too much time doing manual repetitive tasks causes them to leave the game. It takes *years* as it is to traverse the refinement ladder.
I find it slightly amusing that they actually admit that first they act and after that they start thinking (start talking)
Must have been an emergency shutdown because of something severe going on. I don't think this has been a growing development. Leadership botting was out of hand for months and years and they never brought down the gateway. This is different.
While I am loathe to even type this, I don't think it has been mentioned; at least not in a while - just remove Leadership and increase the drops for RP from all sources then make that RP BtA.
I use the Gateway for lots of things beside just running professions.
Selfish Opinion: Make the Gateway Zen Exchange and the Gateway Auction House read-only. Lock Gateway Professions for characters that haven't completed Blacklake District, Tower District & Spellplague.
Selfish Opinion: Make the Gateway Zen Exchange and the Gateway Auction House read-only. Lock Gateway Professions for characters that haven't completed Blacklake District, Tower District & Spellplague.
my opinion is that they are taking Data out to analyse the economy with and without the gateway...And depending the results they will re-open it or not.
For sure they will not stop botting by suchs actions and impact for all players is really negativ for so many reasons and they know it. So i cannot really understand why they have shut it down...
So hopefully gateway will re-open soon enough. WE NEED IT.
and please Cryptic, hire a Director of Communication or change it. The way you communicate with the community has become a joke...
It has been suggested already in this thread that it might not be leadership that was the problem. I agree.
If the botting was strictly leadership bots, there is no reason that they could not simply remove leadership from the gateway. They did it a year ago, they can do it again. In addition we know that leadership can be botted in game and many bots will move/have moved already back into the game client.
I suspect that it is some type of AH or ZAX bot. probably designed to buy low and repost higher (Similar to Wall St's High frequency traders.) Of course I do not expect them to let us know what happened.
Selfish Opinion: Make the Gateway Zen Exchange and the Gateway Auction House read-only. Lock Gateway Professions for characters that haven't completed Blacklake District, Tower District & Spellplague.
I agree with this, except take it one step further - remove professions, Zen Exchange, and the AH from the Gateway completely. I think they would still have issues with people botting SCA though, and that's one thing I don't want to lose, so make the rewards from SCA BtA.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
I think they would still have issues with people botting SCA though, and that's one thing I don't want to lose, so make the rewards from SCA BtA.
That doesn't make sense. Why would you allow people to still bot SCA for personal gain but take away the AH and ZAX that has absolutely no value for botters in read-only mode. What would be the issue of read-only AH and ZAX? People at least could search the Auction House and look up their own auctions etc.
I agree with this, except take it one step further - remove professions, Zen Exchange, and the AH from the Gateway completely.
I don't disagree with you as such, just wonder why I have to go to the Gateway in the first place to transfer ADs from one toon to another one - using an approved method involving a weird method involving the ZAX.
This game has so much room for improvement.
Yes, I know that I can transfer ADs in game as well, but it takes is at least 20 times longer than using the gateway.
Imaginary Friends are the best friends you can have!
Selfish Opinion: Make the Gateway Zen Exchange and the Gateway Auction House read-only. Lock Gateway Professions for characters that haven't completed Blacklake District, Tower District & Spellplague.
I agree with this, except take it one step further - remove professions, Zen Exchange, and the AH from the Gateway completely. I think they would still have issues with people botting SCA though, and that's one thing I don't want to lose, so make the rewards from SCA BtA.
Hmmm and what exactly will be left there ? The mails ? It's nice that you only care for the SCA, I don't care for the SCA at all, so lets remove that and keep all the rest.
One thing for me and possibly many others, I won't be looking at any new summoned companions any time soon if my Loyal Avenger gear can't be used on it. Sure there are "adorable bites" and such, but they are insanely expensive and maybe on just my main I would consider it, but certainly not on alts as well.
Lack of professions aside- how am I supposed to spy on my guild without the gateway?!
But seriously- I leave for work at 6:20am every day, by the time I get home I'm generally too tired to log in. The only time I do log in is during the weekend, and the only way I can somehow catch up to everyone (at least gear-wise) is through running leadership at work.
Killing the gateway will basically be the final nail in the Neverwinter coffin for me, and I've been here a while so it would be a shame. (or will it, really? I can finally be free! FREE!!! \o/)
Why people use gateway? It's quicker than in-game tasks. ZAX? Few clicks and you have all your ADs on main character. Doing professions is much quicker. Professions in-game lag for few seconds after opening profession window tab. If you do it on 10+ alts it's taking forever. Sword Coast Adventures are very nice addition to regular gameplay, especially if you're on the way to school/work. Searching thru AH is quicker and do not get stuck as it is in-game.
What I'd like to see in Gateway in future is more guild and alliance stuff like: List of players (with updated date of last log in, now we have list but it's not working properly), Guild/Alliance activity log (eg. upgrading buildings, new players joined guild, etc. Coffer donations, updated at least every hour, Guild/Alliance message of the day. Basically stuff we have under G button in-game, but I'd like to see more...
0
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
Lack of professions aside- how am I supposed to spy on my guild without the gateway?!
But seriously- I leave for work at 6:20am every day, by the time I get home I'm generally too tired to log in. The only time I do log in is during the weekend, and the only way I can somehow catch up to everyone (at least gear-wise) is through running leadership at work.
Killing the gateway will basically be the final nail in the Neverwinter coffin for me, and I've been here a while so it would be a shame. (or will it, really? I can finally be free! FREE!!! \o/)
Typical Cryptic response to an issue: using a shotgun to kill a housefly.
I DO NOT CARE if people are botting the Gateway. All I want is to play a couple of adventures during my lunch break. If someone is so no-life that they're going to farm a currency which is worth roughly 1/500th of a cent, that's their problem. I DO NOT CARE.
Put the Gateway back up and stop ticking off your paying players, or you won't have any left before long.
Comments
I'm sure there will be massive increase of in game botting -> causes horrible lag, loading times etc. to us players.
Let's face it none of their "anti botting" measurements have worked, playing have just gotten worse for us players.
Dead🔪And right now, many players are facing a problem with not being able to aquire SCA companion items - sure you can farm your SH HEs for stuff but the drop requires quite some effort unlike buying them off AH and also the type of companion item dropped in HEs are dependent on the GH ranks. Bidding ingame is not as convenient compared to Gateway. Not to say those poor guild officers who need to look at the inactive accs - gateway was a tremendous help for that!
Disable Leadership like you guys did last time - I'm sure legit players won't mind logging in per day just to set up leadership for a week or two. That will give you guys time to figure out a solution while affecting players' gameplay minimally.
Join Now! - Infernal Paragons , The Infernal Alliance
Gateway and the beloved SCA is down for 6 days and likely much longer and all communication is a 2-liner with a rumor "it is my understanding" on the 6th page of a 2-word topic in the bug forum.
Announcement? News? What does PR stand for?
*The Main Bit* I'm that EU player that seems to annoy American and Aussie players.
I always had nice smooth connection simply by doing the bounce out to task manager / shift client to "above normal" priority, no packet lag between zones once I found out "patch on demand" was a default for some reason and nice smooth animation even in PE unless it was one of the REALLY full ones.
Since the gateway went down...
Rubber banding both in PE and elsewhere, packet loads in the million for something as simple as zoning to the stronghold, partial render fails and subfloor displays even in non-PE zones; for those curious checked with the console commands /netgraph 1 to enable and /netgraph 0 to turn it back off, and tracemon and procmon ( in bootlog ) among other things to check it wasn't my machine or pipe causing the issue ( mainly because the couple of times before it's been transient and down to my AV doing either timed updates or an emergency hotfix due to a massive exploit for some software I'm using ) and generally any render fails or zone loading freezes were due to massive and I mean MASSIVE packet loading spikes on par with WOW xpac launch days from back when I played it.
So for a move designed to either alleviate in game server stressing or Gateway server stressing it's actually added to the issue.
*Onto the personal opinions*
Lack of communication:
As folk have said fair enough and thanks for the info as soon as you had it @strumslinger and @kreatyve , it's been understandable to us that work in businesses with compartmentalisation that you've been able to supply what you can when you can... Kreatyve due to his not being a direct employee and Sturmslinger due to the simple fact you were at PAX and also had various other issues to also be dealing with.
What isn't acceptable as folk have said is the simple fact that not one other member of the management or technical teams even posted something as simple as "We have discovered issues with the Gateway being exploited/causing massive server lag/suffering attack by blue monkeys or whatever was the issue", not the day it went down... hell not even till today.
If I tried that on an event build or concert job I'd never work again, I'm expected to not only notify other departments or technical teams but also if it will impact the public in any way to inform the public; doesn't matter if it's the band are ill so the concert is being rescheduled or simply "We had a power issue earlier and doors will be moved back 20 minutes, sorry for the inconvenience."
At all times as a Stage/Production Manager I'm expected to keep clear communication to ALL affected by any issues, not just my teams or the touring entities, and in a timely fashion. Trucks late, tell folk... truck's broken down, tell folk... generator has blown, tell folk... bands' plane is delayed, tell folk... it's not rocket science and neither was this.
Someone, even if it was the fricking teaboy in the server offices, should have simply came on and said "We have issues with the Gateway that are needing resolved, it will be down until further notice. We will post more details once we have a clearer picture of the scope and scale, along with an estimated timescale for return." No need for a full Resolution Timescale, just "It's borked, it'll be down till we have it sorted" would have been enough.
bang... job done, most folk happy and takes about oh... 2 minutes to type.
QOL
I'll admit I'm one of the folk that didn't see the point of the Gateway at first because when I looked at it originally I thought it was a login to one or other deal, if you were in game you couldn't be in gateway and vice versa. That got sorted out by a helpful guild ( yes they exist
Sure the professions thing is handy as is the AH access but here's the thing, the AH I'd be doing on a specific toon anyway due to having the item drop while playing unless it was profession based and I'm not at that level yet on any of them and professions was generally a play for 30 mins to an hour then tab out and check if anything had finished. I can still do this, but in doing so I'm causing transient loading on your login and handling servers as I pop in and out of over half a dozen toons to check, rather than idling an already resolved login and bouncing to a separate process on MY machine.
What I actually used it for more was:
1) mid zone selling junk from full bags, now I just head to a vendor.
2) SCA when not in game to get companions some xp.
3) Damaran Shepard... gotta have my Bork Bork
As folk have said the real fix is not to scrap or hobble the Gateway but to actually balance and enhance it.
Simply remove the shorter jobs that have no real use or extend them but also increase their returns porportionately, e.g. scrap "Feed the Needy" in leadership beyond tutorial level or make it an hour long using 6 resources and give 6 times the xp; and on top of that add some form of queuing mechanism to the process ( even 3 or 4 tasks would be enough ) so that those who actually enjoy or use the professions system ( which in turn needs an overhaul badly... I'm new to the game and even I know that there's no point to anything past JC, Alchemy, BIS and Leadership ) can for example on an inactive toon jump on once and queue up a day or so of jobs or even for say Alchemy queue up the needed parts for experiments without having to bounce multiple times just to check things are ready.
It's a nice idea, a relatively stable platform and if you'd just take the short time to tweak a few QOL issues with it would be a draw to new players, as it is it's causing more and more dissatisfaction for both veteran players and new players.
There is maybe 5k players on NWO at one time, xbox saves the number by bringing in more people. If you eliminate all the bots, I'd bet it is less than 5k by a long shot. You realize there used to be hundreds of thousands all using the gateway, I'd say roughly 30-40% of the playerbase bots the gateway. Rather than making up bs, being "cryptic" as you normally are why not fix the root of the problem?
Your game is simply not rewarding to "play". A script that runs around and does HE's using dragonhoard/fey blessing makes more money than any content you have in the game. A script that does professions has/still does make more money than actually playing the game. Your content is so slow, there is ZERO economy which you will see when the gateway rp drops out and prices go up through the f'n roof again.
So now... the one thing that kept this entire game afloat is now down. I think your biggest win was the gateway. It keeps people off the game and believing it still is the mod 1-5 it used to be. Now you have forced a lotta people to play again and they are in for a rude awakening lol. I'm glad I made all the AD I'll ever need for when I feel like stopping by. Sorry to everyone else who missed one of the most fun games I've ever played. #moredailiesplz #colorfilteroldmaps #DnDw/noD #BOE/BOP/BOA/KMA
[quote]Sword Coast Adventures will also feature a special dungeon to battle the Fire Giant Grumthrox and Medallions of Battle might also drop from all challenges within it.[/quote]
In the scheme of things, who cares though? Mostly you get refinement items which just causes people to spend more $ on wards. Plus, it kept profession botting out of the game itself.
Eventually you are going to find that point where forcing people to waste too much time doing manual repetitive tasks causes them to leave the game. It takes *years* as it is to traverse the refinement ladder.
Must have been an emergency shutdown because of something severe going on. I don't think this has been a growing development. Leadership botting was out of hand for months and years and they never brought down the gateway. This is different.
I use the Gateway for lots of things beside just running professions.
I think this might not be unrealistic.
Keeping everyone in the dark about this like they did FOR DAYS is absolutely not okay though.
For sure they will not stop botting by suchs actions and impact for all players is really negativ for so many reasons and they know it. So i cannot really understand why they have shut it down...
So hopefully gateway will re-open soon enough. WE NEED IT.
and please Cryptic, hire a Director of Communication or change it.
The way you communicate with the community has become a joke...
If the botting was strictly leadership bots, there is no reason that they could not simply remove leadership from the gateway. They did it a year ago, they can do it again. In addition we know that leadership can be botted in game and many bots will move/have moved already back into the game client.
I suspect that it is some type of AH or ZAX bot. probably designed to buy low and repost higher (Similar to Wall St's High frequency traders.) Of course I do not expect them to let us know what happened.
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Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
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That doesn't make sense. Why would you allow people to still bot SCA for personal gain but take away the AH and ZAX that has absolutely no value for botters in read-only mode. What would be the issue of read-only AH and ZAX? People at least could search the Auction House and look up their own auctions etc.
This game has so much room for improvement.
Yes, I know that I can transfer ADs in game as well, but it takes is at least 20 times longer than using the gateway.
But seriously- I leave for work at 6:20am every day, by the time I get home I'm generally too tired to log in. The only time I do log in is during the weekend, and the only way I can somehow catch up to everyone (at least gear-wise) is through running leadership at work.
Killing the gateway will basically be the final nail in the Neverwinter coffin for me, and I've been here a while so it would be a shame.
(or will it, really? I can finally be free! FREE!!! \o/)
It's quicker than in-game tasks.
ZAX? Few clicks and you have all your ADs on main character.
Doing professions is much quicker. Professions in-game lag for few seconds after opening profession window tab. If you do it on 10+ alts it's taking forever.
Sword Coast Adventures are very nice addition to regular gameplay, especially if you're on the way to school/work.
Searching thru AH is quicker and do not get stuck as it is in-game.
What I'd like to see in Gateway in future is more guild and alliance stuff like:
List of players (with updated date of last log in, now we have list but it's not working properly),
Guild/Alliance activity log (eg. upgrading buildings, new players joined guild, etc.
Coffer donations, updated at least every hour,
Guild/Alliance message of the day.
Basically stuff we have under G button in-game, but I'd like to see more...
I DO NOT CARE if people are botting the Gateway. All I want is to play a couple of adventures during my lunch break. If someone is so no-life that they're going to farm a currency which is worth roughly 1/500th of a cent, that's their problem. I DO NOT CARE.
Put the Gateway back up and stop ticking off your paying players, or you won't have any left before long.