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Cryptic: My hat is off to you.
tinypyro
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 371 Bounty Hunter
Had some down time at work last night, so I was able to monitor this situation from my phone. I have to say that this incident brought out both the best and the worst of the community. One slogan I try to live by is this: How you handle yourself in a crises is what truly defines your character.
Having been a long time member of the NW community, I have seen some malicious comments on the forums, but never anything like I saw last night. There was so much hate and spitefulness that I was almost ashamed to be a part of the NW community. Hate directed at both Cryptic and each other.
My hat is off to the folks that were patient and understanding.
But most of all, my hat is off to the people at Cryptic. They handled this situation as well as anyone could have expected them to handle it, and they supplied updates on a regular basis in order to keep the community informed. Something many game developers shy away from.
Having been a long time member of the NW community, I have seen some malicious comments on the forums, but never anything like I saw last night. There was so much hate and spitefulness that I was almost ashamed to be a part of the NW community. Hate directed at both Cryptic and each other.
My hat is off to the folks that were patient and understanding.
But most of all, my hat is off to the people at Cryptic. They handled this situation as well as anyone could have expected them to handle it, and they supplied updates on a regular basis in order to keep the community informed. Something many game developers shy away from.
Post edited by tinypyro on
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Glad you tip you're hat to the company who let this happen since closed beta it just happened that someone posted it the forums. That makes no sense how you can praise a company who REFUSED to fix it in closed beta and played it off like it just happened.
Cryptic has done a wonderful job of communicating and they've handled a very difficult situation with fairness.
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Proof? I keep hearing this regurgitated but no proof....let me see it before I believe it.
I agree with the tons of comments saying not to overreact and call foul for a full wipe over an exploit since there will be one tomorrow, so wipe again? The problem is that those comments are for "normal" exploits like farming pirate boss, GF 1 shotting, etc. They give players an unfair edge but don't destroy the game...
The AD AH exploit is LEAGUES beyond any other exploit I really know of in any game. There is effectively unlimited AD in the market right now...this hurts everyone in game now, and everyone that will ever join the game in the future. I'm not sure how people can't grasp this concept?
The game no longer is the game it was "released" to be. The actual core game mechanics are no longer relevant. The in-game methods of earning ADs are utterly incapable of giving you enough to be relevant in the economy as inflated as it is. I actually noticed a severe disparity in AD numbers in game and what you could earn as a player a week ago when i started playing...indicative of the "in the know" players generating TONS of AD to hide away in the first few weeks.
This is easily the worst exploit in any MMO to date. This is unless most of the stories about the exploit are not true, but as consistent as they are that seems unlikely. I'm curious to see how they fix it, but without a full reset to the game economy I do not see this game ever recovering, which is hugely lamentable
Hyperbole.
My suggestion: relax and let the devs do their job, stop being arm-chair generals and enjoy the game.
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
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I am not sure how OP justify this at all.
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
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@Captain-Electric | CoH/Virtue veteran | Proud new Champion
I mean you cannot for one second be serious.
The only communication we've had is basically "Thanks for your patience and continued support".
In any case, to say that the game's economy will never recover is nonsense. Every MMO I've ever played had an "economy" that was broken in the first week, and eventually settled. I've seen MMOs introduce changes during the life of the game, ruined the economy... and then within 2 weeks it settles. Just like a real economy (only without the bankers sitting in the middle simultaneously destroying lives while avoiding consequences).
So chill - the game has been rolled back. It's a beta! But even if it wasn't I've seen live games rollback before too and the world doesn't end. and we're going to get a gift package, which is more than they have to give us and a **** sight more than we ever get in DDO when Turbine make a monumental <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> of things, for example.
Consider the bright side - at least they didn't also:
1. Do a full wipe (was on the cards I beleive)
2. Roll back the foundry too
3. Reset everyone's AD to zero (which would not be a bad plan in my view, except for the awful 'buy AD with Zen auction mechanic that would mean people lost actual, real money)
But the economy will recover. PW have said they think those abusing this before the rollback time are in a minority - and they have the stats, we don't. So all this 'economy is ruined' stuff coming from players... well I think you should just wait a few months, possibly only weeks, and see. It'll be fine.
Well... since I noticed the servers went down last night I was easily able to find out:
1. that the servers were indeed down
2. that they had been taken down deliberately
3. that it was related to an Auction House/Astral Diamond exploit
4. that all options were on the table, that it might require a rollback
5. updates at least once an hour on expected downtime length
I got all of that from the dev posts on the forums. I got a tad more from the twitter feed.
Having logged on this morning to find out what's gone on, I have in just a few minutes been able to find out that they did indeed rollback, got some FAQs as to the outcomes of that, and taken the time to post here. Twice.
Methinks the problems are not with the Dev's ability to communicate. The issue appears to be at the receiving end.
How so? Name one worse? If you don't agree then I don't think you realize the kind of damage that has been done. The economy is now broken, unless PWE culls most of the AD's in the game the game will be unplayable for casual players. Of course it might be incentive to spend a ton of cash since you can't get anything useful with ingame effort.
From my understanding there is billions-trillions of AD spawned out of nowhere on hundreds of alts spread around the game. They bought EVERY item on the AH for grins. They cleaned out the Zen store in game. They bout hundreds of thousands if not millions of Cats and handed them out. The best mount in game is more common than the basic ones.
Even if the economy "looks" decent (which it was already inflated before this) once things settle, the people with billions of stashed AD quite literally own the game's economy. They can just buy all the Zen whenever they feel like it...benefiting PWE oddly enough as more people then will buy Zen cuz they can get ADs quite easy.
Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that all the talk of this exploit is pretty consistent. PWE also left the dealing of AD from this exploit open ended, so they much cull most of it, which would be a good step, but will cause a HUGE backlash on par with a wipe imo.
Oh, and i'm quite relaxed about it. I'm hugely sad that such an enjoyable game is potentially ruined for all time. I'm just thinking the problem through with the info I know, people seem to be missing or not understanding the info given.
^This^
Just because an exploit is reported on the forums, that doesn't mean it was ignored. In case you haven't noticed, hundreds of thousand of posts have been made since launch. I am no fanboy. I have been very critical of Cryptic and more so PWE in the past on certain issues. But they handled this very well and I felt compelled to say so.
I have seen many other games go down for much longer for much smaller issues without hardly muttering a word about it. And in regards to the economy being broken forever due to this I say: Give it some time and see what happens. If 3 months down the road the economy is in shambles as a direct result of these exploits, then fine. Please feel free to thump your chest and toot your horn and say "I was right". But until then I would advise giving them the benefit of doubt. Enjoy the free and wait and see. The game is only a few weeks old. Give it some time to stabilize.
-They didn't give any valid updates on twitter or the message boards
-Took them HOURS to take the servers down once the issue got WAY out of hand and everyone was going nuts w/ the exploit.
-Rolling it back doesn't fix the issue of the flood of AD/ZEN for an issue that was used prior to this.
-They have ingnored service tickets of people telling them about this problem since ALPHA
The list goes on and on
"Waiting to see" if the economy is broken means the game dies, not a risk I would take as a game developer on such a huge IP.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?266921-FAQ-AD-AH-Exploit-Follow-Up/page112 there is one for starters
Hyperbole.
Let the devs handle the work to sort all this out while you relax at home in your "command chair", making comments on a forum.
Or just go play the game and have fun.
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
"YES, PLEASE"
Vote YES for the Foundry in Champions Online.
@Captain-Electric | CoH/Virtue veteran | Proud new Champion
Yes, ignoring bug reports for months is "handling it well". Definitely.
It's incredible how brainwashed some people are.
Actually, we're the few who are thinking for ourselves and NOT subscribing to all the groupthink.
The devs are working to solve this. If you're going to second-guess every decision they make, go make your own game where you can feel like you're completely in control of everything, and have your own customers second-guessing every decision you make.
[SIGPIC]Captain Electric and the Sapien Spider[/SIGPIC]
"YES, PLEASE"
Vote YES for the Foundry in Champions Online.
@Captain-Electric | CoH/Virtue veteran | Proud new Champion
I'm don't see how that would affect things in this case: Servers went down at about 2050 (ish) my time (UK) last night. I didnt' know this and tried to log in at 2115ish. Couldn't. Checked forum. There was already a dev post explaining the first two points of my last post. Within an hour there was more info. That's late afternoon US time, early hours asia, morning Australasia. So:
US, europe, Australasia - solid info available within 20 mins or so, and you were likely to be awake to receive it just as I was
Asia - info available immediately, in fact by the time you got up and logged in to the forums there was probably quite a bit of info.
I don't care where you are in the world, PW communicated the problem within 20 mins of taking the servers down (probably sooner, I just can't be bothered to go look up actual times so I've rounded up a fair chunk), and then kept us up to date at least hourly or within the projected timescales they said. Your timezone is irrelevant to that.
I don't honestly see how you can ask more of a games company in the middle of a crisis than that.
I'm no fan boy by the way, I just think the DoooOOOOooOOOOOM!!!!eleventyone!!1!!one!! is entirely premature, and the hate being thrown at the company for their communications is completely misplaced.
I'm no fanboy: by all means throw hate at the lack of cross-game working that allowed this bug to creep in just because they added the gateway rather than keeping it all to the client end of things. Certainly, criticise that the bug has been known for a while and they only bothered to pick it up when it started to become well known and mass exploited. But there was nothing wrong with the comms, and - had this been an actual new exploit - the rollback is an entirely reasonable response for a game still technically in beta.
Also as a technician I can completely understand why they didn't release information regarding a ETA. With issues like this, there generally no way of knowing when the problem will be fixed until the time they have a fix.
The people who where complaining about this remind me of the bratty people who you see in restaurant who think the world revolves around them because they're spending $20, so of course all the cooks, servers, and manager needs to tend to their every need.