Very sorry to hear about this circumstance. I wish that we were able to change this behavior, but unfortunately it is how the system works at this particular time. We will do our best to minimize occurrences of this in the future. Thanks for your patience and support while we work out the issues that were escalated today.
I don't think it necessarily works that way either. I have lost out on 2 items already that I legitimately bid on, and was the highest bidder when the auction ended. BUT, when the auction ended, the timer went into negative seconds for a couple minutes before it cleared off the screen. The entire time it showed me as, "currently the highest bidder", yet when the negative timer ended, I checked my mail and it refunded my AD. So at this point, there is no telling where the AD or the item is going.
When a new product, such as a software program, is created or upgraded, there are several stages in development before the manufacturer sells it commercially. The first stage is an "alpha" version, in which software testers within the company test and debug a program as necessary. A "beta" version is the name for the second stage, in which it is often released for free or at a reduced price to a group of external users for additional testing. Websites also commonly go through this phase during development, to see how well they function for a large user base.
Restrictions or Limitations
Although the beta version of software might include much of its functionality, it is not usually meant as a commercial product. Companies might be allowed to use a graphics program in beta, for example, to create new images or products, but they cannot sell what they create unless they pay for a commercial license. Computer games, especially online games, often go through beta testing to find bugs and ensure it will function properly at release. While people can usually play in these tests for free, once the testing is over, they have to pay for the commercial release of the game to play it again.
Technical Support
Products in beta often have limited, if any, technical support available to users. This can be frustrating for some people, but is a consequence of the fact that the product has not yet released commercially. Since users are not paying for the program, frustration based on poor customer service is usually forgiven as bugs and errors disappear with each patch or update. Some products remain a beta version for years, during which time they may be used by a wide audience as if they were full versions.
Usage in Website Development
A beta version can also refer to a website that is made available to test its features and gain audience feedback. During this time, certain features might not function properly. This process is often used to ensure compatibility between the code for the site and different web browsers and computer systems. Beta version sites are frequently first placed on secret domains that are only available to their test audience, before being transferred to their real domains for public viewing and use.
Origin and Other Usage
The word "beta" comes from the second letter in the Greek alphabet and originated with early hardware tests for International Business Machines (IBM) computers. It has entered common usage, especially among frequent computer users. "Beta version" is often applied as a slang term to refer to any product or service that seems unready for mainstream release, especially as a criticism for something sold commercially.
Purpose and Different Types
The beta version of a software release is considered to be a preview; though it may include many standard features, it is not yet ready for wide release or sale. During this phase, the developers collect feedback from users about the product's functionality, including what they like and what should be changed before its wide release. A beta version of a program can be either "closed," which is limited to a specific group of users, or "open," which is available to the general public. During this testing, developers might release numerous versions of a program, including improvements and bug fixes with each iteration.
__________________________________________
If you spent "REAL" money ... you did it knowing the game was in BETA.
Take a breath, they are working on it.
Abeloth
so you missed out the billion times the devs, the lead designer, the lead developer and the lead PR said the game has actually been released....fail much? open beta= if something goes wrong you can't shield yourself with any law that ensures you a guaranteed chargeback. just a commercial name to save their asses for being sued. most of the mmos out there are in open beta and have been for years now. there won't be any character wipe (check sticky posts) and that's the reason why they opened the zen shop. this game will most likely die before ever being called a ''release'', since the company itself doesn't promote ''releases''. perfect world is famous for this behaviour. they are also famous for cashing out on pre sales, founder packs, early access and extra goodies at start, then letting games fall apart while they move their devs to other mmos in closed beta. rince and repeat
Open Beta is not a fully live fully released game, your right many games stay in open beta til they die out because the real bugs were never fixed. It was not a fail we all knew it was a live open beta when we signed up, Beta is still beta if it is to cover ones butt or because they know it still has bugs. Your right they have said it is live, live open beta repeatedly.
hi there Dezstravous,
you might also ask to the devs what happens to all the AD spent to sell stuff, and put it in the Q&A? I mean do you guys realize that when this kind of issue happens without a roll back all the AD is lost?
on top of this, the auctions timer. just yesterday with my alt i reallocated all the expired stuff from the previous AH downtime. we are in open beta,but you also sell stuff for real money right? so, is that difficult to write a piece of code which freezes the AH timer when the AH is down? a way to prevent that your existing costumers (and the potential ones) gets really annoyed? I don't know,Cryptic and PW have several years experience in MMOs,yet they still look almost completely clueless regarding certain mechanics.
Exactly! It shouldn't be that hard to take a snapshot of the AH database before its taken down, then reinstate it after the code maintenance. The AH code and the AH database should be completely separate entities.
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luciohexMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
I'm surprised you don't have a single DBA on staff capable of running a script on the auction house to extend the duration of the auctions before you take it offline (or just after), it won't be 100% perfect for catching all the auctions that would get screwed by the downtime, but it'd be a heck of a lot better than pissing off all the playerbase invested in auctions.
You guys need to play this smart. There are alternatives to fixing these problems. When the going gets tough, you don't just shut everything offline - you're losing confidence (from your customers/fans), you're losing money (which, I'm sure, is important to you people), and most importantly, you're losing respect.
Get your **** together.
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falson1Member, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 135Bounty Hunter
so you missed out the billion times the devs, the lead designer, the lead developer and the lead PR said the game has actually been released....fail much? open beta= if something goes wrong you can't shield yourself with any law that ensures you a guaranteed chargeback. just a commercial name to save their asses for being sued. most of the mmos out there are in open beta and have been for years now. there won't be any character wipe (check sticky posts) and that's the reason why they opened the zen shop. this game will most likely die before ever being called a ''release'', since the company itself doesn't promote ''releases''. perfect world is famous for this behaviour. they are also famous for cashing out on pre sales, founder packs, early access and extra goodies at start, then letting games fall apart while they move their devs to other mmos in closed beta. rince and repeat
Then leave and stop all the whining. If you don't like it STOP PLAYING! dang crybabys
History is repeating itself.Yeah it will be fast maintenance.
2 more hours 2 more hours 2 more hours.
No rollback guys don't worry.
We are almost done!4 more hours.
Finally give up and go to bed
Wake up find that you are 9 levels rollbacked.
And AH will be out for a week again.
HAMSTER
Wow, you'd be FUN to take on a Picnic!
Don't Mess with the Affairs of Dragons for you are Crunchy and Good with KETCHUP!!:p
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
lol smart ppl would just put their auctions at the lowest they are willing to take or just below a buyout and eat the fee instead of being cheap and complaining about maintenance.
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demonoidzarMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 20Arc User
edited May 2013
It is good to here that the auction house is down . I thought that I had lost everything. As for people saying that they are loosing AD because the auction house is down everything will still be there when it comes back up. We all have to remember that the game is still in beta. They will need to take the game offline to fix issues. I think that they are doing a great job.
Keep up the good work.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
lol smart ppl would just put their auctions at the lowest they are willing to take or just below a buyout and eat the fee instead of being cheap and complaining about maintenance.
Theoretically there's a breakeven point. If I save 50 AD on every transaction, but out of every 100 transactions, I lose 5000 AD, then I'm equally as well off being stingy as I am just putting the bid price equal to the buyout price. If maintenance problems are more frequent, you want to use higher bid prices. If they're less frequent, use lower bid prices.
What u guys really need to address with the auction house are several things, 1: the search needs to be addressed badly, ie when u look for an items between this lvl and this lvl it should come back with results as that, not a piece of gear that it out of the ball park from ur search. example looking for armor lvl range 25-29 results come back with lvl 6 gear. 2nd issue: have it be manditory to have a buy out price on items, too many items listed with no buy out at mid lvl gear ie lvl 25-30 with a timer of 4days. its getting a little rediculas how much u see items like this.
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leemanMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 1Arc User
History is repeating itself.Yeah it will be fast maintenance.
2 more hours 2 more hours 2 more hours.
No rollback guys don't worry.
We are almost done!4 more hours.
Finally give up and go to bed
Wake up find that you are 9 levels rollbacked.
And AH will be out for a week again.
Exactly! It shouldn't be that hard to take a snapshot of the AH database before its taken down, then reinstate it after the code maintenance. The AH code and the AH database should be completely separate entities.
Thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately I personally don't have the level of insight you're looking for. I can pass along the suggestion, though unfortunately I do believe that we've looked into different options to prevent the expiring of auctions, but were not able to find one that could be executed in the necessary timeframe. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience this causes and hope to continuing doing everything we can to prevent the Auction House from going offline in the future.
What u guys really need to address with the auction house are several things, 1: the search needs to be addressed badly, ie when u look for an items between this lvl and this lvl it should come back with results as that, not a piece of gear that it out of the ball park from ur search. example looking for armor lvl range 25-29 results come back with lvl 6 gear. 2nd issue: have it be manditory to have a buy out price on items, too many items listed with no buy out at mid lvl gear ie lvl 25-30 with a timer of 4days. its getting a little rediculas how much u see items like this.
I don't get buying armor or weapons for low levels. It take about 40 hours to level to 60 by just doing quests. Why bother wasting AD on low level HAMSTER??
New exploit discovered- bidding on everything that's 25 AD or less at all times just in case the AH goes down due to other exploits and you get potentially millions of AD worth of items for pennies.
It's an exploit, within an exploit- exploitception.
That's no more an exploit than posting items with a minimum bid of 25 AD or less to avoid paying posting fees. In fact, what you posted is the remedy to people posting low minimum bids. I posted during the last time the AH went down that the real question was, "How many people will learn from this experience and stop posting minimum bids that are lower than they are willing to accept?" The answer is clearly not all of them. Maybe this time they will learn. How many times do you have to get burned in a fire before you stop putting your hand in it? Smart people do it once at the most. Not every MMORPG player is smart.
Very sorry to hear about this circumstance. I wish that we were able to change this behavior, but unfortunately it is how the system works at this particular time. We will do our best to minimize occurrences of this in the future. Thanks for your patience and support while we work out the issues that were escalated today.
So cancel all auctions. Do something. Clear the auction house completely and send all items and bids back to their owners. I understand that you can't freeze the timers if there's no such functionality right now, but there's got to be something you can do.
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rragleMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Because informing people with a message of the day when you log in, or a mail is so hard.
Actually, they will do that, they will just charge us to read the mail next, just like they do for testing this supposed beta with respec tokens lol /fail at whoever thought it was clever to call it open beta yet not wipe the servers after the last exploit. (In betas you wipe and learn by your mistakes)
In beta there will be bugs, in PW's case, we get charged for these.
Exactly! It shouldn't be that hard to take a snapshot of the AH database before its taken down, then reinstate it after the code maintenance. The AH code and the AH database should be completely separate entities.
this is a opinion of a person that never studied DB.
If everything in Programing was solved with a simple snapshot why should IT and programers study so hard to press 1 button.
So cancel all auctions. Do something. Clear the auction house completely and send all items and bids back to their owners. I understand that you can't freeze the timers if there's no such functionality right now, but there's got to be something you can do.
That hurts all the people that played intelligently and posted reasonable minimum bids (and thus paid posting fees) so that the few people that cheaped out on paying posting fees will not be hurt. The cheap people are bad for the economy. Without AD sinks inflation of AD occurs faster. Posting fees is one of our AD sinks. Avoiding them leaves more AD in the economy and causes faster inflation. There is no reason to reward these people at the cost of everyone else. Do your part. Pay your taxes (posting fees). If you constantly cheap out you are eventually going to get burned. Bringing down the AH makes it happen faster, but eventually one of your low minimum bid items will be sold for next to nothing even if the AH doesn't go down. Learn your lesson and pay your posting fees.
You really should use "intelligence" with more restraint. It's the devs that made a repeat mistake, not the players. I assumed Cryptic would've implemented a way to control auctions after the last haphazard downtime. I was punished for good faith, not ignorance - though perhaps those two go hand in hand when one trusts PWE lackeys.
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mystralzMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 2Arc User
edited May 2013
Hey dezstravus.
Another Critical problem that needs to be handled asap is people abusing the report spam thing. Apparently it only takes 20 people to report spam falsely and that mutes people for 24 hours. This feature is completely and utterly obsurd to trust in the hands of gamers. If you don't understand what the problem is go play league of legends for a couple games and listen to the hostile immature chatter that never ends. On top of that a mere 20 is just a ridiculously low number. Handle your problem with real active gms or your just creating a bigger problem. A functioning company learns quick that it doesn't have the time to baby sit its community.
this is a opinion of a person that never studied DB.
If everything in Programing was solved with a simple snapshot why should IT and programers study so hard to press 1 button.
Dev. team nice work. keep going
This. Except for the nice work part. This game has been a mess ever since it launched. I'm still playing and enjoying but I'm not about to tell the dev team good job until they get their heads out of their collective backsides. Yes yes, ever game has issues at launch but that doesn't change the fact that this is up there with the worst MMO launches in history. The only thing keeping it from the top is the fact it launched with all its advertised features unlike a couple others.
Will this maintenance also address the issue of being unable to mail items at the mail courier? Are these issues related, or are they separate? I can see how a database issue might affect both the auction house, and the ability to send items through the mail.
Comments
I don't think it necessarily works that way either. I have lost out on 2 items already that I legitimately bid on, and was the highest bidder when the auction ended. BUT, when the auction ended, the timer went into negative seconds for a couple minutes before it cleared off the screen. The entire time it showed me as, "currently the highest bidder", yet when the negative timer ended, I checked my mail and it refunded my AD. So at this point, there is no telling where the AD or the item is going.
so you missed out the billion times the devs, the lead designer, the lead developer and the lead PR said the game has actually been released....fail much? open beta= if something goes wrong you can't shield yourself with any law that ensures you a guaranteed chargeback. just a commercial name to save their asses for being sued. most of the mmos out there are in open beta and have been for years now. there won't be any character wipe (check sticky posts) and that's the reason why they opened the zen shop. this game will most likely die before ever being called a ''release'', since the company itself doesn't promote ''releases''. perfect world is famous for this behaviour. they are also famous for cashing out on pre sales, founder packs, early access and extra goodies at start, then letting games fall apart while they move their devs to other mmos in closed beta. rince and repeat
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Exactly! It shouldn't be that hard to take a snapshot of the AH database before its taken down, then reinstate it after the code maintenance. The AH code and the AH database should be completely separate entities.
Get your **** together.
Then leave and stop all the whining. If you don't like it STOP PLAYING! dang crybabys
Keep up the good work.
Theoretically there's a breakeven point. If I save 50 AD on every transaction, but out of every 100 transactions, I lose 5000 AD, then I'm equally as well off being stingy as I am just putting the bid price equal to the buyout price. If maintenance problems are more frequent, you want to use higher bid prices. If they're less frequent, use lower bid prices.
Your point is.....?
Thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately I personally don't have the level of insight you're looking for. I can pass along the suggestion, though unfortunately I do believe that we've looked into different options to prevent the expiring of auctions, but were not able to find one that could be executed in the necessary timeframe. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience this causes and hope to continuing doing everything we can to prevent the Auction House from going offline in the future.
I don't get buying armor or weapons for low levels. It take about 40 hours to level to 60 by just doing quests. Why bother wasting AD on low level HAMSTER??
That's no more an exploit than posting items with a minimum bid of 25 AD or less to avoid paying posting fees. In fact, what you posted is the remedy to people posting low minimum bids. I posted during the last time the AH went down that the real question was, "How many people will learn from this experience and stop posting minimum bids that are lower than they are willing to accept?" The answer is clearly not all of them. Maybe this time they will learn. How many times do you have to get burned in a fire before you stop putting your hand in it? Smart people do it once at the most. Not every MMORPG player is smart.
Actually, they will do that, they will just charge us to read the mail next, just like they do for testing this supposed beta with respec tokens lol /fail at whoever thought it was clever to call it open beta yet not wipe the servers after the last exploit. (In betas you wipe and learn by your mistakes)
In beta there will be bugs, in PW's case, we get charged for these.
this is a opinion of a person that never studied DB.
If everything in Programing was solved with a simple snapshot why should IT and programers study so hard to press 1 button.
Dev. team nice work. keep going
That hurts all the people that played intelligently and posted reasonable minimum bids (and thus paid posting fees) so that the few people that cheaped out on paying posting fees will not be hurt. The cheap people are bad for the economy. Without AD sinks inflation of AD occurs faster. Posting fees is one of our AD sinks. Avoiding them leaves more AD in the economy and causes faster inflation. There is no reason to reward these people at the cost of everyone else. Do your part. Pay your taxes (posting fees). If you constantly cheap out you are eventually going to get burned. Bringing down the AH makes it happen faster, but eventually one of your low minimum bid items will be sold for next to nothing even if the AH doesn't go down. Learn your lesson and pay your posting fees.
Another Critical problem that needs to be handled asap is people abusing the report spam thing. Apparently it only takes 20 people to report spam falsely and that mutes people for 24 hours. This feature is completely and utterly obsurd to trust in the hands of gamers. If you don't understand what the problem is go play league of legends for a couple games and listen to the hostile immature chatter that never ends. On top of that a mere 20 is just a ridiculously low number. Handle your problem with real active gms or your just creating a bigger problem. A functioning company learns quick that it doesn't have the time to baby sit its community.
This. Except for the nice work part. This game has been a mess ever since it launched. I'm still playing and enjoying but I'm not about to tell the dev team good job until they get their heads out of their collective backsides. Yes yes, ever game has issues at launch but that doesn't change the fact that this is up there with the worst MMO launches in history. The only thing keeping it from the top is the fact it launched with all its advertised features unlike a couple others.