My published Foundry quest....gone.

shorlong

Logged in to the Foundry earlier today to see my quest was gone. I published it two months ago, it had 79 plays, 60 reviews. It never showed up on the new list, best list, or any other list. It had multiple play throughs on livestreams, video reviews and playthroughs showcased on yourtube by multiple reviewers, and now, just gone.

I had made two copies of that quest, as it was to be part of a 10-quest saga, I wanted to re-use certain maps and costumes. I had started editing one of those copies as my second quest. I deleted everything except for one map (the headquarters) and the costumes, as I wanted to get started on the actual second quest. The other was just named Copy of Dirty Politics, and I had loaded it multiple times to see that all of my stuff was there.

The second quest is untouched, which is good as I have two highly detailed maps already complete. Everything that should be there is there.

The other copy, however, is completely empty. The only thing that remains is the description of the quest. Everything else is blank.

And, of course, my main quest is gone. So is the campaign associated with it.

I can overlook no one being able to find my quest unless they search for it, that is fine with me. I can overlook bad reviewers, one star reviews, broken search systems and other faulty issues with the Foundry. But my quest, two months of my life, 230 hours worth of work, is now all gone.

I am writing this in hopes that a dev will see it, and maybe tell me that it's ok, there is a backup and we can restore it. Or at least "I will look into it and see what we can find out."

If the quest is gone, I don't know what to do. I would be fearful of trying anything with it at that point because I would be afraid I would lose it all over again. I don't want that fear. I just want my quest back.

zebular

. . . . . Please make a Bug-Report and/or GM Help Ticket on this and then reply with the Ticket ID number(s) (aka Incident Number). Thanks!

shorlong

Ticket #1,866,463

zebular

shorlong wrote: »

Ticket #1,866,463

Thanks, I'll forward this thread along to my Superiors.

lovepeas

I really hope this gets fixed because this was an awesome quest. I am looking forward to the next part, and I know that losing all that work would be devastating. Good luck!

redneckronin

More importantly than a missing single quest (and for the Author in question this itself is clearly very, very important) the Author community as a whole needs to know if there is some, unannounced, mechanism by which Cryptic chooses to "disappear" UCG.

If there is we need to know the exact, to the last detail, parameters of that mechanism.


All The Best

zebular

. . . . . Just a random thought; Did you add this to a Campaign and then add another mission to the campaign that you haven't published yet? If so, remove the unpublished mission from the Campaign until you publish it. Placing an unpublished mission in a Campaign will make the campaign disappear as the Foundry will then see it as an incomplete Campaign. (All the other details you provided though in mind, I doubt this is the problem, just thought I'd throw it out there.)

xhrit

redneckronin wrote: »

More importantly than a missing single quest (and for the Author in question this itself is clearly very, very important) the Author community as a whole needs to know if there is some, unannounced, mechanism by which Cryptic chooses to "disappear" UCG.

If there is we need to know the exact, to the last detail, parameters of that mechanism.


All The Best

"Cryptic reserves the right to remove any New Game Materials at any time for any reason, without providing any cause or recompense. You agree that all new material produced by the foundry becomes property of Cryptic, to use as they see fit."

redneckronin

Well, xrhit, if that is the case then Zebular's advice to Shorlong is specious, isn't it.

All The Best

x0y1

About the copy -> last post: http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?337442-Old-alpha-beta-bugs

zebular

redneckronin wrote: »

Well, xrhit, if that is the case then Zebular's advice to Shorlong is specious, isn't it.

All The Best

. . . . . Everything I have stated here is true. In fact, it was sent directly to my Community Manager, Sominator. As well, I made the rest of the Moderator Team aware through our means of direct communication (we are also in direct communication with the Community Managers as well as various other PWE Staff Members).

redneckronin

zebular wrote: »

. . . . . Everything I have stated here is true. In fact, it was sent directly to my Community Manager, Sominator. As well, I made the rest of the Moderator Team aware through our means of direct communication (we are also in direct communication with the Community Managers as well as various other PWE Staff Members).

I wasn't doubting your sincerity Zebular, sorry if it came across that way.

I was pointing out that your actions (which I took to be sincere) were at odds with the Foundry T&Cs linked to by xhrit.

We all know that such T&Cs are basically there to "cover the posterior", and may not reflect what actually happens.

All The Best

zebular

redneckronin wrote: »

I wasn't doubting your sincerity Zebular, sorry if it came across that way.

I was pointing out that your actions (which I took to be sincere) were at odds with the Foundry T&Cs linked to by xhrit.

We all know that such T&Cs are basically there to "cover the posterior", and may not reflect what actually happens.

All The Best

. . . . . I don't see how me forwarding a possible foundry bug to be at odds. (If you're suggesting there are Terms violations in a Foundry Mission, such should be done through the Support site, else on the forums it is considered Naming & Shaming and is a violation (Defamation).) If you're saying that by me forwarding this off, it is conflicting with the privacy policy of not discussing EULA violations; I have no way to know what the issue is in this case, nor if and how it will be resolved.

. . . . . All I can do is forward issues that appear to be important or might be a precursor to a major bug. A long-time-standing foundry missions going missing, coupled with the other details the user stated, counts towards this decision to forward this off. My actions have nothing to do with the clause of non-discussion.

*the mage nods*

redneckronin

zebular wrote: »

. . . . . I don't see how me forwarding a possible foundry bug to be at odds. (If you're suggesting there are Terms violations in a Foundry Mission, such should be done through the Support site, else on the forums it is considered Naming & Shaming and is a violation (Defamation).) If you're saying that by me forwarding this off, it is conflicting with the privacy policy of not discussing EULA violations; I have no way to know what the issue is in this case, nor if and how it will be resolved.

. . . . . All I can do is forward issues that appear to be important or might be a precursor to a major bug. A long-time-standing foundry missions going missing, coupled with the other details the user stated, counts towards this decision to forward this off. My actions have nothing to do with the clause of non-discussion.

*the mage nods*

Ok, look, there seems to be a misunderstanding here.

So, I'm going to bow out.

All The Best

nimmanu

xhrit wrote: »

"Cryptic reserves the right to remove any New Game Materials at any time for any reason, without providing any cause or recompense. You agree that all new material produced by the foundry becomes property of Cryptic, to use as they see fit."


[img removed for courtesy's sake for slower machines][/img]

That doesn't mean that they're going to refuse to ever tell anyone why they do something. It simply means that they have the right to remove something and not say anything.

Just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean that you will do a thing... nor that it is good customer service to do it.

Legal statements are not always general policy or general customer interaction statements. I'm surprised that you need to be told any of this, you seem like a generally intelligent person. I wouldn't dream of assuming that you were being snarky and rude, so the only thing left is that you thought TOS meant unwavering policy and a statement of absolute intent.

zebular wrote: »

. . . . . I don't see how me forwarding a possible foundry bug to be at odds. (If you're suggesting there are Terms violations in a Foundry Mission, such should be done through the Support site, else on the forums it is considered Naming & Shaming and is a violation (Defamation).) If you're saying that by me forwarding this off, it is conflicting with the privacy policy of not discussing EULA violations; I have no way to know what the issue is in this case, nor if and how it will be resolved.

. . . . . All I can do is forward issues that appear to be important or might be a precursor to a major bug. A long-time-standing foundry missions going missing, coupled with the other details the user stated, counts towards this decision to forward this off. My actions have nothing to do with the clause of non-discussion.

*the mage nods*

His reply wasn't pointing at you, Zebular. His reply was pointing out that TOS aren't statements of general policy, but are rather just legal disclaimers.

Stating that xhit's posting of a legal disclaimer as if s/he were making PW policy clear for the OP, was disingenuous at best.

As you know, and I know, and ronin knows (and someone else seems to have missed); legal disclaimers aren't necessarily a reflection of what WILL happen, but are instead a statement of what CAN happen and PW can't be sued for ("I sues you cuz you didn't tell me why my exploit quest was removed, rawr!" stupidity prevention).

shorlong

zebular wrote: »

. . . . . Just a random thought; Did you add this to a Campaign and then add another mission to the campaign that you haven't published yet? If so, remove the unpublished mission from the Campaign until you publish it. Placing an unpublished mission in a Campaign will make the campaign disappear as the Foundry will then see it as an incomplete Campaign. (All the other details you provided though in mind, I doubt this is the problem, just thought I'd throw it out there.)

Good thought, but it isn't missing from inside the game, it's missing in the actual Foundry editor. When I load it up, the campaign and the quest are gone, and the copy I made of it that used to have stuff in it is now empty.

shorlong

Any information at all yet?

shorlong

Anything? Anything at all?

zbkolde

This is scary, and makes me sad.

If i remember correctly, awhile back when they did the exploit-map pull, the quests that were deemed exploits were only pulled from the catalog. The accused authors were banned from the editor for awhile, but then were able to make changes to their quests to remove the exploit-ish features. I'm only going by memory because i can't seem to find those threads now. But anyway my point is that this should not be treated as a violation or exploit issue, because it doesn't fit that circumstance anyway.

shorlong

Seeing as how it's been quite a few days and this seems to be a MAJOR issue, I am kind of upset (ok, not kind of) that I haven't even heard back yet. A simple "Still looking into it" or "I forgot to forward this, doing it now" would suffice. But instead, just like normal, you curtail around the Foundry people to please the mindless pvp idiots who pay real money to get AD to buy the best gear so that they can feel accomplished that they won in PVP. This is ridiculous. You guys, obviously, have absolutely no interest in helping out with the Foundry, or EVERY question or concern about the Foundry would get answered immediately. But instead, you leave up certain exploit maps, you keep a broken review and search system, and when someone's quest that they slaved over in your laggy and broken system goes missing, oh well...

shorlong

This is ridiculous. Been over a week, not a word. Glad to know how you REALLY feel about your Foundry community......

shorlong

This is my last post here. You (not you, specifically, zebular, as you are just a mod, I mean in general, PWE and Cryptic) have the absolute worst customer service I have ever dealt with. If someone's character disappears, in any game, I would expect that character back in two days tops. How is it here? I don't know. But I can guarantee you I had more time put into that quest (over 200 hours according to Raptr, with 140 in actual game time) than most people have in their characters. I dropped two other games to play this, to build stuff in the Foundry. I tried to help get the podcast off the ground, I've been a part of the Forge, which has been great fun for me, I love doing the voices and helping other authors take their good quests and make them great. I was very vocal on the forums with ways to help improve, I tried to help calm people down who were raging for no reason. I did all of this because I loved the concept of the Foundry and I know it is the future of gaming.

Then, my quest disappears. It's heartbreaking. And you know, I would actually be ok if I was told that it's gone forever. At least then I could move on and start on another quest, maybe not do the one I was going to do and just focus on making fun quests. But the fact that it has been over a week without any word, not even a "looking into it"...all I get is a forum mod saying it will be forwarded. I submit a ticket (just one, I know what happens if you submit multiples..) and I get nothing. You could have just given me closure and I could accept that, mourn my loss, but eventually accept it is the downfall of a broken system and then continue making quests that maybe dont' have my heart and soul poured into them.

Instead, all you do is prove every bad thing I had ever heard about either company. You guys are pathetic. If I get banned, I get banned, I no longer care. I will miss this community, I will miss doing The Forge, but at this point, Cryptic and Perfect World can go **** themselves...