Cryptic: My hat is off to you.

tinypyro · May 2013

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.

thehalostrike · May 2013

they handled it so well by being quiet for a huge amount of hours when it was already being posted on the forums u mean?

luther8 · May 2013

Yeah I agree, they did a good job with fixing this issues when you see how much work is truly involved with fixing a problem like this its no small thing.

meshooflakes · May 2013

Welcome to official game forums,official MMO forums.And the internet.Enjoy your future eye opening experience.

ozghost · May 2013

Well said, you speak truth imho.

jn2002dk1 · May 2013

Yea great job fixing a game breaking bug which was in there since closed beta and was posted on the forums for many hours before they even started to do anything about it...by doing a way too short rollback and letting lots and lots of people getting away with items gained as a result of this exploit...

madmike82508 · May 2013

tinypyro wrote: »

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.

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.

impervium · May 2013

Well said, Tinypyro.

Cryptic has done a wonderful job of communicating and they've handled a very difficult situation with fairness.

garblebeast · May 2013

jn2002dk1 wrote: »

Yea great job fixing a game breaking bug which was in there since closed beta and was posted on the forums for many hours before they even started to do anything about it...by doing a way too short rollback and letting lots and lots of people getting away with items gained as a result of this exploit...

Proof? I keep hearing this regurgitated but no proof....let me see it before I believe it.

maho4200 · May 2013

Yeah they did a great job at only taking 12 hours to take the servers down, glad to see swift action was taken.

bitharne86 · May 2013

I'm not so much angry at the Dev's silence for hours as this exploit ran on and then was allowed to further ruin the economy once people had infinity AD from it by buying Cats and throwing them at people for grins...i'm just surprised that people are not able to grasp the kind of damage this has caused.

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

impervium · May 2013

bitharne86 wrote: »

This is easily the worst exploit in any MMO to date.

Hyperbole.

bitharne86 wrote: »

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

My suggestion: relax and let the devs do their job, stop being arm-chair generals and enjoy the game.

estsu · May 2013

Ignoring and letting exploits be released in open beta while simultaneously asking people to pay money for early access/benefits is a great job done?

I am not sure how OP justify this at all.

impervium · May 2013

The devs are not ignoring anything, they have been pretty darn communicative as a matter of fact.

maho4200 · May 2013

impervium wrote: »

The devs are not ignoring anything, they have been pretty darn communicative as a matter of fact.

Are you for real?

I mean you cannot for one second be serious.

The only communication we've had is basically "Thanks for your patience and continued support".

poigt · May 2013

If this exploit was as reported going since the early Beta, then PW have dropped the ball quite badly, and presumably only started looking at this bug when a bunch of people 'got organised' and it could no longer be considered a niche exploit.

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.

exploiter420 · May 2013

Great Job indeed! Broken bug report system that usually returns submissions as resolved because the ticket was lost. If it does actually get through, it obviously gets ignored - AH bug has been around since closed beta AND in Star Trek online. Only way to get these dev's attention is to break the game for the entire community.

poigt · May 2013

maho4200 wrote: »

Are you for real?

I mean you cannot for one second be serious.

The only communication we've had is basically "Thanks for your patience and continued support".

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.

bitharne86 · May 2013

impervium wrote: »

Hyperbole.

My suggestion: relax and let the devs do their job, stop being arm-chair generals and enjoy the game.

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.

tinypyro · May 2013

impervium wrote: »

The devs are not ignoring anything, they have been pretty darn communicative as a matter of fact.

^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.

vamps37 · May 2013

They have known about this issue since APLHA and didn't fix it... I woudln't give them any credit at all. They still havn't fixed the issue, the market is still flooded w/ AD from people that used this exploit prior to this. So please explain to the rest of us how did they shine???

-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

dustee071 · May 2013

its funny, still seeing people who trust this company. but i guess people really are different from eachother hmm, who knew.

maho4200 · May 2013

poigt wrote: »

Methinks the problems are not with the Dev's ability to communicate. The issue appears to be at the receiving end.

Or maybe we live in different timezones.

bitharne86 · May 2013

True tinypyro, the problem is: if the info about this exploit is legit, the economy is forever broken without utterly silly-levels of drastic action that game devs do not do. This is to cull nearly the entire economy or reset the servers.

"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.

jn2002dk1 · May 2013

garblebeast wrote: »

Proof? I keep hearing this regurgitated but no proof....let me see it before I believe it.

Check the sticky, screenshot of the tickets there

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?266921-FAQ-AD-AH-Exploit-Follow-Up/page112 there is one for starters

impervium · May 2013

bitharne86 wrote: »

"Waiting to see" if the economy is broken means the game dies

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.

zeuseason411 · May 2013

p2w prevails again

katbozejziemi · May 2013

tinypyro wrote: »

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.

Yes, ignoring bug reports for months is "handling it well". Definitely.

It's incredible how brainwashed some people are.

impervium · May 2013

katbozejziemi wrote: »

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.

poigt · May 2013

maho4200 wrote: »

Or maybe we live in different timezones.

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.

killz2many · May 2013

I knew they would do the right thing and perform a rollback. There's a lot of bugs and exploits that are irritating, but ones like this are unacceptable and demand more serious action.

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.

Cryptic: My hat is off to you.

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