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Xploror what do you think?

TombsTombs Member Posts: 185
in The Pub at MMORPG.COM

Im a 4 1/2 year EQ veteran.  I left for many reasons...outsourcing customer service overseas, balance issues, poor direction for the game, insensitivity from devs to their player base, overpromising and underdelivering on patches, the grind and the fact that I had three level 65 Time enabled characters on two accounts.

You would think that with them no longer being the only show in town they would be much more driven towards customer satisfaction but, well...

http://www.warbucket.com/ibforums/index.php?showtopic=17655

The gist:  Some players were exploiting a duping bug to generate cheat "credits" (money in SWG).  When Sony found out they banned everyone who had a duped credit including people who had been in vendor mode and sold items, tech and were paid with the duped credits.  Banned.

So, a group of players decided to get together in game and protest this "guilty until proven innocent" treatment of their friends and guildmates and what was the response from Sony?

"Cease or we will just shut down the server."

Bravo. 

When is WOW open beta again?

Comments

  • AnnekynnAnnekynn Member Posts: 1,437

    Erm youre posting old news. This has been discussed to death on these forums. Who do you think told Phalanx about this story in the first place? Me :)

    --------------------------------------
    Played: AC1, DAoC, E&B, SWG
    Tested: AC1, AC2, DAoC, Eve, Lineage 2, RYL
    Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide

  • TymoraTymora Member UncommonPosts: 1,295

    I'm all too familiar with this issue.  It is a shame.  I recently cancelled my SWG account, not because of this, but just because I have been playing for a year and I simply needed a break.

    SWG is a good game, it's fun, the players are generally friendly and helpful, there is a lot to do.  The there are still many issues to be resolved by the devs.  SWG still has a lot fo potential, this issue with duping is a major set back, however.

    I've heard stories about how outspoken protesters and even calm players in general, just opposed to the way SOE is handling this issue, have been transported into the middle of a hostile environment as "punishment", or even dropped right in the middle of space.  This is not a mature wayto go about dealing with issues, SOE.

    I have been a long time supporter of SOE.  I like their games and I find the Customer Service, in my case, to be decent.  But this has been troubling to see in SWG.

    (Hey Tombs, I think I may know you in-game.  Do you play in Kettemoor?)

     

  • EnigmaEnigma Member UncommonPosts: 11,384

    I personally get a fancy tickle in seeing the merchants banned as well.

    There were merchants (armorsmiths and weaponsmiths) who were catering to the dupers. Meilawerks was one person who did this crap.  She would sell her freakin Fwg5 blasters for 500,000 credits apiece (yes they were good fwg5 but not worth half a mil! lol). So, it does my heart good seeing even the merchants banned.

    Besides, if someone pays you 4 million credits for a sword, chances are its a credit dupe

    People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.

  • RoinRoin Member RarePosts: 3,444


    Originally posted by En1Gma

    Besides, if someone pays you 4 million credits for a sword, chances are its a credit dupe



    Problem is if you were seller and was nice enough to report it.   You to would be  banned.  Damned if you do.  Damned if you don't.  Is not a good CS policy to have.  Creates an environment where no one reports things for fear of being banned.

    image

    In War - Victory.
    In Peace - Vigilance.
    In Death - Sacrifice.

  • EnigmaEnigma Member UncommonPosts: 11,384


    Originally posted by Roin

    Problem is if you were seller and was nice enough to report it.   You to would be  banned.  Damned if you do.  Damned if you don't.  Is not a good CS policy to have.  Creates an environment where no one reports things for fear of being banned.


    That's true as well.  SOE is pretty messed up in many ways...and in other ways they do a good job.  It's a paradox really.

    People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.

  • Unknown

    Alright, I will bite LOL. Since you made some effort to try spelling my name right heheh. (you need to add another "or" at the end.) This new thread of yours seems to have a decent tone. You are curious about my opinion without trying to name call, etc... Just regular debate and/or seeing what someone else thinks.......

     



    Originally posted by Tombs

    Im a 4 1/2 year EQ veteran.  I left for many reasons...outsourcing customer service overseas, balance issues, poor direction for the game, insensitivity from devs to their player base, overpromising and underdelivering on patches, the grind and the fact that I had three level 65 Time enabled characters on two accounts.

       I was a casual EQ player for the past 2 years. I still play once in a while right now. I got the game for free, and access to the Bazaar for free. (I had 2 Real Life friends already playing who already had the Bazaar expansion. So I just gave them all my plat and told them what to buy. Zero chances of them scamming me heheh. image) If EQ2 were not coming out, I would probably get deeper into EQ aka aim to have 12 high level characters instead of my current 1 high level character and 4 mid level characters. When EQ2 comes out, me and 5 friends, plus 50 or more online players from their guilds are going to get into it as hardcore as possible image

     I never got involved in the whole "EQ has the worse ever customer service" discussions because I never needed to use EQ customer service. Was EQ perfect? No. But definatly playable. My friends disliked how sometimes monsters would attack through walls. I even had a bear once attack me from underneath me while I was standing. I had no idea what, or where I was being attacked until I finally saw part of its head sticking up out of the floor. I couldn't even retal against it.

    You would think that with them no longer being the only show in town they would be much more driven towards customer satisfaction but, well...

    http://www.warbucket.com/ibforums/index.php?showtopic=17655

      I used EQ customer service 1 time. And yes, believe it or not, I got a reply in 30 mins. A GM with an uber-level character with all uber gear visited me. I was stuck 400 feet underneath and inside the gameworld, with trees, houses, above my head. She was very nice, talked to me for 5 mins, and was finally able to teleport me litterally out from the center of the planet.  I can only speak for myself. I do think there has to be something valid about the thousands of other complaints from the 200,000+ individuale players who play EQ.

      But it does not matter that EQ/Varant/Sony is no longer the only player in town. As long as the EQ players do not write petitions on the official EQ forums, and on the forums of every major game site, nothing will have a chance of changing. A petition should have all points numberically listed, with possible solutions to each point. Then at the end ask posters/players who agree to sign in the thread.

     BTW, EQ IS showing signs of responding to the fact it is not the only player on the block. EQ did get affected by DAoC and showed it. EQ did get affected by AO, SB, and other MMORPGs directily and indirectly. EQ for the past months has blatantly taken game features that were in the revolutionary MMORPG Anarchy Online.

    The gist:  Some players were exploiting a duping bug to generate cheat "credits" (money in SWG).  When Sony found out they banned everyone who had a duped credit including people who had been in vendor mode and sold items, tech and were paid with the duped credits.  Banned.

       I've already responded to this latest controversy in SWG. But I will respond again:

     1. SWG's in game economy is 95% player run. 95% of all items are player made. There is roughly 5% NPC loot that is valuable enough that other players will buy it. (like the trenchcoats some NPCs drop.) Anything effecting the player economy has a chance to litterally bring the entire game down instantly.

     2. SONY did respond instantly. Banning at will. Right NOW SONY is going through its secondary process which is a player by player appeals process. Every single player who feels they were unfairly banned, will get a personal read, and response from the Sony customer service about their individuale case. It is up to Sony to make a judgement call in each and every case. This will probably involve thousands of players. I am estimating 50,000 players but who knows (see #3)

      3. Me, you, and everyone, can never, and will never, know 100% exactly which players are in the right, and which are in the wrong. Because ALL game companies do not discuss player information, and cases, with the public. This would violate player privacy - the same thing that keeps companies from sharing credit card info, or any other info about players. If any company were to talk in public about any information about a player, that company can be instantly sued out of buisness.

     There was a case 4 months after SWG came out, of a player who made 100,000 million credits in a few days, using a little known exploit. AFTER he made the money, THEN he reported the exploit. Showing screenshots, etc... What should Sony do? Ban him? But he reported it. Do a judgement call lilke AO did? Do not ban him, but take away either all, or some of his credits? (He posted all about it on the official SWG forums, and some major game sites. Showing his screenshots, and ingame text logs.)

      4. Alas, there will always be secondary scam artists. Other players who will see and use this as an oppertunity to try and get over. From either filing false claims, claiming they were wrongly banned when they were rightly banned. Even the players who got caught red handed will try to turn the tables - it is just human nature. "Yeah I went from 1 million credits to 1 billion credits in 2 hours. Prove I did something wrong!"

     

    So, a group of players decided to get together in game and protest this "guilty until proven innocent" treatment of their friends and guildmates and what was the response from Sony?

    "Cease or we will just shut down the server."

    Bravo. 

    When is WOW open beta again?


     It is up to Sony how they want to handle this. It is their judgement call. From what I read, they were "teleporting" protesting players to elsewhere in the game. I fully support what the innocent players are doing. But I am also trying to see things from Sony's shoes and the fact that SWG is a 95% player economy.

     Let me give you another case:

       Anarchy Online had the exact same thing happen in its game some months ago. There was a massive credit duping exploit. Entire guilds got banned. Many high level players got banned. Players screamed. The official AO forms were erased, taken down, etc... because every single thread was about what was going on. Later Funcom engaged in its secondary process looking at each player by player appeal. Many players got unbanned. Some high level players, some guilds, got penalized (unbanned, but stripped of all credits and/or all items, since Funcom had no way of knowing how many of their credits were theirs, or counterfit.) Some low level players were let off the hook and allowed to keep their credits, even after getting caught, if Funcom felt they did not make enough counterfit credits to seriously affect the game. AO is not a 95% player economy though. It is roughly a 20% to 50% player economy. Funcom made their own judgement call.

     If Sony decides to be cut and dry, with no room for discussion, with no room for penalties other than banning, and SWG goes down as a result, then that is that. Goodbye SWG. Would I be sad? Yes. I'm a die hard Star Wars fan, and it's what attracted me to SWG in the first place from AO. But there are other games out there. Other Sci-Fi themed MMORPGs like AO, EvE, and even JG (Jump Gate) and EoC (Edge of Chaos). And of course STO (Star Trek Online... which is still inside my head, and everyone else's heads. image)

     

    -----

     IMHO SWG has immenent problems even more serious than this latest exploit:

      - Getting rid of Jedi. (Or at least bringing back Perma-death aka "Blue Glowies" for Jedi)

      - Perfecting the rest of the other professions which are/have the potiential to be just as fun as Jedi, or even more fun than Jedi, to play. Like Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Creature Handler, Architect, Merchant, Teras Kasi Artist, Mucisian, Doctor that is not traped with the usual Healer Template seen in all other MMORPGs, and Dancer, which are the major professions that made SWG get over 300,000 accounts in the first place. As well as the other 20+ professions that are all intresting and unique.

      - Make death sting like it did when SWG first released. Even then it did not sting that much, but right now death is 100% meaningless in SWG.

      - The SWG game DEVs should smack the suits and ties upside the head and say they are going to make a list of every single minor bug, then have ALL the game DEVs work on each one until fixed. Then attack every single major game bug the same way. (It gets a bit tiring still seeing one's character slip off their chair and sit on thin air. New players playing SWG should not be forced to see such a glaring, blatant game bug. It hurts their initial experience with SWG, and even worse if SWG is their first ever MMORPG.)

     - Push the SE (Space Expansion) back to the end of fall 2005. Jedi and the SE are SWG's only 2 Trump Cards. The Jedi Trump card has been played and squandered. The SE, no matter how "successful" it is will ultimatly be a shorterm meaningless success IF the core game issues are not first taken care of.... which are covered in a very nice thread by a veteran player on Niritus server -> And instead address everything talked about in this elequent petition full of constructive crticism:

    http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=GCW&message.id=247739&page=1


    =========================
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  • Unknown


    Originally posted by Annekynn

    Erm youre posting old news. This has been discussed to death on these forums. Who do you think told Phalanx about this story in the first place? Me :)
    --------------------------------------
    Played: AC1, DAoC, E&B, SWG
    Tested: AC1, AC2, DAoC, Eve, Lineage 2, RYL
    Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide

     He wants to have a specific discussion about this development.  Him and me discussing it in a public forum with all our lurker friend free to join in anytime. image

    The "old news" was more of discussions between posters and the game DEVs. Or rants from posters targeted at the game companies and game DEVs.

    =========================
    ======= SIGNATURE =========

    MMORPG games I've played:
    ---------------------------------------
    http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor

    Star Wars Galaxies:
    http://community.webshots.com/user/capt_xplororor

    More games:
    http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor_archives01

    EVE Online !!!
    http://community.webshots.com/user/sica_xol_archives01

    DAoC (coming soon)
    ---------------------------

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