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One of the hardest thing for both publishers and developers in the online gaming industry is to approve (or decide upon) a rollback.
Every once in a while, some “wise guy” will find an exploit inside the game which threatens the integrity of the game and/or the game balance which is mostly hinged upon the economy. Almost all games have a fixed drop rate so that rare and powerful items are kept… well… rare (and valuable).
The moment one screws up with this delicate balance, the entire game and the community crumbles down like a deck of cards.
During my years here at the company, I have witnessed various roll-backs and I must say, it really is a tough call to make. Dissatisfaction from the player base is among our top concerns. That’s why most rollbacks are done with some compensation involved. I remember the time in Ragnarok when a bug in Alberta allowed anyone to upgarde ANYTHING (yep, even accessories) to a sure +10!!! /gg
That was disaster!
Imagine a game wherein everyone had maximum upgraded gear? During that sad night, all people had to look to me to make the call. Given the gravity (no pun intended) of the situation, the only logical choice was to roll it back. I couldn’t allow the game to suffer if all hell broke loose. Now, the pRO team is again faced with a tough choice. I am there to guide and support them all the way, of course but I want them to analyze the situation and decide for the good of the customers (and for the brand and the business). The dreaded “duped item issue” is another challenge to hurdle…
Currently, there is talk and suggestions from the community. Now this is good. For me, feedback (if it is constructive) is helpful since it allows the game team to make informed choices. Though we get complaints (and customers DO have the right to complain), sometimes the stress alone makes it tougher. There are a lot of components to an issue. And an issue such as item duping (which is happening also now in Khan) is serious shit! I kid the not). The IT team will have to look and investigate, the Prod Dev GMs will have to verify and try to replicate the cause. While various people and teams will spend sleepless nights trying to figure out solutions and tricks to try to correct the problem. See? It’s not all fun and games in a gaming company.
Khan just rolled back today due to exploits in the game. Together with the Khan team, it was a tough choice to make. But to protect the game and for balance issues, the only logical thing to do is roll it back.
I hope that the players (for whatever game) understand the necessity of this. A lot of “innocents” will indeed feel “affected” or feel that their time, effort and money was wasted with the rollback. But trust me, if we allow the problems to continue, in the long run, ALL will be wasted.
That’s a mouthful! Whew!
Cheers!
GM T
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I’m innocent but my characters were affected of the rollback. Oh well if khan support team does not have any other ways to fix the issue I guess gamers (like me) doesn’t have a choice. I just hope the compensation that khan will give to the users has value to them.
Thanks for understanding dude. I’m sure the Khan team will more than make up for the rollback
the roll back is a good suggestion BUT cant you guys at the very least make some hocus pocus programming that you do so that the roll back would only affect items or something? coz a lot of players spend a lot of money to level up or gain in game money or whatever. i know its all hard and all but wouldnt it bring more complains if you rolled back waaaayyy to much? example: i play 18hrs a day for 1 month and made a char level 118 in rose, thats almost the sme time the whole server problems occured. so if you were to roll it back, id lose my clan, level, items, money and everything i have spent time and money to do. how would it feel if you lose everything you gained from so much work?
my suggestion is fix the servers or the game so it wont happened again and delete specific items that are very obvious came from dupe and let the others be. that way not much HELL will break lose
We would love too. But we can’t just rollback specific items or characters and not affect the level. Believe me, I ask that from the developers at the start.
But yes, you have a good point and I truly understand how bad it is for your time and effort to be wasted. We will do our best and follow your advise so that these things don’t happen again.
Thanks for your thoughts
Hmmm, a game where everyone has max mod gear…?
Actually, I’m playing it. It’s called Guild Wars.
Access to max mod gear is easy there. Anyone can get max mod armor, weapons and accessories with a bit of in-game cash. The trick with this game world is that rarity is ascribed to skins. People are vain here and they care about what looks cool. So, if you want the pretty glowing sword with the forks of lightning dancing around the blade, you will have to pay A LOT.
Now if someone were to mess with that and make the pretty swords common, ah, then you would have a problem.
You see, in the end, MMORPGs are all about perceived value. After all, we are paying for an intangible product.
Wow… I have played an online game that wasn’t as lucky as the ‘exploited’ games of LU…
And I have seen everything turn to dust when we finally realized that the GMs (and other the background people) have deserted us…
No rollback, no news, not even moderators in the forum. So I know what the ‘long run’ Sir Tristan means.
I’m a pioneer in that game. But I’m willing to build up my character from level zero and back up if that’s what will drive the ‘exploiters’ away. *sigh*
Exploiters suck. Bigtime! Those are the kinds of things that we guard against. That’s why vigilance from the community is needed. It’s a two-way street…
Thanks for dropping by. Hope to seeya again
[...] yah… we were gonna do something about the dupe issue. Too bad it’s a rollback. I just wrote about rollbacks about 2 weeks ago and now, it’s actually happening. Sigh. But trust me, this is for the good [...]
Have a nice Guam Trip.
Nice Post, bispak.