The Rollback of January 2006
by Loral on January 22, 2006
On Wednesday, 18 January 2006, the Everquest servers went down for a routine four hour patch. They came back online at 11:42 AM EST with few game changes except one - a new vendor in the Plane of Knowledge selling expensive to priceless tradeskill items for next to nothing. The Everquest developers, Sony Online Entertainment, designed these vendors for the recent betatesting of Prophecy of Ro, the eleventh Everquest expansion due for release mid February 2006. These vendors let betatesters test new tradeskill recipes with items that exist on the live servers only in much more rare quantities.
The results were quick and catastrophic. Players flooded to these new vendors, buying as many of these rare components as they could hold from the unlimited supply of the rogue vendor. Many players know that an event like this is a temporary situation so they hope to make out with what they can as long as they can. Knowing a character rollback may be likely, these players quickly transfer items to alternate characters, friends, or through their own shared bank. Players, hoping to keep their profits, might launder these rogue items through dozens of trades. Prices in the bazaar fell quickly as these new items flooded the market. All of this happened within two hours.
SOE quickly became aware of the situation and removed the rogue vendors. Yet the damage was done. Thousands of rare tradeskill items, some of them so rare that only a thousand exist across all servers, had now entered the market. While the economy of the server might balance out the error over time, many players who had never acquired a single rare tradeskill item, now might have hundreds of them. SOE made the decision to begin rolling back the characters who purchased items from the vendors and all of those who had traded with them down the line.
One can imagine the web of transactions between those who originally traded with a rogue vendor and any of those who had contact with them and so on down the line. Imagine a single piece of platinum coated with a poison that spreads to whoever holds it and anything they possess. Whenever any infected coin or item changes hands, another character and all of their possessions become infected. When it reaches the bazaar, it can flood hundreds more.
SOE contained the spread of the rogue items and all of the affected players forty eight hours after the servers originally came up. Every character touched by anyone or anything that could be traced back to the original vendors was rolled back to their last save point before the patch.
Rolling back certain characters resulted in strange lapses in the state between one character and another. One character hands an item to another character. The second character is rolled back to a previous state but the first character, having given an item and not received one, is not rolled back. This results in the loss of the original item.
Erana, an enchanter on Quellious, was one such victim. Erana, her bazaar vendor, and some friends transferred some equipment including a Manastone, an item of great power that no longer drops anywhere in Everquest. While most of these characters were rolled back including the new possesser of the Manastone, the original holder of the Manastone was not. This resulted in the Manastone becoming lost in the void between mismatched rollbacks. Like thousands of others, Erana began the painful process of navigating a complex petition form to contact customer service in the hopes of recovering her Manastone. She cares little for other items lost over the two day rollback, she can always replace those, but the Manastone is irreplaceable.
Though this example is extremely rare and most likely the exception, Erana's tale is not unique and some stories are worse. Some players lost entire corpses full of their most valuable possessions due to the paradoxical states between rollbacks. A player dies and leaves a body behind before the patch. After the patch they recover the body but become poisoned by a tainted transaction. The rollback leaves them in a state before they had recovered their body but now with no body to recover.
While these lost corpses are very rare, they are paralyzing and dismaying to those affected. A lost corpse can mean the end of a character. SOE's customer service almost always returns the body to the victim but it can take a long time for a response, a time when the player nearly convinces himself or herself that all is lost.
Most frustrating is the fact that many of the players rolled back did nothing out of the ordinary. They did not try to get rich quick on low-priced ultra-rare tradeskill items. They did not try to exploit a bug in the game. They might have accepted some coin for a buff or bought some emeralds in the bazaar. They might have transferred some gear from one character to another and lost nearly everything of value. Even if they didn't lose a body or gear, many lost all of the progress made in two days worth of play time. One player, returning to Everquest with Everquest Titanium, a $20 package including the base game and ten expansions, wrote of his confusion at losing levels and equipment for something he didn't even understand.
From the time of the initial discovery of the rogue merchants the Everquest forums exploded with posts of rage, frustration, arguments, and threats. It becomes nearly impossible to uncover the truth as angry players post rumors, assumed statistics, threats, vague details, and overdramatic outcries. One full thread of posts discussed the impact of another rogue vendor who gave out alternate advanced points when players handed them a single platinum piece. SOE developers spent time away from the real issues to dig into every script that could possibly result in a situation like this only to find out that it had never happened. No such vendor existed on the live servers, the beta servers, or anywhere else. Other players reported the losses of millions of platinum pieces, hundreds of alternate advanced points, tens of levels, and entire suits of new equipment - far greater results than any player can earn in a two-day period.
These exaggerations took much away from the real stories of those directly affected. High-end raiders lost two nights worth of victories in difficult raid zones, bazaar traders and tradeskillers lost two days worth of profits, mid-level hunters lost levels earned over two days of hunting.
At midnight on 20 January 2006, Chris Lena, the Everquest Producer, wrote a letter of apology and explained the direct results of the error and the effects. Chris stated that less than 1% of existing Everquest character were effected by the rollbacks and that customer service would help with lost corpses and guild membership status but not with lost items. Later, SOE announced that it would help with the recovery of lost epic items or epic quest pieces as well as offering a double experience bonus starting Saturday morning on 21 January and ending the following Monday. Due to some technical difficulties Saturday morning, the double experience weekend was extended until Tuesday morning.
The decision to roll back certain characters over a 48 hour period meant that many players unaffected by the poisoned transactions saw little change at all. It did, however, let the transactions continue to spread as the players rolled back. Taking down the servers and rolling back every character, affected or not, might have had many of the same problems faced already but with less of the paradoxical state for the lost 48 hours. Only SOE has the data to truly determine which method would lead to the best outcome.
Many posts questioned the 1% affected rate stated in Chris Lena's letter. It seems everyone knew someone, often more than one who was rolled back and lost time, items, money, or all three. Some entire guilds were affected as guild bankers became tainted and spread the poison out to every guild member who touched the bank. Again, no one outside of SOE knows exactly the number affected, but those who play most often, those with the widest social circles, were the most likely to become affected.
Yet the numbers matter little to those who lost much during a rollback. To the player who loses a corpse full of their hard-earned equipment or another player who loses a priceless artifact from a quick trade in the bazaar, the results are all that matter.
Now is as good a time as any for SOE to consider re-looking at their choice for equipment loss on death. At the Everquest Summit in September 2005, Craig Knapp begain the discussion of Everquest's death system. With recent games choosing alternate penalties for death instead of equipment loss, SOE should consider a new death system that lets players respawn with gear and receive another penalty - a "death effect" perhaps - to off-set the benefit of returning fully equipped.
While the psychological advantage of returning fully equipped is strong, situations like these recent rollbacks build a much stronger case. Players don't ever want to lose equipment. In today's new world of massive online games, equipment loss is too strong a penalty that effects the wrong set of players - the lower and middle level players who have few tools for corpse recovery and a smaller network of friends to assist.
If you are one of these player, what can you do? Be patient and persistant. Be polite and understanding. If you've lost a body or irreplacable gear, keep working with CS to try to recover it. Don't accept no for an answer but don't hurt your case with rudeness.
With a letter of apology and a weekend of double experience, SOE hopes to put the event back into the pages of history. While the situation will no doubt fade over time as the CS teams recover all that can be recovered and the rest of us move on with our adventures, the week of the Great Rollback will not likely become forgotten.
Loral Ciriclight
21 January 2006
loral@loralciriclight.com
Update: Erana, the enchanter in the article above, received her manastone back on 30 January 2005. Many reports came in from those who lost items in the rollback and eventually had them recovered by SOE's Customer Service staff.
Comment Posted by: Goodlord on January 22, 2006 09:49 PM
I used to garner some hope that Mobhunter provided neutral info and news about the game.
That hope is all but gone as I now realize you are one of the biggest apologists SOE has going for them.
Would love to see you write an article asking SOE to re-consider giving back those 'rare-items' lost. Ie. the manastone that will not be reimbursed.
Comment Posted by: blobby on January 23, 2006 01:15 AM
sony is dead to me, im off to wow until vanguard comes out, they simply have no clue what there doing.
re the equipment lost on death, even if you did not have this, in the manastone example, the person who bought the manastone would still have been rolled back 48 hours loosing the manastone, and the person who originally had it would not have, so the manastone would still be lost to the void as you put it, i call it lost to blind ignorance of a company that knows nothing about the things they do.... totally unprofessional.
Comment Posted by: Horzek on January 23, 2006 02:48 AM
Cheaters never prosper
Comment Posted by: Merrick on January 23, 2006 02:57 AM
This sort of thing was really common in Ultima Online.
The solution was simple.
Roll everything and everyone back to the pre-patch state as soon as possible.
Yes, that's a lot of character restores and a lot of manual work, but really there isn't any other fair and foolproof option.
If they wanted to come out smelling like roses, they then should have instigated double XP for a few days, like they did, to make up for lost time.
The next step would be to implement a more comprehensive backup system in case something like this occurs again.
Has this ever happened before in EQ not counting any beta programs or test servers?
If anything, I'm impressed they held out this long.
Oh, and goodlord? Do you play everquest live regularly right now?
Comment Posted by: Eldakka on January 23, 2006 03:08 AM
While I think calling Loral an apologist might be a bit strong, he certainly seems to be treading carefully and not trying to raise ire at SOE.
One thing that I am very disappointed in this article is the incorrect (one might say false) reporting of Chris Lena's statement on the eqforums, and a failure to analyse the very carefully, deliberately misleading original statement.
Loral wrote: "Chris stated that less than 1% of existing Everquest character were effected by the rollbacks"
This is in fact incorrect. What Chris said (http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Crier&message.id=261&jump=true) was: "The result is that the integrity of the economy has been maintained while touching less than 1% of the character population of EverQuest."
Unlike Loral's reporting of this statement, note there is actually no use of the word 'existing' as reported by Loral.
The key words missing from Chris's statement (which Loral should have been jumping all over) are 'existing', 'active' and 'accounts'.
The lack of use of any of the above words leave me to believe that the '1%' figure is of all characters and not accounts (as listed on EQPlayers), past and present.
According to EQPlayers there are something like 5 million characters, so 1% of that is 50,000 characters, and while that again is characters and not accounts, 50,000 is an awful big number with respect to 'active' characters.
Loral also failed to point out the community nature of Everquest. So while 1% of characters were 'touched', that touching affected many other people. Raids crashed and burned as characters were rolled back during the middle of a script, causing the entire raid of 50-odd people to wipe because a half-dozen people get rolled back during the middle of the raid.
Even if the raid pushed on to success, if it was a flagging raid and members lost flags due to rollbacks, or because they were too scared to even login, then that raid (and most flagging raids are not 'fun', they are something that has to be done to progress) will have to be re-done to get those members their flags.
This affected group's as well, as a rollback of one character in a group MPG trial can cause that trial to be failed. Or someone could lose their DoDH spell progression flags, which means grabbing friends to do the same boring missions again...assuming you have a group of solid friends who you can impose upon to do a mission they probably never want to see the inside of again.
Comment Posted by: Simkin on January 23, 2006 07:55 AM
This has to be EQ1's greatest blunder ever. When SOE botched an EQ2 patch big time they did the right thing and brought the servers down and did the rollbacks. This is what should of happened right away when it was seen PoK was wrong.
I work on a small team that supports the financial systems for 4 companies. While our user loads are under 2,000, the impact of faulty patching could affect 30,000+ Our change management for system updates and code changes is very strict. Nothing gets moved downstream to QA and on to Production before a number of sign offs and testing. In the case of an error in Production, the server is brought down and restored point in time to just before the patch and the error is investigated. We've had to do this twice in seven years.
What happened here is typical of SOE's utter lack of QA. Time and time again they botch things that should of easily been trapped. However this time they kicked it up a notch by inserting a script to fix their mistake instead of taking the servers down.
Now, their track record for code changes is laughable already so it's no surprise their version 0.21beta script wasn't tested properly and ran amok making things worse.
There were some snide comments by SOE appologists that it's strange the two days of rollbacks were the single best days people ever had. Insinuating that people are lying. Given any two day period, there is no doubt in my mind that a lot of people progressed their characters by flags, items, AA, trades, skills, etc. I know I improved my toon in some way nearly ever day I played. Unless you sat afk you pretty much have to.
Now, SOE has said before they do spend a lot of time responding to fraud claims so no doubt these same people are filling up the queues along with the legitimate complaints. But I think they are in the minority. There just aren't that may scammers in EQ.
If SOE had properly contained the error, they wouldn't have to even worry about it. Everything would be backed out. Instead this script cut transactions in half, a truly mind boggling piece of code.
The double exp weekend is a true slap in the face as well. Why everyone should get this when only a "few" people were hit is an insult to the players who are still waiting on their characters and cannot even play.
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 23, 2006 08:02 AM
Any writing of this topic that doesn't start with "OMG, EQ IS DEAD!!11!!" is considered apologist. I had hoped to focus discussion on what actually happened instead of continued Scarlet O'Hara dramatic prose but perhaps that's impossible.
As far as the 1% number, the problem is that there is no real stated base. In the end, the number matters little to those affected. If you got rolled back and lost levels, AAs, loot, a body, or items traded between characters, you aren't likely to care about numbers. None of us has enough data to put together any real numbers anyway. A friend in a raiding guild had nearly half his raiding guild rolled back after clearing Tacvi and Anguish. To him, the number was over 51%. When I queried the General chat channel, the number was six out of 195 or about 3%.
A lot of people lost a lot of different things and a lot of others took speculation and rumor and ran wild on the forums, dwarfing the stories of the people actually affected. The point of this article was to cut in to what really happened.
Comment Posted by: Zmatil of Stromm on January 23, 2006 08:05 AM
I am highly sceptical of the 1% figure touted by SOE. It might be right for the entire pupulation of characters across the servers but it is certainly hihger than that across the population of active players.
For myself my main was rolled losing me not only the AA's I had won in that time and the augment I had won in Tipt but also the tradeskill items I had transferred over from my tinkering supply bot. However since my supply bot didn't get rolled back those supplies vanished into thin air.
To those who blithely say "cheaters never prosper" may I say "take a long walk off a short bridge".
I came onto the server after the rogue vendors had been taken down. I bought nothing from the bazaar, only water and rations from the vendors, took no tips for buffs and teh only transaction I made was to transfer an ornate leather chest pattern from our guild bank to our guilds monk.
I spent most of the time before the roll back helping members of my guild get their KT flag by doing a Tipt run. Flags which they all lost.
So what was it I did that might have cuased a roll back? I cast an MGB KEI at nexus...... snow will settle on Fennin Ro's wings before I do that again.
Some have lost out but others have won. I know of several instances where players got very lucky out of this process. Instead of losing items due to a selective rollback after a transfer between characters, they found that the items transferred had been duped because the other character had been rolled back.
My view is that they should have shut down the servers immediately they had been aware of a problem and rolled everyone back to the point immediately prior to the patch. It woudl ahve been annoying but we have suffered long patch days before and the majority of people would only have noticed a very long patch. This half assed method of selective rollback has created a huge amount of discontent far above that which might have been caused by a long patch.
And I won't even mention the digust most Strommites feel towards SOE after our 3 hour long double XP weekend.
Comment Posted by: Chapp on January 23, 2006 08:50 AM
With a game this complex, you have to give SOE credit for keeping the mistakes to a minimum and give them a mulligan.
That said, it is very unfortunate that SOE is unwilling to step up and correct the items lost due to the rollback. It's easy to say that this would be a monumental task, however given that only 1% of 'whatever' was affected, it shouldn't take them more than a couple of weeks.
Seriously, what else are they gonna do with that time? Work on reenvisionment? Teehee.
I'd personally love to see the 'EQ Press' step up and at least attempt to ask SOE to reimburse lost items, especially the items that cannot be attained ever again.
Apologist? Not really, it's a good article that states the supposed facts, however that's about all it does.
Some of us wouldn't mind seeing more.
Comment Posted by: Aethn on January 23, 2006 09:23 AM
Actually Loral, that AA for plat NPC DID in fact exist. It was in Luclin Beta, stationed in the Nexus on top of trhe center platform. AA's were new at that time and SOE did not have the tools to just award AA's to characters.
So the solution was to make a NPC that would award x number of EXP points for one platinum. That EXP value was equal to the EXP needed to gain one AA point. BUT, the NPC could not distinguish between Real and AA exp. So players used this same NPC to level characters from 1 to 60 also.
So SOE pulled the NPC about a week into Beta. So yes it did exist. And No, it never made it to any live server.
Comment Posted by: Glormane on January 23, 2006 09:31 AM
Merrick and Zmatil said it right, as soon as the rogue merchants were discovered, the server should have come down, with a motd that all tradeskill items would be removed etc.
Theres a new Producer in, was it his Naivety, or his pigheadedness that made SOE wait. Either way they paid the price but you have to wonder at what lvl of competence is employed by the techies and how much SOE really cares as when they patched the double xp firstly they patched at 5am, when usually they patch at 2am and secondly the patch was incorrect and they had to repatch.
As for Loral being a SOE sympathiser, I will admit that his articles sometimes slant towards SOE, but when you are trying to write articles (Sometimes exclusives) on new features and expansions it is shooting yourself in the foot somewhat to actively criticise a body you hope to get information from. I didn’t find this article pandering, indeed why write an article at all drawing attention to this ‘gaff’, keeping quiet would have been a better tactic.
Also
“If you are one of these player, what can you do? Be patient and persistant. Be polite and understanding. If you've lost a body or irreplacable gear, keep working with CS to try to recover it. Don't accept no for an answer but don't hurt your case with rudeness.”
This doesn’t sound like taking SOE’s side to me, seems like pretty balanced
Comment Posted by: Sithas on January 23, 2006 12:07 PM
Wow no mention of the biggest crime from this past weekend. 1000s of people leveling like lunatics on one stupid MM in Highkeep that already had much too high of an xp reward before the 2x xp weekend. With the double reward, one could level from 60 or less to 70 easily in several hours without ever having to play your character once. Or get 3 AAs a 'mission' for doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the game. This 'adventure' is so trivial that people were playing separate missions simultaneously on multiple computers. Yet, its so rewarding, it blows away any challenging zone for the amount of reward available.
The single most game breaking experience in the history of EQ and everyone seems to have eaten it up like pie. Long gone are the days where reaching level 70 and getting 200 AAs were an accomplishment. Now it just takes a weekend. I played EQ this long because of the accomplishment of progressing my characters. Now the only progression that actually takes a modicum of skill is collecting pieces of gear.
January 18, 2006...the day the music died.
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 23, 2006 12:15 PM
"Wow no mention of the biggest crime from this past weekend. 1000s of people leveling like lunatics on one stupid MM in Highkeep that already had much too high of an xp reward before the 2x xp weekend."
That will likely be the topic of another editiorial on the Dangers of Monster Missions. I'm a big supporter of monster missions but if they break, the reprocussions can be bad.
I don't think all the double-exp leveling in one weekend will have a big impact over the life of the game. I do think the High Pass monster mission was offering too great a reward for the time. When I wrote the majority of this article, the double exp thing hadn't even gone in yet.
Comment Posted by: Sithas on January 23, 2006 12:43 PM
Thanks for acknowledging it at least.
I have to say I see no difference at all between buying a level 70 character on ebay or whatever versus 'leveling one up' on a MM like this. Either way you get a character you didnt earn and have never played the game of EQ.
Comment Posted by: Simkin on January 23, 2006 12:45 PM
You can't blame people for going to where the exp is the best. The game is gear and level dependant. Since EQ zones aren't equal people go to the single best. Creator mssions, Werewolf mission & orc/fairy pre nerf, now this HH mission.
It probably didn't help that the HH mission can be completely automated with certain 3rd party tools.
I feel monster missions were the single worst addition to EQ. There are more useless features of course but MM trivialized the game like no other.
And unless SOE makes a statement otherwise, you're going to be sol in getting items back. You'll probably get your corpses/characters back eventually.
Comment Posted by: Quescient on January 23, 2006 01:33 PM
The monster mission in Highhold Pass is hardly game breaking, even at double experience. In the Nest (Blackwing mission), with a good group, we were getting an AA every seven minutes or so. With Lesson running, our best AA was three minutes and fifteen seconds. In two hours, I made twenty AAs -- plus we looted a few drake scales and got 60 crystals.
With my 66 monk in Highpass (who I didn't want to group with my level 70 friends for fear of slowing them down), I made 2.6 AAs per mission. That's 15 minutes per AA, or half the speed of the Nest group (and you can't use Lesson).
And the Nest wasn't the only fast experience. Other guildies were soloing in the Hive, and many were doing the 69.1 DoD spell mission over and over.
The only thing exceptional about the Monster Mission is that anyone could get a group there in seconds and play the game. Since no one wanted to waste a minute of the double experience weekend being LFG, of course people flocked there.
Comment Posted by: Sithas on January 23, 2006 01:57 PM
The difference is that you and your friends in the Nest were actually playing Everquest which has some risk vs. reward. People doing MMs aren't. They are playing some other trivial game that has risk vs. reward so far out of balance with most of the rest of the game that it is in fact game breaking. At least it broke the game that I started off playing.
Look through all the old mobhunter articles and i bet half of them or more talk about balance in one form or another. You can't convince me that RvR in MMs is balanced. There used to be some integrity and consistency about the game but I'm afraid that is long gone. Might as well just allow people to roll up a level 70 with 500 AAs when they open the gamebox if you're going to give it away so trivially.
Comment Posted by: R_A_Ndom on January 23, 2006 03:19 PM
Dunno if people realise, but with the HHK mission, people are swapping toons to ignore the lockout. Do a mission, with lockout timer, log, login new toon, repeat with the same group you was just with. Fair enough, not game breaking, a bit of rule bending, but, meh.
BUT;
What some are ALSO doing, is opening up the mission with 3 alts whilst their other toons are still plowing through the mission as the 3 alts won't have the lockout. Then, on completion with their main toons, they transfer into the mission the 3 alts have already opened up and continue xp'ing, thus ignoring ANY lockouts as it's the npc who checks the timer, not swapping in after.
Unfortunatly, people using this method are now making THE most xp possible in the game, with no risk (except further bannings/rollbacks if caught) on a single toon.
All the arguments about time/risk, or there being other/better xp spots are thrown out using this method (that existed as long as MM's came out it appears).
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 23, 2006 04:26 PM
"The only thing exceptional about the Monster Mission is that anyone could get a group there in seconds and play the game. Since no one wanted to waste a minute of the double experience weekend being LFG, of course people flocked there."
This is the puzzle to my new Everquest problem: How can you set up an environment where people can get groups as quickly as they do with Monster Missions but do it with their main character? It's fine to have problems with Monster Missions, some are clearly outside of the proper risk vs. reward, but they do offer the fastest way for anyone to get a group. Something else has to be discovered that does this for main characters.
"You can't convince me that RvR in MMs is balanced."
Not all Monster Missions are balanced the same. The Nagafen mission is one I consider well balanced. You have to actually work to succeed. Some may say it isn't particularly hard, but it takes a group of well coordinated people to succeed. It also has a set duration of 45 minutes. 45 minutes later you either succeed or fail. You can't beat it in 20 minutes and you can't keep working at it for four hours. That's my favorite monster mission.
People always use examples of the most out-of-balance monster missions to prove that the whole monster mission system is broken. Some of these monster missions are extremely challenging and might even offer too much difficutly for the reward.
I agree that content needs to be balanced but anyone who kites Fire tables for double the experience they should be receiving and has done so for years shouldn't be complaining about monster missions being out of balance. Content risk vs. reward always needs to be carefully balanced regardless of the system it uses.
Comment Posted by: Sithas on January 23, 2006 05:31 PM
Its interesting that you mention Fire tables…I play a necromancer among other classes. I don’t do fire tables (known as a necromancer playground) but I do have my spots that I have found to maximize xp gain. In general this is pretty easy and when you consider start up and down time (almost none), I do as well as anyone as far as xp gained per time played. Well anyone within reason…
Not to give away specifics but the monsters that I fight hit for 500 to 900 (that’s a lot for non-uber me) and randomly spawn with abilities that make my work a lot harder. That’s risk. There is a particular ability that they can come with that is fairly rare but when they have it I get owned almost every time if I’m not prepared. That’s risk. Just yesterday I met one of these bad boys and through my own gross stupidity (I rooted it near my bind point as a last ditch effort to save myself) I got stuck in a mini death loop (3 deaths total). That’s risk.
The rewards…good xp for me and my partners when I have them, occasional rare no drop loot, occasional rare droppable high resale loot.
I’m sure there are some MMs that offer some risk for the reward but those aren’t the ones being abused 100s of times a day by the same people. I could not play two different characters on two different computers at the same time in the places that I hunt with no risk of dying. This is done often in MMs. Not to mention the numerous other loopholes that another poster already mentioned.
Solution? Since I seem to be in the minority, I won’t suggest abolishment, which is my first choice. How about limiting each MM mission to 3 times per real day per account? That seems fair.
Comment Posted by: menleniel on January 23, 2006 09:59 PM
Thanks Loral. I'd picked up bits and pieces of the fiasco but its good see it all put together like that.
Comment Posted by: Glormane on January 24, 2006 05:10 AM
I agree with Loral on the Nagafen MM. Its more playable than the others, it can be failed and has a set duration of about 45 mins. A shame then that SOE nerfed the xp on this one and left the fairy MM alone. The xp given by the Werewolf Mission in Stoneroot didnt give as much xp as the HHK mission and they killed off the NPC's within 48 hours, so what gives? I can't figure what SOE are thinking.
Its my opinion that MM's were designed as a stop gap for people unable to find groups or at a lvl range where grouping is difficult. MM's should be enjoyable but the loot table and xp returns should be such that they are not always option no 1. The instances in DOD provide very good xp but requires something the MM's dont, a modicum of player and class skill. MM's also take out the death down time and penalty and are as we have seen become the best option for many people who do not have the gear and/or AA's to tackle DOD.
I think that MM's in their current form are a bad direction for EQ to go, and I hope SOE lose their enthusiasm for them.
Comment Posted by: Pants on January 24, 2006 08:09 AM
Well having been away from EQ for a little over a year now, and reading about what has happened, all I can say is the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that is referring to more than just SOE's actions. Truly pathetic all around.
Comment Posted by: Skuz on January 24, 2006 08:55 AM
The way I see it, MM are a great idea, the bad things are that they don't have an inherant risk in most of them, if you die you respawn with no experience loss, no penalty for death is bad, ok some of these missions death is almost completely unavoidable regardless of your skill....that's where I feel the MM creators were lazy in not tuning the encounters well.
To introduce a death-penalty on MM in their current state would be very unfair the monster missions as they are need a full overhaul, time consuming......I think that SoE will just look at the xp involved and nerf that as they see fit instead, yet another lazy method, but a cheap one.
In EQ you are always going to find that the ideal game mechanics for any given encounter have a cost involved if they are to be changed, thats an issue for all MMO's though.
I would much rather see SoE look at the 20-65 game & rethink it, players in those levels are going to struggle to find groups so I think there is a need to facilitate at least "some" solo progression so that when players get sick & tired of grinding out endless MM 's there is something else they can do, right now MM are what many low to mid level players view as being the only decently paced route to the higher end game where they can get "real" groups.
Comment Posted by: Vamirez on January 25, 2006 03:39 AM
Which is a shame, because there is a lot of cool level 20-65 content out there already. Its just that almost noone is using it.
The game already suggests where you could go when you achieve a new level. What about adding a number of simple quests to the game, one for each level? For example, you ding level 20, the game tells you to adventure in the Warrens, but also gives you a quest that requires you to kill ten pack elders and ten diseased kobolds. Completing the quest rewards you with a yellow bubble of bonus XP, a few pp and a nice item appropriate for your level. Maybe something like that would cause people to actually go to these places, making groups there possible.
Comment Posted by: Horzek on January 25, 2006 03:55 PM
I for one took some advantage of the Monster Missions to gain experience for both AA and for level improvements. I saw a great many others there doing exactly the same things as well. I much more than made up for any experience I lost when I was rolled back although that did not compensate for the high end gear I lost.
My take on the experience weekend was that it was over all good for the game. My raiding guild picked up hundreds of aa points over all and we will be all the better for it. The tanks will be better tanks, the healers will be better healers. For us IM very sure we will be much better off.
Another side of the experience boost is that many many people raised characters up very quickly and I was able to raise my little 66 warrior up to level 70 and knock down a few aa for him at the same time. I now face the problems of gearing him pu sufficiently to be able to handle the chores required of a 70 warrior. I had gotten him to 66 the long hard way so all his skills were largely maxxed and his path to improvement will not be a long tireing one.
This does lead to the next item I am giving thought to. We now have a lot of brand new clerics and casters and others of all classes that have no spells and dont have the gear to support their levels. To me this means zones dropping runes like WoS and Rcod and others will be revitalized. While the 66 - 68 runes can be bought in the bazaar, and I predict soaring prices, the 69 and 70 will be greatly sought after once again and the zones where these are droppable will see new interest as well.
Since so many of us are in the same boat I expect that my little warrior among many others will be out there taking groups and building his skills while hoping to get that gear and the runes he may be needing. I am sure the farmers who hog up all the good rune spots can only love this.
For me, my warrior has a new life breathed into him. For my cleric who benefited with quite a few new aa points it would have taken weeks to obtain otherwise I will only be that much better able to perform my healing duties.
Thanks Loral for your take on the entire situation over the past week. You have been fair and I can really ask for no more.
Comment Posted by: Horzek on January 26, 2006 02:12 AM
I wanted to make a brief followup. I had petitioned concerning the loss of gear during the roll back and tonight after a few days in the petition cue My request was answered. My new greaves and my Tier 4 flag piece were restored to me and I was able to quickly complete the Tier 4 flag once again.
I didnt have to make a pest of myself at all. I simply petitioned in as thorough a manner as possible and I was polite. I know I dont like people being rude or nasty with me and I try to return the favor.
Comment Posted by: Reckoner on January 29, 2006 07:57 PM
New players don't care about EQ1 - it's too old. Dozens of zones where players happily spent months of their lives.. empty. It doesn't appeal to me at all. Something must be done to get players into those old zones - and revamping the graphics is not the solution. Anyone playing EQ1 is not playing it for the graphics - they're playing for the gameplay - the history. This used to be a virtual world once.
Right now Everquest 1 *is* dead, for new players. I don't presume to tell long-term players that they're playing a dead game. Don't be ridiculous. Everquest 2 is where all the lowbies are at right now.
EQ2 has more than enough content for new players for all but the most hardcore player, and even then, you'd be hard pressed to catch up with people in EQ2 now.
So why play EQ1 unless you already have a high level toon? I can't think of a reason. Someone help me out here.
Comment Posted by: JuneauPrexus on January 30, 2006 01:12 PM
EQ2 is dead too as far as new players are concerned. Most new players are playing World of Warcraft (most popular) or Guild Wars (no monthly subscription fee) instead. And in the next few months, new players then will be drawn to games like D&D Online and Vanguard Saga of Heroes instead of EQ or EQ2.
Comment Posted by: JuneauPrexus on January 30, 2006 01:19 PM
As far as monster missions being out of whack, don't worry. SOE will nerf the hell out of these DoD missions once PoR comes out, and everyone will flock to the XP bonanza of the monster missions in PoR so that SOE can sell its latest expansion.
SOE has a history of doing this, whether it be luring people to buy new expansions with artifically boosted XP zone modifiers or Monty Haul-like rare treasure drops in the first couple months after a new expansion's release.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 30, 2006 03:32 PM
JuneauPrexus Wrote:EQ2 is dead too as far as new players are concerned. Most new players are playing World of Warcraft (most popular) or Guild Wars (no monthly subscription fee) instead.
from what I heard WoW servers have half the player population they had a year ago, and Guild wars only really gets major populations on the server during special events. (Holidays, Expansion preview) other then that most people in guild wars have probably burnt out on the diablo 2 style of gameplay it offers at the moment.
Comment Posted by: Erana Dragonfire of Quellious on January 30, 2006 05:45 PM
Hi all,
I now have my Manastone back, after petitioning a second time because my first petition was
closed without a reason. My second petition went through and was answered in 1 business day.
I would like to thank GM Winsi for taking the time and effort to recover my Manastone. Its much appreciated.
I wish there was a way to say thank you ingame in reply to a petition.
Oh and nice article Loral!
Comment Posted by: fanboi on January 30, 2006 09:08 PM
Amazing what a few thousand cancellations does to improve CS. If SOE was a shoe, they'd be a flip-flop.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on January 31, 2006 02:07 AM
And do you have any evidence at all to support your claim that a few thousand people have cancelled?
Comment Posted by: Richard Hinson on January 31, 2006 04:13 AM
"Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 30, 2006 03:32 PM
JuneauPrexus Wrote:EQ2 is dead too as far as new players are concerned. Most new players are playing World of Warcraft (most popular) or Guild Wars (no monthly subscription fee) instead.
from what I heard WoW servers have half the player population they had a year ago, and Guild wars only really gets major populations on the server during special events. (Holidays, Expansion preview) other then that most people in guild wars have probably burnt out on the diablo 2 style of gameplay it offers at the moment."
Armarant, you might want to do a little fact checking. Currently most WoW servers are at max capacity. There's actually a posted list of servers that are allowing new character creation on them. Blizzard just released three new servers.
Please don't make the mistake of bashing down a game in order to try to make SOE's recent actions not look so bad.
Comment Posted by: Reckoner on January 31, 2006 05:02 AM
Aye WoW is growing and continues to grow. It's defying the laws of economics, physics and probably some legal laws too :P
I just can't play in a cartoon world. Nnng... I wish I could get past that, I would probably have a great time.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on January 31, 2006 12:42 PM
Typo Correction:
"There's actually a posted list of servers that are allowing new character creation on them."
Make that "NOT allowing new character creation." You can make new characters if you already have a character on that server, but new people aren't allowed on them.
WoW has some serious flaws, and the answer we're getting ("The expansion will fix it") brings back bad memories (though I'm still hopeful that it's true). But there's no denying that it has been a huge commercial success. WoW is to EQ as EQ was to Ultima Online. EQ's success didn't make make Ultima Online a bad game, and WoW's success doesn't make EQ bad either.
Comment Posted by: fanboi on January 31, 2006 01:00 PM
Why did SOE go from "No items will be returned" to spending a week giving back everything they improperly deleted through their "rollback". One simple answer: money. I have no doubt from the forums and through friends, it was the final straw for many. I'm not saying people won't be back or renew when their account expires, but *lots*, and I will stick with thousands, cancelled their accounts. It was a wakeup call pure and simple.
Oh, in case people think EQ2 is where it's at, they just announced they are merging servers. They're trying to spin it positive but their logic fails miserably. Merged servers and massive games changes means they are losing customers.
EQ2 didn't draw me in like EQ did and I am tempted to give it another go once the new changes come in this week. I made my dream monk and cleric that I couldn't make in EQ1 but from what people tell me, it's just not interesting still.
Comment Posted by: Maevenn on January 31, 2006 02:07 PM
What SOE needs to do now is regain the EQ community's trust by posting a letter on what they have learned from this incident, what precautions will be taken to avoid a repeat, what their disaster recovery plans are in case something this serious happens again. We as customers need to demand this...apologies and Double Xp are all well and good, but words and freebies are cheap...take *action* SOE and show the players your commitment to QUALITY.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on January 31, 2006 04:55 PM
"Merged servers and massive games changes means they are losing customers."
No, um. It doesn't. It's possible that they're merging servers because of losing customers, sure, but there are dozens of other possibilities, such as the size of the world causing people to become to spread out. Unless you got some leet inside info from someone at SOE that you're not sharing, you can't say with any certainty what the reasons for server merges might be.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 31, 2006 04:57 PM
Richard Henson wrote:Armarant, you might want to do a little fact checking. Currently most WoW servers are at max capacity. There's actually a posted list of servers that are allowing new character creation on them. Blizzard just released three new servers.
Yet its ok for people like you to bash down EQ saying that its dieing and the servers are lower in population. anyone can create a list saying whatever they want. the fact that blizzard would create a list intentionally saying servers are at max capacity shows they themselves know that they are not at max capacity.
the people who said that blizzard wow servers were going down in population are in fact wow players themselves. and do infact enjoy playing.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 31, 2006 05:07 PM
a good website to check out is..
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/activity.php
it has a census of sorts.. with
46080 on alliance side.. and
49357 on horde side..
they take a census of how many people log in daily.
they have been averaging
923 on alliance side.
612 on horde side.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 1, 2006 04:31 AM
So 1 in 50 active accounts plays at any given time at WoW.
Comment Posted by: Richard Hinson on February 1, 2006 05:45 AM
Armarant,
You might want to re-read what I posted. I did not "bash" EQ. Rather I suggested to you that you might want to avoid bashing other games as a way of making EQ look good.
That said, you may want to go back and read the posts from the SOE developer staff and thier press releases prior to the time that the server mergers where made. SOE stated that the active player population had dropped to the point that they felt it was needed for the health of the game to make those mergers. Please note, it was SOE that said the populations had dropped.
If you want outside stats on all MMOGs there are a few non-game centric sites out there that do a good job of keeping stats based on company provided subscriber account numbers. While those numbers may be inflated by the companies providing the numbers, and some games are certainly over stated due to the fact users have more than 1 account, they certainly aren't understated. Just ask around if you have problems finding those sites.
That said, I personally don't think Everquest is "dieing", anymore than I think Ultima Online is. The game is a legacy game, almost 7 years old, with a substantial loyal, almost rabid, fan base. Just like Ultima Online, or Lineage. That said, I'm sure that if you turned the clock forward 5 years you'll find that there are servers still active and players still playing.
Simply put, too many people have an emotional need for Everquest to continue do too thier investment of a great deal of emotion and time in thier characters. The result is that no matter what SOE does to the game either now, or in the future, so long as their is a server to log into, their is an entrenched user base that will persistantly log in.
Armarant, please don't take any of this as an attack on you. I appreciate your loyalty to Everquest, and to SOE. I play the game too, so I understand. Just please, refrain from posting attacks on other games.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on February 1, 2006 06:23 AM
Richard Hinson Wrote:That said, you may want to go back and read the posts from the SOE developer staff and thier press releases prior to the time that the server mergers where made. SOE stated that the active player population had dropped to the point that they felt it was needed for the health of the game to make those mergers. Please note, it was SOE that said the populations had dropped.
Yes, and toward the same alot of people were also posting on a very long thread on the forums asking for server mergers, I personally dont think server mergers were necessary. and I still dont think they solved any of the problems most people had with everquest. any good company will tell you that loss of players happens on a steady basis no matter what game your running.
and as far as sony saying the population dropped, I beleive that most players became inactive, not cancelling their accounts but not playing as much. this can be shown in the double experience weekend that caused alot of inactive players to creep into the game to take advantage of the experience. and the aftermath of the Tradeskill problem that caused people to take a second look at EQ because they feel the developers are being more dareing in takeing care of the problems as they occur rather then letting them fester and remain like past bugs that allowed massive plat into the game.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on February 1, 2006 02:00 PM
If you had looked a little harder at that web site Armarant, you'd have found data that are much more relevant to what you're trying to prove. The following graph shows average number of players logged in in prime time per server for the last six months:
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php?serverid=-1
You'll see no sign of a drop in population; in fact average Horde population has been trending up. Of course individual servers will vary. Some have spikes big enough to make you wonder what sort of drama was going on--or if the data collection was working properly that week.
Comment Posted by: Phrank on February 1, 2006 05:52 PM
"So 1 in 50 active accounts plays at any given time at WoW."
Which means at least 100K concurrent players. Nothing to sneeze at.
Comment Posted by: RosesAreRed on February 1, 2006 08:15 PM
Rumor has it that the NEW UI is gonna be mandatory with the next expansion.
PLEASE SAY IT ISN'T SO
It's SO awful !!!
Comment Posted by: Redhenna on February 2, 2006 12:39 AM
No, the new UI will not be mandatory for PoR RosesAreRed. They are not updating the defualt_old UI, but most likely, some one will update it and post the updates at eqinterface.com. Also, custum Ui's that are updated for PoR will still be uaeable.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on February 2, 2006 05:33 PM
Teremar wrote:If you had looked a little harder at that web site Armarant, you'd have found data that are much more relevant to what you're trying to prove.
I think it also changes daily sometimes based on how many "Hits" they get. since they cant just do a straight out census they have to rely on people sending in /who data for each server.
Comment Posted by: RosesAreRed on February 3, 2006 01:14 AM
Thanks, Red ....
Forcing an ugly, inflexible UI on us would be the last straw.
Comment Posted by: xsi on February 3, 2006 04:26 AM
RosesAreRed wrote: "Thanks, Red ....
Forcing an ugly, inflexible UI on us would be the last straw."
As long as SOE supports custom UIs, the above would never be an issue. Now, the fact that the 'default_old' almost instantly became just another unsupported custom UI probably annoys people -- especially those who liked the old UI and don't want to have to screw with manually supporting it after every patch -- but we do always have the choice to spend hours every patch keeping things up-to-date instead of conforming to what SOE thinks our UI should look like this month.
(Incidentally, I think the rollout of the new UI was horrible, the support of the old UI is non-existent, and the communication about all of it has been less than stellar. But I maintain my own custom UI, as I have done since they were made possible, so it doesn't really impact me at all)
Comment Posted by: Pants on February 3, 2006 08:16 AM
I can tell you that the WoW servers are not half as populated as they were a year ago. I know because I was playing a year ago and am playing now. The 2 servers that I play on have insane queues to log in that far surpass any I have ever seen in the past. On one server recently the queue was over 700 long, the other around 380, at the same time. When I get into the game I see people everywhere, no zones are ever empty. Now some servers are lower than they were a year ago, mainly PVP ones. Other are even more populated than a year ago, mainly PVE and RP ones. Populations fluctuate as they do in every game. There was a huge influx around the holidays and recently it has dropped off a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if the population is down a little bit from a year ago overall among all servers, but no way are they half what they were a year ago, it's absurd to claim it, there is no evidence of such.
As for people quitting EQ over this or just plain age of the game, I don't know, and frankly I don't care. I have no desire to play the game ever again after seeing other, more modern games, do things better, and having a more friendly progression pace. I tried playing EQ again during the free trial in August and stayed in the game maybe an hour or 2 then took it off my computer. It's just too bland and boring to me now having tried newer ones. If other people still like the game fine, play it forever. EQ will be around for years to come even if the popuation drops to 1/5 of what it was at peak. The only reason I even was reading this website again was because I heard about what happened and wanted to get the different perspectives on it from websites I used to read regularly, and as I knew it would be I got the fanboy perspective here, but that's OK.
Still there is no excuse SOE's massive oops and the even worse oops they made to resolve it. I told a friend who played EQ for years what happened and how they didn't do a full rollback, and his first reaction before I even told him the results was "NO! don't tell me they were that stupid." You see it's obvious to anyone with any common sense at all what the result of SOE's actions would be, and what a mess it would make. Apparently SOE has no common sense which I have suspected for a long time. They should've gotten the servers down ASAP and rolled everyone back to before the patch. Sure that would've made a lot of people angry but it would've kept the integrity of the game intact and people would've gotten over it. Now they have a mess to deal with that will take a long time to fix, and has still angered a lot of people anyway. Who knows if they ever will get everything right. Mistakes like putting beta stuff on live servers happen, and has happened before, and I'm sure they will look closer at quality control in the future but it's the decision making process how to deal with it that was completely flawed, and calls in to question the competence of the current SOE staff. For that there is no excuse or sugar coating it, and arguing over WoW or other games is pointless to what SOE has done.
Comment Posted by: Keisa on February 3, 2006 10:48 AM
"As long as SOE supports custom UIs, the above would never be an issue. Now, the fact that the 'default_old' almost instantly became just another unsupported custom UI probably annoys people -- especially those who liked the old UI and don't want to have to screw with manually supporting it after every patch -- but we do always have the choice to spend hours every patch keeping things up-to-date instead of conforming to what SOE thinks our UI should look like this month.
"(Incidentally, I think the rollout of the new UI was horrible, the support of the old UI is non-existent, and the communication about all of it has been less than stellar. But I maintain my own custom UI, as I have done since they were made possible, so it doesn't really impact me at all)"
No matter what change is made to any software intereface, there will be someone out there that does not like it. My wife used Microsoft Word 5 for ages, because she didn't like changes put into Microsoft Word 6, 7, and 8. If a company could not upgrade their interface because people don't like change, then they'd never be able to upgrade anything.
Some companies provide backward support for old software packages and interfaces, but it is an additional drain on resources. Most let users use old interfaces without support, meaning that it is up to the users to maintain the interface.
In EQ, you can have a custom interface, (which includes their old interface). They have decided that it is not their job to maintain custom interfaces (which includes their old interface). If you don't like the current interface (which I like much more than the old one), then you have to maintain it yourself or get a third party to maintain it for you.
That's life. Complaining about it earns you no points. Just be glad they provide you a mechanism to use the interface you choose instead of forcing you to one interface.
Comment Posted by: Redhenna on February 3, 2006 04:48 PM
The defualt_old UI is something some still like to use in my guild, and in a discussion on that, one member found this: http://maddave.dnateam.com/everquest/everquest.html
This might help those who like the old UI. Personally, I have used cusum UI's forever(Sars most of that time, as it is to my mind the cleanest, best looking UI around). Keeping the UI's up to date is usually pretty trivial, with fixes usually posted the same day when patches outdate some aspect of it. If some one as computer illiterate as I am, on dialup, can keep UI's up to date and working, I think almost anyone can.
Comment Posted by: Kaelon on February 5, 2006 07:04 PM
Without delving into the whole World of Warcraft versus EverQuest debate, it's important to recognize that the subscription numbers behind WoW are grossly inflated due to the fact that the winning business model for MMOs in much of Asia, including Korea and China, is bulk-based sales to cybercafes, which in turn, lease time out to regular players. Despite this, WoW is a smashing success gathering over two and a half million subscribers in North America alone, more than four times EverQuest at its height. SOE has previously expressed concern about this figure (PCGamer August 2005) indicating that people so invested to one game wouldn't be interested in playing other games and an MMO monopoly would hurt innovation, but the fact is that WoW's popularity has dramatically broadened the market of MMO-gamers, bringing it out into the mainstream. And that can only mean good news for all MMOs, including EQ.
Comment Posted by: Kaelon on February 5, 2006 07:07 PM
On a side note... is there any reason why anyone would want a Manastone these days? My congratulations to Erana, whom I have known and appreciated in the past tremendously, and she is quite a deserving player, but really, what does the Manastone give you aside from prestige and infrequent use in a shrinking (revamped zones like Mistmoore 2.5 disabled the Manastone use) old world?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.