The 7 hour rollback due to major AD exploit

[Zeli]

Neverwinter went offline for a bit due to a massive bug in the auction house that saw players receiving free money simply by bidding negative amounts.

Last night, a player found that if you bid negative amounts on your auctions the game handed you not only the item you were bidding for, but all of the money you bid as well. So if you bid negative two million Astral Diamonds on an item, you’d not only end up with the item, but with a further two million Astral Diamonds on top.

Then players discovered that you could take those Astral Diamonds to the Zen market, where players were offering real life currency in exchange for Astral Diamonds and Cryptic immediately shut the game down.

They were investigating who exploited the economy, and are promised a “high likelihood of character-specific rollbacks” and “investigating the possibility of a shard-wide rollback” — something that should be a last resort... like maybe the entire game is broken otherwise type of situation. I really believe a more targeted character specific ban/rollback approach would be better for the overall game and community, but perhaps that wasn't possible.

Apparently they did a 7 hour game-wide rollback (affects the progress made between 5:20 a.m. PDT (8:20 a.m. EDT) and 12:20 p.m. PDT (3:20 p.m. EDT)). That's going to affect quite a bit of innocent people, especially on a Sunday, I would think there's a high likelihood of some long gaming sessions and progression for many players. I have to think that this was the last option. This must have been so wide-spread and economy breaking that they had no other choice, because game-breaking or not, there's going to be quite a few people affected who quit over their loss of progress. It's a free game so the investment for them is time, and if PW/Cryptic pulls that out from under players in order to save their own cash-shop, then innocent affected gamers are going to leave.

EDIT: Apparently the problem is so bad that some players are calling for a complete beta-wipe. I disagree with calling this a beta, for one thing. Yes, I see that they are still calling it that, but the game has launched. An entire beta-wipe? I think I'd quit.

EDIT 2: Looks like a full-game wipe is what a very large portion of the community wants. I'm still trying to figure out if this is over-reaction or if this exploit was actually this devastating to the game. What a mess.

EDIT 3: Just saw someone say that anyone who would quit over a full-wipe is a exploiter anyway. That's so unfair. And comments on how it's just casuals that would throw a fit and who cares because they'd leave anyway. Great attitude. I need to stop reading about this before I just hate the entire community.

[Winin]

A full wipe would wipe all my hard won progress in the Foundry. I have a lot of plays and achievements from people playing my stuff. A full wipe would reset all that. But it won't reset the fact that all those folks have played my quests. They will be unlikely to play them again and tip again, etc.

I'll be honest, it would wipe out a lot of my enthusiasm for the game.

In the end, I don't buy/sell much, so I really don't care about other players getting too much cash/items/level. It doesn't affect me.

[Zeli]

I could totally see that. It would wipe a great deal of my enthusiasm for a fun game. The idea behind this free-to-play was that you could invest money or time, but if they erase all of my time investment, then where is my incentive to play this as my main MMO? I don't have a great deal of time to play as it is.

I can't imagine that many foundry creators are screaming for a full wipe because of exactly what you said.

I guess it's not worth debating. They've done the 7 hour roll back and I doubt they'd add on to that at this point. It seems to be the "fix" whether it fixed it or not. I have never used the AH because it all looks like a mess so I'm not affected.

[Pazzolupo]

Yea, I've not touched the AH either, but it still sucks that prices will go out of whack. It's funny...I remember thinking on a side tangent once on what would happen if I bid negative on something. I guess....I now know....and without getting banned!

[trapsinger]

I haven't used the AH much, though I do look at it occasionally. I do, however, use the AD/zen exchange all the time, i've been collecting and trading AD for zen to save up for more character slots and new companions, and the idea that these exploiters ruined the price exchange really torques me off. Plus I wasn't even playing during that 7 hours window, so the fact that they rolled it back to fix the zen prices pleases me just fine.

[Slurm]

Just catching up today... so what came of this? Just a 7 hour rollback?

[trapsinger]

Seven hour rollback, AD exchange down for one day, AH down for two days and counting (not up yet), and we all got a letter from lord neverember with some free stuff, a costmetic faceplate, a cosmetic cape, some full healing stones, and some bonus exp runes.

[Zeli]

nice! I know it's probably rough for the innocent people who were playing during those 7 hours and I feel bad for them and their progress lost. but I'm pretty geeked about some gifts.

[Grok]

I'll never understand how any of these people expect to get away with this kind of thing. They had to know the exploit would eventually be found out and transactions traced back to the perpetrators.

[Zeli]

Ya, but they don't care. They had no intention of keeping it. They were converting it to ZEN and then selling it to gold farming companies for real money. People doing this are reported to have made anywhere from $5K to $20K of real money.

and they got banned on a free account...

[Slurm]

May 21, 2013 12:42:39 GMT -5 Zeli said:

People doing this are reported to have made anywhere from $5K to $20K of real money.

[Musei]

I'm glad they haven't resorted to a full wipe. I haven't had time to play lately because of work (putting in 10-12 hour days the last week and a half) but if they wiped I definitely wouldn't come back.

This is where their hedging their bets and still calling the release a beta bites them in the rear. I don't think there would have been as much crying for a wipe if they hadn't done this.