Neverwinter MMO Devs Forced to Roll Game Back After Auction House Exploit Derailed Economy
Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment are having a bit of difficulty with Neverwinter's open beta. The MMO opened its doors to the public in open beta just a month ago. Since the game has launched, the developer's been wrestling with a glut of server issues. Unfortunately, exploiters added yet another task on the developer's to-do lists.
Exploiters discovered that they could make billions of astral diamonds (one of Neverwinter's many currencies) via the auction house by bidding on negative auctions. According to reddit user sadshark, this apparently was an exploit that had already been discovered and patched on Cryptic's other MM Star Trek Online. How embarrassing.
In any case, after discovering the exploit, Cryptic took the servers down—an exploit of this nature quickly spiraled out of hand, enough to derail Neverwinter's economy. In order to undo the damage, Cryptic was forced to roll back the game to an earlier state. Any player progress made on May 19, 2013 from 5:20 AM to 12:20 PM PST was erased. For those who spent real money on Zen, the currency available across all Perfect Worlds Entertainment games, Cryptic will be reimbursing those players in full: "You'll have any and all ZEN that you transferred to Neverwinter -- we tracked all transfers during that time and made sure players have the ZEN they should have," wrote Cryptic in a FAQ about the exploit. "If you spent ZEN on items during that time, you'll need to re-buy the items, but you'll have all of that ZEN. No one will lose any money they spent on Neverwinter because of this fix. If you have any issue, please see the customer and billing support contacts below."
Neverwinter's servers have now been restored. Unfortunately, there's plenty of player progress that now will have to be re-grinded and re-earned.

Im more sad about MMos that were actually really good and had to close, like black prophecy, but hey, thats just me.
that would be true if the game ever went out of beta. BUt with these F2P games, they may never go beyond beta. Saying it is in beta is a wearing thin excuse
It is ruining gaming.
In world of tanks beta test, we got $1.50 worth of "gold" every day, equivalent to spending $45 a week. We could not buy gold ourselves.
It is nice to see company do that and say hey, I know my game is not perfect yet, and I thank you by giving you with $45 of purchased currency each month for testing.
@hotrodex Well, you have to consider 2 things. First, they've already said many times there will be no char wipes. Second, I don't care how loudly you shout it to the world, if you accepting people's money its not a beta anymore.
I saw they said they were giving everyone a gift, but I don't recall seeing anything. Maybe I just opened it without thinking...who knows.
Im more sad about MMos that were actually really good and had to close, like black prophecy, but hey, thats just me.
I spent the last two years playing Uncharted Waters Online, a free to play MMO with a game economy mixed with real money. Thriving, dedicated community that loves the game. Game has been running since 2006 or something. You sure that real cash doesn't work well in games?
As for this... I'm actually playing NWO right now. Rocky start, but actually far from the worst I've seen in an MMO launch. Community has to be the whiniest group of entitled brats I've ever seen in a game. They either want everything in the game free right now, or are screaming to the rafters how the game is dead and this auction house bug has permanently ruined the economy. Game is good, not for everyone, light on end-game content but the foundry has me interested.
True it is an open beta but, I think they are using that label loosely just in case something like this happened. As far as I know, The characters being played right now will carry over to "Live". Many people playing right now are of this opinion.
I would be interested in seeing how many account holders who already invested real money into the game, also took advantage of the exploit and what, if any, action would be taken against those accounts.