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.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Catherine Cai was a freelance news writer for Tom's Hardware. She covered a variety of tech industry news, ranging from PC components to PC and console gaming.
-
shikamaru31789 Launch is usually pretty rough for MMO's. Not too suprising, especially considering that it's Cryptic.Reply -
hotroderx At least they did the right thing and it is a open beta so people should expect this sorta thing. I think the real question is why in the world would any one spend real money to buy things from a cash shop for a game that's in beta? That to me makes no since.Reply -
abbadon_34 Just give up one the real money scam. It's no different than pirating, turning a virtual asset into real cash.Reply -
cats_Paw Those companies never learn... game economy mixed with real money will always destroy the game. I guess that dosent matter much for the companies trying to make money. Anyhow i tried this game for about 3 hours, then uninstalled it, so im not too sad about this.Reply
Im more sad about MMos that were actually really good and had to close, like black prophecy, but hey, thats just me. -
w0_od Reply10838376 said:Beta testers should understand, it is in beta phase after all.
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 -
shotgunz I think players should get free ingame currency that's bought by real money during beta tests cause well... You are beta testing for a company.Reply
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. -
xelliz I'm glad to know that they are banning exploiter accounts. However, it is my understanding that this problem was around for more then a day. Of course that could just be the internet know it all's spewing at the mouth.Reply
@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.