Tag: NCSoft

NCsoft Nukes Aion, Bans 16,000: I Offer My Services


With 16,000 accounts gone, less queues!
That's 16,000 less accounts to compete with.

Segueing to our next topic, look it’s Aion again! Barely a day after announcing the introduction of G-Unit (Not the rappers, as I discovered) to fight bots in Aion, NCsoft has announced a mass ban following the maintenance reboot earlier this morning. Nearly sixteen thousand accounts, too. The bans are anything from gold farming, botting, buying gold, to spamming and advertising.

So is there any recourse for players who feel they were wrongly banned? Unlikely, as NCsoft feels quite sure of themselves, using multiple instances as evidence rather than just one. If you do feel that you were banned improperly, you can always create a support ticket to have it looked at.

I wrote this knowing that I’m going to get a lot of emails asking “Why are you pushing NCsoft’s propaganda?” Two years ago, I would have picked Jagex for the most dramatic mass bans with the trade restrictions and other massive game mechanic changes. This year, however, the prize definitely goes to NCsoft and Aion for the most dramatic showmanship. The sixteen thousand on paper sounds great, until you go in-game on the same day to realize that the bots are back in full force.

More after the break…

Continue reading “NCsoft Nukes Aion, Bans 16,000: I Offer My Services”

G-Unit Coming to Aion: Botters Beware.


I don’t know about you, but when I think of botters and gold farmers, just the mere thought of “U buy g0ld n0W, cheep pricz, accounts, wWwDoTChInaGolDdotCoM” makes me want to pop a cap. Luckily for me, and any Aion players out there, NCsoft has just the answer: The MMO developer has hired G-Unit to come in and bust bots, and possibly flip a few lines our way…Oddly enough, I was not aware Scott Jennings was part of G-Unit, nor that he could rap. I’m getting a word from my producer…The group is GSU? What would the Georgian Steel Union know about busting bots?

I see! Rationality of typed articles and nonexistent producers aside, disregard that last paragraph. If you’ve played Aion over the past months, you are no doubt aware of the major issues the game has with those pesky gold farmers, bots, and spammers. NCsoft has made quite a number of steps at beating back the mob of unattended shells, with mixed reviews of their efforts. The next step in the fight comes in the form of a Games Surveillance Unit, also known as GSU (or G-Unit as my recently fired producer referred to it). NCsoft is hiring this team for its NCWest Houston office, and is bringing Scott Jennings aboard for the fight. As of this posting, the job is no longer available.

NCsoft West, the U.S. branch of NCsoft, the world’s largest independent developer and publisher of online computer games is seeking talented candidates for Game Surveillance Unit Agents to work in our North Austin office.

Game Surveillance Unit Agents are responsible for monitoring our services to identify individuals that are violating our User Agreements and causing harm to our game services. They are responsible for executing various processes for monitoring the in–game and out-of-game environment for Bots, Farming, RMT, Private Servers, Account Theft, and other ‘cheating’ type behaviors. This position requires the ability to navigate a computerized data entry system and other relevant applications.

This reminds me of Eve Online’s Operation Unholy Rage, which you may remember was a complete success:

 

This rage is anything but holy.

Not much else to say other than good on NCsoft. Let’s hope this G-Unit will have less collateral damage than the previous.

 

Aion: 1 Million Copies, CAPTCHA, Patches


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The good news just keeps on rolling in for Aion, with NCsoft announcing that the title has reached nearly 1 million copies sold in North America and Europe. 600,000 of the copies come post release, we all remember Aion’s boasted four hundred thousand copies preordered. North America accounted for over half of the copies sold since Aion launched in September.

Where Aion has not excelled recently is in the most recent patch, whose community response can be summed up with a “…” Although experience rewards have been boosted in several areas, the community is lashing back against a new CAPTCHA system that randomly debuffs players during gathering that is removed by typing in a random word that displays on screen. The new system is set up to stop bots, an issue that has been plaguing Aion since launch. Players have also issued complaints that the patch did not address the main problems affecting the game.

So, good news this week for Aion and bad news as well.

With Scammers At Bay, The Players Will Play


This article has nothing to do with T-Mobile's Sidekick
This article has nothing to do with T-Mobile's Sidekick

All two of you who visited my message boards will see that I am not a big fan of being explicit with rules. In fact, there are three rules on the Orb Boards; Don’t incite a flame war, keep your account secure, and don’t be a spambot. Apart from those basic rules, I don’t think the rest needs to be explained. What it comes down to is: Anything you wouldn’t do in real life, don’t do here. Unless you make a living out of stealing people’s identities, in which case…still don’t do that here.

I often like to see Game Masters getting intuitive when it comes to removing problems that may not warrant a complete rule, or that may be such a special case that putting a rule would be far too generalizing. Say, for example, the issues Aion had when it launched last month. Players were clogging the servers by going away from keyboard so they could sleep, go to school, etc, without being logged off. Rather than pull out the ban-stick and taking things far over the edge, NCsoft quickly released a patch making such an exploit impossible.

The idea is that you don’t have to issue permabans to get a point across.

More on Aion, World of Warcraft, and more after the break.

Continue reading “With Scammers At Bay, The Players Will Play”

False Positives Happen: The Response Is What Counts


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Good morning/day folks,

A couple of threads on this topic appeared during the night and rather than replying to each one of them I thought I’d create a new one.

We have, as you know, recently banned a large number of users for violating our User Agreement. If you found yourself unable to log in after the night, that would be the reason.

If you are 100% sure you have not been involved with any activity that would violate our User Agreement (this would also include anything related to RMT), then we suggest contacting our Customer Support team at Support | NCsoft who will be able to look into your case.

We understand that the timing is very inconvenient and will make sure that inquiries on this matter are made top priority. Our GMs will be working through the weekend to sort this out as quickly as possible.

– Ayase

Mass bans in any game remind us as to why police officers don’t take down an armed suspect in a crowded mall by firing an automatic rifle into the crowd and hoping to hit him. You’ll hit your mark eventually, but you are the one that will be explaining to little Tina why daddy won’t be waking up.

When the subject turns to real money trading (RMT), the situation turns from cop-in-mall to a McCarthy style commie hunt, the commies being the gold farmers and buyers (Note: Not a jab at China). Hunting down goldfarmers is akin to searching for a criminal by attempting to listen to their thoughts (Note: You are not Matt Parkman, nor do you work for the FAA). Banning for gold is an even hairier issue. Take for example the following issue: Xkcd sends TwinkpOwn892735 twenty thousand gold. R3dsp0t sends X Dalton X twenty thousand gold. Both of these transactions actually happened in an unnamed MMO, and one of the two were gold farmers. I’ll come back to that later.

Continue reading “False Positives Happen: The Response Is What Counts”

Aion: Pick A Less Popular Server


aionqueue

If you rushed to create a character in the head start for Aion, on the more populated server before it closed down, you are most likely seeing something like this. Reports from the battlefield indicate that the server queue’s are reaching six, seven, and climbing over eight hours in some instances during higher traffic hours. The question that remains on many minds is: When NCsoft was gloating over their four hundred thousand preorders, how did they expect to cram everyone into little over twenty servers (12 for NA, 12 for EU)?

The question is whether NCsoft will take an “ends justify the means” approach, and stay committed to keeping the servers balanced. An easy way to accomplish this would be to open more servers, and allow transfers from the more populated to the less. If current player nature is any indicator, it is likely that the Asmodian side will forever overpopulate the Elyos, to the fullest extent NCsoft will allow.

The issue appears to be stemming from players who are joining the overpopulated faction, overwhelmingly in fact. Further reports from the battlefield make claim that the Elyos side of these multi-hour servers, are giving little to no waiting time. If you don’t have any obligations to join friends or a clan on a selected server, I suggest you join the Elyos faction. Judging by trends on the server status, the Asmodians are always going to be facing queues until the community starts balancing itself out.

By the time you read this, Aion will have gone live (alongside Fallen Earth). Here’s hoping NCsoft finds a way to quell the rage.

Aion: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly


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Aion launches in four days, and the title, much like Champions Online did earlier this month and in August, is stealing much of the spotlight here at MMO Fallout. So much so that I’m putting together a new section for MMO Fallout: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Not that that particular mechanic has ever been done before). Since preselection began today, it’s one of the better times as any to get a good preview in.

Continue reading “Aion: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”

Aion: Still Gaining Momentum


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A couple days ago I talked about retention rate being more important than simply the number of people who preorder an MMO. The fact that Aion has brought over three hundred thousand preorders means nothing if you can’t keep those people playing after their initial month of free game time is up. Aion’s success will not be decided by the number of people who buy the boxed copies, but in the long run, where subscriber numbers mean everything.

I will admit I’ve taken a look at Aion with a little more skepticism than the title deserves, even though everything I have said is true. Success in the Eastern market means nothing when referring to how the West will respond to the game, and attempting to gauge the success of the game based off of forum hype will produce equally inaccurate results.

So here I notice that, in the past few days since Aion announced that three hundred thousand copies were preordered, today comes another announcement: The number has hit four hundred thousand, bringing the title to be the most preordered MMO of 2009. This news comes in conjunction with news that will directly please the company: Aion will not ship with Game Guard, the controversial anti-cheat software. While Game Guard may be used in the future, NCsoft has promised that should the software return, it will be tweaked in response to criticism.

In finding discussion-worthy topics for MMO Fallout, I do a lot of traversing over various forums, and I can say without a doubt that the lack of Game Guard will be well received within the community. If NCSoft can prove, using methods such as this, that they are indeed listening to the community, they will have a major edge over critics in the long run. For those who are unfamiliar, Game Guard is widely panned for inefficiency, and false positives.

Nothing but good news for Aion this week. Aion goes live on September 22nd, with preorders gaining early access.

Dungeon Runners to Shut Down


Dungeonrunner

If Dungeon Runners could be compared to any game on the market, you could probably stick it as World of Warcraft with a mix of Diablo, where players actively click to make their characters attack. Players do their trading and grouping in public hubs, and then go off to raid various dungeons of varying level, with varying groups of varying mobs. Where Dungeon Runners truly shined was in the slapstick humor and parody nature of the title. New characters are greeted by the Noobosaur, PvP is done in a town called Pwnston, and weapons and armor have exaggerated and outlandish titles (If I remember, there are mentions of seal clubbing in several weapons). The game runs on a freemium model, where players can pay a membership for benefits such as better drops.

So in a move that surprises no one, the announcement came yesterday that the title will be shutting down on New Years Eve this year, at midnight. Dungeon Runners fell to the same hurdle that brought down The Matrix Online, Tabula Rasa, and more; The game was simply not profitable anymore. The team that currently runs Dungeon Runners numbers at three, and isn’t up to the task of taking on the ridiculously expensive and risky steps that may, or may not, have saved the title.

But, those of you who are familiar with NCsoft’s method of shutting down titles will know that subscribers will not be going away without some compensation packages. Current subscribers will receive free copies of City of Heroes and Guild Wars Prophecies, as well as 30 day time cards for each. It isn’t Dungeon Runners, but in the words of Producer Steve Nichols; “it’s still frigging nice!”

Dungeon Runners marks the second title NCsoft will be closing down as 2009 progresses. If you’d like to enjoy Dungeon Runners while it lasts, you have about three months, during which the exp has been raised, drops are heightened, and there will undoubtedly be players giving their last goodbyes.

It's All About Retention Rate


ncsoftAion launches alongside the delayed Fallen Earth come September 22nd, and those of you who have watched sales figures over the past few months will have seen Aion topping the charts for the PC market, both retail and digital through Steam and Direct 2 Drive. Aion preorders have gone so well, that NCSoft has proudly boasted the latest mark of over 300,000 preorders for the upcoming MMORPG. NCsoft is looking to make Aion not just localized, but going forward and culturalising the title for Western markets, changing various mechanics in the game to suit a different play style and expectation.

Continue reading “It's All About Retention Rate”