"I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive!"
Cyborg from the warbucket forums was heard to have remarked...
- "I sense a disturbance in the force, as if millions of gamers suddenly cried out and then were silenced."
SOE (sony online entertainment) has crossed many lines since the aging behemoth that is EverQuest took hold of sweaty nerds, from all walks of life, back in 1998. They have ventured into the oft uncharted lands of Player Abuse many a time, and returned from the breech seemingly unscathed; due in no small part to their "huge-fat sacks of ca$h money".
A little over a year ago SOE unleashed a beta test disguised as a game, called "Star Wars Galaxies", upon an unsuspecting public; not only increasing their strangle hold over the disposable income of the socially inept, but also giving them new and exciting avenues to fuck with people for no good god-damned reason.
Ladies an Gentlemen, we have reached a crisis point; a "point of no return", if you will. Due to a recently discovered exploit -that joins the gargantuan parade of exploits made possible by the craptastic development team behind SWG- many many players were banned from playing the game without warning, indefinitely. The bug has to do with duplicating credits (SWG currency), thereby flooding the economy with all this free money = instant mudflation. SOE needed to fix this, I'm not suggesting they leave it be, but I have more than a little animosity towards them for the way they chose to handle it. Though, one can hardly be surprised, given their customer service track-record.
It went down like this: Anyone that was found to have "dirty" credits was immediately banned, regardless of the amount of credits, or how they were obtained. They could have taken the time to sort out who was legitimately responsible, but because they are lazy fucktards, they decided that banning players on-mass would work just as well. Not even the innocent were spared. If you got your dirty creds through a legitimate sale of an item, or from a *tip (tipping allows player-A to give money to player-B without player-B's consent) you still got banned. Everyone agreed that this was a piss-poor way to handle the problem, and since any complaint emails to tech support were met with a cookie cutter auto-response, friends and guildmates of the banned decided to demonstrate. The mob descended upon the city of Theed on planet Naboo, spamming the local talk channel with ANGRY MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS, bringing the server (Intredpid) to its knees. The righteous indignation was so thick you could cut it with a perfectly smooth, spherical surface.
Here's the good part. SOE in an attempt to break up the demonstration, and return blood flow to their rapidly crashing server, dispatched a group of licensed assholes called CSRs (SWG Game Masters). The crowd was asked to disperse, but when it became clear that the enraged throng had no intention of leaving, they decided to take more drastic, asshole-ish actions.
Bear in mind that a CSR can just cause a client or clients to disconnect with a simple command, no muss no fuss. They could also kick them out of the server with a temporary ban that would last about 10 minutes to let them calm down. They had many rational, reasonable options open. They decided to follow the SOE protocol for customer service , "If a customer with a legitimate complaint contacts you, fuck them in the ass. Smile while you do so."
They proceeded to teleport people away from the site at random, and to random places.
With more than a few unlucky victims being warped into the cold, unforgiving bosom of deep space.
Have they gone to far? Yes. Will the abused gamers come back to SOE, not unlike a crack-whore returning to her abusive pimp? Only time will tell for certain, but if the fairly steady rate at which SWG is hemorrhaging players is any indication......
- "I sense a disturbance in the force, as if millions of gamers suddenly cried out and then were silenced."
SOE (sony online entertainment) has crossed many lines since the aging behemoth that is EverQuest took hold of sweaty nerds, from all walks of life, back in 1998. They have ventured into the oft uncharted lands of Player Abuse many a time, and returned from the breech seemingly unscathed; due in no small part to their "huge-fat sacks of ca$h money".
A little over a year ago SOE unleashed a beta test disguised as a game, called "Star Wars Galaxies", upon an unsuspecting public; not only increasing their strangle hold over the disposable income of the socially inept, but also giving them new and exciting avenues to fuck with people for no good god-damned reason.
Ladies an Gentlemen, we have reached a crisis point; a "point of no return", if you will. Due to a recently discovered exploit -that joins the gargantuan parade of exploits made possible by the craptastic development team behind SWG- many many players were banned from playing the game without warning, indefinitely. The bug has to do with duplicating credits (SWG currency), thereby flooding the economy with all this free money = instant mudflation. SOE needed to fix this, I'm not suggesting they leave it be, but I have more than a little animosity towards them for the way they chose to handle it. Though, one can hardly be surprised, given their customer service track-record.
It went down like this: Anyone that was found to have "dirty" credits was immediately banned, regardless of the amount of credits, or how they were obtained. They could have taken the time to sort out who was legitimately responsible, but because they are lazy fucktards, they decided that banning players on-mass would work just as well. Not even the innocent were spared. If you got your dirty creds through a legitimate sale of an item, or from a *tip (tipping allows player-A to give money to player-B without player-B's consent) you still got banned. Everyone agreed that this was a piss-poor way to handle the problem, and since any complaint emails to tech support were met with a cookie cutter auto-response, friends and guildmates of the banned decided to demonstrate. The mob descended upon the city of Theed on planet Naboo, spamming the local talk channel with ANGRY MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS, bringing the server (Intredpid) to its knees. The righteous indignation was so thick you could cut it with a perfectly smooth, spherical surface.
Here's the good part. SOE in an attempt to break up the demonstration, and return blood flow to their rapidly crashing server, dispatched a group of licensed assholes called CSRs (SWG Game Masters). The crowd was asked to disperse, but when it became clear that the enraged throng had no intention of leaving, they decided to take more drastic, asshole-ish actions.
Bear in mind that a CSR can just cause a client or clients to disconnect with a simple command, no muss no fuss. They could also kick them out of the server with a temporary ban that would last about 10 minutes to let them calm down. They had many rational, reasonable options open. They decided to follow the SOE protocol for customer service , "If a customer with a legitimate complaint contacts you, fuck them in the ass. Smile while you do so."
They proceeded to teleport people away from the site at random, and to random places.
With more than a few unlucky victims being warped into the cold, unforgiving bosom of deep space.
Have they gone to far? Yes. Will the abused gamers come back to SOE, not unlike a crack-whore returning to her abusive pimp? Only time will tell for certain, but if the fairly steady rate at which SWG is hemorrhaging players is any indication......