A Note From My Day Job

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 37 Comments

Learn my jolly pirate nickname here!

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  • TPRJones

    I salute your valiant efforts while simultaneously bemoaning the futility of such a campaign.

  • c

    My primary job is computer security. I think you wrote an excellent letter. I am particularly pleased to see you pointing attention at Flash.

  • Klaitu

    OMG Lum sells out!!1

    Oh wait, it’s not the 90′s anymore?

    Is it too late to bring back abyss?

  • http://www.therealstupid.com Stupid

    We, who play Aion on a semi-non-regular basis, support this effort.

  • Jeff

    Kudos to NCSoft and to you, Lum.

    Now if only NCSoft was as aware of the notion that grind heavy MMOs (at least in North America) are sooo 1990′s.

    I liked Aion, but it was far too grindy.

  • Jeff

    “Don’t use power-leveling services.”

    Ahem. One thing every MMO can learn from WoW is less grind when it comes to leveling. Not saying WoW is perfect, but their efforts in this area are to be applauded by us gamers that have, you know, lives.

    If you want people to not use these services, you might want to clue in the developers to cut the grind factor in half. It would help with your job. As a side note every single person that I know in WoW, with the exception of one that was exceptionally burnt out on guild drama more than the game itself, came back to WoW almost solely because of the grind in Aion.

  • wade

    How about NCSoft adding such basic security features as requiring email verification on ANY account change, be it passwords or character deletion? How about an option for character locks (and even item locks) so they can’t be deleted without a major effort (email and perhaps even a secondary password for each character); everyone I’ve talked to in both GW and Aion wants an option to make their characters and certain items extremely hard to delete. After putting in up to 4 years of playing (GW) or even several months (Aion), few players are going to delete those characters.

    And how about treating players with a little respect, things like not threatening someone with a permanent ban when their account has been hacked through no fault of their own? How about restoring characters when they are hacked, which wouldn’t be an issue if there was some kind of protection against characters being deleted. I personally haven’t had any of these problems (knock on virtual wood), but I’ve seen far too many people that have, and I find it very hard to believe all these thousands of players getting accounts stolen were using bots, RMT or got key-logged.

    And finally how about some CMs that can deal with the community (which granted, MMO players seem pretty poor in most cases) in a professional and non-insulting manner? One gets a “you are guilty regardless” vibe and “we never make mistakes or have security vulnerabilities” from both the GW CM and the Aion ones as well. If I’d treated customers like they do sometimes, when I was doing customer support, I’d have been looking for a new job pretty darn fast.

  • Freakazoid

    Jeff :“Don’t use power-leveling services.”
    Ahem. One thing every MMO can learn from WoW is less grind when it comes to leveling.

    This.

    I recently paid for age of conan during the bonus exp holiday thing. Even then, there wasn’t enough solo content past 70 (with the expection of certain repeatables, which are on long timers), but at least mob grinding wasn’t a huge pain. I made it to 80 in just over 3 weeks with some poopsocking.

    Anyway, good luck keeping the bots in check. Looks like you missed more than a few, if those comments are to be believed.

  • Queso

    Or be like Eve Online and take out leveling altogether.

  • http://bifftheunderstudy.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/so-youve-been-hacked/ Dan Gray

    I suppose I should post this over on the aiononline comments, though I’d rather it wasn’t immediately buried by other comments.

    “As a result of the point-by-point testing and analysis, our security team concluded no critical vulnerabilities had been demonstrated or identified, but our security team continues to research, to monitor closely, and to implement security improvements to address any potential weaknesses raised.”

    What happened to the numerous confirmed cases of people being logged into other master accounts randomly, when trying to log into their own?

    There were successful reproductions of that issue by members of the Guild Wars community, with evidence, and the data was forwarded on through the ArenaNet support rep – apparently straight into a black hole.

    You’re doing a great job Lum, but that part seems like an attempt to sweep some unpleasant truths under the rug.

  • Jeremy T

    This is going to sound snarky, but I feel like it’s a legitimate question: Do you expect many players to actually read, comprehend, and abide by your suggestions in that document?

  • http://killtenrats.com Ravious

    Man, I get a strong Runelords (David Farland) vibe from your name. Being Lum and conquering the darkness. +5 points for cleverness.

  • http://weblog.probablynot.com Jason

    Jeremy T :
    This is going to sound snarky, but I feel like it’s a legitimate question: Do you expect many players to actually read, comprehend, and abide by your suggestions in that document?

    I would assume the answer is “No.” However, by putting it out there, he can say they were warned (again). So many players get banned and scream that it was unjust, they didn’t do anything… except buy gold, get powerleveled, run five different third party tools, clicked on every link ever sent to them in an email ever, and shared their password with all 147 members of their guild none of whom they have ever met in real life but that shouldn’t matter because if you can’t trust your guild who can you trust? am i rite?

  • Athryn

    Great letter Lum, thank you for what must be a rough job!

  • Vetarnias

    @Queso

    Ah yes, the old EVE revisionism. Sure, you don’t have levels, you just have skills with ranks that level up even while you’re offline, but you can’t make it go faster by being online and actually doing stuff.

    End result: In other games, while new players are at a disadvanatage in terms of levels when they start out, it stops being a problem after a few weeks/months when they hit maximum level. In EVE, there are so many skills that it has yet to be proved possible to get to the maximum level in all, even if you started playing on day one; so if you just joined, you can’t ever catch up with the guys who have been at it for years.

    Good luck with that.

  • Stormwaltz

    While reading that, I imagined you presenting it in a Dick Cheney style press conference, scowling and point at maps and charts.

    “Make no mistake—it is a war.”

    We’re not going to just suspend the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip the stolen credit cards out of their hands and use them to build new server racks. We’re going to ban those lousy cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. The internet is serious business. You’ve got to DOS attack them, or they will DOS attack you. Change THEIR password. Steal THEIR CC numbers. When packets are dropping all around you and you wipe the gold from their main and realize that it was once your guildie’s epics, you’ll know what to do!

  • dartwick

    You actually wrote the line “Make no mistake—it is a war.”

    Dont you feel silly?

  • Blake

    The question is how many hours of writing and proof-reading did that take?

    Good luck with what must be a sucky job, in terms of dealing with non-ending streams of shit.

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    As a long-time hater of unsupported RMT, I rather enjoyed a nice long post that laid down the law – no, the war-time conduct – of the situation.

    Would that more than 0.5% of your users would actually read the thing.

  • DoubleD

    Hmm. Seems like any MMOlaunch should have tools in place to combat this out the gate. This should be an example to other mmo’s to get their tools ready to combat RMT at launch. Or don’t launch at all.

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    DoubleD :
    Hmm. Seems like any MMOlaunch should have tools in place to combat this out the gate. This should be an example to other mmo’s to get their tools ready to combat RMT at launch. Or don’t launch at all.

    A good sentiment, but it bogs down in the details. Exactly what kind of tool exists to prevent people from giving their password to others? To prevent them from botting?

    About the only decisive thing an MMORPG can to prevent RMT is to simply not implement a mechanic that allows a players to transfer anything to another player, and this is an imperfect solution for many reasons. (e.g. It doesn’t prevent power leveling services. It prevents the whole idea of a player-based economy. It prevents players from helping out their friends. Ect.)

  • Hank

    <3 the secret pirate name!

  • Tethyss

    I am pleased there are game companies taking a side on the RMT issue and acting on it.

  • Queso
  • Wyrm

    Why do people always bring the “OMG i ahve a life and a hot gurrlfienrd and has babies?”
    Dudes, please, most of you spend already more than 10 hours a week log in games so why don’t you stop using the game as a chat channel and, erm, play the effing game instead? It takes long to level? Boohoo, are you in a hurry?
    And if you can’t play for more than 10 hours perhaps Farmville is the game for you.

    Yes, this is a trollism.

  • Longasc

    The points you listed have been posted for various games not only from NCsoft over and over already. They are quite COMMON KNOWLEDGE. They are nothing new, but it does not hurt to repeat them.

    But as Dan Gray already stated, there were and maybe still are security issues which were of course not mentioned. Even belittled and denied.

    I also wonder how you can dare to say you detect bots, the majority of bots (90%) I reported in Guild Wars “Jade Quarry” usually get away because the team notices nothing unusual. And even more interesting is that I got sometimes an answer by mail, is the general policy not to NOT reveal the results of such investigations?

    It seems for each gold seller or bot you ban two new ones enter the stage. But it should also be noted that GW and especially Aion are gold seller and bot heavens, so if you can do anything about it, it is about time. I already set NCsoft games equal with botting.

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    @Longasc
    Methinks you overestimate what’s common knowledge in a largely PEBCAK userbase.

  • http://www.antipwn.com/blog/ IainC

    In EVE, there are so many skills that it has yet to be proved possible to get to the maximum level in all, even if you started playing on day one; so if you just joined, you can’t ever catch up with the guys who have been at it for years.

    You keep saying that and it continues to not be true. I’m pretty sure you know this as it’s been pointed out to you multiple time already so I’m at a loss to explain why you persist with this misguided notion.

    geldonyetich :
    A good sentiment, but it bogs down in the details. Exactly what kind of tool exists to prevent people from giving their password to others? To prevent them from botting?
    About the only decisive thing an MMORPG can to prevent RMT is to simply not implement a mechanic that allows a players to transfer anything to another player, and this is an imperfect solution for many reasons. (e.g. It doesn’t prevent power leveling services. It prevents the whole idea of a player-based economy. It prevents players from helping out their friends. Ect.)

    You can mitigate the problem to a large extent in design. Aion is a haven for botters not because of any lack of detection tools or an unwillingness from NCSoft to deal with them, but because the game design practically forces you to take time out of your levelling or PvPing to earn money for consumables, new equipment and upgrades. By attaching a Kinah cost to practically every aspect of character progression, NCSoft have made accumulation of wealth the primary factor for most players because that’s what you need to do to move forwards and Pavlovian games design elicits predictable Pavlovian responses.

  • http://www.antipwn.com/blog/ IainC

    Oh and Longasc, most companies have that policy; what happens to someone’s account is not anybody else’s business.

  • JuJutsu

    “I’m pretty sure you know this as it’s been pointed out to you multiple time already so I’m at a loss to explain why you persist with this misguided notion.”

    Why let the facts interfere with a good rant?

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    Aion is a haven for botters not because of any lack of detection tools or an unwillingness from NCSoft to deal with them, but because the game design practically forces you to take time out of your levelling or PvPing to earn money for consumables, new equipment and upgrades.

    To some extent, I wholeheartedly agree that a game with a tremendous grind encourages players to seek alternatives, whether they be illicit software or third parties offering a shortcut. That people are willing to shell out cold, hard, life-sustaining cash for virtual goods sort of indicates that there’s a massive deficit.

    However, is that the whole story? Not really. To an extent, what’s being created by implementing a grind is something very important: true value through rarity. Sure, we could let the players have their cake and eat it too, but how much achievement would they really feel from that?

    What we have here is really more of a matter of unresolved middle ground that varies subjectively by instance. You make the game have value, there will be people attempting to trivialize that value for a profit. Even in a world without anything to gain of particular value, there still exists people who would rather find shortcuts to gain the upper hand.

    So we’re back to where we started: A good sentiment, but it bogs down in the details.

  • http://www.antipwn.com/blog IainC

    You’re presenting a false dichotomy. There are more choices than simply ‘giving characters everything on a plate’ or ‘value through rarity’.

    The second is almost universally a terrible model anyway, if option B is better than option A but requires a long and arduous grind to achieve then what will happen is that players will either put themselves through that long and arduous grind (complaining bitterly all the time) or they’ll quit citing the horrible grind that they need to undergo in order to compete. There was a long held fancy amongst MMO devs that making things difficult to achieve would create rarity and value, actually what the last ten years or so of MMO history have shown is that instead it just creates a bar to playing your game that your players have to decide whether they want to clear or not. Decision moments like that are a bad thing for retention.

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    I’m not really intending to present a dichotomy, though I can see why you’re interpreting it that way.

    Rather, I’m pointing out that this grinding model, universally terrible it may be, is nonetheless known to produce a desirable result of producing this sense of value.

    You’re saying “3rd party exploiting would not happen if you don’t bring about forced rarity” but it could very much be that the developers are willing to humor 3rd party exploiting if forced rarity brings about more popularity.

    You’re also saying “the new model adapted by MMO developers has shown that decision moments are a bad thing for retention.” That’s an interesting assertion to make considering I can look at Sir Bruce’s charts right now and see that the most popular MMORPGs on there are ones that have forced decision moments. Yes, World of Warcraft is one of them.

    There’s no logical fallacy to be found in blanket statements that satisfy what we know about games, but they nonetheless bog down when we attempt to bridge the gap from conception to integration. Therein is where the bogging down in details occur.

  • http://www.antipwn.com/blog IainC

    geldonyetich :
    You’re saying “3rd party exploiting would not happen if you don’t bring about forced rarity” but it could very much be that the developers are willing to humor 3rd party exploiting if forced rarity brings about more popularity.

    I’m absolutely not saying this because it’s demonstrably untrue.

    3rd party exploiting is pretty inevitable regardless. You can have only two levels and a super fun journey from one to the other and there will still be players who’ll want to go straight to two without any of that boring intermediate stuff.

    geldonyetich :
    You’re also saying “the new model adapted by MMO developers has shown that decision moments are a bad thing for retention.” That’s an interesting assertion to make considering I can look at Sir Bruce’s charts right now and see that the most popular MMORPGs on there are ones that have forced decision moments. Yes, World of Warcraft is one of them.

    Any time that a player has to make a decision whether or not to continue playing your game brings a chance that the wrong decision (from your point of view) will be made. In my experience most players leave a game at fairly clearly defined points, they reach a crossroads and have to decide what they are going to do next. In some cases they decide that what they’d like to do next is play someone else’s game.

    Successful games (like WoW) make those crossroads as subtle as possible so there are few paradigm shifts in the overall experience or points in the progression where there is no attractive short term goal in sight. Unsuccessful games give players clear go/no go points and wave goodbye to a portion of their playerbase each time.

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    I hope this fancy blockquoting works.

    IainC :

    geldonyetich :
    You’re saying “3rd party exploiting would not happen if you don’t bring about forced rarity” but it could very much be that the developers are willing to humor 3rd party exploiting if forced rarity brings about more popularity.

    I’m absolutely not saying this because it’s demonstrably untrue.
    3rd party exploiting is pretty inevitable regardless. You can have only two levels and a super fun journey from one to the other and there will still be players who’ll want to go straight to two without any of that boring intermediate stuff.

    Yes, I meant what you were saying was “3rd party exploiting would not happen as often” instead of “would not happen” outright. Sorry about the ambiguity.

    geldonyetich :
    You’re also saying “the new model adapted by MMO developers has shown that decision moments are a bad thing for retention.” That’s an interesting assertion to make considering I can look at Sir Bruce’s charts right now and see that the most popular MMORPGs on there are ones that have forced decision moments. Yes, World of Warcraft is one of them.

    Any time that a player has to make a decision whether or not to continue playing your game brings a chance that the wrong decision (from your point of view) will be made. In my experience most players leave a game at fairly clearly defined points, they reach a crossroads and have to decide what they are going to do next. In some cases they decide that what they’d like to do next is play someone else’s game.
    Successful games (like WoW) make those crossroads as subtle as possible so there are few paradigm shifts in the overall experience or points in the progression where there is no attractive short term goal in sight. Unsuccessful games give players clear go/no go points and wave goodbye to a portion of their playerbase each time.

    Personally, I don’t see anything subtle about the rarity of WoW end game raid gear, it gets as many complaints as any MMORPG ever has about how difficult it is to acquire. But I do acknowledge that WoW at least reduced rarity on the way up.

  • EpicSquirt

    Bots and account theft is a problem in Aion. Grinding is not.

  • http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

    EpicSquirt :Bots and account theft is a problem in Aion. Grinding is not.

    But, if the tedium of grinding encourages the use of bots which may facilitate account theft (via bots laden with trojans) they are not so very separate things, and it becomes difficult to truly say that the problem ends with the former when the later can be attributed as a cause.

    What I was saying just now in contrast with IainC may be that the value a grind brings in terms of rarity may sufficiently offset the tedium of dealing with exploiters so as to stay the course regardless.

    Though this might be doing them more justice than they deserve. Really, when it comes to mainstream game design, or any other entertainment field, it’s more about imitating what’s worth and damn the consequences as long as you keep making money.