SOE Developers Admit to Bending Rules for Friends on Test

[Aelryn]

No one will care that you can cheat because you're friends with a dev, right?

Massively has more on the story they broke the other day about how there was some alleged "cheating" (if you want to look at it that way) on the part of a certain EverQuest 2 guild which was transferred from Test to a live server with the help of a GM. Apparently, SOE admitted to the GM involvement and essentially dismissed it as "not a big deal."

Alan "Brenlo" Crosby, Director of Global Community Relations and Bruce "Froech" Ferguson, EQ2's new Senior Producer admitted to SOE's involvement. Well, rather that someone at SOE made the call to override the policy, but in a good natured manner to reward certain players for their hard work on the Test server. Not a smart choice of words or tone given EQ2 players warranted concerns. In any case, Ferguson claims the transferred characters will be removed. Since their initial statements and response there has been no further word from a SOE representative on this matter.

You can read the story at Massively. So was it a big deal, or was it just some harmless screwing around?

[SirRobin]

In any sort of competitive game experience getting help from the inside is a very big deal. I really hope EA Mythic doesn't pull any crap like this with WAR.

Simply disgraceful.

[Cody Bye]

Boo SOE.....boo.

[Spare]

I reserve judgement atm because all I saw was some claims but SOE has not really responded. So I cannot say this is wrong just because I dont have all the facts.

However things to consider, this guild might be a SOE employee guild. Its not uncommon in any game company that employees all game together and sometimes people bring in friends. Devs play games too and if i worked on EQ2 all day the last thing I would want to do is level up a toon on EQ2. Also these friends might not be friend but more press people, game reviewers, or industry peeps.

If this is a case of a dev helping a friend or someone they met in game then odds are they would not all be in the same guild.

I just find it odd that all these toons moved from test to live were all in the same guild. It makes me think this is a SOE employee guild vs perks for friends.

[Spare]

Just as a follow up on this, here is the OP from the EQ2 boards

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/p...opic_id=399007

There is 79 pages so far and reading like pages 74 75 it sounds like SOE went above and beyond for a group of players who had been on test for 3 years.

I am not going to read all 79 pages because most of it is crying but it looks like there was a group of people who have been playing Test for 3 years and they wanted to move to a live server. SOE somehow learned this and decided to move these players from test to live.

From one of the posts it looks like they rewarded this group for 3 year of testing and it exploded in their faces.

hehe From the article it makes it sound like a GM did this for a group of his/her friends when in reality it seems like SOE was attempting to reward a group of players.

[Cody Bye]

I think a number of the forum posters responded to this by saying:

"I've been paying SOE for 3+ years, yet they've rewarded me by moving a bunch of characters to my server and auto-leveling them?"

Seems like a load of horse pooey to me. Why can't Joe X receive the same sort of reward?

[Spare]

Originally Posted by Micajah

"I've been paying SOE for 3+ years, yet they've rewarded me by moving a bunch of characters to my server and auto-leveling them?"

Seems like a load of horse pooey to me. Why can't Joe X receive the same sort of reward?

I see both sides of this and to be honest I side with SOE on this one and I will explain why.

SOE has open test servers year round and people go there and pretty much test and open bug reports. This is part of their game play and every now and then a patch is put in and the die hards who play test do a service to SOE and the community as a whole. This group of players seem to have spent 3 years in test finding errors and bugs that helped EQ2 overall as a game.

Its not like this guild logged in and within 3 weeks SOE was waving all rules to process this transfer. This group would have had to really go above and beyond to get something like this. From what I have read this group had been an active group for like 3 years.

Insted of SOE saying go crap in a hat they rewarded a group that odds are gave a lot back to the community under SOE's eyes. They bent the rules for a group of players who had played long enough on test that this was not even cheating. Odds are all these players lost a lot of stuff just because of the move and while they have a head start its not like they have these cool items from test to live.

I mean if this group got around policy because they knew the GM well then I say shame on SOE but from what I am reading this is not the case.

I can see why people are pissed but looking at the posts from EQ2Flames and reading the posts on the EQ2 boards it looks like one of the guys pissed off someone on their server and it past the point of reason.

It really looks like SOE just tried to reward a group of players and it got out of control.

[Savanja]

I'll just share that this particular guild has received far more favors than this, and it was sort of the straw that broke the camels back.

I know MANY testers that have put in as much time as anyone in this guild, and yet this opportunity was not given to them. The guild has personal ties to devs and GMs and were given an edge that should have NEVER touched the live servers. This would be equivalent to Station Exchange players being given the option of moving off their servers, and just as unacceptable.

The bottom line is, they leveled at 2x the rate. They were given access to content they couldn't achieve on their own. They were twinked with insane gear that they didn't earn. They did nothing more on test than any other tester (or the loyal beta testers as well) and they did not EARN the right to compete against guilds who worked their way to the top without Dev and GM influence.

It was a bad move on SOE's part and I think a lot of the community is happy it was reversed.

[Sardu]

If it were simply a case of characters being moved from test to live with no other involvement I wouldn't see it as too huge of a deal per se - after all, many games allow you to create an exact copy of your live character on test servers, so why couldn't it work in the other direction?

Since it sounds like there *was* other involvement then yea, it sounds like bad news to me. They should have granted the transfer only with the requirement that they'd do so with zero items or coin, and all spells / skills be reset to apprentice 1 level. They should have also opened up a one week window granting the exact same opportunity to anyone on test who'd been there for X days with an active account.

At least they admitted it was done and implemented the only real fix to the situation that they could to keep the issue from snowballing. Otherwise the next thing you know you'd be reading how GoonGuild flooded their forums with hundreds of posts on a Saturday morning, and altered the SoE Wikipedia page.

[Spare]

As Bruce "Froech" Ferguson said

Originally Posted by Bruce "Froech" Ferguson

What we did was take a group of characters from the test server, scrub them by hand of all test gear, and any 'privileged' equipment, titles, etc, and grant their wish to continue to play as a group of friends, on a live server.

EQ2 players are all saying "Oh this guild has gotten lots of favors etc etc" but the article does not state any of that. Massively points out the major beefs with the whole thing and all of it centers around the fact they took toons from a 2x XP test server and moved to live. If they have been playing more than a year I am willing to bet they would have been that level anyway.

The articles and the buzz said these players gained an unfair advantage and were cheating. My view is "No this was not" because I dont think it takes more than 1 year to reach max level on EQ2.

I think the major wild hair in peoples behinds is that these guys talk to or are friends with devs and got some special treatment. I am willing to bet that every dev on the planet has hooked up a friend with awesome uber gear and pimped their accounts out.

THis was not one of these cases where my friend from college got items but more SOE trying to reward some people for their hard work. I am also willing to bet that these chars will get rewarded even more now that everyone freaked out.

Following the logic of "I pay 15 bucks a month" I should be able to go take a dump in the white house. I mean after all I pay my taxes and I even served in the Army. So its my RIGHT as a tax paying american to pinch a loaf in the white house. If I showed up at the white house steps with a newspaper to use the crapper I would be tossed out on my ears by a secret service guy. However if that Ex-PM of England showed up he would be offered tea when he came out.

Paying 15 bucks a month does not give this ultimate power over the game companies or entitle people to anything.

**PS This is not aimed at anyone but I used to have the 15 bucks gives me the power notion until the NGE in SWG. Once that happend I realized that my 15 bucks is nothing and even if I left the game would not suffer with the loss of my 15 bucks.

I still wanna take a dump in the white house tho :P