May 20, 2017

XP Exploit Level Rollback

Heroes level 76 - 85 have been rolled back to 75

Last night's release was HUGELY popular for good reasons... and some not so good reasons. We released a new challenge farming map in /thevoid AND raised the level cap twenty levels, up to level 85. That is the AWESOME news.

The not-so-awesome news is that there were a handful of monsters (and one in particular) with super-high XP rewards (over 42000 in one battle). That made it very easy for some players on the PTR server to level much, much faster than we intended when they added in XP boost item stacking.

This was a situation that needed to get fixed as quickly as possible. Here are the steps we are taking to make things right:

• Fix the monsters giving out super-high XP rewards DONE
• Roll the 879 players above level 75 back to 75 DONE
• Give everyone who logged in since yesterday 12 free one-hour XP boosts DONE
• Put the 15% xp, cp, gold, rep boost back on DONE

That this exploit went live was on us, completely. When we make mistakes like that, we own up to it and strive to make it right.

The exploit and resolution

Last night, Yorumi and Arklen fixed that issue by making sure all those over-the-top monsters were reset to give reasonable XP rewards.

Based on our calculations, the most XP a player could get legitimately get with the best set-up in this time frame* puts them at around, or possibly a bit higher, than level 75.

As of this posting, we have 879 players who are over level 75. Now that the exploit has been fixed, we are rolling all players at level 76 or higher BACK to level 75.

If you are one of those 879 players, we are not banning your account. Having your level/XP reset is enough of a knockback.

But that's not FAIR! You might be saying. They should get banned!

I understand why you might feel that way. But at AE, in ALMOST ALL cases dealing with exploits that are left in the game, when we make a mistake we do not want to punish players for that oversight.*

I want to share a story from Artix that illustrates why this is:

We do not typically ban when the exploit is our fault. We just roll everyone back.
I remember in this one MMO I played way back in the day, they announced that they were dramatically increasing the price of crafting materials.

So me and a dozen other smart people bought gazzillions of them. Then after the price went up sold them and became rich. The game masters got very upset, taking all the items and gold off our characters.

I felt that was wrong of them and vowed I would never do things like that to our players.

In this situations, the exploit was available, and that was our fault. 

Free 1-Hour XP Boosts+ Server boosts

It is never fun to have an error like this go out to live servers - we never want to roll content live that upsets you guys. When we have problems like this, we work to make it right - striving to get the best, fairest resolution live as quickly as possible.

If you logged into your AQW account/s today or yesterday, we are giving you 12 free 1 hour XP boosts to help you battle! Thank you for your understanding and patience while we correct the balance and XP exploit issues with this weekend's release!

With the glitch fixed, the 15% XP, Rep, Class Points, and Gold boost is now back on!

* Without using any glitches or exploits
** That may not always be the case, but in almost all situations, that is our guiding principle.