The Daily Grind: When are rollbacks and wipes absolutely necessary?
In the last few weeks, two big games we cover on Massively have been slammed with exploits that have injured their respective economies: Diablo III and Neverwinter. In Diablo III's case, a gold duping bug apparently pumped insane amounts of cash into the economy. Neverwinter's exploits run the gamut from Foundry abuses to negative auction hall bids that don't consume gold to classes that can one-shot bosses making farming trivial. According to these claims, NW exploiters are making off with thousands of real-life dollars when cashing out their ill-gotten funds.
In both cases, players called for characters wipes and rollbacks, believing each exploit severe enough to merit a clean slate. But in Diablo III's case, while the studio dealt harshly with the exploiters, the developers disagreed with the need for wipes and do-overs, presumably having concluded that such drastic measures would impact the legit playerbase far more than would a dented economy. Neverwinter, on the other hand, chose to roll back the servers, causing widespread uproar.
That brings us to today's question: Which studio was right? How bad does an exploit have to be before character wipes and server rollbacks are absolutely necessary?
Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
