First off, thanks to everyone who took the time to contact me. We received a lot of really good questions. We also received a lot of duplicate questions, as well. So in some of the cases below, questions were paraphrased. This was done to either simplify the question being asked or to incorporate several different (but similar) questions into one heading. But we tried to leave the question with its original wording as much as possible.
I hope that this clears up what is going on with Lineage II and I hope you are as excited about the future of the product as I am.
- Samuel ‘Omega’ Han
Q: There are many community systems in game (and out of game) which require a lot of attention in order to unify the communication between players and clans. For example, the community (alt+b) boards are out-dated, hard to use and have no documented instructions. They have been neglected for as long as I can remember, yet the potential is definitely there. Likewise, the forums are old, out dated and only maintained 9-5 Austin, Texas time. So, for my question; not focusing on any single method of communication, what advances, improvements or changes can players expect to see across all communication mediums in the coming future?
A: Some time this month, we plan to upgrade the official message boards from UBB format to vBulletin. It will be more stylish, more user-friendly and allow players and moderators a greater number of options and possibilities. We will provide more information on this upgrade in the coming weeks.
As for the in-game community server, we have several ideas that we are currently trying to flesh out to improve its functionality and usability. We are even having discussions about expanding this tool to encompass a broader range of capabilities. As we know more, we will pass that information on to you.
Q: How will Lineage II be affected by the formation of NC West? How will Lineage II survive with a reduction in staff?
A: NCsoft will be forming a specific studio within the NC West organization whose primary purpose will be the development and longevity of our imported products. Lineage II will be a big part of this studio’s focus and I’ve been assured that the formation of NC West is about investing more resources into Lineage II. I think this is a good thing for our game.
More than ever, this team is dedicated to improving the quality of your gaming experience. It is our hope that you will see a revitalization of the game we all know and love. With new content, new events and new contests, Lineage II has some great things in store.
Q: Will we be seeing more advertising efforts? What are you doing to bring new players to the game?
A: Once NC West has established its office in Seattle, the company plans to hire a representative to manage and implement a marketing strategy. NCsoft wants to reinvest in the Lineage franchise (meaning both Lineage and Lineage 2). We are still in the beginning phases of this venture, so there is not much else to share. However, let it be known that the management team at NC West believes in these products and has every intention of implementing a plan that will boost public awareness and promote new player registration.
Q: What has happened to Ornery and Alyra??
A: Tim Tan (Ornery) and Jessica Folsom (Alyra) are no longer with the company. But we sincerely thank them for all their hard work on Lineage II, and we wish them all the best in their future endeavors.
Q: Why does Spam only visibly run around on Bartz? Are none of the other servers important?
A: Every player on every server is important to us. Just because you may not have seen or been aware of him on your server, doesn’t not mean that Spam hasn’t been there. But one of the things to keep in mind about this type of occurrence is that, while it may be gratifying to actually see Spam out there banning those using a 3rd party program, it is actually the least effective way for us to catch and ban bots.
Q: When are you going to make it easier to report bots?
A: I know that bot reporting has been something of a chore in the past (due to names like illli1llilffff). And while we aren’t at liberty to divulge any specifics regarding Gracia – Part 2 just yet, we can tell you that a new system that will make this process easier than ever will be introduced. Look for the Gracia – Part 2 patch notes to see what we have in store.
In addition to this, we are already brainstorming ways to make this system even stronger. I will update you on this when I can.
Q: What the heck are you doing about the bot problem??
A: I understand your frustration! Even when I am out leveling my characters, I have encountered this issue, and it frustrates me as well. We are continually re-evaluating and evolving the processes that we use to identify and ban bots. This is a very difficult task, as you know. However, I can assure you that this topic is always a priority for the team here and in Korea. We will continue to fight bots with everything we’ve got. There are a lot of things that happen in the background and while it sometimes might not be evident, we really are making concerted efforts to eradicate bots. The war on bots is just that – a war that we have to wage each and every day. But I can guarantee you that as long as bots exist, we will be doing all we can to get rid of them.
Q: I've been playing on Sieghardt/Sayha for three years now and I have never seen a single GM in game. With the new organization, do you plan to add more GM's to the different servers?
A: If you were around between Prelude and C2, you know that GMs used to go visible to players sporadically. But this caused a multitude of problems. Most importantly, it slowed down service, as players would always want to ‘chat up’ the GMs, which I can understand. However, it affected our response time for other player needs. The bottom line is that when a GM went visible productivity went down and we ended up not serving the whole of our customer base. Except in situations where it is necessary, GMs are now asked not to go visible. But, visible or not, please know that there are always members of the team providing service and investigating your reports.
Q: Will NC West gain more localization control over the game to better suit it to our market or will approval for any changes still be required from NC East?
A: We have a bunch of talented and dedicated people in our localization department. While we cannot really comment on our processes or systems, we think that you will see an improvement in localization with each future update.
Q: We need more events and contests! What are your plans regarding this?
A: We regret that the past months have been lacking in events and contests. But all that is going to change. With the coming year, you are going to see a more regular scheduling of events. We even have an event coming that was specifically designed for North America!
Q: NCsoft is already talking about killing Lineage with over 150k of subscriptions. What will happen to Lineage II with over 1/2 the content and scheduled updates not even in yet?
A: NCsoft has absolutely no plans to get rid of Lineage or Lineage II! I honestly don’t know where this rumor came from. The Lineage franchise is a cornerstone of this company. There are only plans to improve and expand the franchise. As a company, we take pride in our roots. And we have every intention of making Lineage and Lineage II some of the best and longest running games of all time.
Q: A Russian division of Lineage II is coming. Will you restrict access of Russian players to Teon, Franz, Luna when Russian servers will be launched?
A: Yes, there is a Russian division of Lineage II coming soon. However, this is a separate entity from NC West. For specific information regarding this division, please go to the Contact Us portion of the ncsoft.com website and contact our Korean Headquarters. But we do want you to know that we have no intentions of restricting Russian access to the North American servers.
Q: What other paid services does Lineage II plan to incorporate? And when are you going to make Luna transfers possible again.
A: I understand that many of you want to know about these two issues. Unfortunately, it is too early to mention anything concrete. All I can tell you at this time is that my goal is to have these services ready by the end of the year. We are carefully reviewing and planning on both of these fronts. And I hope to be able to tell you more in the near future.
Thank you for getting us the answers to the questions, will there be more, or was this the bulk of it?
And sorry... but could not resist.. I must give you a congrats for only using the word "soon" once. As you know it is a inside joke for all of us. And, you spelled it wrong should be Soon (TM).
I hope the promise of advertising comes thru. I'd love to see L2 ads on TV in the way that WoW has done. People seeing this game compared to that will most likely make the choice this way!
Also, to comment about the GMs in game... It would be nice to actually have GMs responding to petitions regularly instead of the confusing double-speak messages we get now. I understand that if you do the command to see how many GMs are online, it's always zero???
/gmlist used to show gm's logged into that list, as I understand it they stopped doing so because bot programs could detect any GM logged into that list and when they got close the bots would auto log so they stopped logging into that list.
That's why spam is rarely visible in game, when he is then he can be detected and people log out before he gets around the corner :p
the GM thing was explained a few years ago... it had to do with GMs up to C3 logging in to the actual server (say Bartz) and were therefore visible in /gmlist. After C3 they changed it so GMs can monitor all servers at the same time. Presumably this means they used to log in with a regular game client (visible in /gmlist) whereas now they use some kind of console app and deal centrally with petitions across all servers (aka not visible in /gmlist)
Well, I would like to submit a petition and have a conversation with someone regarding my question instead of getting an automated response that doesn't address it really, and then having to wait so long for it to be attended to. For instance, we have a glitch reported in Tully's that was reported over a week ago and still have not received a viable answer....
I m not supporting the no live gms thing, I m simply rehashing the explanation we were given some time ago. And dont start me on HB gliches, the whole place, citadel/tullys is one big glitch
Thank you Omega, for answering my question regarding the Community system. I can't wait to see the new boards this month. It will be interesting to see how the old posts are transferred - after all, we don't want to lose any of this valuable information.
As for Alyra and Tim, I've had my speculations since Alyra went quiet and Tim was no longer Producer. It's a big shame that they left as part of the re-structure and I wish them both well in their future ventures.
I hope the promise of advertising comes thru. I'd love to see L2 ads on TV in the way that WoW has done. People seeing this game compared to that will most likely make the choice this way!
Also, to comment about the GMs in game... It would be nice to actually have GMs responding to petitions regularly instead of the confusing double-speak messages we get now. I understand that if you do the command to see how many GMs are online, it's always zero???
On my petitions lately I've actually been getting clear responses signed by whichever GM that answered(I have svreenshots if you need proof), it's been creeping me out man! lol, but I have really seen an effort lately and appreciate the work that's been going on.
I really hope we will see same improvement but I will wait to see them for real.
Seriously when you petitionned people botting & accpeting auto rez and that s still not enough proof to ban them I wonder what kind of proof NCSoft need.
Anyway, let s see what the new change in NCSoft NA will bring to us and hope for the best.
Glad to hear that the boards are getting a new look and that a new in game reporting feature will be in.
Thanks for the answers, but as usual they were very vague. I got a chuckle out of your war on terr... I mean bots response. Here's to hoping.
I would like to think that more active message boards, hopefully with the new system, will motivate more players to use them. I'd imagine that a lot less bots would be attractive too...
Off topic: Do the Korean servers have this many bots aswell?
Q: What the heck are you doing about the bot problem??
A: I understand your frustration! Even when I am out leveling my characters, I have encountered this issue, and it frustrates me as well. We are continually re-evaluating and evolving the processes that we use to identify and ban bots. This is a very difficult task, as you know. However, I can assure you that this topic is always a priority for the team here and in Korea. We will continue to fight bots with everything we’ve got. There are a lot of things that happen in the background and while it sometimes might not be evident, we really are making concerted efforts to eradicate bots. The war on bots is just that – a war that we have to wage each and every day. But I can guarantee you that as long as bots exist, we will be doing all we can to get rid of them.
Lol, i lolled so hard on this piece of text. Especially the words "verry difficult task".
One easy thing they could do is contact Inca Internet which is responsible for Gamegaurd. Ask them to implement a new module into Gamegaurd which scans on memory loaded [censored],3th party software files which are localized on the client computer. They can even make a scan on those files.
Manual bannings wont work. You dont pick the problem on his head but on his tail. So long NCsoft dont dicuss with Inca Internet how they can add easily an extra module to Gamegaurd, it never will happen.
Its not hard for Inca Internet to make an extra module to Gamegaurd which can scan on memory loaded files.
I am tired of their lying all the time about this problem.
Oh wow, pretty much the exact same response I would of expected from Tim Tan... and we all know what happened to that guy.
Reality check to the people who are happy with his responses:
The improved community features are in the future gracia updates. They have nothing to do with our input or our producers. They will require no work from our side either. That's why they will get here (soon) instead of (now).
Localization will be (better), or at least seem to be, because the gracia part 2 update is smaller then gracia part 1, which it self was less then 90 megs (compared to ct1's 1+ gig)
With the coming year, you are going to see a more regular scheduling of events
We've all heard this one before.
We even have an event coming that was specifically designed for North America!
Haven't they always been like that? If we had been getting korean events I think we would of all been pretty happy. You know, with them getting awesome stuff on a regular basis.
Lik's comment on the invisible war on bots is right on. It's still possible to bot from 1 to 80 and then turn around and make that 80 a noblese. Bot's aren't hard to catch but I imagine it's hard to ban massive amounts of people when all but 3 servers are below half their designed population.
A: We regret that the past months have been lacking in events and contests. But all that is going to change. With the coming year, you are going to see a more regular scheduling of events. We even have an event coming that was specifically designed for North America!
That made my day. Hopefully it's a Good as the Ones Earth & Beyond did. So far they made the Best MMO events that were worth doing ;)
Everyone can see that the" bot situation" is getting worse" Words and good intentions are wonderful but actually what we want is to be able see a result ie, bots being banned and places like HS and WoA being returned to the real players again. I love this game but waiting for something to happen that never does ruins it. Thank you for answers though.
Q: What the heck are you doing about the bot problem??
A: I understand your frustration! Even when I am out leveling my characters, I have encountered this issue, and it frustrates me as well. We are continually re-evaluating and evolving the processes that we use to identify and ban bots. This is a very difficult task, as you know. However, I can assure you that this topic is always a priority for the team here and in Korea. We will continue to fight bots with everything we’ve got. There are a lot of things that happen in the background and while it sometimes might not be evident, we really are making concerted efforts to eradicate bots. The war on bots is just that – a war that we have to wage each and every day. But I can guarantee you that as long as bots exist, we will be doing all we can to get rid of them.
Lol, i lolled so hard on this piece of text. Especially the words "verry difficult task".
One easy thing they could do is contact Inca Internet which is responsible for Gamegaurd. Ask them to implement a new module into Gamegaurd which scans on memory loaded [censored],3th party software files which are localized on the client computer. They can even make a scan on those files.
Manual bannings wont work. You dont pick the problem on his head but on his tail. So long NCsoft dont dicuss with Inca Internet how they can add easily an extra module to Gamegaurd, it never will happen.
Its not hard for Inca Internet to make an extra module to Gamegaurd which can scan on memory loaded files.
I am tired of their lying all the time about this problem.
Your under some impression this is an L2 only problem.
WoW, WAR, AoC, CoH, Guild Wars, bah basically any MMORPG you can mention has bots, has adena/gold sellers, powerleveling service.
They want to clean up the problem but in some games its just more in the open then others. For example L2 has very little instanced play and no RvR play so if someone bots you see it. IN games like CoH and WoW and War now there are a lot of instances so you can hide and xp out of the way where people do not see you as bot till your high level.
I really tired of people blaming NcSoft for not doing anything, you can stop the problem too, I blame the clan leaders on these servers that allow people who bot or buy toons into their clans. If people just ignored and distanced themselves from these people then botting would be pointless, but no they accept them into their clans because they want to win and thats is what is most important.
Why is the botting problem getting worse? Because people do not want to do the game the way it is designed. Start taking responbility for your own problems and stop blaming ncsoft for everything, no one from NCSOFT TELLS YOU TO BOT, you decide to do it on your own.
Why is the botting problem getting worse? Because people do not want to do the game the way it is designed. Start taking responbility for your own problems and stop blaming ncsoft for everything, no one from NCSOFT TELLS YOU TO BOT, you decide to do it on your own.
That's why NCSoft should fight more actively against botting. Exactly what people are saying :cool:
I just typed up a long response to your post Sly but figured it would derail the thread. I'm just going to say that you can't compare l2's bot situation to any other game. Especially not WoW.
NCSoft might not be entirely to blame, but I'm pretty sure maintaining an exploitable environment for the last 5 years gives them at least 90% of the blame. While we're considering fabricated statistics, I'd like to sugest that bots must account for 90% of the playerbase and that banning them would kill 6 servers.
Finally, I'd really like to stress that botting in WoW is possible but is verrrrrry uncommon. Yea, you might leech some BGs, but you sure as hell aren't getting that tier 6 or S4 arena gear. I'd be surprised if even .001% of wow's population is even aware that botting might exist in WoW.
Its a mixture of both. If they were seen to actually do something and respond to the issue it would encourage players to be legit. There is no deterrent and that does not help. That is my point. I believe Omega when he says the problem frustrates him too, but how many people do report bots and have to see the same bots still going strong week in / week out? If they improve the system for reporting them ,great! but thats pointless if there are no actual results. If you want to encourage players to be legit you punish those that cheat.
When this new botting reporting system gets in, you have to post and continiously remind people to use it. And then follow it up by banning them or reporting to the community how many have been reported or how many have been banned.Some sort of aknowledgement. Or yeah.. some ppl may give up on reporting as they do now.
You are comparing apples and oranges and wondering why apples dont taste citruslike ....
Wow has bots, they hide in the instances and they are the source of the billions of gold the big sites sell each month. But that's farmers and honestly the best solution for them is what wow/war are doing, hide them in an instance where regular people dont see/arent bothered by them.
On the other hand regular wow players dont bot as much as regular l2 players, but that is down to game design. Experience and character developement in WOW dont come from the repetitive motion of killing the same mob a billion times. And the same applies to gear. You dont get top tier gear by collecting 6 billion quest items which you get by killing 11 billion mobs and you turn in to get to recipies that might or might not work. That's L2's game model and like it or not NCsoft West can do absolutelly zilch about it. And like it or not the very core of the game encourages boting because it's based around the idea of repetitive actions that a bot can do as well as a player and for longer.
and let me get another thing out of the way ... most people tend to think Koreans dont bot while NA/EU players bot. WRONG. Boting in korea is very widespread, and let me say a lot more sophisticated than here. Koreans have even come up with a harware bot device that plugs in between your keyboard and mouse and your computer and controls l2 with software that runs in it's flash not the computer's ram, so it's not detectable by anyhting. Go to any Korean net cafe you ll see it in action
thank you for the post.
A number of issues though.
We were told over a year ago that we would have the same customer services that Korea has, ie: moving specific toons between accounts of the same main account as an example.
It seems that you all tend not to even look at Lineage 1 and see what events there were awsome and which ones were not. Point in fact, double experience weekends, etc. You don't need to have a full production event to have an event.
The bot problem is and most likely will always be an issue in any online game that has armor and weapons as a primary means to an end. As such, thank you for all of NcSoft's work in trying to control this.
As for GM's in game, this is where I feel you don't understand what that means to the players in the game. Yes, you can't be as productive when a gm logs in, is seen, and people want to say hi, but, this puts a real, human face towards us and makes US feel appreciated. When spam did his run around a month or two ago, everyone was estatic and even [censored] was posting screen shots and had threads about it. Their appearance in the game is much more than just taking care of issues. You really should go back and re-consider that one, even randomly, once a week, have one show up for an hour banning, talking, maybe even at MRT for a quick hello.
Your handling of the layoffs of our community person sucked, pure and simple. Not for the fact that you had to lay the lady off, but the way you all handled it. She is a pro at this, her life's work was doing community service. Did you all really think she would do something more than say goodbye to us and give us closure? What kind of managers do you have there, and more to the point, just what kind of people do you all think you have working for you. No, on this point, you all really screwed up.
As for the rest, well, we will see. It would be nice to see proactive translations from you all to us on the up coming releases instead of us having to find them and do it.
It would be nice if you all had posted that interview here first instead of us finding it on an outside magazine.
It would have been really nice if you all showed a bit more respect for us when you all make serious decisons that change our investment in your product.
A: If you were around between Prelude and C2, you know that GMs used to go visible to players sporadically. But this caused a multitude of problems. Most importantly, it slowed down service, as players would always want to ‘chat up’ the GMs, which I can understand. However, it affected our response time for other player needs. The bottom line is that when a GM went visible productivity went down and we ended up not serving the whole of our customer base.
If it slows down service when GMs are chatting a bit with players then you are hopelessly understaffed. Why don't you hire a few dozen more? Above all GMs who are at the office at night and on weekends, when most players are online.
And I want academics, with degrees in koreanistics and English literature. Don't you realize that it is those canned answers that make people so furious? I don't expect a GM to greet me with a spontaneously composed haiku, but some personal remark appropriate to the occasion would greatly increase my respect for the person at the other end of the line, something like "who would have thought the old Boss had that much blood in him" or "may Maphr bless your sell shop".
Omega, you have the number of subscribers. How much would 20 additional GMs, half of them with doctorates, cost each of us per month? 20 Dollars? 30 Dollars? Give us a number, than we can have a vote.
+1 to Zhanig. Customer Service cannot be overrated. In fact IBM built it's business on excellent customer service for an inferior product.
The general atmosphere of NCSoft customer service is vague and oblique messages that frustrate the customers... corporate doublespeak that drives people to quit asking questions at all or respond angry and whiney. This needs to be improved absolutely.
The other point of the translations is pretty valid imo as well. Why do we have to go to a website that you won't even allow their name to be typed here to get them? They are posted for us to peruse and discuss and it allows all of us to prepare for the next update as well. When the PTS goes online, we are all ready and prepared to test out all the new features, so that bugs and questions can be asked to improve the product.
Everyone also knows that when the update is actually live that everything is subject to change. It would be so much better to get the rough drafts from NCSoft than a few very dedicated players who can translate Korean and offer that service to their fellow players.
With NCSoft, we don't get anything official until probably the day after the release is uploaded. Just look at the simplest thing of being able to buy spellbooks at the starter towns and what a uproar there was about that...
Part of the fun of L2 is the discovery of the newer aspects of the game. But when they are bugged, like almost every single aspect of Hellbound has been, the Customer Service not only should be right on top of the reports, but should be as concerned about correcting them as the players are in having them corrected. Sometimes we cannot tell if what we are experiencing is a bug or intentional part of the game's discovery.
Here is a the response I just got from NCSoft re: a bug report I sent in about Tully's.
We have received your bug report and will be transferring your ticket to our Quality Assurance (QA) Team for further review. Once your report has been reviewed and logged, your ticket will be moved to "Closed" status without a response. If you wish to update your bug report, please update this incident to re-open your ticket.
I apologize for the frustration and any inconvenience resulting from this issue. Neither the support team nor QA team will be able to reimburse for any losses.
Our QA Team is unable to provide status updates on bug reports. This allows them to focus on quickly addressing bug reports and other issues in the game, so that our players can experience the smoothest game play possible.
At this point I couldn't care less what is convenient for your QA Team. Their suggestion that this behavior is for my benefit is absurd. I don't care if it's being forwarded to QA. I want Customer Support to address my question. Period.
You do realize that this answer is telling me, the customer, that I can just shut up and leave them alone, that they have no intention of ever letting me know the answer to my question? Also, I would like to remind you they didn't even answer my question. They just blew me off and told me they couldn't reimburse any of my party for their losses.... which was never even implied that we wanted.
I apologize in advance for my lack of tact, but the rudeness of this automated response just pretty much set off my temper. It also focuses on how much attention needs to be given to this sorely lacking department.
Your handling of the layoffs of our community person sucked, pure and simple. Not for the fact that you had to lay the lady off, but the way you all handled it. She is a pro at this, her life's work was doing community service. Did you all really think she would do something more than say goodbye to us and give us closure? What kind of managers do you have there, and more to the point, just what kind of people do you all think you have working for you. No, on this point, you all really screwed up.
Agreed, though this might not be Omega's fault as I've seen this so many times. Sometimes that edict comes from "above".
And as I've posted elsewhere, in some companies, when you are laid off, you are escorted out by security, no matter how much you were appreciated. I'm not saying this is good but this is what some companies do.
And as I've seen serveral examples of Korean companies just arriving and laying off people without any notice it might be coming from Korea.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. NC is an arrogant company.
What you must realise is that the "not being present" makes alot of things.
First it ticks the hell of players, I for one has only had one good experience from a GM and that was one that actually talked to me .
Mind you that before the GM support was vastly greater, in C1 C2 one actually could get great support and fell that there was someone that listned to what you said.
Now everytime i send a ticket I get a response that has nothing to do with the subject so I have to resend the ticket, this happends way to much ...
Secondly the absence of GMs is one if the biggest reason we have such a bot problem.
Almost everyone i meet say the same thing " NC dont care why should I? "GMs haha are you kidding me there is none" etc.
1. What I could 'care less about' is whether I see a GM in the game. I don't log in to say howdy to GM's. As far as I'm concerned you can commit that time to something productive.
2. In another game I play, there are drop down choices from right clicking either a player or a chat notice. One of those is "report spam"---and a prompt crosses my screen in big orange letters "you have successfully reported xyz for spamming". Now THAT is no-muss, no-fuss reporting. Your system should grab my name, server, time and other demographics when I report sdfghjjjj for botting--with a click of my mouse.
3. Coudos to NCSoft for some recent expansion of game easing mechanics to lvl 61. The kamaloca stuff (or however you spell it) is kinda cool. Major props for vitality--first bone you've thrown to casual players in over a year. NOW KEEP GOING. Level 20-61 should not just be throw-away time to be avoided. The more your mechanics (and yes, I understand you don't program platform changes) speed players past to AVOID this, the more of a disconnect you create! Now the newb gets to 61 very quickly where they find out it is 200 million for their weapon & gear and they don't know a **** thing about how to produce 20 million in the game! It's my opinion that this INCREASES the desire to ebay adena (which fuels bot running & gold farming). How about a moratorium on new lvl 80+ content and some advances in B and A grade content (instanced dungeon adds would be great)--new mission content & slightly more lucrative rewards--etc? It used to be that players burnt out getting to B-grade. Now you've advanced that a bit so they will be quitting at 63 instead of 54--big deal. The answer is CONTENT (still).
4. You've got a good game here. You get many things about it right. Your support is below the industry expectation so it stands out as "poor".
5. Would love to see ads on TV or mention in programs on TV--perhaps using real players if there is a visual? It would be cool to see "Olorae" on the screen someday!
6. I will never forgive you for the merge that destroyed my Lionna. Nothing you can do about that. It seems obvious there are more of these coming. So next time? More notice and less touchy-feeling BS about naming and such. Announce the **** things and get about the merges when they come. The only thing I will say is if they are such a 'wonderful' ****ed idea, then everybody who plays should be included--not just some players on a few servers. You know **** well if you could ban all Eula violators running bot accounts on Teon that you wouldn't have 3000 accounts left. Get about removing the soulless and get the next round of mergers done. Personally still think they are stupid idea but I understand from a resource perspective that you have to do them.
Last comment about those--you gave no one a choice about where they were merged. In the future this should continue. As frustrating as it was for some of us--it would be MORE unfair if in future forced mergers if servers got to pick their partners.
7. Please perma ban any forum posters who put up a suggestion about any aspect of requesting: auction houses, 'balancing the classes', or 'my archer needs a boost'. None of the rest of us want them in the community.(lmao--j/k)
Now everytime i send a ticket I get a response that has nothing to do with the subject so I have to resend the ticket, this happends way to much ...
The last 3 times I've sent in tickets I've had to send and resend the tickets because the GM responds with information that has absolutely nothing to do with my question. I've had to send in 4-5 tickets before somebody finally understood what I was asking and I got a reasonable semi-related answer. If the first tier of GMs spoke/read/understood English it would surely alleviate 90% of the problems we're having with customer service.
Q: What the heck are you doing about the bot problem??
A: I understand your frustration! Even when I am out leveling my characters, I have encountered this issue, and it frustrates me as well. We are continually re-evaluating and evolving the processes that we use to identify and ban bots. This is a very difficult task, as you know. However, I can assure you that this topic is always a priority for the team here and in Korea. We will continue to fight bots with everything we’ve got. There are a lot of things that happen in the background and while it sometimes might not be evident, we really are making concerted efforts to eradicate bots. The war on bots is just that – a war that we have to wage each and every day. But I can guarantee you that as long as bots exist, we will be doing all we can to get rid of them.
I loled hard. Why almost every crappy freeshard have an antibot-system? And a big company like NCSoft can not handle it?
Why you dont be honest and say your happy about your profit of walker gametimecards and you dont want to lose 90% of your L2 customers?
Q: What the heck are you doing about the bot problem??
A: I understand your frustration! Even when I am out leveling my characters, I have encountered this issue, and it frustrates me as well. We are continually re-evaluating and evolving the processes that we use to identify and ban bots. This is a very difficult task, as you know. However, I can assure you that this topic is always a priority for the team here and in Korea. We will continue to fight bots with everything we’ve got. There are a lot of things that happen in the background and while it sometimes might not be evident, we really are making concerted efforts to eradicate bots. The war on bots is just that – a war that we have to wage each and every day. But I can guarantee you that as long as bots exist, we will be doing all we can to get rid of them.
I loled hard. Why almost every crappy freeshard have an antibot-system? And a big company like NCSoft can not handle it?
Why you dont be honest and say your happy about your profit of walker gametimecards and you dont want to lose 90% of your L2 customers?
Q: What other paid services does Lineage II plan to incorporate? And when are you going to make Luna transfers possible again.
A: I understand that many of you want to know about these two issues. Unfortunately, it is too early to mention anything concrete. All I can tell you at this time is that my goal is to have these services ready by the end of the year. We are carefully reviewing and planning on both of these fronts. And I hope to be able to tell you more in the near future.
What about the second, solo Kamaloka instance that was disabled on NA servers? What about paid "color services" that are coming in the next Lineage 2 expansion? will thoise, too, be accessible via the paid services you are working on?
Also I would like to see the character transfer between different accounts service (and I mean my own accounts tied to the common master account - I do not intend to sell characters or anything like that).
nice post Omega but we've seen these kind of promises before, delivering results is what counts
please note that the bot problem isn't the only 3rd party software issue with this game as there are also a multitude of pvp cheat programs used in L2 which has rendered the pvp aspect almost useless & no fun
Guys. Guys. You are viewing this from wrong perspective. We are players that Pay to Play.
We pay. And for business - this is only thing that counts. As long as there is payment NCSoft won't do a [censored].
They will NOT ban bots in mass quantities. They will do server merges. They will do many others things that we may not like. Dollars are everything for a company.
Try looking from executive position. Once in a while he needs to report to owners about progress in L2. What interests them is MONEY. INCOME.
And bot party is making (7-9)*13 dollars + (maybe) walker/superman. You wouldn't want to throw away 2/3 of your salary would you?
So? Bots will be here for as long as some of their staff/ or us won't prove that by eliminating 1000 bots will attract 1000+ members. If you can make a good work and prove it, they will do it next maintenance (
Also. Try checking how much servers Korea has. 20+ 30+ 40+?
And how much we have. 7? We are just a small fry. Our income just fades in front of Korean.
And bot party is making (7-9)*13 dollars + (maybe) walker/superman. You wouldn't want to throw away 2/3 of your salary would you?
You throw away much more from all those people who play for a week and then quit as they don't want to play a game overwhelmed with cheaters.
Also. Try checking how much servers Korea has. 20+ 30+ 40+?
And how much we have. 7? We are just a small fry. Our income just fades in front of Korean.
So what you expect?
We expect our potential market for this game (which is much bigger than the Korean one) to be treated as well as the Korean one, if not better. Then we would have 70+ servers, not 7.
Come on! Even if the game could not be played by anyone but grindfest lovers (which is not true) and there are only 5% of such lovers in NC West's market population, it is still more than the whole Korea has.
You are comparing apples and oranges and wondering why apples dont taste citruslike ....
Wow has bots, they hide in the instances and they are the source of the billions of gold the big sites sell each month. But that's farmers and honestly the best solution for them is what wow/war are doing, hide them in an instance where regular people dont see/arent bothered by them.
On the other hand regular wow players dont bot as much as regular l2 players, but that is down to game design. Experience and character developement in WOW dont come from the repetitive motion of killing the same mob a billion times. And the same applies to gear. You dont get top tier gear by collecting 6 billion quest items which you get by killing 11 billion mobs and you turn in to get to recipies that might or might not work. That's L2's game model and like it or not NCsoft West can do absolutelly zilch about it. And like it or not the very core of the game encourages boting because it's based around the idea of repetitive actions that a bot can do as well as a player and for longer.
and let me get another thing out of the way ... most people tend to think Koreans dont bot while NA/EU players bot. WRONG. Boting in korea is very widespread, and let me say a lot more sophisticated than here. Koreans have even come up with a harware bot device that plugs in between your keyboard and mouse and your computer and controls l2 with software that runs in it's flash not the computer's ram, so it's not detectable by anyhting. Go to any Korean net cafe you ll see it in action
Quoted for the truth, and thank you for voicing my own opinion so I didnt have to type it down... ;)
Koreans have even come up with a hardware bot device that plugs in between your keyboard and mouse and your computer and controls l2 with software that runs in it's flash not the computer's ram, so it's not detectable by anything. Go to any Korean net cafe you ll see it in action
WOW. Now that is determination!!!
And I think that the NA market is ready for the picking. Online games are booming out there. There should have been major advertising in the beginning, but even now some advertising to equal WoW is warranted.
The biggest problem is that Lineage II has been marketed pretty much word of mouth, which is not the way to get a lot of players but to keep the game small and exclusive.
Disclaimer: this post is not directed at the few rational and considerate people who've posted constructively in here, so keep that in mind. For your replies, I thank you.
As for the rest of you, really, this thread is an embarrassment.
Not because of Omega's responses - rather, I think he did a fine job delivering replies to people's questions, and should be applauded for even taking time out of his schedule (which is not, in any way, a customer relations liaison) to do this.
He was not obligated, as much as some of you would rather think otherwise. This was a community service.
These replies may not be the replies some of you WANTED, but if you haven't come to grips with the fact that the sun does not rise and set just for you, then you have an awful lot of growing up to do (fact: children are classified as egocentric until approximately age 4, when they start acknowledging the world outside of themselves; so well done on displaying the behavioral capacity of a group of 4-year-olds).
You people sent in your questions, got responses, and instead of thanking the man for following up and being happy that you've been given information which, in point of fact, you are not entitled to be given (and no, before you even think it: being a paying subscriber does not entitle you to a **** thing - it allows you to log into the game and play it, and that is ALL)...instead, all you can do is gripe, bellyache, nitpick over the definitions of "soon" vs. "we dropped everything else and worked 'round the clock to implement your solutions, they're all patched in, & the client is already downloading to your machine as I type this", or rail on about how it "I Have A Better Solution"™.
You don't, by the way.
You might THINK you do, but then, you might also THINK you can walk barefoot across hot coals and broken glass because you saw some dude on TV do it once and it didn't look that hard.
The last time I saw this much acrimony on a forum was in the Tabula Rasa community, and that overwhelming negativity alone turned me off of playing the game entirely. It seems like nearly every MMO player these days has cultivated this irrational, petulant, my-way-or-the-highway attitude, thinking that the game developers owe us the sun and moon.
They do not.
They owe us a game, and you pay for the privelege to play it.
If you have problems with that, put your money where your mouth is - you're the ones renewing your subscriptions every month.
Consider being unable to post to the forums after canceling as an added perk. You won't have to worry about spending time complaining about people who "clearly don't listen to their customers"...and the rest of us wont have to listen to you, either.
I just want to jump in and say thanks for the responses. I was absolutely positively elated to see that there is an intent to begin a marketing effort in NA. It's too long overdue and will flood the servers with much needed new blood. I'm really looking forward to that. I guess I'll keep my account after all.
Thanks again for the responses and most especially for addressing the marketing topic.
Q: What the heck are you doing about the bot problem??
A: I understand your frustration! Even when I am out leveling my characters, I have encountered this issue, and it frustrates me as well. We are continually re-evaluating and evolving the processes that we use to identify and ban bots. This is a very difficult task, as you know. However, I can assure you that this topic is always a priority for the team here and in Korea. We will continue to fight bots with everything we’ve got. There are a lot of things that happen in the background and while it sometimes might not be evident, we really are making concerted efforts to eradicate bots. The war on bots is just that – a war that we have to wage each and every day. But I can guarantee you that as long as bots exist, we will be doing all we can to get rid of them.
Just LOL. on Arya, u can make a character lvl 1 and go everywhere in varka stronghold outpost without dying coz there is so many bots that you can't aggro a mob. And you said that you are fighting bots?
you are pathetic.
GravyTee - no one here is saying that we do not thank Omega for his responses, but for some, and I said some, of his responses we have heard time and time again - the problems is that for the most part when the Producer has said something, it never happens. I am for one keeping my fingers crossed that what Omega said will come quickly to the game, because it really needs it.
It only took a month for Tim “Ornery” Tan to quit (fired?!) after making "State of LineageII" post. SO the real question is, how long can/will you last Omega?
Men do not have the guts and patience with L2 community :)
You're right... the community needs a woman... they're better with children :)
I can't believe all the negative responses. I'm grateful that someone took the time to even ask us what we felt is wrong with L2... and then spend time answering them. Whether any of it comes to fruition or not is another story but it's nice to feel "in the loop".
I can't believe all the negative responses. I'm grateful that someone took the time to even ask us what we felt is wrong with L2... and then spend time answering them. Whether any of it comes to fruition or not is another story but it's nice to feel "in the loop".
A level 7x bounty hunter that has been playing 3 years is greatful our latest producer copy and pasted the same questions and answers the previous producers have been asked and answered? Someone get this man a bishop, he needs to be cleansed of whatever memory effecting debuff is currently effecting him.
I will now predict what the next ncwest l2 producer will say a year from now.
1. we are working dilligently on the bot issue. The up comming update will provide us with more robust tools to handle this problem.
2. new and exciting events (if you cant read korean or have never been to a community board outside the offical boards) are on the way! I know things have been rather sparce lately but with the old staff being replaced and our home office being moved again we haven't had time to provide the community with the content it so richly deserves. Your patience will soon be rewarded :)
3. I can't comment on that, but look forward to the next update coming soon!
4. We are working hard to keep the website and community tools up to date. Expect to see some new and exciting changes in the near future.
5. I'm the producer but I can't answer that specific question. Please contact support here if you continue to have an issue.
Q: There are many community systems in game (and out of game) which require a lot of attention in order to unify the communication between players and clans. For example, the community (alt+b) boards are out-dated, hard to use and have no documented instructions. They have been neglected for as long as I can remember, yet the potential is definitely there. Likewise, the forums are old, out dated and only maintained 9-5 Austin, Texas time. So, for my question; not focusing on any single method of communication, what advances, improvements or changes can players expect to see across all communication mediums in the coming future?
Would it be possible to integrate XFire into L2? I love the ability that XFire allows me to communicate with w/o having to minimize my game (which causes crit errors all the time since gracia). For those who dont know, its like MSN messenger- but geared for gamers.
I hope the promise of advertising comes thru. I'd love to see L2 ads on TV in the way that WoW has done. People seeing this game compared to that will most likely make the choice this way!
Also, to comment about the GMs in game... It would be nice to actually have GMs responding to petitions regularly instead of the confusing double-speak messages we get now. I understand that if you do the command to see how many GMs are online, it's always zero???
This would work for some time, but a lot new players would quit in few months anyway.. It's like investing your money to doomed business, you wont invest unless you see some opportunities. If l2 want to make some succes they should introduce something that new players could catch up old one in matter of months NOT years playing 2-4 hours a day. And please dont start to say that it's easy already, because if new player is not boting or having 4 buffer accounts IT IS NOT EASY!
I like how blizzard did after tbc has been launched, they reduced exp needed from 30-60, nc could do the same with 40-76 or 52-76.
But it is, even a newbie can reach 40 lvl in 1 week. Ok, 40 - 62 could be better, but it's better than it was pre-Gracia. Why do you complain?
I'm not talking about myself, I've my 75 SK so I'm doing pretty well in woa.
And the main problem of l2 is that end game is always pushed away w/o a chance to cacth up older players faster. In gracia end game was moved once again from 78+ tp 80+, I bet you know how much time takes to reach it. Especialy, if you dont have good OE'd skill you cant make a decent pvp, because you miss a lot, or skills fails. So once again lvl 78 is low lvl, you need more!
And the main problem of l2 is that end game is always pushed away w/o a chance to cacth up older players faster
This is why such measures won't help: because the end game is pushed further away and the effort to reach it is incredibly big.
People will complain no matter how "easy" the game is made when they hit the first wall. It does not matter if the wall is at level 20 or level 60 or level 76.
Look what happened with Gracia, people are complaining they cannot find adena when they reach A grade, when previously they were complaining about D, C and B grade...
There is no easy solution to this. If you want to remove all walls, you can just as well start all at 76 with 2 billion adena and free npc buffers everywhere.
Ofc that would be players who are complaining, but the game it self would be more atractive. Because as I said atm there's no point to invest your time to l2, because by the time you reach current end game, the real end game will be pushed further away.
Ofc that would be players who are complaining, but the game it self would be more atractive
Or it would not.
Because if you make it so that legit players can reach true end game in a month, they will be broke and clueless. And they will complain then about how impossible is the game, how crazy are the market prices and how they cannot become heroes after "earning" it in a month's effort.
Or you really want to give them billions, S80, OE skills and a few BJs in that month?
Maybe an option to attract more players would be a semi-permanent, PTS-like server: Let all start at near-end-game with lots of adena. Play as much as they want, pvp all day, no need for heavy grinding, no need to craft anything, no serious market issues, basically f**k it up as much as they want. Give them a few millions (or many millions) each Tuesday, to cover upkeep. And reset every 3 months, maybe even keep the same toon names for those who care.
Because, let's be honest, these things are what the ubers want, not really play this game as it was designed.
You're still missing the point.. Where I have wrote that give them everything? I just said the main issue why l2 is not atractive. Ofc there're others too but w/e.
Top 3 things imo the people want to see:
1. Someone giving a rats [censored] about this game and the peopl e that play it, which he obviously does.
2. Player bots getting banned. People have a higher tolerance for farmer bots, but when they see players bot, cheat and participate in the l2 community other than selling their adena (ie farmers), it rubs people the wrong way and makes them feel like their effort are for naught.
3. Involement in the community at a GM level. By this I mean taking time to respond to (some of) our questions, in game events, perhaps even spawning Antharas outside of Giran or something like that. These things get people excited about lineage.
Thanks for the time Omega, looking forward to seeing this game continue to thrive.
And the main problem of l2 is that end game is always pushed away w/o a chance to cacth up older players faster.
End game? I've enjoyed the whole game from lvl 1~current... and am still finding it enjoyable. There's a lot more to the game than just reaching end game. New players will find plenty of enjoyment as long as there are a lot of other new players to accompany them.
End game? I've enjoyed the whole game from lvl 1~current... and am still finding it enjoyable. There's a lot more to the game than just reaching end game. New players will find plenty of enjoyment as long as there are a lot of other new players to accompany them.
says the dorf
hey look behind you it's a flashing mob corpse. fetch boy!!! :P
Nice to see a Q&A this way specially with Omega, i really hope the next update refresh the game in all aspects, specially the eula breakers to not call them some bad word, L2 is one amazing world with lots of things to explore but many players just look at it as a competition where the competition start only at top level with all the ebayed crap, they don't even know anything about the game just run as a massive group without any problem on deads, so far the network keep working while they are at bed...
I found myself very mad with the game, i kill and rez the same guy for over 150 kills, i got more red than Valakas...
I understand you cant just Ban a account cause someone said "hey this (censored) is B.........), but killing the dude over hours, delevel it to ng stage and after one week still seeing it running around that put me out of serious, not to talk on the times i reported a full group running around, and in the end i see them running in towns as heroes with top++++++++++ weapons.
So far all the comunity as seen was when some ban come out to the wrong one, some come QQ at the boards calling mass petition and they still on game, i would suggest Nc afdding a Ban list - Names (All characters on that account) and the reason why they got banned.
The legit players of this game, i know they are few, and usually ppl makes fun of them, end up doing the same everyday cause nothing big can be done due to farmers, ghost players assisting one real account without any problem on lose even one full level, and other crap like that.
So in the end i give you my friendly smile and i will be probably the first to put my finger on the bleed soon the new Garcia update turn to live.
I know usually my posts are not so welcome but this is my point of look at the game, the point i see a lot of friends looking at it, the point i see some ending leaving the game, and this never should be the reason for leaving a work like was builded in L2 Chronicles.
Thank you very much Omega, for taking the time to answer these questions for the players. My husband and I and our small clan appreciate it very much. :) It's given us hope for the future of L2, which we've loved and will continue to love until the switch is flipped and the power goes out! Hehe. *wink*
(...hopefully we'll be 80 irl by then and have our great-grandkids recruited to our L2 cause, lol ^^)
I've been playing this game for more than two years now, I curse the day when my friends lure me into playing it, they've all quit playing it and i have been stuck here for all this time. The main problem that force them to leave was that the game is full of bots and nobody is doing anything about it and the sad part is that they won't do it in the future either. I remember that in the old days the farmers were more calm they didn't snatch your mobs and they were thinking two time before hitting you. Now you can't even play in the catacombs anymore, they come in take the spot like you're not even present and if you go pk on them they come with high lvl characters and kill you in like 20 seconds. And please spare me the replies with "why don't you report them?" cause we all know how that works.
If you don't want to see bots anymore is really simple: you have to quit playing! OR if you have the time and founds you can start doing something about this and take some actions. You all claim you are a big community and you are united, well if that is the case why don't you gather up and start suing them, hire a bunch of lawyers and start dropping lawsuits on their heads, after all they are robbing you of your money and the fun you should receive. I can believe what this game has come to, there are farmers guarding spots and you can't even play there!!! Wasn't the purpose of this game to play and have fun?
The bots are running everything the market, the hunting grounds and the company. I haven't even see an online petition regarding this problem and the fact that it hasn't been solved yet.
So my friends you you have the founds and the power, I'm telling you the LAW is the answer ant not the posting and the promises from their part.
Sorry about my poor spelling is my first post and I hope it won't be the last...
Take care all and see you in game. ;)
"FEAR is the answer, do not settle for WORDS. Drive FEAR into their hearts and you shall be remembered"
Quote "A: I understand your frustration! Even when I am out leveling my characters, I have encountered this issue, and it frustrates me as well. We are continually re-evaluating and evolving the processes that we use to identify and ban bots. This is a very difficult task, as you know. However, I can assure you that this topic is always a priority for the team here and in Korea. We will continue to fight bots with everything we’ve got. There are a lot of things that happen in the background and while it sometimes might not be evident, we really are making concerted efforts to eradicate bots. The war on bots is just that – a war that we have to wage each and every day. But I can guarantee you that as long as bots exist, we will be doing all we can to get rid of them."
So my question to you is. What changes are you trying to make to your profit margin model's to ensure that mass banning these bots does not have a long term affect on your bottom line. Cause that's at least one reason why you haven't done anything "aggressive" as of yet.
note* Does the new advertising have anything to do with this prehaps??