Dev involvement drama hits EQ2

[Kirth]

Word is a guild got moved off the test server to the live server.

http://www.eq2flames.com/your-guild-sucks/16578-unhallowed-triad-unrest-moved-test-soe.html#post367501

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=399007


haven't seen it mentioned here yet so figured I'd start a thread about it. people are comparing it to the EVE incident or when FoH got pve to pvp move in WoW.
 

[UD_Delt]

Hehe I was just going to come and post this here.

The only surprise is that they made it so obvious this time. Certain guilds have gotten the dev treatment since nearly the beginning of EQ2 it was just done on the down-low. This sort of blew the lid off the whole thing lol.

Edit - and here's the drama-bomb:

My char on Test and guilded with Unholy Trinity is [removed], my wife´s is [removed] be both now play on Innovation on our pre lu13 chars we played up the hard way.

Some Time after LU13 we both left for Test where we met Lucky who at that time had the best equipment on Test also his wife´s char.

After a time he invited us in his Guild and after that guild was more or
less dissolved after some drama we all went to Unholy Trinity.
We started to raid T6 together in may 2006 and Lucky handed out stuff to help compensate for the Test inviroment to get some raiders geared. That was tradeable fabled and masters and rares.

It took me until August 2006 to find out the truth behind that. Lucky is a personal friend of a high level executive at SOE and a char on Lucky´s second account (officially his wife´s) had GM powers, the GM chars name is [removed] i think.

Some time in summer 2006 I got access to the inner circle of UT and he took me and a few others into Deathtoll and showed us how he gets the gear by oneshotting epics with his GM account. There was a player with us that never raided but that got most of the stuff (I did not take anything).

I confronted Lucky and asked him if he thinks it is fair that my wife and me get up every saturday and sunday at 2 am to raid (we are gmt+1) for 6 months and a twink gets better gear that my wife has without ever raiding.

So fact is that lucky used his GM powers to buy people and cement his raidleader status and of course no tank got stuff good enough to ever be able to replace him.

One time in summer 2006 Lucky made a mistake by being too greedy and looting a mythical item he got oneshotting epics and that of course produced a server wide message on test. He was banned for a week for that but was still able to keep his GM powers.

I helped a dev a few times testing stuff for the german servers so I
mailed him to say goodbye and he asked me why so many people from the test raiders left and I told him.

That dev spent a big part of his christmas vacation checking logfiles and found out that Lucky nearly cleared whole raid zones weekly with his gm powers. After this got out Lucky´s GM powers where revoked.

So the people that say he never cheated while they raided with him are right because he could not cheat after january 2007.

There have been other things like the friendly competition I had with
Lucky getting a crafter to 70. I was in my mid 30´s and he early 30´s on a saturday and on monday i meet his char again and he is 70 crafter with all advanced books scribed which is practically impossible on test. All of this was for testing purposes of course as he likes to put it.

Now to the current situation:
I came back to Test 3 months ago and got reinvited to UT again and wanted to do some raiding again because i really missed EQ2. It never came to that because the UT people talked about moving to unrest and shortly after that started levveling up new chars there.

Lucky did not want to have the hassle of rebuilding the raidforce and
handed his friend at SOE a list of chars he wanted there. That person assigned a dev to do the work. The dev spent two days manually preparing them for copying and of course none of them paid
for it.

I did not want to be part of that because i could see the drama. I really want my char moved also especially because of my 5 room house i worked my [I cannot control my vocabulary] of for months to get irreplacable stuff for it.

I think it is ok to copy them because we all really did a lot to get stuff tested and I mean testing till your armor is at 0% and paying for it with my very hard earned money. SOE never managed to hand us repair kits even when we tested completely broken stuff.

So now I sit in an empty guild where only the really honest or really
stupid stayed without money because I gave everything away when I left without anyone to raid or even group.

And the worst part is that they also copied the lvl 60 guild over so I bet after the people start to forget this drama they leave Unhallowed
Triad on unrest and rejoin Unholy Trinity. I you want to see the other
copied chars nobody knows about look up Unholy Trinity on Unrest.

[Signe]

I love drama.

[Murgos]

It's a PVE game.  Someone elses character, equipment or whatever has absolutely no bearing on my game play.

People, obviously, are going to get worked up about it but all I can offer is a hearty  .

[tazelbain]

They are test characters, just delete them and be done.

[Soukyan]

I'm not sure I really follow where the drama is other than reading about some guy bitching that he had a Test server guild leader who cheated. Meh. Switch guilds and go on with life.

[Murgos]

I actually kind of expected that test center guilds would get special treatment.  You know, so that they could test things.

[tazelbain]

Cheated like mad, and got his pimped out characters and the rest of the guild moved off of test.

[Mrbloodworth]

I love drama.

We really need to start integrating the smilies you find.

[UD_Delt]

I'm not sure I really follow where the drama is other than reading about some guy bitching that he had a Test server guild leader who cheated. Meh. Switch guilds and go on with life.

Well from my perspective (being an evil plat-seller person on an exchange server) my concern is as follows:

1. Roll a char on test server
2. Possibly get level-buffed or at least enjoy a full-time 50% exp bonus
3. Cheat and get gear from God-Mode GM one shot killing entire raid zones (re: pics of chars wearing loot from mobs that have never been legit killed on test)
4. Transfer said char to live server w/ full gear, coin and loot intact (re: pics of new chars with over 12 pages of fabled items up for auction)
5. Transfer from Live server to Exchange server - still keeping raid gear but losing coin
6. Profit

vs.

Me who leveled up and earned things legit with my end-game being the bonus that I can sell my char if/when I choose.

[Murgos]

4.  Is the only actual issue.  If something was 'legit' killed on test or not is a silly point.  It's test.  It gets wiped from time to time.  They need to be able to test things, including armor that hasn't 'legit' dropped.

Item 4 should probably not be allowed though.

[UD_Delt]

4.  Is the only actual issue.  If something was 'legit' killed on test or not is a silly point.  It's test.  It gets wiped from time to time.  They need to be able to test things, including armor that hasn't 'legit' dropped.

Item 4 should probably not be allowed though.

Agreed. But if you get rid of 2 & 3 then 4 isn't really an issue then. You need the whole sequence of events to understand why people might have a problem with it.

[UD_Delt]

Well it looks like Grimwell has been outed.

Note the char name Eclavdara
http://www.grimwell.com/?p=7

Now note who is one of the alts in the "alt guild" that was also moved from test to live
http://www.eq2ut.com/memberlist.php?sid=b0abad0e7a6c00ca7509f32dcbbab33e

[Kirth]

whats grimwell do for SoE? something with community management? would he have the access/power to pull this off?

[UD_Delt]

Probably not but I'm going to take a guess that the community manager probably has access to devs who would have the power and ability to pull it off. It's already been stated by the "insider" that an SOE employee asked a favor from a dev to do this. So, we knew it wasn't a dev who did the move on his own but someone who didn't necessarily have the access or knowledge to do it themselves.

[Rendakor]

Anyone read the official thread and see any dev response after page 1? Neither Brenlo nor Grimwell have any other posts in it, and I cant find a dev tracker, nor do I feel like going through 30 pages.

[Blackluck]

To this point it's mostly histrionics. Had the guild in question been a bunch of soloers in handcrafted gear we wouldn't see the mob having apoleptic fits, and it is this mob mentality that is obscuring the real issue, that being giving this guild free transfers. Even then we don't know the story, for all we know the guild in question was somehow asked to leave the test server and SOE decided to move them.  Also, Grimwell  is not in that guild, he merely registered at the guild website.

[Morfiend]

Oh man, I love me some good Dev drama. Thanks guys.

[geldonyetich2]

Well it looks like Grimwell has been outed.

Officially?

Personally, I think Grimwell's a pretty good GM/CSR type, just because he's pretty candid with the playerbase.  It'd be a pity of this test server move, which was probably thoroughly approved by the higher ups, cost him his job.

[shiznitz]

I skimmed the 19 pages (at the time) in that thread and only saw the initial "hold on let's not jump to conclusions" posts by Brenlo and Grimwell.

[UD_Delt]

And here is the final answer:

    There has been quite a bit of discussion recently about something we were doing to show kindness to some valued members of our testing community who have been working diligently to improve EverQuest II for the last three years.

    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.   

    Had we been aware that being a little extra kind to these folks would cause such an uproar, there is no doubt we would not have taken this step. However, due to the current situation, I find myself apologizing to you for allowing this situation to occur.

    We are in the process now of removing the characters that we copied to the live servers. Obviously, we overstepped the bounds of kindness in attempting to thank these people for their efforts in testing, and we are working to rectify this situation before the end of the day today.

    Thank you,

     

    Bruce "Froech" Ferguson

    Senior Producer, EverQuest II

Hehe I wonder how "valued" the rest of the test community feels now?

[Simond]

SOE's follow-up should be a server-wipe of Test.

[tkinnun0]

scrub them by hand

So any gear the person doing the scrubbing would accidentally miss would end up on live servers?

Also, for the tone of the message.

[Signe]

The tone of the message did sound a bit snotty, didn't it?  I'LL KILL MYSELF, THAT'S WHAT I'LL DO.  YOU'LL ALL BE SORRY!  Sheesh.  Does this mean the drama is over?  Too quick.  More, please.

[UD_Delt]

Unless someone decides to name names I think the drama may be over.

Here's bullet points from LFG (owner of EQ2Flames) who initially broke the story:

The story I've confirmed with several sources and consider reliable goes like this:

1. An "SOE employee" is guilded in UT (This was NOT Grimwell, even though Grimwell was in UT on Test beginning last July, he is not the person I'm referring to here)

2. That SOE employee instructs a coder to move UT from Test to Unrest.

3. The coder balks, says he can't do that. (btw, this guy is the hero of this story, he's the person who put his finger in the dike and said "fuck no". I didn't get any info in this thread from this person and am not naming him to avoid any hassle to him)

4. The SOE employee then forces the issue and goes high up the chain over the coder's head. This results in the coder being given a direct order from senior management to do the move.

5. The coder then spends 2+ days doing his best and hand coding as much as he could to remove as much of the worst stuff possible from the toons before they were moved to Live.

In addition at one point Hartsman was thrown under the buss but that was then cleared up as nothing but rumor. And apparently my initial rumor about Grimwell has not led to anything other than the fact he at one time was a guild member.

[shiznitz]

SOE could get an active Test server population if they wanted to. The fact that one does not exist means that SOE doesn't really care that much.

[Signe]

Is there a game with such an active test server that you can get enough people together for raids and serious pvp?  I use test servers regularly when they're offered and that stuff almost never happens.  You know what you get when you choose a test server.  I don't believe they chose it for any sort of altruistic reason, either.  If SOE had been smart... HA!... they would have given the whiners a pat on the head and fed them some crybaby soup for their trouble.  Personally, I would have wiped their characters for being annoying.  And I would have laughed at their emo tears!  (which I'm doing now, anyway)

[shiznitz]

Give people a price discount if they play on Test exclusively. Hell, make it free and let people exploit bugs to high heaven. Then Test might actually be useful.

[Soukyan]

Give people a price discount if they play on Test exclusively. Hell, make it free and let people exploit bugs to high heaven. Then Test might actually be useful.

Exactly. This is what a Test server is for. It isn't meant to be some normal rules server with a four letter name. Do the exploits on Test. Allows transfers to, but not from Test. Duh. This is simple shit and quite honestly, weak fucking drama. This is nothing. When administering MUDs, I used to do this sort of stuff all the time on the test servers to make sure everything was working properly, well-balanced, etc. Why they ever allowed Test server people to transfer to regular servers is beyond me and is beyond stupid.

[UD_Delt]

By the way Signe if you want real drama check out this thread for 100+ pages of internet drama-bomb goodness:

http://www.eq2flames.com/rate-retard/14725-keigo-had-irl-sex-my-wife-ab-server-drama.html

• In-game romantic guild drama? Check
• Real life romantic drama? Check
• Attempted suicide by lighting yourself on fire? Check

[Soukyan]

By the way Signe if you want real drama check out this thread for 100+ pages of internet drama-bomb goodness:

http://www.eq2flames.com/rate-retard/14725-keigo-had-irl-sex-my-wife-ab-server-drama.html

• In-game romantic guild drama? Check
• Real life romantic drama? Check
• Attempted suicide by lighting yourself on fire? Check

Wow. Just... wow.

[Rendakor]

That was epic.

[Sky]

 






 

[Signe]

By the way Signe if you want real drama check out this thread for 100+ pages of internet drama-bomb goodness:

http://www.eq2flames.com/rate-retard/14725-keigo-had-irl-sex-my-wife-ab-server-drama.html

• In-game romantic guild drama? Check
• Real life romantic drama? Check
• Attempted suicide by lighting yourself on fire? Check

    Thanks!   

[Simond]

Give people a price discount if they play on Test exclusively. Hell, make it free and let people exploit bugs to high heaven. Then Test might actually be useful.

Give people a free, well geared pre-gen character of their choice when a patch is on the test server. Wipe the server after every patch goes live, then close off all non-SOE Dev/QA access to the server until the next patch needs external testing.