"-responded with the urgency and gravity-"

No, but if you can pretend the "Dev" tag on the forums just means "Daybreak Staff Member" you can overcome your trust issue.

I like how they've taken a leaf out of western government's playbook for the last 3 years.

Claim that anyone talking about things they find inconvenient is "misinformation" and silence and censor.

"If only you players didn't talk to each other about the game we wouldn't be in this situation so it's your fault".

How could you have not been monitoring for this proactively? This is a 24 year old game. That's a ton of years for someone to have thought to monitor the economy proactively and put code in place to do so. Do these monitoring safeguards not exist, or are they just not monitored at all because of "reasons"?

For example:
- How is it that you don't have code in place that notices absolutely implausible amounts of items being sold to vendors?
- How do you not calculate the overall amount of plat on a server periodically, and page someone if it expands at a velocity that is impossible without exploiting?

???

They absolutely did NOT respond with any kind of urgency and gravity. That is one of the most absurd responses I have ever seen. And to also backhand blame your playerbase that its their fault for talking in public forums about this is even more absurd.

Locking the thread where you promise to be better about communication going forward is just the hilarious icing on the absurdity cake.

I mean this with all of the best intentions, Angeliana. I’ve told you before how much I appreciate your work as the Community Manager; however, the community cannot be told “we apologize about the lack of communication and will strive to do better in the future,” only to then hear that DPG is relying on someone who is currently on vacation to communicate with the player base. That doesn’t quite make sense, sounds like a statement that isn’t going to be followed through upon.

If you guys believe that excuse, I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm absolutely disgusted by this message. It starts off sounding like a public "apology" for someone who did something that they regret only because they got flack for it, but it transitions into the perspective of someone trying to deflect by saying the complaints are "alternative facts". It accuses its player base of being the problem. That has never gone over well, and we won't forget it.

I mean no offense to the EQ community managers, but this is something that really should have been addressed by someone higher up the ladder, along with answering some obvious concerns.

e.g.,

• Presumably, many people lost real life money when kronos were mass bought up on the bazaar on Oakwynd. I know there were many listed prior to the massive inflation. Are they going to be compensated for something that was entirely out of their control?
• Likewise, what is being done about the people who bought kronos and sold them for plat in the weeks prior to this on Oakwynd? They couldn't have predicted their purchase would immediately be worthless, and if I were one of them I would feel extremely cheated right now.
• With regards to the previous two questions — Are we, as customers, expected to assume the risk of other players exploiting and stealing from us in ways that don't involve legal game mechanics?
• Why weren't the servers taken down the moment it was obvious? Is there no emergency plan in place for such an event? I find this hard to believe in one of the oldest MMOs that exists that has dealt with these issues since the beginning.
• What is being done about Oakwynd's economy being essentially destroyed?
  • Many people don't play exclusively just to log on, raid, and log off. The server has been irreversibly ruined for casuals, people who primarily solo/group play, tradeskillers, so on and so forth, at least for the foreseeable future. I am making (hopefully an educated) assumption here, but I'd think many of the people in these categories end up making up a larger % of the overall server population as it ages, which would imply Oakwynd has no future once the annual TLP hoppers move on.

No need to apologize for having a life. Thank you.

So i am in no way arguing with YOU...these are just my thoughts on the matter:

1) Why would they be compensated. The Krono was sold at the price they listed. The price they listed was current market value. The value only went up AFTERWARDS, meaning they didn't lose out on anything besides an opportunity to make more in the future from the dupe.

2) Why would you feel cheated? It's called a free market. If i sold my house during a buyers market, I don't get to complain about it 5 years later when it's suddenly a seller's market and my old houses value increased by 33% of what it was when I sold it

3) Yes. Again, free market. The millionaires and billionaires that lost out on Gamestop stock by selling when it crashed and lost out on the sudden skyrocket when Reddit users boosted it to unheard of levels that complained about it never got anything

4) I agree with this sentiment

5) It's not destroyed. It's just accelerated. It'd have gotten to that point eventually. And it's just a supply and demand issue now. All depends on how much you're willing to pay for the convenience of having someone else do all the farming for the items you want. If it's too much, looks like it's off into the world to do your own killing - as for no future...that's the crux of all the TLPs

I'm going to point out the flaws in these parts of your statements.

1) The dupe bug was known days in advance before it went public. DPG was informed of it and refused to act on it. It was already being manipulated, we just couldn't see it happening.

2) It's not a free market when you have people literally controlling how fast they flood platinum into the market.

3) The Gamestop Billionaires didn't lose out because suddenly someone flooded cash into the marketplace, they lost because people wised up to their shady dealings and bought up the stock before they could, there's a huge difference. Money wasn't printed out of nowhere to buy up Gamestop, people used actual, real, existing money to do so.

5) It's destroyed. Accelerated would mean that the entire community moved with it, but now about 80% of the population, at least, can't afford basic things like spells or equipment that they sold Krono for at the former market values to get. The economy on Oakwynd is dead now with only a percentage of the population able to work in it.

Except they continue to flood synthetic shares into the market to make up for retail taking shares off the market via Drs. One of these days they will close their shorts

an overall comment.

This issue had been going on for some days before Thanksgiving and could have been responded to before the holiday. It was first mentioned on the 20th in bug reports.

If the CL was spending time with the family (which is what we all should have been doing) then when did the employee who made the response send it to her? They must have not been spending time with their family.

Every Dev has the right to post on these forums and any of them could have posted.

No need to try and work our sympathies.

I get it, the economy on Oakwynd is forever trashed (not really, but for now). I get it, a late response and one that seemed void of anything but corporate lingo. But all y'all are acting like this is something new and unheard of. Just like on Battlestar Galactica, all of this has happened before, and it will happen again. Almost like clockwork, on a fresh-ish TLP.

Why would they be compensated?!
Because a dupe introduced by the developers allowed the market to hyperinflate.

If the federal reserve accidentally printed 10 trillion USD today and all the money you owned was suddenly worthless, would you perhaps feel a bit upset? Maybe the company you own or work for sold some products before you could delist them and they were sold at a tiny fraction of their actual value. Hey, you shouldn't feel bad right?

I feel like people aren't quite grasping that this plat should have never been in the economy.

I'm amazed by the number of players not in agreement that there needs to be some kind of compensation or rollback. The only conclusions I can arrive at are that 1) they don't understand the problem, or worse, 2) they benefited from it, and do not want to lose their ill-gotten gains.

Oscig sums it up perfectly. The plat and the inflation only exists, and the economy compromised, because the game was exploited on such an astronomical scale. The idea that's OK is ludicrous.

I know for a fact it was reported on the 19th, and was probably reported sooner.

Do the rollback! The majority of the server didn't participate in the dupe but we were all affected by it. Previous posters have explained why this matters. Not doing a rollback only benefits the people that cheated. Yes, we all will lose time and exp but that's better than having an economy that's fubar for the foreseeable future. Ban the people that exploited the dupe, do the rollback, give us an extended exp bonus, fix what was has been broken.

NM. Misread a post.

1) Still doesnt change the fact that it's a cause and effect. Before the duping happened, Krono were listed at market value. Only afterwards did it go up. If people continued to post below value after the inflation, that's on them.

2) It is free market as you're able to post whatever value you feel is worthwhile. If i post something for 100p and I see everyone else posting for 500p a few hours later, I can pull out and repost at 500p to match the market.

3) The money issue is irrelevant. What's being bought (like limited gamestop shares), is where the issue lies. Those had to come from somewhere. Those weren't just printed out of nowhere. Inflation didn't come from a supply and demand ordeal. Still a free market. Instead of buying at inflated prices, you can go get your own and sell at inflated prices. I don't think you're understanding the concept of "free market".

5) Krono inflated with the economy right? DBG didn't increase the price of Krono. It's still $18. You can still purchase the same Krono for the same $18 and continue to buy the same things you did before for the exact same price as before. The fact that Krono didn't change in real life means that the in game economy just accelerated. If my Krono was only worth 10k before and is worth 1m now, guess what that means. My $18 went from 10k to 1m. I moved with it.

"introduced by the developers" makes it sound intentional. But here's the thing, Krono is still $18. Where does everyone get their plat from? Krono. Where does everyones plat they make in game go? Back to Krono. Krono prices would have to change in order for your analogy to be spot on (though i'm not really arguing with you on that matter). So why would they be compensated? My Krono didn't become useless. My krono rose with the inflation. Buying and selling Krono like everyone is doing anyway keeps me in line with the inflation.