One thing that NWO does well is events - they have an event nearly every weekend*. Some events last through an entire week, or more, depending on what the event is. For instance, the summer festival is typically 3 or 4 weeks long. They have even done "one off" events, such as back during the official launch, but these are much more rare. So rare, in fact, I think the only "one off" event was in fact the launch event.
However, 3.5-years ago (September 2014), there was another seemingly "one off" event - the Siege of Neverwinter. The basic premise of which was that Cult of the Dragon fanatics were attacking the City of Neverwinter. This was done as a kick-off of the launch of NWO's "Tyranny of Dragons" module. As part of the event, a special profession, "Siege Defense Effort" (SDE), was created so that one could craft "defense supplies" which can then be traded for other event currency to buy event related items, such as special cosmetics, dye packs, or mounts. I believe the event ran for about 1 week.
Now, back then, NWO had a way of managing many of the 'housekeeping' tasks such as doing professions, checking in-game mail, moving inventory to bank space and vice-versa, etc. from an off-line website called "The Gateway" - you could log-in to the Gateway on any computer with a browser without having to download, install, or run the actual game. Not a terrible idea, and one that was fairly well received by the player base, as far as I know. So, since one could use the Gateway to perform profession tasks, I went ahead and used the Gateway to run the first task of the SDE profession, which was to hire a siege master. This lone, 'level zero' task would then grant enough profession XP to advance SDE to level 1, where one could then use the siege master asset to perform the level 1 tasks.
But I ran into a glitch - I completed the level zero task, was granted the siege master asset AND the profession XP, but the SDE profession never advanced to level 1. However, the lone, level zero task was gone, replaced by a bunch of level 1 tasks, but they were all locked, because I was not granted level 1 status - I was stuck somewhere between level 0 and level 1. The profession XP bar was full, indicating that I should have advanced, but no actual advancement had occurred. There was no way to 'reset' and try again (from the client side), so I was just stuck.
I filed a bug report and the response was along the lines of: we're sorry, there's not enough time [left in the event] for us to dig into this issue. OK, understandable. And assuming this event was indeed a "one off" - and at the time, there was no reason to believe it would be recurring - I figured that was that. But then...
January 2015 - the Siege event returned. Was it just an encore? Maybe, but in any event, it was back, so I filed another bug report because I was still stuck. Nothing happened (I may have gotten a response, but if so, I don't remember what). Then, May 2016, it was back again. Alright, so now it has become a recurring event and not just a "one-off". So I filed another bug report. This time, the response I received suggested I post in the fora (sorry, "forums") as well, because "devs read the forums". So I did and someone suggested I try deleting the siege master asset; which I did.
Unfortunately, that didn't help and to make matters worse, I no longer had a siege master which was required to perform the level 1 tasks (which were still locked). So I filed a ticket on the 'lost' asset and after a bit of back-and-forth, one of the Customer Service (CS) reps (not the one I started with, though) managed to get the asset returned.
January 2017 - it's back once again, so once again I file a bug report. Nothing. May 2017 - it's back for a fifth time and once again I file a report. I get the "I'm sorry, but CS cannot help with this - try filing an in-game ticket." Which I had but did again anyway. Still nothing - other than the very nice responses from CS, I was getting nowhere. But my resolve stood firm - I would continue filing reports every time the event returned.
Now, granted, I'm not a game programmer, but I do have quite a bit of experience in programming. I do a lot of programming for industrial controls, so I know about bits, and flags, and queues, and logic, and flow charts, and a bunch of other programming related elements. My best guess was that the fix itself should be quite simple - either force the 'stuck' bit/flag to be the correct value, or reset the profession entirely; the biggest problem for most bugs is locating the area of the code that has the issue.
So why did I bother with the previous paragraph? Because once again, here in May 2018, the siege event was back - so I, once again, filed both a CS out-of-game ticket (with a screenshot) and an in-game ticket (which,as far as I know, one cannot attach a file to, including screenshots). Only this time, things were different.
In my tickets, I mentioned that this issue was going on 3.5 years now - not days, not months, but YEARS. And, like with most of my CS ticket filings, I received a polite and sympathetic response from CS. And, like previous responses, it was along the lines of "CS can't fix game code, so you should file an in-game ticket and maybe even post in the forums, but rest assured it is being looked at." In my response, I acknowledged that CS couldn't do anything 'code' related and I understood that, but I did ask if there was anything they could do, like at least forward the screenshot to 'someone' since I can't include it in the in-game ticket system. I also mentioned, in a polite way, that from my perspective, the issues "has been being looked at for 3.5 years". I had pretty much resolved myself that like the previous tickets, this one would 'die' with no actual resolution. But then I was pleasantly surprised.
Now, I don't haunt the NWO fora (sorry, "forums"), nor do I regularly read the numerous blogs, dev diaries, news posts, etc. whose links pop-up in the launcher, but I do on occasion. After a while, even a casual 'peruser' such as myself does start to recognize certain names. Lo, and behold, the response I get from my response was not the CS rep who originally responded, but none other than Chancellor Knuckles - which is a name I recognize. He asked if he could access my account and take a look, to which I replied "absolutely". Nigh but mere moments later, I receive another message from Chancellor Knuckles stating that the issue was now fixed.
Woohoo! Finally! I thanked him and went on my merry way.
So, while it only took 3.5-years of me filing tickets every time the event recurred, as I suspected the actual fix was an easy one - I just needed someone who could access the code to access the code; which they did (finally!).
____
* In this case (as with other MMOs), the "weekend" is usually defined as running Thursday through Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment