[AC] Weekly Update 5/2/07

[Ziv]

[turbine]

http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showt ... hp?t=34016

Hi there and welcome to this week’s edition of the weekly update. We have a few things that need to be addressed, so let’s get right to it.

The issue of Colosseum keys keeps coming up, so I am going to be as clear as possible on this so we can finally lay this to rest. Our traditional policy on lost items is and has been that if you lose an item or do not get said item, we generally will not replace the item. There are exceptions in cases where we do not have a fix in place and it is easy for customer service to track. In this particular case I wanted to be a nice guy and replace what I felt was a valuable item, even though it goes against our longstanding policy. In hindsight this was not the best idea I have had in my time here as Community manager. One mistake I made was not being clear on who should and should not have their keys replaced, so I will do that now.

The only people who should have gotten a replacement key were those who completed the Colosseum and tried to use the key and the chest “ate” said key. If you used a Skeleton key and this happened you should not have a key replaced. If you were doing a Colosseum run and part of your group got credit for finishing and you did not because you did not get through the last door in time, for whatever reason, you should not get a key, since that is not actually a bug and is working as designed. I completely take the blame for any confusion on this as it was poor communication on my part and you should all expect better from the person in charge of communicating with you on the team’s behalf.

So you may ask, what happens now since things were so confusing? Well, the first thing we are going to do is make sure that all those folks who still should get a key actually get it. Please be patient with this as it is one of our customer service team leads who is handing out the keys. The customer service team as a whole is very busy, and they don’t have a whole bunch of extra time to do this, but the person is trying to reach everyone as soon as possible. If there was any confusion about who got a key and who didn’t or a person got a key who should have based on the above listed criteria, they will not be penalized or have the key taken away. This again falls on me. I make no excuses for what happened, and all I can do is apologize for any confusion this has caused.

Once everyone who should have a key has gotten one, we will once again return to the policy of if you lose an item, chances are it will not be replaced. While this may seem harsh, we can see what happens when we try to stray from this policy. Again, I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone over the past few weeks. That was not the intention. I am hopeful that we can put this issue behind us and move on to all of the new and exciting things coming to the game in the future.

On to other things…

Death Macros
It has recently come to our attention that a very small portion of players has decided to try and increase their death count by the use of a macro program. The use of ay type of macro program that causes a player to die over and over is not allowed. Any player caught using such programs will be banned for no less than 3 days. If that person is caught again, attended or not the length of the ban can and will be increased dramatically. We will not tolerate any type of player behavior that causes extra strain on the server or affects other players. This issue is not up for debate.

Server Issues
We are still investigating the cause of the server issues that we have been having over the past several weeks. The cause has been much harder to track down that we anticipated, but we are still hopeful that we can find the cause and get it fixed. We recently had an all hands on meeting, and some more methods of tracking things have been put in place to help us find out the reason for these issues. As soon as we have more news on this I will get it posted. We are hoping this will happen sooner rather than later.

Celebs in AC?
The rumors of our having some celebrity players, I believe, have been exaggerated as far as I know. If we do have any celebs playing it is their right to have their identity remain a secret if they so choose. Chances are this is all just some folks trying to have a little fun with the community, but I thought I would give it a mention anyway, just in case.

Website Weirdness
We are beginning the process of upgrading the ancient tools I have been using for updating the website. That means over the next couple of weeks you may see some strange behavior on the website. We will be watching things closely to try and catch these things as they may happen, but as in any upgrade there are bound to be a few quirks that we might not catch right away. The good news about all of this is that this is the first step towards getting the main website redone to a more user friendly site. Yay!

LA Player Gathering?
Last but not least, I recently received a PM about interest in a LA/West coast player gathering. While nothing has been set in stone as far as I know if anyone would be interested in doing something like this we may be able to send either myself or another member of the team out there bearing prizes and loot goodness. If you are interested in getting something like this going, please let me know once we have a rough idea of attendance and date. The sooner we get the ball rolling on something like this, the better. I know I would love to come out there and get a chance to meet with players. That is one of the things I most enjoy about this job.

That is it for now. Everyone have a great day and see you all in Dereth!