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My First Million with Lineage


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Hi there Partners.

I've been sitting on outskirts of this project from the day before it launch, Playing the game in Light mode and didn't even contribute to a community here on forum, though I have a tone of l2 experience and I'm sorry for that. 

I'm a typical 30+ y.o. Lineage 2 fan, started my journey back in 2004. I spent thousands hours in game, never run a bot or illegal game enhancing soft (or even illegal), was a Clan leader on few private servers, was a CP leader on one of the official once, hell, I've even bitten GM in a real life for in-game in-justice. So, my in-game and around the game experience is quite something. 

In this post, I'm trying to help this community and NCsoft as a company to make this a better experience for broad fan crowd. But I would not be me if I won't say this first:

Out of all server starts in my life, that includes 6 official servers and about 6 private once, without a doubt, this was by Far the most incompetent one, nothing comes even close! I could probably write a book about it, mb one day :)

For some strange reason I've decided no to rant about the problems (writing that book), rather come up with simple solutions that even those, managing this project could implement.

Let me put myself in their shoes.

If I were running NCsoft and wanted to add a few extra millions to my pension I would:

- Start reading books on everything, including customer service, management, and lineage 2 forums!

- Call this mess what it is,  an Alpha test, kiss every player's ass, and beg for forgiveness. 

- Fire at least a few project members and make this public (helps with forgiving part)

- Hire a project manager for lineage 2 classic. 

- Hire at lest one GM-bot hunter per every server you open (you don't have any on staff, don't even lie about it)

- Hire Adena-sellers- hunter part time, 1 person per server! (yes, you don't have them). Hell, even 1 minimum wage person per ever 3 serves can eliminate this easy-to-fix problem (you don't know how? Give me a call )

Now, at this point you have people on your staff, and we can plan for the future $$$.

- Announce OTB, as fast as possible. 

- Announce that you start first server 10 days after OTB will be closed, and you close it after you fix all the problems players have brought to you. say you do it in month or two, then

- Announce big launch, example January 15, 2019

- Launch a server for every time zone you can think of. Start with GTM 0 with 4h step. example: gtm 0 server, gtm +4 server, gtm +8 server, gtm - 4 server, gtm - 8 server and so on.

- Allow players from around the world. Needless to say rejecting players access to the game is from a freedom of speech stand point. but it also makes it harder for me, as a NCsoft executive to make those millions, cause US market is not big enough.  

- Make the field plane! Only subscription! No shop whatsoever (except for mb cosmetics)

- Increase server capacity, more people = more money! Happy costumers = more money! 

Now, what about things you could do right now? During this shameful Alpha test or during OTB.

Turn off Fishing whatsoever, don't worry it would not influence the game, trust me. Just turn this off. 

Before you have a staff member on this, put a receptionist on a duty. Install for her/him a game on 2 separate PCs, so you cloud create a toon for every village/town in a game, and let her/him sit there AFK, all day long. Checking every 2 hours for adena seller's massage. Write down the nick-names and give them to GM for investigation. Trust me, in day 5, there won't be a lot of work, since all adena seller would be in a dip ban. how do you do this? 

Given a plane field, 1x rates:

Turn off all the communication for characters under lvl 10. 

And make sure there is no quests on exp for characters under 10 lvl, make them grind! Knowing why it's done people would be happy about the change. 

Further chat restrictions might be implemented, example: only characters 25 lvl + can communicate with characters 40 ++

Stick to the rules! Ban for everything! 

Given:

everybody on Earth can access any server. (So, no one has a reason to use VPN).

Permanent account ban for 3 reasons:

- RMT

- 3rd party software 

- Speaking not English outside of party/clan/private chat.

How it works? example (and I know It's possible and not even difficult)

 Adena seller: Creates account for advertisement levels it to 25, uses VPN, pays for 1 month subscription to the game and gets instantly ban every time he/she shouts that offer or pm it and our receptionist (better yet adena-seller hunter) sees it. What it achieves? Well, seller hunter with GM, forking together, will ban majority sellers, it just under 1 weeks. Imaging you sell adena.

You leveled 5 toons for every village, you spend time for the registrations (email and phone verification) payed 40-70$. Spend more than a week leveling those toons, and you got banned in a first day of you operation? You try it again and the story repeats. After you spent 1 month of work, and 400$ for vpn, phone numbers you would think should I try it again??? 

Remember, every body is allowed to play? So, for our adena seller It makes even a bigger problem, because GM permanently bans IP address = 1 advertisement = 1 banned VPN server.

It's all great, and will defiantly work, but what if we wanna take it up a notch? Now, that we have Adena-sellers hunter on staff he/she can actively look for places to buy. Go on the web, google it! Contact every seller he/she can find both in game and on google. setup a meeting with adena sellre (make a purchase) then, do actual work.

What work? Well, happen to be around GM during his work, so I know that adena, same as real money leave a trail.

The Adena trail. 

After making a purchase from a seller, we can ban him for good, that would be easy but not really fun. Instead we dig into adena trail, we fined out who gave it to him (they never farm it themselves, it would be too easy for us to deal with). Say we bought it on MDT for Goldman2018. We know every character who gave adena to him, we spy on him so we know ever one who bought it from him. Gather that info for 1-2-3 days. mark every character in question (why may or may not sell/bought adena from him). Then we ban the seller. After a week or so, we contact them again and we repeat the procedure. Then again. At this point we would have enough material to ban not only a few characters but the entier supply chane as well as a good part of their costumers.

Given that people know that Buying and Selling is illegal, and you get your IP permanently baned, would you buy Adena from sellers? I would not risk it. Loosing 3 boxes with gear, and having to deal with changing phone number and ISP provider would be too much for a regular "buyer".

Without the demand, and with High operational cost (thousands of dollars every month: banned toons, banned phone numbers, banned credit cards, banned vpn, and hundreds of hours of gaming time) would you risk it? I would not. 

But what if we want take it up a notch? 

Well, it's very simple. Make an Event! Allow people buy adena, then report a seller! With no consequences for a buyer. You bough any amount for the real money? Tape on video how you transfer the money and contacting a seller outside of a game + give to a seller hunter seller's nickname and you good to go! you get to keep everything you've bought + 50% for a Game master! 

After those, VERY SIMPLE and EASY to Implements Adena/bot hunting steps, Imaging how much I would make from All of the new servers!

Good luck NCsoft, Hope you have a greedy executive how gets to see this massage :) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 very popular l2 russian project actually started a hunt on RMT and it is success, just the exact scheme you told. BSFG server. But sadly purchase shop ir pure p2w with insane prices even for western people. But hunt really worked, people don't sell leveling up, nearly no bots, nearly no RMT.

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9 minutes ago, Barrel said:

Btw Ncsoft actually tried to buy that project, they didn't sell them :D

This mess (start of NA classic) is so bizarre, It actually made me laugh a few time. When you this, "ok, it cant really get any worst then that?!" and then... then  I laugh.

I actually wanted to invest my own money and make a great server, first time in l2 history, but i can't turn my back to real life :( and lineage is not in top 20 priorities, though it's not really hard nor expensive thing to do.  

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I have to disagree with not hard and not expensive.
1. You would be ddosed and you would get message as admin "Pay x amount of money here and it will stop". Only old l2 whales don't have this problem, and still sometimes it strikes on them too.
2. Good client is hard to get and you need to know some stuff inside of files to be able to apply fast fixes.
3. Ads, ads, ads (biggest expense)
But your vision is really good and there's an example. BSFG (100% russian populated) without obvious RMT and botting, extremely strict admins, they do pay salary to streamers, if any starts talking about RMT or botting, goodbye salary. Drivers and insane purchase shop is a problem in there.
 

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Wish I could give you a gold medal, this is great. 

 

id change the not speaking english to everything connected to shout, sales, world etc. One should be able to speak whatever language they want in general - 
 

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33 minutes ago, ViciousL2 said:

You seemed like an intelligent person until that part. 

English in global chats might be bad and sloppy, but it's way better than seen "dsfkns 2N&^GL fdofd,of, " massages like this.

Half of the time when people approached me on TI server, they started with something like this:

"fjksdnfjk s nsdkjfn skdj sndfk js"

then they add something like this "mom mnot croaf"

They never ask Do I speak **** language? They just assume that I do? And I don't! And this is unacceptable. If you don't see this..well, those just my free tips for NCSoft, use them or loose them is up to NCsoft 

 

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8 minutes ago, Zolah said:

Wish I could give you a gold medal, this is great. 

 

id change the not speaking english to everything connected to shout, sales, world etc. One should be able to speak whatever language they want in general - 
 

They should, but not to  random people in a game, it just spoils experience for everybody. 

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5 minutes ago, LoveTheGame said:

English in global chats might be bad and sloppy, but it's way better than seen "dsfkns 2N&^GL fdofd,of, " massages like this.

Half of the time people contacted me on TI server was something like this:

"fjksdnfjk s nsdkjfn skdj sndfk js"

then they add something like this "mom mnot croaf"

It's Orkish.

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