CHILL OUT PEOPLE!!!

[Medeoan]

Holy crap guys! Everyone just take a chill pill. Ya the que sucks for those on Giran and TI. First the log out bug and now the que goes forever since no one is logging out capping the servers out. Give them some more time. You gotta remember this isn't 14 years ago when they had a MUCH bigger staff to deal with problems. Also as launches go, this is far less buggy than Vanilla Lineage II was, when we had MONTHS where you could log in and the mob server would be down so no one had anything to fight.

 

TL;DR - RELAX PLEASE! NC Soft has shown very genuine effort they are trying to solve the problems. Don't stop reporting them, but mellow out with the anger and let us see if and how they continue to work to address. Finally, remember it is the weekend right now.!

Spanish - ¡RELAJATE POR FAVOR! NC Soft ha demostrado un esfuerzo muy genuino, están tratando de resolver los problemas. No deje de denunciarlos, pero aplaste con la ira y veamos si continúan trabajando para resolverlos. Finalmente, recuerda que es el fin de semana ahora mismo.

Portuguese - RELAXAR POR FAVOR! NC Soft mostrou muito esforço genuíno que eles estão tentando resolver os problemas. Não pare de denunciá-los, mas mantenha a raiva e deixe-nos ver se e como eles continuam a trabalhar para resolver. Finalmente, lembre-se que é o fim de semana agora!

German - ENTSPANN DICH BITTE! NC Soft hat sich sehr ernsthaft bemüht, die Probleme zu lösen. Hören Sie nicht auf, sie zu melden, sondern entspannen Sie sich mit der Wut und lassen Sie uns sehen, ob und wie sie weiter arbeiten, um anzugehen. Denken Sie daran, dass es gerade das Wochenende ist!

French - Détendez-vous s'il vous plaît! NC Soft a montré un effort très sincère pour tenter de résoudre les problèmes. Ne cessez pas de les signaler, mais adoucissez votre colère et laissez-nous voir si et comment ils continuent à travailler pour y remédier Enfin, rappelez-vous que c'est le week-end en ce moment.

Italian - RELAX PER FAVORE! NC Soft ha dimostrato uno sforzo molto sincero che stanno cercando di risolvere i problemi. Non smettere di riferirli, ma addolcire con la rabbia e farci vedere se e come continuano a lavorare per affrontare. Infine, ricorda che è il fine settimana in questo momento.!

Greek - RELAX ΠΑΡΑΚΑΛΩ! Η NC Soft έδειξε πολύ γνήσια προσπάθεια για την επίλυση των προβλημάτων. Μην σταματήσετε να τις αναφέρετε, αλλά μετριοπαθή έξω από την οργή και ας δούμε αν και πώς συνεχίζουν να εργάζονται για την αντιμετώπιση. Τέλος, να θυμάστε ότι είναι το Σαββατοκύριακο αυτή τη στιγμή.

Russian - РЕЛАКС ПОЖАЛУЙСТА! NC Soft продемонстрировала очень искреннее усилие, которое они пытаются решить. Не прекращайте сообщать о них, но смягчайтесь с гневом и дайте нам понять, продолжаются ли и как они продолжают работать. Наконец, помните, что это выходные.

(Please note I speak English and used Google Translate to make the above TL;DR translations.)

 

Let us look at the principle issues that have we have had since Classic launched in the last week and a half.

1. Servers quickly filled up necessitating the creation of additional servers.
2. Servers continued to fill up until the two prime time servers reached full status. At this point a new bug became known. The timeout for logging in was way too short for the ques that developed.
3. The drop rates for adena, crafting materials and items, and spoiling were all way too low to establish and maintain a viable game economy.
4. RMT Botters. The problem isn't near as bad as it was 14 years ago when botters were like cockroaches everywhere you looked, but the fact that they are still here 14 years later is a problem.
5. Accounts being falsely flagged and banned.
6. Issues with the slow application of web based purchases applying in game.
7. Ques taking forever now that the login bug has been fixed.

1. Lineage II Classic was originally meant to be launched with only a single server. The explosion in popularity at the possibility of being able to go back and truly start fresh made NC Soft quickly realize they would need at least two servers and not one. When that proved to be not enough with how rapidly Talking Island and Giran filled up, they quickly established a 3rd server.

• NC Soft realized the popularity was more than initially anticipated and so established two additional servers
• They have held of on making more servers while the log in bug made it hard to see just how many people have been truly interested in the game.
• We might (not will) see more servers now that the bug has been corrected and we have had a weekend to see the change in the behavior of the ques.
• Conclusion: NC Soft has taken some proactive action to aid players in getting into the game and enjoying Lineage II Classic.

2. Servers in the prime time zones of US East Coast and EU Central continued to fill up rapidly until the ques reached sufficient length to cause people to hit the time out barrier of a very short 10 minutes and get auto logged out.

• This is something that NC flat out dropped the ball on. Game is 14 years old and NO other MMO has a timeout period even close to being that short.
• Timeout period should be no less than 30 minutes in under any reasonable circumstance and should not engage at all until you are at the character selection and creation screen.
• NC Soft made 3 separate attempts to address the issue and ACTIVELY worked to fix the problem. Their third effort was the charm and the timeout problem has been resolved by and large.
• Conclusion: NC Soft has worked diligently to solve the issue and done so fairly fast for such a significant issue given how much the Lineage II team has been scaled down over the years.

3. The drop rates for adena, crafting materials and items, and for spoiling were way too low for establishing and maintaining a viable economy in game. This wasn't just for VIP 0 players like myself, but for everyone including the VIP 4 players. This is particularly brought to light when you realize the special launch packages and VIP status DO NOT accord an increased rate in adena drops. This meant people running huge xp buffs were dramatically out stripping the effectiveness of their gear and were far behind on any ability to upgrade in accordance with their level. To address the outcry NC Juji and his assistant, NC Hime, appealed to the power that be back in Seoul, Korea to change the drop rates to actual rates the game boasted when it was Pay to Play.

• This is purely conjecture on my part. I suspect the original rates were established to very strongly encourage people to the cash shop. They didn't realize the rates were so bad that not even those who did revert to the cash shop still wouldn't be able to enjoy sustainable long term gameplay.
• The outcry proved that the rates were fundamentally broken to maintaining Lineage II Classic in a playable manner. Player outrage, for good developers and game custodians, is a sure fire barometer when there is a problem that needs to be addressed. The gamers playing the game do not always know the best way to fix the problem, but they sure as hell can identify the problem.
• NC Juji and NC Hime worked to bring the news to NC Soft Korea and convince them to adjust the rates to make the game actually playable.
• NC Soft Korea listened and decided to go ahead with the rate change. Conjecture - they probably are testing to see if this really does improve customer increase, retainment, and expenditure.
• Conclusion: NC Soft ultimately listened to the players and changed the rates to something that is actually workable. For those who can get in game, the game is reasonably enjoyable now.

4. RMT botters are still here. 14 years ago the botting situation from RMT services was rampant and really set the tone with what customers could expect from NC Soft. By that I mean NC Soft ignore them flat out since the botters were also paying accounts. The results, coupled with the Holiday launch of World of Warcraft spelled doom for Lineage II as a major MMO in all markets outside of The Republic of Korea. Had NC Soft heeded the legitimate player base and worked diligently to ban accounts being used for such services, competing games would have had a much more difficult time in taking away sandbox MMO preferring players. Further more, the attrition of players in generally would have declined greatly as people wouldn't have found themselves having to compete with foreign players who were taking all the prime hunting grounds expressly to farm adena to turn around and sell to legitimate players.

• RMT botters are still here, still botting, still spamming us with offers of their services.
• They are not as bad as they were 14 years ago. They have learned to leave the better areas to honest players to reduce the wrath of the very players they hope will be their customers. However the fact is NC Soft still hasn't dealt with them in any meaningful way.
• Conjecture - I suspect the greatest reason that botting isn't as extensive at this point in time is due to the fact the overall decline in people even interested in Lineage II has fallen dramatically over the last 14 years.
• NC Soft continues to try to rely on automated means of dealing with botters. As they do so, they consistently do not have sufficient human based GM presence to properly police the situation. Being free to play only exacerbates the situation since it no longer costs the botters anything to make new accounts.
• Conclusion: I don't think NC Soft really knows how to stop botters. I don't think anyone else does either. I have my own ideas, however they are not sure fire methods either and do require additional GMs expressly for the purpose of dealing with the problem.

5. Accounts are getting flagged and actioned A LOT of late. I can't say if everyone who complains about this is being honest or not, however enough have complained and enough have been unbanned for me to conclude that there is a serious issue with false flagging leading to accounts being punished that should be punished at all. I haven't experienced this myself, so all my own knowledge is second hand at best.

• I wonder how much of this is resulting from the change to their monitoring program XIGNCODE.
• The volume of complaints on the forums is far greater than I have ever seen in 14 years of playing this game off and on.
• People are ticketing and some are getting the bans overturned.
• I also wonder how much is from people being reported in game by people upset at multiboxers.
• Overall I must conclude that NC Soft should disable any automated actioning system and review each alert by hand until the situation is stabilized. In the short run this does mean a higher cost to operate the game, however I think NC Soft would reap the rewards of better customer service down the road once things have smoothed out.
• Conclusion: I hope NC Soft takes the best interests of their customers to heart, otherwise this could end up costing them a sizeable portion of potential players and potential customers. This should be a top priority issue for NC Soft management along with the new que problem.

6. This is another topic that I do not have first hand knowledge of. Purchases of NC Coin and the Classic Launch Packs are taking in excess of 24 hours to post in game. I haven't purchased NC Coin since Zaken was still a separate server. I do know that web service purchases on the developers own website should not be a slow process. I do have to wonder if the slow speed is due to complications of running two different versions of Lineage II on the same base set of hardware.

• NC Coin and Classic Launch Packs are taking excessive time to show up and become available in game.
• People are reporting times in excess of 24 hours to see web purchases show up in game.
• This is impacting people's ability to increase their VIP levels to the level they desire.
• This is leading to frustration with people who want to level faster.
• No news that I have seen officially regarding this issue.
• Conjecture - issue might be arising from running two different versions of Lineage II on the same server hardware.
• Conclusion: This is an issue and an important one, but not as important as some of the others. Biggest things is for people to exercise patience at this time. I mean, we ARE still less than 2 weeks into the launch.

7. The launch que bug has been fixed. HURRAY! However a new problem has reared its ugly head. Ques hardly move at all now if ever leading to people still not being able to play as they cannot get into the servers at all during their waking hours. The forums are now awash in compaints of 9, 10, 11, and 12+ hours ques. This can only mean the size of the interested player base and thus potential customer base is quite large. MUCH larger than NC Soft figured it would be even after adding two more servers. Best way to deal with this problem will be to increase the capacity on the current servers AND to add additional servers at optimal time zones. There is no reason why there cannot be several servers in the same time zone for player to choose between.

• Server ques for Giran and Talking Island are now lasting in excess of 12 hours.
• People wake up, log into the que, go all day without playing still in que, come bed time still in que and log out to go to bed never having gotten to play.
• Contributing factors: AFK automated fishing, AFK shops (buy/sell/craft), multiple accounts per player, RMT botters, AFK spot holding for the following days play session, LOW SERVER CAPACITIES, INSUFFICIENT NUMBER OF SERVERS FOR NUMBER OF PLAYERS INTERESTED IN LINEAGE II CLASSIC AT PRIME TIME SIEGE HOURS. These last two are in bold and caps because these two reasons are much more readily addressable by NC Soft. They are also not factors of how the game is designed but rather with how the game is managed.
• The fix for the logout que came only Friday evening near the end of the work day before the weekend. This means NC Soft has not had a chance to really take in the new problem and decide how the wish to address it. PATIENCE FROM THE PLAYERS IS NEEDED TO ALLOW THEM TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE ISSUE ON MONDAY!!
• Recommendations: With the caveat that I am a player myself and thus not a developer working on the problem and as such my solution proposals might not be the best way to handle the problem, here is my two part solution. 1) Increase the size of the existing servers to accommodate a higher population. I do not know how much potential overhead room is left available but as much of any that might be left should be taken advantage of. 2) Add more servers in the GMT -5 through GMT +2 zones. I'd recommend GMT -4 specifically for the South American players as most of South America is GMT -4. I'd recommend a second server at GMT +2 for the European players seeing as how Europe has more than double the population of the US and thus should be no surprise to generate a large customer following over there.
• Conclusion: This one is a wait see folks. This problem is a new one that was hiding behind the que kicker problem. Being that it only showed up AFTER everyone went home for the weekend, we won't be able to judge how well NC Soft addresses the problem until Monday. For now, all we can do is be patient and keep reporting problems as they occur so NC Soft can at least be aware of the issues when they come back to work.

 

To everyone who fully reads the above, I know it is long. I thank you for taking the time to read it in full. For those who are not native English speakers I apologize for not translating the full post. Sadly that would make it far too long as is. Please feel free to post your own thoughts below. Please keep things civil. Please think your thoughts through several times before posting so you can post well reasoned and thought out replies.

 

Tiffi of Devianne

 

Edit: Finally, I'd just like to say any errors are mine and no one elses.

[sour]

2 days ago I purchased 3x founder packs and $50 in NCoin for each account. I leveled my 2 support accounts last 2 days and tried logging in my main today to apply VIP4 and whatnot.

Guess what - 12 hour wait.... Once I was at 100 in line, I stared patiently at screen as it ticked down to 0. Once it was my turn to login, I was instantly greeted with a message "your client will close now". I thought they fixed that?!

I'm very upset. There are hundreds on hundreds of afk players that leave their pc on all day while at work to bypass the queue. People were talking about it in chat. NCwest or w/e really needs to call home and get this fixed.

You're right, it's not the end of the world but people are also in the right being upset and feeling wronged about it.

 

[Medeoan]

I suspect what they did was drastically increase the time before auto log out kicks in. For many games it is 30 minutes to an hour. World of Warcraft is 45 minutes. I think they were not expecting ques to be this long. That is why I advocate more capacity on existing servers, if possible, and more servers in comparable time zones to TI and Giran to give people more options for sieges are reasonable hours.

 

With those two changes, If enough people spread out to other servers, should they be made, we will see the ques drop or even disappear entirely. I'd also like to see fishing reverted so it is no longer automated by the game directly, but I doubt that would happen.

[Devoid]

tl;dr

The rates got fixed because people stopped spending. And losing VIPs is the worst possible outcome of the business plan for these vegetative servers NCwest has.

For example, the limited amount of servers/queue encourages people to spend, hence avoidance of a solution on NC part.

Regarding account flagging, I have had some of my newer accounts also locked, even though they were far over 2 years old, when the autoban system was deployed. Still, this is nothing new, if you hadn't created an account over the last year, you wouldn't know, of course, but all new accounts are autobanned for "suspicious activity". CS always removes the autoban once you contact them, this is absolutely no big deal.

[Medeoan]

Are you one of those tin foil hat people that honestly believe that have any amount of VIP status actually lets you bypass the que or ever did?

 

The VIP system has nothing to do with how many servers there are, nor does have it anything to do with the que. There is zero business sense in such an illogical assumption that there is any connection or in any strategy to punish players who do not purchase VIP. If nothing it harms their total customer base which in turn harms the potential number of people who might otherwise be willing to spend money on NC Coin and Classic Launch Packages.

[Ghost007]

i agree it has nothing to do with vip or not... even vip started having small queue ...and if more people buy vip then queue will be the same for them also...

the problem right now is that after the update that supposed to fixed the issue in login the queue is longer and cause of that people just stopped log out ...

so the queue issue got even worst than it was before... .. i think simple solution is to disconnect afk chars in game either fishing or whatever every hour or something if thats even possible to do ... 

[airfathaaaaa]

you cant fix the queue when there are 2500 even 3k yesterday people waiting to log on a single server that is already at 6k.....

it needs a new server 

[sour]

9 minutes ago, Medeoan said:

Are you one of those tin foil hat people that honestly believe that have any amount of VIP status actually lets you bypass the que or ever did?

 

The VIP system has nothing to do with how many servers there are, nor does have it anything to do with the que. There is zero business sense in such an illogical assumption that there is any connection or in any strategy to punish players who do not purchase VIP. If nothing it harms their total customer base which in turn harms the potential number of people who might otherwise be willing to spend money on NC Coin and Classic Launch Packages.

they have different queue systems.... 

[PyroAmos]

the problem is they expect it to fail shortly, so they refuse to open new servers and give free server transfers, since they'd have to shortly merge servers when they inevitably fail. Unfortunately for them over a week in and even with their terrible release, people still want to play because the MMO market as a whole hasn't put a game out worth playing in close to 15 years and people yearn for a PC MMORPG game not catered to the console 10 year old kid that don't want to grind and just wants to play MMORPG version of PUBG. Very sad that a company fails to accept that a reality is happening and their ancient game actually has more appeal than any of the trash they've put out in the last decade.

TLRD: we're old, we just want to grind and get strong. Give us a game where we can grind and get strong (and not delete our progress after a year for OMG lets get more noobs up to your level)

[Medeoan]

The problem with everyone who wants to boot the afk players is that afk play was and still is a CORE feature of how the game was designed, built, and intended to be played. To kick people using that mechanic simply is not fair to those playing the game the way it was intended to be played. Nor is it the correct way to deal with the problem. That is why I believe the only real solutions are increasing server capacity and additional servers.

 

We just have to wait until Monday to see what Juji and Hime think when they report back to work. Then we have to wait and see what NC Korea tells them to do about the problem. I know people are frustrated and upset, I certainly didn't want to give up my toons on TI and start over on Aden either. That said, patience really is the best tool in our arsonal until Monday arrives.

[Medeoan]

4 minutes ago, sour said:

they have different queue systems.... 

Do you have proof of that?

[sour]

Read the forums or login with 2 different account - one with VIP and one without. 

This is common knowledge. You think everyone is complaining they cant login to apply their VIP status for nothing?

In case your interested, my VIP4 account had a queue of ~120 earlier while conversely, my non-vip had a ~1500 queue. Logged them in at the same time.

It appears, VIP have priority over non-vips and only queue with eachother.

[Medeoan]

That is a problem. That is plain bad business and will sour MANY people.

[Eledh666]

Thanks Medeoan for your comments, I see you share most of my points of view. My guess is that things will be accordingly addressed, and things like this may need some time and patience from the community.

On the other hand, I was wondering if server connection limits where intended or not: imagine that server opens by allowing 100k players from the beginning (just to say a big number), newbie areas really crowded and impossible to play. In fact, when server opened it was really hard to quest on these regions, many people doing the same quests. Over the time, number has to be increased, I think is normal to keep opening connections when players start to move to other regions of the map. Giran was empty 1 week ago, now we can start to see people there. So my guess is server will keep growing, and when it reaches its real limits, maybe then NCSoft will run a second server.

[Medeoan]

Remember folks, NC Soft employees will be back in the office tomorrow. Patience until then. Then we will see how they handle the new issue with the super long ques.

[Oreoloveboss]

All of this was forseeable though. Why can private servers create an offline shop but NCsoft cant, they deal with several hour long queues meanwhile there are more people with AFK shops contributing nothing towards the game/community than there are people waiting in queue. Same with afk fishing, and in general afk people who don't want to wait in queue so they just afk all day long.

 

It's ridiculous and could be solved by any company that actually cared for their player experience.

[Vitamin]

The time you put into this post is highly appreciated and whether I agree with some of your points I have to disagree with most of them..Let me clarify

1. "We did not expect this volume of ppl" is not an excuse at any way.. I am sure they know what happens even when some shitty private server like Lionna or Tales etc.. Opens. Even these servers are peaking at 15k wich is triple the capacity of what we have now. So they should have bought better servers cause THEY KNEW its going to be overpopulated. That leads to only 2 conclusions. A) The low cap was intentional to make people get VIP status aka pay to play B) Someone responsible for this sector of the game did his job very poorly.

2. It is unacceptable to have people locked out of their accounts for 6 days for automated system failure. They should have people monitoring bot activity manually or at least have a more sophisticated anti bot system. I know cases that people where locked just because they changed their IP address which is unacceptable at 2018

3. I see many people saying that is weekend and they don t work.. People wake up please. Every online service provider has 24/7 - 7/7 - 365/365 someone who you can contact in case of an issue. Of course they dont have a full team and of course they dont have all their devs in. But they should AT LEAST have someone to respond to enquires even if that response is "we will look into this on Monday"

4. What is the most annoying and irresponsible thing which again they got 0 excuse about is the lack of communication and the lack of support provided to people. It is understandable that you have a high amount of tickets but what they expect? They released a game that is at best at 50% of what it should be.. AS MENTIONED TO COUNTLESS POSTS THEY SHOULD AT LEAST PROVIDE US INFORMATION OF WHATS GOING ON!!!!

Warmest regards

[Medeoan]

32 minutes ago, Oreoloveboss said:

All of this was forseeable though. Why can private servers create an offline shop but NCsoft cant, they deal with several hour long queues meanwhile there are more people with AFK shops contributing nothing towards the game/community than there are people waiting in queue. Same with afk fishing, and in general afk people who don't want to wait in queue so they just afk all day long.

 

It's ridiculous and could be solved by any company that actually cared for their player experience.

To really understand the "WHY" of it all you have to understand NC Soft and its history. Lineage was created by 1 man. Just one. Jake Song. In 2003, after disagreements with the CEO of NC Soft, Jake left NC Soft in the middle of Lineage IIs development. Since then NC Soft has tried to make successful games either by taking the left overs of Jake's team to make MMOs "for western audiences", see Aion which ironically has done really well in China and flopped everywhere else, or buying out western companies including Richard Gariott's last major MMO effort, Tabula Rasa, and ArenaNet, Guild Wars.

 

To date, only Guild Wars has done well and that has been by and large because NC Soft let ArenaNet do its own thing rather than screwing it up by bringing in their own "experts". Big thing to understand is, Lineage 1 and 2 were designed for the Korean market and the Korean mentality. Not the US and EU mentality. Furthermore, they have been riding on the coattails of Jake Song ever since with very little change to the core blueprint. They haven't adapted or innovated except to make their games look better and occasionally poach ideas from other companies like Blizzard.

 

With all that in mind, can you honestly say that you are surprised by anything that comes from NC Soft?

 

Sources include:

Mention of Jake Song's conflict - https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1767/beyond_lineage_jake_song_goes_xl.php?print=1

NC Soft's History - https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2017/05/23/ncsoft-goes-west-how-the-korean-video-game-giant-is-translating-success/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSoft