Patch Notes: https://archeage.playkakaogames.com/news/570
I left out the word INCOMPETENCE from the title since it should be self-explanatory by now.
UI saving issue still not fixed, and they removed the majestic trees, mining drills, and plant houses from the Unchained version of the manastorm crystal shop. This is like missing the forest completely. Stuff like that doesn’t belong on a fresh start server yes. But the evolution ones too? This is another reason why I’d have no problems having my account transferred over to legacy. It’s like your paying to have a half-assed cash shop in Unchained. And on the UI front, XLGAMES is seriously one of the worst development teams around when it comes to bugs and being able to fix them.
Kakao as publisher is proving they aren’t up to the task with publishing ArcheAge (it’s amazing they were able to publish Black Desert Online for as long as they did). As I mentioned before, the company managed to acquire a majority stake in the developer XLGAMES, but that doesn’t mean added competency for publisher or the developer. In fact, it just highlights how ill prepared Kakao was in transitioning the service from Gamigo.
Whoever the western product manager/producer is, they are not making the proper decisions (and are doing far more damage with this franchise’ already poor reputation). Moving to a subscription only model for Unchained was a risky bet on their part, but they are proving they are already in over their heads managing the game during everyones free period. No, the exploiting PVP degenerates that populate this game aren’t going to go anywhere no matter how much they meme about quitting or “one last ride”. They’ll stick around until AA2 comes out, and repeat the mess there. Potatoes like myself are perfectly content with the property part of the game (except having stuff constantly removed from the cash shop); if landrush had turned out differently, then it would’ve been academic for me to not continue past my free time ($104 across two of my account for an extra 180 days is low cost entertainment in-game, and being an observer over on their Discord; which is now a hot mess of memes). And I have no need to expend money on credits since they compensated more than I ever sunk into this game. Make no mistake, Gamigo is still the worst western publisher as far as I am concerned. But Kakao is giving them a good run right now (and that is pretty sad).
UPDATE: Kakao has performed a second ban wave (the first one was related specifically for RMT) that includes 323 for RMT, 10,706 alt accounts, and 75 main accounts related to the account creation and Twitter code abuse that happened over this weekend. These were permanent bans. To be fair, this action is probably the most that has happened in several years now (Gamigo did very little in the 2 years they published the game), and Kakao deserves some credit for taking some action versus none at all.
The problem over on the fresh start servers though is the damaged economy from resources (materials and gold) that have already traded hands as well as gear that has been enhanced (any advantage is magnified at the very start since it has a domino effect with being able to handle content before others. Yes, the gating of progression will allow everyone else to catch up, but they’ll be behind in terms of having been able to farm certain content.
This article over on MMOBOMB by a reader contributor, highlights the extent of what happened.
They made it clear they have no plans to rollback (again, being able to do that requires snapshotting the database more often in between the weekly maintenance where I presume they are backing up and verifying the database; I doubt Kakao is doing that since not even Trion was doing that, and most definitely Gamigo did not). And I doubt they will start a new fresh start server either despite a lot of feedback over on their Discord to do just that. Either way, the damage is done to those servers (doesn’t matter with the evolution servers).
The learning experience for Kakao going forward is that they should stop doing any more fresh start servers and transition to seasonal servers (with no more server mergers) because the core problem is a game that is filled with holes, and a player base (specifically the competitive PvP ones) that will find ways to exploit those holes. What made things worse was a rushed service transition that tried to accomplish too many things in one crack. Launching a fresh start server from the start seemed sound on paper (it would generate interest that would bring players back), but they should’ve also known the risks of moving to a global build with all prior servers merged from the start (while taking possession of account data from another publisher). I spelled this out earlier and ended up being mostly correct about this being an imprudent move (where it would end up turning into a shit show).
Kakao also has issues with an exploitable web site (the web inventory was also exploited as explained in this github repository) that allowed some folks to redeem items multiple times. The Glyph platform (the main backend for account management, the web store, and payment flow) was also exploited multiple times under both Trion and Gamigo (after acquiring those assets). Kakao’s site however allowed people to automate the account creation process and apply/redeem the codes (leading to the explosion over the weekend, and thus over 10K alt accounts being permanently banned as of this current ban wave).
These now damaged and what will quickly become dead servers, will end up having to merge much more quickly (causing grief for everyone on the evolution server, which also results in player retention issues when some decide not to go through another merge; I’m on that last leg myself since Lost Ark will be out by then, and that may end up being more than enough to keep me occupied).
