Posted by Wilki in U.Hall in response to many posts stating that EA/Dev Team doesn't care about it's players...

Ok, I'll take you up on that offer. I think some of the opinions posted in this thread are emotionally based rather than supported by any true understanding of the subject at hand.

Let's start with this notion that EA doesn't care? Who is EA? The dev team? You better bet they care. When a major exploit occurs, they often stay long into the night and/or over weekends to make sure it gets fixed as soon as they can get it fixed. If they didn't care, they'd just leave it to the next day, and go on home when the whistle blows. Or do you mean the GM team? These are the people who spend hours putting together evidence, researching exploits, passing on bug reports, etc 24/7, 365 days a year. Having worked with them on a high profile exploit/hacking case not too long ago, I can personally tell you that they care very much. How about marketing? Yep, marketing cares too. How do we keep subs and keep revenue high? By keeping players happy, which includes keeping them safe so they don't get frustrated and quit. QA? Oh... the person that questions whether QA cares knows not of what they speak. This is the team that hammers away on the game with a passion every day that they're at work, with the single-minded purpose to find and fix problems, hopefully before they go live. Does community care? I wouldn't be here in the middle of my vacation posting and reading each day if we didn't. Every single publish I sit down with QA and we go through our list of things that were changed in the publish. We remove the items that we don't want the public to know about. There are always quite a few of these in our published, most of which go by unnoticed.

So, ok, "EA" cares. So you're wondering why hackings happen, why people occasionally find ways to crash shards, dupe items, use cheat programs to win in PvP and so on. That's a simple answer. It's because for every one of us there are many thousands of you. On a daily basis, we deal with bad guys ranging from script kiddies on up to operations conducted by organized crime.

And we're not alone, as the original post shows above. Every online game ever in existence has had to deal with issues like this. I see someone pointing at Blizzard's latest announcement about mass bannings. We don't generally talk about actions we've taken against the less scrupulous members of the UO community, so how could you possibly use that number to make a point about UO? You simply have no idea how many accounts we've banned yesterday, last week, last month, or last year. It's not an insignificant number. Statistics like “18,000 accounts” might sound impressive, but keep in mind that WoW is larger than UO and that we don’t release our accounts banned numbers. No comparison can be made, thus no point can be made by touting how many accounts Blizzard bans.

All that said, do I agree that we (EA and the gaming industry as a whole) could do a better job? Of course, and so does everyone else at EA. Not only do we fight the front line battles daily against individuals who cause these sorts of problems, but we continually spend time fixing exploits and security holes in our service. The vast majority of the time nobody ever knows about it because we don't make a habit of announcing such things unless they are already public.

It's the same way with WoW, EQ, SWG, AC and any other online game that has been available to the general public. We’ve all had our problems with exploits and security, and we all fight a daily and never-ending battle to improve the level of security in our services.

The very nature of online games prevents them from ever being 100% bulletproof, and all the emotional ranting and raving that I’ve seen coming from certain individuals on this forum lately isn't going to change that. We'll continue to find and fix the vast majority of these issues before anyone ever finds out about them, and jump on the few that slip through and are exploited by those whose sole purpose is to ruin the game in any way they can. We’ll also continue to care, very much so, thank you.

Very nice post.

well said, good job

Yeah, I suppose. Or at least my sister seems to think so.

Here is her post on UOstratics that seems to be getting alot of attention. Don't mind my follow up post. I haven't been taking my Ritalin over school break. I love her all the same.

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...b=5&o=&fpart=1

nice sig salem

Gramps made hot chocolate after 6pm the other night, not knowing mom doesn't allow it. I was racing and had nothing to do for the rest of the night except make stuff like that and pester DJ Plucky at UOradio.com with song requests.

Well said Wilki!

Well said,

I do know EA cares, I know they do because if not, the game would be a hell house, but one of my points here are, sometimes the fun in the game gets taken away. I know that major decisions about the game (Including game style, faccet aditions, and the way many templates go) but when things that certain players do a good number of them that have been with UO since its start gets changed to where it isnt about skill anymore but the items you have, it just gets irritating. YEs im talking about PvP.. but not just that. Luck etc now changes the way people hunt. And as much as people rant about it, this has been my question since AoS came out, ive just never wanted to ask because well, EA hears from these issues 24-7 and its just another ranter asking it but, Why not make a shard, much like seige, but that is the exact copy of before AoS was released?

Also:

I know ive heard this alot, but what exactly happened with the counselor program. I am not sure if they were payed etc or not, or the exact reason it was removed but, many people miss the things they did. Alot of Counselors would just show up in the towns to see what was going on and talk with the people. To discuss issues, and such.

It is a program that is greatly missed. Atleast in my opinion it may not be that way, But if they were payed why not hire volunteers for it? Many people like myself wish to have the program back and you can only imagine how many people want to be the ones who actually are in the program.

Your post was well said, and I never doubted that EA cares, but maybe theyve been answered in other threads, I never spend all my time reading U.Hall threads but, why not bring any of these back?

I know EA has worked hard, and we all appretiate it, or we wouldnt be playing it. Ive been to WoW, SWG, GW, other online games that arent PC and ive ALWAYS come back to UO. The longest Ive stayed on a game other than UO was about a month and a half. I just kept coming back to UO.

I apologize for being the only one to question on this thread, but I do agree with you 100% and do notice that EA works hard.

These are questions that I Just HAD to ask.



~Cobra

She did a good job on that post and I love BOTH of your sigs! :cheesy:

crazy stuff...yeah I've had my ups and downs with the GM's but not with the rest of the folks. I had an issue where I got banned for misnaming a pet (Dragon kept honking at me when I would call it so I named it honkey and got banned for illegal name). I did my time in the hole and got over it. Learned my lesson and lost the pet. No biggie. I made the mistake I paid the time. They did their job and I'm gld they did. Let me know that they do pay attention and keep the rules going!