In the MMORPG ArcheAge Unchained, there was a long outage of the European server Belstrom last week. The developers discovered an exploit on this server.
What happened? On the Belstrom server in the MMORPG ArcheAge Unchained, there were complaints because players did not receive the gold they had earned in the auction house.
The developers responded on Monday, November 4, and investigated the case. The Belstrom server was taken offline. Many expected a quick fix, but players had to wait nearly 3 days before they could log back in with their characters.
During this time, the community managers for ArcheAge regularly released updates in the forums and social media. They also shared a reason for the delay: players had recognized and exploited the bug in the auction house.
What happened on Belstrom? On Thursday evening, the server went live again. The developers reported that the auction house was functioning again and the issues were fully resolved.
However, it turned out that 9 accounts had exploited the situation, with the gained items not yet being on the market. These 9 accounts were permanently banned and the items deleted.
For the other players, however, there were compensations for the downtime. But this led to new discussions.
“Please take the American servers offline for 3 days as well!”
What was offered as compensation? Players from the Belstrom server who had a character level 30 or higher before the outage received the following compensation:
- 250x Kyrios Orders
- 50x Gilda Stars
- 10x Bound Restorers for labor points
- 1x Hiram Infusion Package
Additionally, there was a bonus event that ran until November 11 at 4:00 PM. During this time, all players received double XP, honor, and drop rates.
Other players are complaining: In a reddit thread, an American player complains about the amount of rewards. The user Navystylz writes that while players deserved compensation, it should not be of this magnitude:
[..] and yet Belstrom receives quite a hefty compensation when considering that most players would never have accomplished things so efficiently. They couldn’t even generate 10,000 labor points in 3 days. And then 250 badges?
In his thread, he argues that the American servers should also be taken offline for 3 days to receive such significant compensation. Several users agree with him, like Hello_Friends_22, who also wishes for downtime for a European server.
Does the exploit also affect other servers? In another reddit thread, the user rmbermine reports that the exploit from Belstrom also works on other servers, allowing for item duplication.
This has not yet been officially confirmed or denied. Under the announcement for the compensations for Belstrom, the user mcdeath already joked:
Let’s call it what it really is. This was a beta test for compensation on the other servers *holds breath*
ArcheAge Unchained is facing problems: With the release of the new Buy2Play version of ArcheAge, the game garnered a lot of attention. This initially caused long queues in Unchained. To counteract wait times, new servers were launched in line with the Steam release.
However, even outside of the queues, there were problems. There was a world boss exploit and issues with the battle pass. This was supposed to secure the monetization of the game, but is still currently disabled.
In the reddit community, there’s agreement that these problems are bad for the game. However, there is disagreement about whether the publisher Gamigo or the developer XL-Games is to blame. Despite the bugs and exploits, players are still optimistic, especially since complaints are responded to quickly.
Apart from the bugs, ArcheAge Unchained is a very interesting sandbox MMORPG. We tested it for you:
