In the MMORPG Bless Online, something happened that online role-playing games only do in extreme emergencies: a rollback. 18 hours on September 20 are treated as if they never happened. While there is compensation, much criticism is forthcoming.
This happened with Bless: In Bless, 18 hours of player progress vanished starting from the morning of September 20. Everything played during that time is gone: All progress until the emergency maintenance of all servers late into the night of September 21 in our time.
How the developers are responding: Neowiz apologizes “deeply” for these inconveniences. Steps are being taken to ensure that this does not happen again. Additionally, players will be compensated. You can read more about how here on Steam.
This is how the community is reacting: Bless is already under heavy fire on social media platforms like reddit and Steam. This development is now being sharply criticized.
- Upset players refer to it as the “last nail in the coffin”
- Neowiz’s “compensation” is deemed insufficient by many
- The harshest critics don’t just demand compensation for the lost 18 hours, but for everything they have invested in Bless in terms of time and money
- Some players do encourage the developers, noting that Bless is still in early access
The bulk of the criticism is not about the rollback but about the general state of the game. It seems that many critics are no longer even playing Bless, but are expressing their displeasure or deriding Neowiz, even though they are not affected by the rollback.
The strange thing here: The reason for the rollback is discussed nowhere, neither by the players nor by the developers.
It is assumed that a “gold exploit” was running in the background, causing such irreparable damage that Neowiz resorted to the rollback.
A rollback is an extremely rare and serious incident in MMORPGs. Developers typically only go to this step in cases of severe economic exploits.
Rollbacks in MMORPGs: Often requested, rarely done
What is a rollback? A “rollback” is like the absolute emergency plan of an online game. It resembles a “system restore” in Windows. The servers and everything on them are reset to a state before “the catastrophe”.
Everything that happened after that time is then lost.
Examples of rollbacks or demands for them: Generally, “rollbacks” are requested more often by players than implemented by developers.
Players demand “rollbacks” when exploits occur that grant unfair advantages that they exploit:
- For example, players from The Elder Scrolls Online called for a rollback after the launch in 2014, when “gold dupes” were going around – But it didn’t happen, Zenimax indicated they had it under control and the reports were exaggerated
- In ArcheAge, rollbacks were called for more frequently, especially after server problems made the distribution of fortresses in Auroria unfair in November 2014. Again, there was no rollback – In fact, some ArcheAge servers were reset after a catastrophic restart in 2015
- In Trove, a rollback occurred after a major economic exploit – that was just a few weeks ago. Trion Worlds generously compensated all those affected here
Why rollbacks are so rare: Such rollbacks are a public admission of serious mistakes and are therefore rarely undertaken. Bless apparently saw no other way out.
The news of the rollback comes at a time when Bless is already in a strange situation:
