In the MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online there was a bug on Sunday on the mega servers for PC in Europe related to the guild merchant reset. This resulted in several million gold entering circulation. Players are excited and called for a rollback. We spoke with Zenimax about the incident.
We at MeinMMO conducted an interview with the German community manager of The Elder Scrolls Online, Kai Schober, in writing. The topic of the interview is the bug with the guild merchant reset on Sunday, August 18, on the European mega server for PC. This bug was dubbed “Black Sunday” by the ESO community.
Images, links, titles, subheadings, and everything surrounding the interview are set by us.
MeinMMO: To understand the situation first. The bug occurred on Sunday, at the time when the guild merchants are reset: What usually happens at that time?
Guild merchants in ESO are NPCs that can be hired by guilds in the game for one week to offer the goods of their members at a location in the game. To hire one, a bid in gold must be placed in advance during the week.
On Sunday, the bids are compared, and the highest bidder is awarded the contract; unsuccessful bidders receive their gold back into the guild treasury.
Depending on the location, these NPCs are more or less in demand. A merchant in Krempten (the capital of Elsweyr) is, for example, significantly more sought after than one at a crossroads in Steinfälle.
Why is it important for players to play ESO at that specific time and participate in this guild merchant reset?
In principle, players do not need to play at that exact time. It previously made sense for guild leaders to be logged in at the time of the switch so that they could quickly search for alternative merchants in case their guild was outbid. However, this requirement was eliminated with the multi-bidding introduced in Update 23 (Scalebreaker).
Unfortunately, the timing of the switch (on both PC servers – the console servers will get U23 next week) coincided with European prime time. Players were online for other reasons.
Server Had a Hiccup
What went wrong this Sunday?
The server could not handle the increased requests during a time when it was already heavily burdened and had a hiccup.
In the forums, it is mentioned that guilds have received “billions of gold” refunded. Is that correct or an exaggeration?
That is greatly exaggerated. The highest-priced merchants receive low double-digit million bids. These were sometimes refunded two or three times. Without knowing the exact numbers personally (because of gamescom), I estimate a triple-digit million amount of gold that was pumped into the game. To put that in perspective, established players often have a personal fortune of 10 million gold and up.
No Collapse of the Economic System
How serious is the problem from your point of view?
See above. In relation to the gold already in circulation, the influx was rather minor, by no means inflationary, and even less a collapse of the economic system.
Players called for a rollback of the servers – Was this considered at any point?
The progress of players in terms of gained experience, completed quests, found loot, and so on is more important than some additional gold.
What measures are planned to ensure that this problem does not occur again in the future?
We continuously monitor the load on our servers. Right now, we have temporarily disabled addon functions, such as retrieving guild history, as these further burden the guild system and thus the associated merchant system. This is a quick solution but not a permanent one.
We are also considering moving the timing of the merchant switch to another time because with multi-bidding, there is no longer a need for guild leaders to possibly get up in the middle of the night to check the success of their bids.
Further options are being discussed.
Zenimax is working to restore player trust
Some players complain that the fundamental issues with ESO run deeper, in the performance problems. Zenimax has already announced a comprehensive package on how they plan to solve these issues in the long term. It seems to be a constant source of conflict, for which you, as a community manager, have to act as a lightning rod. Do you say: I can’t wait until it’s all over?
It is often only a small but very vocal part of the community that creates a conflict out of this. The same is true again with the guild merchants.
It is always difficult to convey that such fundamental corrections, like performance improvements, are not something that can be resolved overnight with a single line of code. We have been working behind the scenes for quite some time on the improvements and finally informed the player base during QuakeCon. Generally, actions are of course always better than words, and we look forward to the moment when we can close this chapter and restore the community’s trust that has been rightly shaken.
Thank you for the conversation.
The incident and the fury of players over “Black Sunday” in The Elder Scrolls Online is covered in this article.
