[PC] TGIF... This week in Dev and Community 26/10/2012

TGIF! What a crazy week! I'm looking forward to kicking back and not dealing with massive server problems, but before I do, let's take a look at what went on:


New Afterworld Crafting items



For those of you who feel particularly crafty, we released new crafting items for Afterworld. Cool!

Halloween-themed Limited item



Awesome-looking, and only around for a short while. Get them before their gone!

Player Bans Oct 13- Oct 19

We had few very specific issues that resulted in a number of accounts being banned, which caused our Facebook ban numbers to be especially high last week.

FB: 77
MS: 5

As always, we are committed to keeping our games fun and fair for everyone, and will continue to ensure that players are playing fairly and within our Terms of Use by swinging the banhammer where it needs to be swung.

If you have any questions or comments about a frozen account, please direct them through Support as the Forums are not the place to discuss account freezes, because of the sensitive account information involved.

Facebook Offsite Game Policy Change

Facebook recently announced a change to their policy regarding offsite versions of games on Facebook that will take effect December 5th, 2012. You can read more about it here.

October 22 outages

As you may have noticed, a reasonably-sized chunk of the internet went down on Monday, and our games were part of that chunk! We wanted to thank everyone again for being understanding and awesome as we worked through all the issues caused by the downtime. You can read our official post about it here!

Ideas Section Revamp

Because of the issues caused by the outage, the Ideas Section Revamp has once again been pushed to next week. I apologize for the delay, and am really excited to have the Ideas section be more functional and accessible. Soon!

October 24 Battle Arena Issue

As some of you may know, we had an issue this past Battle Arena with a player exploiting the feature through a violation of our Terms of Use. We understand that players are passionate about our games and consequently want to do well, however we have certain limitations set in our Terms of Use to keep the game fun and competitive for everyone.

While I can't comment on the specific action taken on this player's account, I can say that we have a number of tools available to us when dealing with situations like this to reach an outcome that is optimized for both the game and community. These tools include, but aren't limited to, warnings, temporary bans, account penalties/restrictions (reduction of stats, levels, xp, etc), and permanent bans.

Massively Multiplayer Online games are all about players and player interactions. Our Terms of Use are there to ensure that players can enjoy these interactions in a safe and meaningful way, and abusing the Terms of Use undermines the reason people play games, and damages the community as a whole. We take our games and community very seriously as we want both to be fun and awesome.

We are also currently working on ensuring that future Battle Arenas will have a more robust detection system to prevent situations like this from occurring in the future.

Thank you to everyone who let us know about this issue. We appreciate your dedication to helping us keep the games awesome.

Also, please remember to keep any discussion of this issue civil and respectful, and free of any player names or links. I understand the majority of players aware of the situation are also aware of the player involved, however I appreciate your discretion and awesomeness.

Support Report

Hi everyone! Not gonna lie, this hasn't been our most favourite week here in Support. During Monday's outage I had no access to the game and account information that I rely on to assist players, while at the same time we were getting way more messages than normal from people wondering why the game was down and how their games would be affected. Ultimately response times have been much longer than normal this week, and we are sorry about the delay.

And speaking of delays! We've been getting a pile of odd requests coming in from "players" with invalid ID numbers and email addresses. Requests that can't be tied to real people who play our games are considered spam and are not investigated, so please resist the temptation to send in a bunch of messages from fake people. They don't help with getting your issue addressed and are a waste of everyone's time.

And finally, there were a few people who were sad that the outage stopped them from getting Spooktober Calendar background image. If you are one of these players then here it is! : http://wac.411c.edgecastcdn.net/00411C/kano/downloads/calendar_spooktober_2012.jpg Happy pre-Halloween Weekend everyone!

-Melanie

Joke of the week!

Joke of the week time! The following is a Wonder Bread original, and about as awful as you'd expect that to be!

A stop sign walks into a bar, sees two other stop signs, and asks "Hey, you wanna make a three-way? Highlight for hilarious joke! Click here for the appropriate sound effect.


Have a happy pre-halloween weekend everyone!


Play Now!

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Re: the battle arena issue ....

I sincerely hope you have done the right thing and removed that player from the game altogether. I know you will not tell us (and we will find out soon enough I suppose) but I can assure you if that player returns to Pirate Clan on Facebook you will have lost all credibility and there will be outrage amongst the players.



Oh, and here is the butterflies, happiness and sunshine that should be in all of our posts ... we have the best damn moderators working with us and we appreciate everything they do to keep our game moving along smoothly. Kudos for the fine choices you guys have made there.

 

Suspicion is no proof.

Any number of things could of happened.

 

This whole thing is sad..

 

True suspicion is not proof, but when a player's has a past , where said player has been frozen, before, not sure how many times, I am sure someone can enlighten me on that part, but for said players who is a smart player to even accuse others of the things that said players actually ""seems"" to do and then some, beyond most players capabilities or interest in even doing, just to win at a game is sad. So time will tell how this all unfolds.

 

Even with a past,many possibilities could of happened.

I'm one for all outside the box possibilities happening.

Cause that could of happened.

Well time will tell what happened.

 

Thanks for the mention

 

Wow - drinking the kool-aid pretty hard, aren't you?

I'm glad to see this person gone, it was obvious to everyone that something was terribly wrong. You can't kill a pirate every 70 seconds for 3.5 hours straight. Not without some assistance.

 

Can I get some of that Kool-Aid? lol

 

With stats like his,yeah thats possible.

I still ain't believin it as suspicion is no proof.

 

Ya know for all the previous times this player was frozen and for his having a bunch of alts, in the past, it is a wonder he was not banned before this, so If anyone really thinks he is not getting what he deserves , for the simple fact that it is about time, then I say , for someone like yourself who complains that Kano does not do enough in making strides for cheating, then I am at a loss .

 

Enough about that! and I think that is going like it should, BTW........ WHERE BE the HINTS for the new Hidden Recipe??????