in Elder scrolls online.http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/04/18/the-elder-scrolls-online-hit-w...When you make an MMO, you will eventually learn a hard lesson about how a single bug can derail your entire game. Right now, that’s exactly what’s happening with The Elder Scrolls Online.
Players are rolling around in legendary gear with billions of gold in the bank thanks to a relatively easy-to-execute duplication bug (a dupe) that can even be done by accident.
While it wouldn’t help anyone to go through a step-by-step process as to how the dupe is actually performed, the end result is that players are able to duplicate stacks of materials in their inventory. The excess materials can be sold to vendors for cash, and then instantly replenished with the dupe bug once more.
Obviously, this is wreaking havoc on the game as now money and items are relatively worthless with so much gold flooding the economy. Zenimax will likely have to take enormous steps to roll back the game or specific accounts to undo the damage, and that could take an exceptionally long time.
Players have found fault with Zenimax’s reaction to the dupe, or rather, lack of reaction. The company reportedly didn’t take action until after the dupe had been posted all over YouTube, and now beta testers are piping up to say that a few of them actually reported the dupe bug during their test play, but Zenimax never responded:
“”Tthe first time I reported it was during the beta stress-test weekend starting Friday the 7th of February,” one player says. “Wasn’t the only time I reported it and it was infuriating that no-one at Zenimax responded to follow up on such a serious issue. I should add that I used /bug and feedback that first time, I didn’t bring it up on the forums until people started abusing it in the live game.”
The accusation is that Zenimax simply ignored warnings from its own players, and didn’t take action until the dupe threatened to overrun the game.
The problems with the bug are far, far reaching. It’s not simply a matter of just banning players that used the dupe, which might be hard to track as is. Rather, people now have fantastic gear because they were able to buy incredibly cheap crafting materials due to other people using the dupe. Technically they’ve done nothing wrong, yet they’ve massively benefited from the situation, and they too are now unbalancing the game.
The dupe doesn’t have to destroy TESO, and I’m sure it won’t. Zenimax will likely work tirelessly to try and repair the damage, though how exactly they should do that is up for debate. A common suggestion is the implementation of entirely new crafting materials, which would make the duped ones worthless, though that would only solve some of the problems with the dupe, and the effects on the game’s economy might be long lasting regardless.
Hopefully Zenimax will put forth a plan to fix things soon, so stay tuned for that. And if you’re a current player? Resist the urge to become a profiteer.
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