Final Update, on the behalf of Khrolan:
All,
Thanks for bearing with us today as we worked to reverse the inadvertent, automated distribution of bonus items acquired with Golden Tokens, which are meant to be granted as a reward for participating in an upcoming promotion.
Golden Tokens themselves have been removed from in-game mail and the auction house. Items purchased with them have also been removed, and the Golden Token section of the marketplace has been disabled. If you encounter a Golden Token in the world, or an item that is potentially the result of a Golden Token exchange, please feel free to submit a ticket reporting the situation – although cases like this will be minimal.
If you legitimately purchased a Golden Token, or an item purchased using a token, from another player and the result of that transaction has been removed by our sweep please contact support and we’ll be happy to set things right for you.
The good news in all of this is that as a reasonably containable issue, there was no need for any drastic action like a rollback. As those tend impact hours or days of unrelated progress, and take significantly longer than our targeted cleanup, they’re best avoided when it’s possible to do so.
It’s important for me to take ownership for the unintentional distribution that occurred, the amount of gameplay time that’s been interrupted by our downtime, and directly apologize to you for these inadequacies. I’m also regretful that an event like this temporarily detracted from the positive vibes about the upcoming 3.5 update.
Lastly, we’re looking into what we can provide as compensation for the downtime today. Thanks for your understanding.
-Khrolan
Hey all,
The Golden Ticket reward item was made available in an unintended way and NA and EU ArcheAge servers have been brought offline to resolve the issue.
We're sorry we weren't able to provide more warning before coming offline but it was important to get this resolved as quickly as possible.
Expect an update to this forum post in 1 hour with news on our progress.
Update #1: While are still working on resolving the issue, the team has made steady progress. We'll be back in another hour with an additional update, or sooner if we have news. Thanks for your patience.
Update #2: The team is still diligently working on cleanup, and progress has been steady. However, there is still a fair bit more to do. We'll be back in about 2 hours with our next update.
Update 3: While the team is still working on resolving the issue, we wanted to share additional details.
The Golden Tickets were not intended to be released in the way that they were, so we've been hard at work to remove all of them from the game. IE: We've removed them from all users, on all servers, across all regions. Since these Golden Tickets could be redeemed for items, we are in the process of removing all of those, too. It's a complicated process with a lot of moving pieces, which is why the team has been working on this tirelessly since 12:30 PM PDT.
We'll be back in another 2 hours, or earlier if there is any new info.
Additionally, I know some of you have been wondering where Celestrata is. She's actually out of office both today and tomorrow, as she is getting married. But, myself (Morgana) and the other members of the community team will make sure someone is always here to update you all.