Took a look at the Nexon "careers" page

[IImaplers]

@Suricatta Much respect to those who actually want to make the game better for everyone. May I ask exactly what resources were/are lacking which you speak of?

[Death]

@Suricatta;

I have to admit i'm truly curious how it ended and if there is still some sort of relation between the MWLB people and GM's.

[MasPan]

I'm still around. :D

Anyway, as one of the first MWLBers, I too can vouch on his word. It may seem like nothing much happened while the program was in place, but like a GM's job... we did what we had to do with discretion. We all signed up for the program with the spirit and will to make the game better in the shadows, even if the contribution would seem like a drop in the bucket.

Sadly, among the reasons that the program didn't last was that hackers kept punching new holes into the bucket, and we simply did not have enough resources at our disposal to deal with them all. We, MWLBers and GMs, all cared about the state of the game. It just wasn't nearly enough.

In the end, you have to admit that the idea was good on paper. It's just the execution that failed.

Also, surprised you decided to reveal yourself, Maspan. :P

What he said. And I revealed myself because I no longer play any Nexon games, lol. What with DFO going under and all.

[Caudatus]

Hot damn, Suri and Monti. I should have known you'd have been in the program Mas. XP

Anyway, as for resources, well I'll start out with how the program started out. At the start, there were only a handful of people, 11 if I recall correctly. I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact numbers, but the main point was that even if every one of them was active, that's a drop in the bucket for the number of people playing MS. I believe by the second wave of additions, we were up to around 20-25 people, but again, not every one of those was active. After that it was a fairly long time before they made any more people MWLB.

Now as for the next part, I don't want to criticize the GMs in charge for this, but it's true that in many ways they did a piss poor job. They had very little idea of how to get a group all on the same page, and keep it there. I came up with a weekly vent call, sometimes twice a week so that we'd all be on the same page. Spent a lot of time coming up with nick names for people too, since all our names were pretty big mouthfuls. I also came up with Squeep, our amazing mascot. :P

But anyway, the GMs tried, but failed rather spectacularly in many ways when it came to the start of the program. At first we were simply level 199 beginners with teleport. We had to use a special command just to hide every time we logged on. We couldn't fly, and the enemies would lock on to us and attack us if they were able to be aggroed. Oh and we could get knocked back. It was a pain in the ass chasing people for evidence if they telehacked at Griffins and whatnot. And we always suffered from the same lag/dcing that everyone else had to deal with. Probably can't fix that last one, but when the dc and cc hackers existed, it was next to impossible to get decent evidence without a GM around to follow them and ban them.

Anyway, we also had to fill out reports on things, and we had private youtube channels that were around for video evidence. Though it took a while to even use the youtube channels due to some problems with it. So yes, they didn't do a very good job prepping things before the start of the program, and they also swapped around the people in charge of the program as well as the GMs that were our contacts Well other than Tekie and Libra. They were there from almost the start and I think til the end. It was just a mess for the first month or two, and only a slightly smaller mess for the next couple of months after that. And while I can't blame them for it completely since it was their first attempt at the program, they definitely should have devoted more resources to it if they wanted it to succeed.

[Suricatta]

@Suricatta Much respect to those who actually want to make the game better for everyone. May I ask exactly what resources were/are lacking which you speak of?

EDIT: Caudatus above explains much better than I do. :P

@Suricatta;

I have to admit i'm truly curious how it ended and if there is still some sort of relation between the MWLB people and GM's.

It ended amicably and with regret that more couldn't be done. We've mostly lost contact with the GMs involved since, for last I hear, they have moved to other positions and games within NexonNA.

[LoveVictim]

Were you around for this? Guess who got this pomegranate fixed. You're welcome. Don't talk about what you don't know - even for the short while I was "Monticol" I was able to directly talk with a few GMs to get a few problems similar to this one brought to attention and corrected.

Big deal, so what, does that mean everyone is a MWLB now because Nexon is paying more attention to reports than they were 4 years ago (in which they would ignore all tickets/complaints and just listen to MWLB).

You just proved my point that MWLB's were useless.

[Caudatus]

Lol, my memory isn't the best Suri, so feel free to add anything I may have forgotten about things back then.

And truth be told, while I was one of the most active of the MWLB, it wasn't that I was super active in game. I probably spent an average to below average amount of time patrolling, but I spent a lot of time outside the game trying to get the MWLBers and GMs all on the same page. Still don't know how I was the one that ended up in charge of the Vent calls, I mean Daliah and Tiara were the original leads, along with Tekie and Cheezpuff and Vash around, you'd think one of them would have realized the necessity of it before I did. XP

As for why I left, well at the time I was getting busy with other things in life, and then someone's account was thought to be hacked. Not sure if it was just their email, or their actual character, but they put the program on lockdown while they were deciding whether or not to close it down. Turned out they didn't close it down, but they kept it in limbo long enough that I stopped participating. I haven't talked to any GMs in forever, but I do miss making fun of Cheezpuff and Tekonos. Man I even wrote an origin story for Tekie. XP

@LoveVictim: I think you forget that for a time there, Hime was the only response you'd ever get about any problems in game, and that was if you were super lucky. The MWLB emailed or chatted with the GMs on a weekly basis, so when some new hack or issue occurred, they heard about it asap. That's just one of the ways in which the MWLB helped MS players. I mean before that, it'd be next to impossible to say whether or not they knew about an issue given how long it took them to fix some things. Being a voice for the community was one of the few things they did right with the program, and I wish they had chosen like 3 or 4 GMs to go around to SP, basil, and Sleepy to stay in touch with the community even when the program was new, let alone by the end of things.

[IImaplers]

Hot damn, Suri and Monti. I should have known you'd have been in the program Mas. XP

Anyway, as for resources, well I'll start out with how the program started out. At the start, there were only a handful of people, 11 if I recall correctly. I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact numbers, but the main point was that even if every one of them was active, that's a drop in the bucket for the number of people playing MS. I believe by the second wave of additions, we were up to around 20-25 people, but again, not every one of those was active. After that it was a fairly long time before they made any more people MWLB.

Now as for the next part, I don't want to criticize the GMs in charge for this, but it's true that in many ways they did a piss poor job. They had very little idea of how to get a group all on the same page, and keep it there. I came up with a weekly vent call, sometimes twice a week so that we'd all be on the same page. Spent a lot of time coming up with nick names for people too, since all our names were pretty big mouthfuls. I also came up with Squeep, our amazing mascot. :P

But anyway, the GMs tried, but failed rather spectacularly in many ways when it came to the start of the program. At first we were simply level 199 beginners with teleport. We had to use a special command just to hide every time we logged on. We couldn't fly, and the enemies would lock on to us and attack us if they were able to be aggroed. Oh and we could get knocked back. It was a pain in the ass chasing people for evidence if they telehacked at Griffins and whatnot. And we always suffered from the same lag/dcing that everyone else had to deal with. Probably can't fix that last one, but when the dc and cc hackers existed, it was next to impossible to get decent evidence without a GM around to follow them and ban them.

Anyway, we also had to fill out reports on things, and we had private youtube channels that were around for video evidence. Though it took a while to even use the youtube channels due to some problems with it. So yes, they didn't do a very good job prepping things before the start of the program, and they also swapped around the people in charge of the program as well as the GMs that were our contacts Well other than Tekie and Libra. They were there from almost the start and I think til the end. It was just a mess for the first month or two, and only a slightly smaller mess for the next couple of months after that. And while I can't blame them for it completely since it was their first attempt at the program, they definitely should have devoted more resources to it if they wanted it to succeed.

LOL Squeep (cousin to the SP chinchilla I presume). Is that the guinea pig in your avatar? If so, it's quite fitting that it's a guinea pig because from what you say, it seemed like your team was used as guinea pigs (perhaps to absorb blame when things don't go right?) and not given the opportunity to be as effective as it should have been. Nexon's executive failures are a dime a dozen. But at least it seems like parts of your team's experience were very positive.

[Caudatus]

LOL Squeep (cousin to the SP chinchilla I presume). Is that the guinea pig in your avatar? If so, it's quite fitting that it's a guinea pig because from what you say, it seemed like your team was used as guinea pigs (perhaps to absorb blame when things don't go right?) and not given the opportunity to be as effective as it should have been. Nexon's executive failures are a dime a dozen. But it seems like parts of your team's experience were very positive.

Yeah, back in like the first vent call with Daliah and Tiara and Cheezpuff, we called ourselves guinea pigs since everything was new and sort of a trial run. So then it was just a matter of naming our mascot. And for some reason, Squeep just fit. XP And I wouldn't say we were ever used as scapegoats, well other than the community complaining we were either too powerful or not powerful enough.

Personally, I felt like they probably should have just straight up hired a handful of us for crap wages and had us go through the vetting process for them. It would have saved them time and energy, and let the program expand. I mean the older people were pretty well versed with things after a while, and while it would be an extra cost to the program, I think it'd have been worth it.

I say that because the number one flaw in the program was adding new people to the roster. I'd say over the course of the entire program, only about 1/4 of the members were actively participating at any one time. Though if I had to give an MVP, it'd probably be to Edanthe. She was a machine when it came to catching hackers and her notes on our meetings were always hilarious. XP Anyway, so for the size of MS at the time, I think the most people we ever had active was 20ish, and most of the time it was lower 10s at best, out of between 30-50 people. That's just not enough helpers, and not enough helpers on often enough. Yeah it's a volunteer program, but you need to reach a certain critical mass of people so that there's always like 5 or so people on, with 20ish on during peak gameplay times. So probably along the lines of a couple hundred MWLB would have been required to make things work, and that was never going to happen with how slow their vetting process was and how few people became active in the program once they were accepted. I can't recall how many people joined for like two vent calls and then were hardly ever heard from again, but it was a fair amount. Some of that was just people losing interest in the game in general, and others were real life interfering with things, but again, that's why you have to have a large volunteer program for it to work, or you need to just straight up hire some people so you have a few sure members on all the time.

[Satellite]

Slightly off-topic but it's been a while since the last time I looked at 'Careers' page.

Additional Benefits

• Generous employee referral program
• Public Transportation Program - up to $100/monthly reimbursement for those opting to take public transportation
• Seasonal flu shots
• 3-6-9 Service recognition awards
• Tuition reimbursement
• Discounted gym membership
• Free dry cleaning pickups and drop-offs
  
• Free Starbucks coffee, tea, and soda fountain
• Big-screen TVs with DirecTV access and gaming consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and Kinect)
• Employee discount program on Nexon cash cards
• Monthly allowance on Nexon cash
• Library of video games, equipment, and books

Now you know what they do all the time at Nexon

[SaptaZapta]

Personally, I felt like they probably should have just straight up hired a handful of us for crap wages and had us go through the vetting process for them. It would have saved them time and energy, and let the program expand. I mean the older people were pretty well versed with things after a while, and while it would be an extra cost to the program, I think it'd have been worth it.

I say that because the number one flaw in the program was adding new people to the roster. I'd say over the course of the entire program, only about 1/4 of the members were actively participating at any one time. Though if I had to give an MVP, it'd probably be to Edanthe. She was a machine when it came to catching hackers and her notes on our meetings were always hilarious. XP Anyway, so for the size of MS at the time, I think the most people we ever had active was 20ish, and most of the time it was lower 10s at best, out of between 30-50 people. That's just not enough helpers, and not enough helpers on often enough. Yeah it's a volunteer program, but you need to reach a certain critical mass of people so that there's always like 5 or so people on, with 20ish on during peak gameplay times. So probably along the lines of a couple hundred MWLB would have been required to make things work, and that was never going to happen with how slow their vetting process was and how few people became active in the program once they were accepted. I can't recall how many people joined for like two vent calls and then were hardly ever heard from again, but it was a fair amount. Some of that was just people losing interest in the game in general, and others were real life interfering with things, but again, that's why you have to have a large volunteer program for it to work, or you need to just straight up hire some people so you have a few sure members on all the time.

Vetting new people or vetting reports?

How long did it take an MWLBer to catch a hacker, as opposed to how much time did a GM have to spend on such a report until the ban?
If there had been 100 MWLB members patrolling at all times, would there have been enough GMs to handle their reports?

[MasPan]

I still remember getting someone else's MWLB account info from Tiara at first haha. The program was kindof haphazard, but understandably so - everything they were trying to set up with us was new to them. I had to bow out pretty early in the program because of the demands of my job in the Navy, but it was good fun while it lasted. Ah well.

[Suricatta]

How long did it take an MWLBer to catch a hacker, as opposed to how much time did a GM have to spend on such a report until the ban?

If there had been 100 MWLB members patrolling at all times, would there have been enough GMs to handle their reports?

If you know where to look, catching hackers don't take long at all. The ones that are slippery (like those that constantly CC) are a tad harder to catch in the act, but we manage. And by providing evidence, it's generally easier and faster for the GMs to act on someone.

I highly doubt there are enough GMs to handle all of our reports though.

[Caudatus]

Vetting new people or vetting reports?

How long did it take an MWLBer to catch a hacker, as opposed to how much time did a GM have to spend on such a report until the ban?
If there had been 100 MWLB members patrolling at all times, would there have been enough GMs to handle their reports?

Both really. First vetting new people faster, and getting them brought up to speed faster. Having just a handful of GMs in charge of thousands of applications was going to be a slow process no matter how quickly they acted. So I'd have taken the first few MWLB, promoted a few of them into handling the newbies, while using the new hires to judge potential applicants since they'd know what qualities to look for in active members. Then, when the program got big enough, say around 100 people, take a few more of the older volunteers and hire them to help clear out the reports faster. I'd probably just set it up as contract work so they could get away with paying us crap, and have no benefits or whatever, but I suppose the whole DCing issue might be enough to put a stop to that. Though I guess you could give them a budget for decent internet access, kind of like how some commuters get a gas budget.

As for catching hackers, it varied. Some places had hackers on almost every channel, so a quick sweep would net you like 10 to 15 names. Other times, it'd be a struggle just finding 2-3 of them. It was a rather huge timesink because we had to collect evidence of every hacker we found, and upload it to youtube, when it finally was working that is. Occasionally you could get away with just screen shot evidence, but that was mainly the stupid botters in the FM and around Henesys. The ban time, well sometimes it was immediate, sometimes it took ages.

And as far having enough GMs to handle reports, well I doubt there would have been enough GMs to handle it all, but we only saw a small fraction of their team, so I could be wrong. I mean, just based on my own guesstimates, they probably had a team of 20-30 GMs, which was the only reason I can think of for how small the program remained.

[MasPan]

If you know where to look, catching hackers don't take long at all. The ones that are slippery (like those that constantly CC) are a tad harder to catch in the act, but we manage. And by providing evidence, it's generally easier and faster for the GMs to act on someone.

I highly doubt there are enough GMs to handle all of our reports though.

I remember making an interesting discovery from the cc hackers - whatever detection they were using reacted through invisibility. Which was obnoxious. Makes sense, though, since it's easy to tell when someone else enters a map - the mobs would drop aggro sometimes. My favorite patrolling grounds were Wolf Spiders and Birks/Dual Birks ;)

[SaptaZapta]

As for catching hackers, it varied. Some places had hackers on almost every channel, so a quick sweep would net you like 10 to 15 names. Other times, it'd be a struggle just finding 2-3 of them. It was a rather huge timesink because we had to collect evidence of every hacker we found, and upload it to youtube, when it finally was working that is. Occasionally you could get away with just screen shot evidence, but that was mainly the stupid botters in the FM and around Henesys.

That's actually what I was asking about, the time sink. How much time did you have to spend, collecting evidence and whatnot, per hacker?

The ban time, well sometimes it was immediate, sometimes it took ages.

Same question, really. Not elapsed time, but man-hours. From the moment a GM opened your report, through whatever time it would take them to watch the video, check their own database, fill out forms, do whatever procedures, until they could mark that case closed. How many minutes or hours, on average?

And, perhaps a key question: how much time (again, not elapsed, but attention-time) would a ban have taken if the GM were doing their own patrolling, perhaps using a player-supplied list of maps to check?

And as far having enough GMs to handle reports, well I doubt there would have been enough GMs to handle it all, but we only saw a small fraction of their team, so I could be wrong. I mean, just based on my own guesstimates, they probably had a team of 20-30 GMs, which was the only reason I can think of for how small the program remained.

Thank you.

[Caudatus]

That's actually what I was asking about, the time sink. How much time did you have to spend, collecting evidence and whatnot, per hacker?

I'd say for the easy to catch hackers, it'd be around 5 minutes. First you find them, then record a short 10-30 second video, then add the date and name to the video, then upload it. Some of it depended on youtube too, for a while there it was next to impossible to upload stuff, and even if you did, the GMs couldn't always watch it right away. For the ones that cced constantly, well sometimes you just couldn't catch them. The best you could do was grab their name and give it to a GM and hope they had better luck. I spent like a half hour trying to catch one at one time, shortly after that, the GMs just said for us to contact them when it came to catching them unless they had a crappy program that sat around for a while before ccing. So catching hackers could be either super easy, or super frustrating, never knew for sure which you'd get since sometimes things got patched, sometimes they didn't, some hackers were lazy and did the bare minimum, and some seemed to make things as difficult as possible to catch, either through ccing or dcing.

Oh, I should note a rather large time sink was just in travel. At the start we just got scrolls and whatnot. Eventually we got tele rocks, which helped us keep a list of popular places to go to, but I wish they'd expanded our powers earlier instead of just giving us modified beginner accounts. Took them forever to realize that was a terrible idea. Being able to warp to any map with a command and perhaps including an auto find name feature when you enter the map would have been handy. Manually doing that was a pain in the ass, and with the cc hackers, not always effective.

Same question, really. Not elapsed time, but man-hours. From the moment a GM opened your report, through whatever time it would take them to watch the video, check their own database, fill out forms, do whatever procedures, until they could mark that case closed. How many minutes or hours, on average?

I'd guess that it was around 15-30 minutes for them. I'm assuming that they had to take the evidence we provided, check it, then possibly find if there was more evidence around, check whether they had other accounts, and then take that evidence and store it on their own servers, possibly even have to write up a short report on it too given the sheets they wanted us to fill out. So it could conceivably be even more time than that if they have a ton of accounts that have to be linked and banned, and even then I'm just guessing, we only went on one "ride along" with a GM at the start of our training, and it was . . . well it wasn't all that useful to us. XP

And, perhaps a key question: how much time (again, not elapsed, but attention-time) would a ban have taken if the GM were doing their own patrolling, perhaps using a player-supplied list of maps to check?



Thank you.

I'm assuming it'd be about equal in time sinks either way. Whether they check our evidence, or make their own, I doubt that it'd change much. Maybe for obvious bans involving selling NX or botting, it'd be easier for them to do than us, but for the cc and dc hackers, the time sink was going to be bad no matter what, and shortly after the program started, those were the main problems.

[hadriel]

A long time ago, when I was having issues with hackers back in MSEA, lag played to our advantage (as in, the player's advantage). The disappearance of other players require at least some data packets to be sent to and fro, so lag implies that you have enough time to right click on that hacker and save his name. Then chasing them was easier.

Then came the party search function, which many players abused to leech off hackers who didn't start their own party. Even now, we can still find the names of the players from party search (in or without party) because the "refresh" rate is not that high.

I'd be much happier if players had a more... useful... reporting function.

Hadriel

[MountLag]

Strange how they don't just decide to automatically flag or ban anything that is highly suspicious, such as botters looting 500m+ worth of mesos from monsters or something.

[SaptaZapta]

Strange how they don't just decide to automatically flag or ban anything that is highly suspicious, such as botters looting 500m+ worth of mesos from monsters or something.

Oh, they do flag any number of things as suspicious. And auto-ban for them, too.
Unfortunately the hackers quickly learn how to avoid doing the things that trigger the auto-bans, and many legits get caught...