Neverwinter servers rolled back seven hours after in-game currency exploit

Severs for Cryptic's MMO Neverwinter were rolled back seven hours over the weekend following an exploit that allowed players to amass billions in in-game currency, according to posts on the forums of publisher Perfect World Entertainment.

The servers were taken down briefly yesterday for the rollback, erasing progress players' made between 8:20 a.m. and 3:20 p.m. ET. According to a post by Neverwinter community team manager Noel Holmes, a bug was discovered early Sunday morning by "a very small group of villainous Nashers," who used the bug to exploit the game's Open Beta Giveaway and Auction House to amass large amounts of Astral Diamonds.

"Rather than let the malicious efforts of a few unsavory players linger and continually impact the game's economy and balance as we progress through these later stages of Open Beta, we have made the extremely difficult decision to rollback Neverwinter to a time shortly before the abuse and exploitation began," Holmes wrote.

The bug has been corrected and the company has taken actions against the group who discovered the ban, "including but not limited to" handing out permanent bans from Neverwinter. The servers are back online and beta testing has resumed, but the Auction House and Astral Diamond exchange are now inactive. Holmes wrote extensive testing will be performed on these systems to ensure the exploit is resolved before bringing them back online.

Perfect World will send virtual gifts to all players as a thank you for bearing with the rollback.