July 12th was a rough day for a number of unlucky Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception multiplayer beta gamers: first they got word that there would be no dedicated servers for the online offering - then they logged-on and discovered that both their profile information and cumulative rank (as well as any associated unlocks) had been reset.

Naughty Dog quickly responded to the situation, once the initial dust had settled - and they've got good news as well as some bad news for affected Uncharted 3 beta members.

Problems in a multiplayer beta obviously come with the territory - however, two aspects of the Uncharted 3 beta make the rank and profile reset especially frustrating for the PS3 community.

1) As a result of the PSN hacking, and subsequent offer of free PlayStation Plus for all members of the Sony online community - the Uncharted 3 beta is enormous with over one million users taking part. As a result, even though only a small percentage of players may have been affected - that percentage still represents a lot of users.

2) Naughty Dog has specifically offered profile-related rewards for the beta that unlock content in the final Uncharted 3 retail release. While the actual data that tells Naughty Dog who qualifies for a reward is allegedly intact, players won't have access to their pre-reset stats to know whether they've made the cut or not (at least until Naughty Dog contacts them with post-beta reward information).

in a recent post to their official blog Naughty Dog laid-out the situation and we've included the most relevant highlights below:

Many players have had to re-accept the online agreement when logging in to the Beta and their profile shows they are at level 1, with no XP accumulated or Cash remaining in their profile. We’re actively looking into what caused the issue so we can prevent it from happening in the future.

The GOOD news is that your progress towards those rewards has NOT been lost — we still have all of your detailed play history by game stored safely and ALL games you have played in the past and are playing right now WILL be counted towards your overall progress.

The BAD news is that we won’t be able to update your profile back to your current level, cash and unlocks. Unfortunately, that means all affected players will not be able to check their progress towards the requirements for the Beta rewards. We won’t be able to update your profile or even look up if you had 1,000 XP or 100,000 XP left before hitting level 25 before the Uncharted 3 Beta ends.

The situation is certainly frustrating, especially for players that had been enjoying the beta and spent time customizing load-outs with hard-earned unlocks. However, it's not all doom and gloom since cash, unlocks, and level rank will not carry-over into the final game - only the rewards earned (by hitting the various benchmarks) during the beta. While it sounds as though most of the profile data is alive and well at Naughty Dog, it's still a little unclear whether or not progress toward the level 25 rank reward was affected (even though per game data sounds intact).

Uncharted 3 Beta Three Team

In case you missed them, here's a list of the various challenges - and what they unlock in the retail version of Uncharted 3:

  • Download the Uncharted 3 Beta and receive the exclusive UNCHARTED 3 PSN Beta Tester Avatar!
  • Complete 10 matches in every Gametype of Competitive Multiplayer and receive the Exclusive Beta Decal Pack 1!
  • Complete 5 matches in every Gametype of Co-operative Multiplayer and receive the Exclusive Beta Decal Pack 2!
  • Complete 4 Treasure Sets and receive the Treasure Hunter's Starter Pack!
  • Rank up to level 25 in the Beta and receive a handsome reward of in-game cash on day one!

As a result, while the beta rank wipe will certainly be frustrating for fans who were actively going after the rewards, this kind of thing is expected in a beta. As Naughty Dog puts it: "everything you do is helping us work towards a much better experience for when the retail version of Uncharted 3 is released in November. After all — finding these kinds of issues early is (thankfully) what a Beta period is for."

It's hard to imagine that anyone who was aggressively working on collecting the various rewards won't have some sense of where they left-off. As we mentioned in our prior Uncharted 3 multiplayer coverage, the online experience is a polished and exciting offering - who wouldn't mind playing a few extra rounds just to make sure they get in on those rewards?

Follow me on Twitter @benkendrick and let us know whether or not you've had a similar problem in a beta.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception releases November 1st, 2011 for the PS3.

Source: Naughty Dog