Rollback???? Not acceptable.

[cerest]

Cerest, that is not accurate. I certainly didn't get 3 levels in 30 minutes. That was my entire morning of hunt.

JDexter

You'll see I actually deleted that post almost immediately after I posted it. The down time was actually between 2 and 2.5 hours before the shards went down.

[bgrifter]

There isn't a MMORPG on the market that hasn't done exactly the same thing. The bad ones are the ones who don't bother rolling back and allow dupers to keep their ill-gotten gains. (or at least allow duplicates to circulate, same damage done) Kudos to Nevrax for minimizing the damage, I recall full day rollbacks in EQ wiping out raids and more, a couple hours is a drop in the bucket.

[chuangpo]

Agreed, Good Job Nevrax. SWG handled their recent credit dupe scam by banning everyone and their freaking brother who received duped credits... In fact, I saw my borther's name on the ban list... and he doesn't even play SWG... or have a computer... Mass bannings lots of unhappy people.. a lengthly appeal process... People lost 2.5 hours here.. that's nothing... if you enjoy the game, it should be no thang to get a couple of levels back. Better than having an economy that is totally out of whack with reality. Tis the nature of the business. Cerest, sorry you have to take heat for exploiters. Hopefully, you banned all of thier brothers too...

[Satchi]

Cerest, that is not accurate. I certainly didn't get 3 levels in 30 minutes. That was my entire morning of hunt.

JDexter

I'm sorry. Cerest's first post about 30 minutes was a mistake on my part. I was getting info from frazzled devs and there was a miscommunication.

This wasn't her fault at all. She was giving you the information she had as fast as she could -- and frankly, that's what a very good CM does.

thanks Cerest. I'm sorry for the headache this caused.

[balduk]

I agree the rollback was the best thing to do. Banning exploiters as most MMORPGs companies try to do doesnt fix the problem created by the dupes.

I will rather loose 2 hours now and play a fun game then loose the whole mmorpg life-cycle because of the whacked out economy. When MMORPGs dont rollback, it doesnt actually fix the problem. You just get stuck with it for the rest of the game-life. Best example was with Lineage II where people actually duped millions and you could see people twinked to death...espcially bad in a PVP game

Thanks Nevrax for actually doing it and not being afraid of the community reaction.

And thanks everyone else for taking this in stride and understanding the need. This is the most amazing gaming community I have been a part of by far!

[mosdef]

it's pretty sad how the "verterans" think bugs, roll backs, and such are acceptable in these games. perhaps some need to understand that people play for fun, and there is no joy in losing what you've worked for whether an hour or a day.

and don't say you don't mind doing things all over again, how many times were you happy to start back over everytime you lost a life in super mario bro.s?

i swear, if a mmorpg lauches with no bugs they won't know what to do.

i, personally, have learned to accept the bugs and nerfs. it sure as heck doesn't mean i like them, and no excuse is good enough for bugs especially when so many have been reported in beta or on a test server and still make it to live servers.

and let me get this straight. they don't know who exploited, but can pinpoint it to 2.5 hrs before the servers went down? do you really believe that is all the time the exploit was being used?
if a rollback is how they plan to deal with future exploits then i'm pretty sure this game will be joining horizons.

[aelvana]

Here's a veteran's stance (long time gamer and programmer, network admin work as well) that was prolly misinterpreted:

Software basically NEVER comes out bug free. Every console game has bugs and exploits. In console games, they don't matter much -- they get printed in Nintendo Power and that's that.

In MMORPGs, often you have to remedy these bugs/issues or they'll screw everything up. You have live servers that you have to take down etc to fix things. And new features getting patched in means more new code to interact with your old code in unexpected ways. You can't avoid getting bugs.

Being experienced in a LOT of what has to come together to make an MMORPG work, I know full well that I have two options if I want to play them:

A) Play a game that will come down from time to time and have some issues, trusting the devs are working their hardest

B) Don't play this type of game

The problem here IMO is that people fail to realize that option C, an evolving and updated piece of software that's bug free, does not exist.

[lupine04]

Here's a veteran's stance (long time gamer and programmer, network admin work as well) that was prolly misinterpreted:

Software basically NEVER comes out bug free. Every console game has bugs and exploits. In console games, they don't matter much -- they get printed in Nintendo Power and that's that.

In MMORPGs, often you have to remedy these bugs/issues or they'll screw everything up. You have live servers that you have to take down etc to fix things. And new features getting patched in means more new code to interact with your old code in unexpected ways. You can't avoid getting bugs.

Being experienced in a LOT of what has to come together to make an MMORPG work, I know full well that I have two options if I want to play them:

A) Play a game that will come down from time to time and have some issues, trusting the devs are working their hardest

B) Don't play this type of game

The problem here IMO is that people fail to realize that option C, an evolving and updated piece of software that's bug free, does not exist.

Well said, and I agree 100%. I'm a QA Analyst for a software company whose application isn't even "multi-user" and we find new bugs all the time. More times than not, they're found because a user did something, or tried to do something with the program that we hadn't intended or planned for, because it's not part of the normal usage.

Now.. here's my opinion on the matter:

Those who feel they've been terribly wronged, stating that Nevrax should have been better prepared, should have known better, should have.. should have.. should have.. Please, share with us your personal, hands-on experience in developing and maintaining a MMORPG, and how you've dealt with and prevented such situations as exploits and roll-backs and the such. Please share with us all the details of how you sought out and found all possible loop-holes, in all aspects of the game system, that could be exploited, and by what means you quickly set to sealing them up. Since you speak with such confidence and authority of all that Nevrax should have and failed to do, certainly you're speaking from experience. Right?

Thought so.

I don't blame anyone for being frustrated at the lost time. That's only normal. But, when you step into the realm of declaring what the company should have done, etc.. like you really have any clue, yourself, it's a bit much.

You know what? I fully expect roll-backs. I fully expect crashes. I fully expect bugs and all that with any online game I play. Because sometimes those things happen. It's not a crime. It's not a travesty. It's a fact of life. Get over it and move on.. or maybe you should find a different type of game to play that won't carry such risks with it.

[ayne31]

They tell a slightly different story on the UK server board I think:
http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?p=20532#post20532

[ayne31]

Those who feel they've been terribly wronged, stating that Nevrax should have been better prepared, should have known better, should have.. should have.. should have.. Please, share with us your personal, hands-on experience in developing and maintaining a MMORPG, and how you've dealt with and prevented such situations as exploits and roll-backs and the such. Please share with us all the details of how you sought out and found all possible loop-holes, in all aspects of the game system, that could be exploited, and by what means you quickly set to sealing them up. Since you speak with such confidence and authority of all that Nevrax should have and failed to do, certainly you're speaking from experience. Right?.

I dont need to be a chef to know a steak is burnt
I dont need to be a mechanic to realize my cares brakes dont work
I dont need to be a policeman to tell an armed robbery is going on

Get the picture?