Rollbacks...sheesh!

[Phantron]

Because the servers are not saved before the patch, a serverwide rollback would've resulted in a lot more than # of people X 1 hour of work lost. In terms of man-hours lost, it's almost certain to be more damage that way (time between last save even if they rolled back is probably on the order of ~10 hours as opposed to 1 as people believed).

Then there's also the fact that people who absolutely do not have anything to do with this incident, not even indirectly, would be paying for this mistake. Making more people suffer for no reason whatsoever is not going to make a situation better, unless you find comfort knowing other people got screwed too.

It sucks for those who get screwed but I think it was a good thing that I and many others, who took steps to avoid buying or selling anything until the whole fiasco is over, don't stand to lose anything (like my 299th smithing skill up) for someone else's problem.

[Fesser]

Here's an interesting thought. I wonder what % up-time on these servers is required for the Dev's management team to get their bonuses? I wonder if that affected the decisions made?

[Cruento]

i remember back in kunark-era, your character saved everytime your inventory or coin changed. you could loot something, and be saved. you could bank, and put a bag in the bank and be saved, or just put a copper piece i nthe bank, and since your inventory changed, you would be saved. everytime you leveled, you were saved. i remember being really paranoid about it, and only camping after i banked, or after i looted something. i remember being able to see the "saving your character..." message, too.

what, was that all too processor intensive?

[mewkus]

There's a difference between saving your character and backing your character up. If you went LD, your character would revert back to where it was last saved. When your character gets rolled back, it goes back to the lasted backed up copy of your character prior to the infration that causes the rollback, not just the last time your character was saved (since that may have been after the infraction/infection).

[Verdandi]

. . . i remember being able to see the "saving your character..." message, too.

I remember in a patch sometime after Kunark it was announced that we would no longer get those messages, but that character saving would still be happening as usual. Just the messages were removed. (Well, the process may have been tweaked, too, but it didn't stop entirely or anything.)

What exactly that saving did and how it could be used, I have no idea.

[Phantron]

Characters are saved every time you make a transaction, like the old 'trade a copper' trick. You can also destroy a copper for the same effect. I think saving happens on the client, while rolling back occurs on the server. For most things the game trusts your client to have the accurate info, like if you LD the server doesn't roll you back to where it last knew you were because it trusts that the client has the accurate information. But for an event like this, obviously the server can't trust what your client says (otherwise you can just destroy 1 copper and keep all your items) so it has to get the last saved info, which I'm sure happens a lot less often compared to how often your machine saves your character. If your server ever crashed it should be very obvious that the server doesn't save your character info on a frequency any faster than once per hour, and even that might be too generous.

If you think about it, the server can't possibly save your character very often, at least not on anything you can trigger. Otherwise a malicious party can just set up a program to constantly destroy coppers and slow the whole server down.

One useful advice I saw regarding keeping valuables is to use /report. It's not unrefutable proof but if you can point where you submitted something that says "Phantron has looted a -- whatever --" it's a lot more likely to get something back then just saying you had it at some point and now it's gone.

[Sanna]

Strokker said: "What should have been done is to drop all servers imediately and then rollback all online and offline to the point before the servers were put back up and go from there..."



Agreed. When poison enters the bloodstream, you don't wait to see IF the poison is going towards the heart or not. Assume it will eventually get there and SHUT DOWN NOW.

SOE, you flubbed. I have not seemed to have been hurt in the rollbacks, even though my trader was running the entire time (my mains were not logged in at all). But that is beyond the point.

Remember when Katrina hit and the government just sorta watched the hurricane roll ashore with a drooping jaw and the "adur" look on their faces? Yeah, that's the SOE guys right about now. Inaction is BAD, especially when you have the ability to play God like they do.


On the other hand... I constantly remind myself that hey, I'm not even /paying/ for what I'm playing right now... and it's amazing how... frighteningly little I care about what goes on. Hm. Money (and lack thereof) is odd like that. I got my 1450, I'm all happy. Everything beyond that is just bonus.


Still. This > SOE. Poor SOE. Oh wait. Nevermind.

Ja ne.

-- Sanna

[Qaladar Bragollach]

What a bunch of geniuses they have working over there at SOE.

Oh hey lets not bring down servers on a Wednesday morning when hardly anyone is logged in yet... no that would cause a disruption.

Yeah I got it! First lets do absolutely nothing for at least 24 hours while this thing spreads. Then, 'lLets hash out a robo-rollback script and see how many 10's of thousands of innocent people (or at least tainted people that had no way whatsoever of knowing in advance that their actions were going to taint them) we can roll back... twice! Lets delete some corpses while we're at it and leave a bunch of people naked for a week or 2.

Then lets post some spin and completely stonewall everyone.

What the heck? People are mad? Dang ok, lets comp them with double exp this weekend.

And now for the icing on the cake... because of their effort to not have a bit of extra down time on an ALREADY SCHEDULED PATCH DAY ON A WEDNESDAY MORNING...

wait for it...

lets bring all servers down for 4 hours... ON A SATURDAY MORNING!

Brilliant!

If I were in charge of this clown operation the boards would already have public letters of resignation posted.

[Itek]

the problem is that SOE apparently doesnt back up the character database before a patch, so rollbacks take a character to the last save point for that character...which, as some have experienced, can be a few days ago.

My god what a mess....

Lies. Pure and simple whoever told you that lied.

It is inconcieveable that SOE doesn't do a "FULLBACKUP" druing the patching process. This is the perfect time to do so as they have greatly reduced Ethernet traffic from server to server and loads of unused processor time to complete the full back up.

They do a complete backup every patch, they do nightly or more frequent incremental (edit) backups as well.

Characters are saved on zoning. They physically HAVE TO BE saved because one instance of the objects are created (in the new zone) and one instance of them destroyed (in the old zone) period.

As proof I offer this scenario....

During the patch process (where in they do NOT p-base fullbackup) there is a fire.

SOE: "Sorry, we had a minor fire in the server room. We lost all the most recent player files, so we are going back to what we have. Some of you lost only a few hours, but for some players you might have lost... up to two weeks. To make up for this we will be offering a quadruple exp weekend. Thank you for your understanding."

No, I don't think so. Plus remember these "rollbacks" ... if they didn't have a backup from before the patch... to what did they roll back? Are they telling you they had to roll some people back to BEFORE the patch since they didn't do a back up AT the patch?

ROFL. No, sorry, whomever stated that they don't do backups at patches is a liar. And "we don't always save character files" is a lie. They might not YET have that save on a tape backup in secure (off-site, see also FIRE) location as part of an incremental backup. But for DANG-SURE your character file is saved every time you zone.

This is a mess of their own making. They handled it poorly and continue to handle it poorly. But since they have an unbroken string of handling their mistakes poorly over the last 6 (going on 7) years I'm not surprised, only out-raged.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I couldn't make **** up this funny if I tried.

They didn't get the double exp right... it doesn't work for aa exp.

Servers coming down AGAIN for another 2 hours.

What the hell... did they all get their degrees from a box of cereal?

[Verdandi]

Alright people. A certain degree of venting of frustration has definitely been in order. I have nothing but the utmost sympathy with the innocent folks who lost all sorts of things due to these problems. But the wild and uncontrolled SOE bashing is getting out of hand.

I really, really don't want to close all discussion of these events and leave people without a place to vent here, but will do just that if we can't start keeping our tempers in check. Tantrums, insults, and flinging of mud aren't going to get anyone their items, exp, and cash back.

You can comment on what has happened, but I have had QUITE enough of the snide remarks about actual people, whether individually or as a group. Knock it off.