Server Screw Up Kills MMO

[Neonit]

nah, i dont belive this. this is TOO stupid. it has to be a scam, they got the cash and now they are running away, probably to mexico. no, sorry, i just dont believe that people who know how to make a game, dont have ANY backup. its not possible.

i mean, the pz thingy was stupid - but realistic, they had a backup, but a very old one. but no backup at all? cmon...... cmoooooon...... OH COME ON!

 

[LorienvArden]

OT: Just imagine if this happened to WoW. Oh the rage that would be incurred.

I think it would go like this....

Blizzard employee 1: Sir, we might have a slight problem.
Blizzard employee 2: What is it, trouble with the maintenance ?
E1: Well, kinda... the harddrives kinda fell in this bucket of acid we used to scrub of the trolling residue from the processors.... they are GONE.
E2: Unfortunate - get the backups and write a post on the forums that we had to do a reroll because of some totally unrelated mishap.
E1: Sir, we don't do backups anymore... Lord Kotick just exclaimed "Don't need it !" and laughed as he calculated the rise in shareholder profits from that cut.
E2: Good gosh... well get a copy from the EU devision and blame anonymous for sabotaging the database.
E1: You mean the Devision that actually did get sabotaged by anonymous half an hour ago ?
E2: Are you kidding ?
E1: And before you get ideas about China - we'ld had to redo half of the last expansion because they replaced Arthas with a "white capitalist devil" and are still calling the cataclysm "great socialist revolution"

E2: Get your hat lad and be swift... we both want to be far away when Lord Kotick gets the news. I can allready feel the disturbance in the fanbase...like a ten million people suddenly whining all over the forums.

 

[Kuala BangoDango]

Nope, not buying it, sorry.

This sounds like "WUPS! We just totally deleted the game! Accidentally, of course. Honest. We will just be going now, taking your money with us."

I simply dont believe they deleted an entire game by accident.

If it really was intended as a scam (close the game and run off with the money) there are much better ways to do it.

Which is better?
1) Say the game data was accidentally deleted, close it down, run off with the money. Now their names are tarnished. No one trusts them in the future because it was such a stupid mistake. Less chance of being able to scam again later on. Since it was a mistake on the company's end they're also more likely to get sued by customers and lose the money they have.

or...

2) Say the game wasn't profitable enough, close it down, run off with the money. Now it doesn't look good that it "wasn't profitable enough" but at least the game can be sold off to someone else (like what happened with APB). There might still be investors willing to give them funds for a future project now that they've "gained some experience on what works and what doesn't". Better chance of opening another game later and pulling another scam.

As a previous poster said, doing it the #1 way damages themselves, and their reputation, far too much.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some hats to sell.

for I am not poor and Irish.

hold the phone! where are the anti racist/feminist screaming at now?

oh wait..it involves being irish and you are male. doesn't matter.

OT:

this is...wow. if i played mmo's and someone told me this i'm pretty sure i'd scoff in their face not believing them till i saw it with my own eyes...

i mean wtf, how do you LOSE A WHOLE GAME, DEVELOPERS?

It's a joke. He made a joke about Team Fortress 2, and I responded with a joke about Team Fortress 2. (One of the hats has the description 'A-ha-ha! You are as PRESUMPTUOUS as you are POOR and IRISH. Tarnish notte the majesty of my TOWER of HATS.'

Since then, the phrase 'poor and Irish' refers to people who don't have any hats on TF2 yet.

But if it makes you feel better, I'm an Irish/Spanish (Spaniard Spanish) mutt.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some hats to sell.

for I am not poor and Irish.

hold the phone! where are the anti racist/feminist screaming at now?

oh wait..it involves being irish and you are male. doesn't matter.

OT:

this is...wow. if i played mmo's and someone told me this i'm pretty sure i'd scoff in their face not believing them till i saw it with my own eyes...

i mean wtf, how do you LOSE A WHOLE GAME, DEVELOPERS?

It's a joke. He made a joke about Team Fortress 2, and I responded with a joke about Team Fortress 2. (One of the hats has the description 'A-ha-ha! You are as PRESUMPTUOUS as you are POOR and IRISH. Tarnish notte the majesty of my TOWER of HATS.'

Since then, the phrase 'poor and Irish' refers to people who don't have any hats on TF2 yet.

But if it makes you feel better, I'm an Irish/Spanish (Spaniard Spanish) mutt.

oh no i was being highly sarcastic there, and i understood the reference just fine (i play tf2 a shit ton myself.) i was just commenting on the fact of the context of your use of the words, even though when it comes to PC people they would normally shit down your throat for ever saying such a thing regardless of such.

 

[DeepComet5581]

OT: Just imagine if this happened to WoW. Oh the rage that would be incurred.

People have invested thousands in that game.

Someone WILL go Postal.

 

[Smooth Operator]

See, this is why you don't use rm -r.

rm -rf actually, you don't want those silly confirmations come in the way of a swift career change.

Accidentally lost deleted all server data... I don't buy that for a second, more like needed a quick escape route due to tax evasion.

 

[PureChaos]

have they checked the recycle bin?

 

[FEichinger]

"no backups" for a online MMO isn't so much a mistake as highly, highly suspicious.

That occurred to me, then I realized that nothing they could actually do could be more damaging to their reputation than "we accidentally deleted the game."

Sure, but for the short-minded it does make for a nice excuse as to why they close it down. Given that the playerbase wasn't too big either.

 

[Dimitriov]

BAHAHAHAHA!

That is the funniest thing I have heard so far today!

Apparently hilarious things happen to stupid (or at least incredibly careless) people.

 

[Darks63]

Too bad this didn't happen to warhammer online right after the 1.4 update.

 

[MammothBlade]

Wow. What a shame, for all concerned. Seriously, epic fail on the part of the developers. Or it might be a case of cut and run... "lolgais we accidentally our game... sorry, can't refund. Ty for the money though..."

 

[QuadFish]

So... Did they delete the game's source code too? Did they have a catastrophic failure that killed off all their source backups as well as the persistent game data? Because if not, they should probably get that shit started again.

Duh, the source was stored on the server. Where else do you put source code than the production server? don't ask such stupid questions.

Also, I suspect this is what the server looked like.

Spoiler

Most competent developers store the source code in a few places at least. It seems unlikely that they'd put it on the same machines that run the server programs. Why would they? It doesn't need to be there at all, since the written source isn't used in the final product, only the compiled program you get out of it.

Then again, that's assuming these guys are one of the "competent developers", which is probably giving them too much credit.

 

[Phishfood]

Most competent developers store the source code in a few places at least. It seems unlikely that they'd put it on the same machines that run the server programs. Why would they? It doesn't need to be there at all, since the written source isn't used in the final product, only the compiled program you get out of it.

Then again, that's assuming these guys are one of the "competent developers", which is probably giving them too much credit.

If they were competent this article and thread would not exist.

 

[LilithSlave]

No! My Asian video games are dying!

Well, on the bright side, if they were dumb enough to make a mistake that bad, it couldn't have been that great of an MMO to begin with.

Still, one less video game in the world is a bad thing. And think about all that hard work down the drain. It much be wrenching. I haven't even worked on it and I feel it. I wouldn't be surprised is someone killed themselves over this, as sad as that would be.

 

[Antari]

And this is what happens when you hire your friend on as a sys admin. He may be a good friend, but that doesn't make him a good sys admin. Talk about some bad decisions coming together.

 

[Skratt]

How is this any different to a game shutting off it's servers due to lack of funding?

Seems like a good racket to me. Make a game, give it away, charge micro-transactions, turn off the servers at the tipping point and call it an "oops, we forgot to backup", have a good laugh and head to the bank.

 

[Spud of Doom]

How... What... this makes no sense. So their server files on the live servers were the ONLY server files? They didn't have internal dev builds? They didn't have the client on another network for testing?

That pretty much tells you they didn't even work on the game. For crap's sake, how do you even do something like this?

 

[stewox]

deleted doesn't mean wiped, with forensic software it can be recovered - or by simple "undelete"

 

[Twilight_guy]

Guys, I accidentally the entire server, is that bad?

I have no idea how one deletes the entire game which was probably on multiple servers. I guess if you have the guy who has no idea what he's doing pushing buttons but I still can't figure out how it could be that easy. Don't you not want to do this and thus put safeguards against such a thing? I mean rm -r *.* usually pops up a warning message.