Tag: Server

[Column] How Nostalrius Killed Its Credibility, Image With One Dump


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A few weeks ago, Blizzard revealed that they would not be discussing legacy servers at Blizzcon this year, however the idea was not off the table and that the company was still considering such servers. In response, the folks at Nostalrius decided to make a threat upon which they have no moral or legal standing: To discuss vanilla servers or the team would release the source code for the Nostalrius private server. Blizzard didn’t discuss vanilla servers, Nostalrius dumped its code.

Still, we should not forget that Blizzard is the owner of World of Warcraft and would be for sure the most able to restore it. Until they disclose a schedule (if they do), the Legacy community will have to assume there will not be an official Blizzard release of Legacy WoW – possibly for very long time. So, it’s time for us to release our source code and additional tools to the community in the hope that it will maintain the Legacy community as much as possible until Blizzard announces an official Legacy plan – should they decide to do that.

Like an entitled child denied a much desired toy, the Nostalrius team responded to demands that they had no leverage on with the equivalent of a flailing tantrum. Let’s get a few things straight: Nostalrius has already lost this battle, they acknowledged that they didn’t have any footing when they bowed to Blizzard’s cease & desist and shut down their servers. They have no ownership of the World of Warcraft game, the brand, nor do they have the rights to operate their own private server. It doesn’t matter if Blizzard ultimately says no to a vanilla server, it doesn’t matter if they take ten years to release it, and it doesn’t matter if they say yes and never follow up on it. Nostalrius has no ground to stand on, zero, none.

And while I won’t take the route of some internet commentators and claim that this could kill Blizzard’s enthusiasm in legacy servers, something which is about as low on the totem pole as you can get in terms of priority, I will say that it has killed any potential of Blizzard working with the Nostalrius people, a killing blow to a group that feels entitled enough to demand regular progress updates from Blizzard corporate and make threats if senpai doesn’t notice them. They threw a fit when Blizzard didn’t respond in a timely manner, let’s see how they take it when the company stops acknowledging their existence entirely.

And what they’ve done by releasing this code is effectively to poison the well with a tracer, with everyone who drinks it being tagged for eventual plucking. Now that the code is out there, everyone is talking about this Elysium server like it’s the next Nostalrius. What do you expect is going to happen when Elysium launches? I’ll clue you in: Blizzard’s lawyers are going to send a cease & desist and the Elysium team are going to buckle and shut down. And none of this is going to have any effect on whether or not Blizzard launches a legacy server.

Which, I will reiterate, they still want to do.

Via IGN:

“There’s no question it’s something we want to do,” said Hazzikostas. “I am a 2004 World of Warcraft player myself. Tons of us came to work at Blizzard because we fell in love with that version of World of Warcraft. And we met with the Nostalrius developers on our campus over the summer and were really impressed by the passion they had for the game and what they’re trying to do to recreate what they see as a lost experience.

So where do we stand now? Nostalrius has burned its bridge with Blizzard, likely taking Mark Kern along with them, any servers that use the Nostalrius code and attract any respectable level of traffic will be nuked from orbit by Blizzard, and the timeline for a legacy server very likely has not moved a millimeter. Not a productive day by any sane metric.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

Arc Will Experience Platform-Wide Maintenance 10/19


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Perfect World Entertainment has announced that the Arc platform will be offline for 7 hours tomorrow. The maintenance will affect all titles on the service.

Arc will be undergoing a scheduled maintenance at 5AM Pacific on 10/19/2016. The maintenance will be for approximately 7 hours. Our engineers will be performing server updates and upgrades during which some web services and games may be delayed or temporarily unavailable. If additional time is needed, we will provide up-to-date information through our social channels, this news page and Arc client emergency message system.

(Source: Perfect World Entertainment)

Rappelz Shutting Down Its Hardcore Server


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The latest expansion for Rappelz has been confirmed for release later in 2016, but for now Webzen has important information for those still playing on the hardcore server. Due to a lack of popularity among the game’s userbase, Webzen has officially announced that the server will close down in just a few months.

Server migration will begin in July and last a month, before the server officially closes.

WEBZEN also officially announces the migration of the Hardcore server, enabling players to transfer their characters to a server of their choice for free. Starting from July, players will have one month to apply for the migration, with the Hardcore server being discontinued after the process. For more information on this topic, please visit the WEBZEN forums.

Rappelz players are welcome to check out MMO Fallout’s Webzen giveaway. Grab some free stuff.

(Source: Webzen press release)

Warcraft Legacy Server Survey To Be Presented To Blizzard


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Nostalrius isn’t the first, nor will it be the last World of Warcraft private server to meet the wrath of Blizzard’s legal team, but the shuttering of this service has undoubtedly opened a can of worms that I don’t think many people anticipated. Between a petition receiving over two hundred thousand signatures, a press that finally seems bent on supporting the user call for vanilla servers, and a ridiculous amount of coverage even outside the gaming press, Blizzard has effectively been forced to respond and take the Nostalrius effect seriously.

As it turns out, the Nostalrius team has been invited to Blizzard to become the ambassadors of the vanilla-demanding community. Nothing is being promised, but the team wants you to answer a poll on what kind of server you want. The poll asks some details, whether you are currently playing WoW (legitimately or otherwise), and why you decided to use private servers if you have. It also asks quite a few questions on your favorite eras of WoW, why they were your favorite, etc.

It’s a bit of a time investment, but well worth it. Hopefully we’ll hear more when the Nostalrius team returns from their meeting.

(Source: Survey)

Jagex Product Manager Weighs In On Classic Servers


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The recent shuttering of Nostalrius, one of World of Warcraft’s biggest private servers, has been rippling throughout the gaming news and leaking into the regular press. Part of the discussion has turned to both the feasibility and potential that legacy servers can offer MMO developers.

Here at MMO Fallout, we’ve pretty heavily covered the ongoing successes of Old School RuneScape, a service that began as a snapshot of the game as it was in 2007 and has gradually expanded thanks to community feedback. The game has even incorporated Deadman Mode, a hardcore spinoff that itself spun off into a seasonal eSport event. We even had a chance to talk to Jagex about Deadman mode in its earlier stages.

You can read the entire piece at Kemp’s Linkedin here or below.

Building on the past: How RuneScape’s official legacy server avoided cannibalism and became an eSport

It’s more than three years since we had our first discussion about releasing legacy servers for RuneScape. However, we can now say that releasing Old School RuneScape was one of the best decisions we ever made. Since Old School RuneScape’s launch in February 2013 we have seen just short of seven million players log in with over two and a half million becoming members.

During that time Old School has of course faced a number of challenges, but here’s how we overcame them and how we took a version of RuneScape from 10 years ago and made it relevant for todays’ gamers.

The legacy risk

During the early discussions there were of course many concerns such as: Was it even possible? How long it would take? And, whether there was the potential for cannibalisation of the existing RuneScape player base? We knew our players wanted legacy servers, as with most MMORPG communities they were not shy in telling us what they wanted. Even though we were quite certain about the initial surge of interest these servers would get, we wanted to test this so we asked our players via a poll if they would play. When half a million of our customers said they want to play it… we kind of had to do it.

Another big question mark was whether the legacy servers would have any longevity. To manage this risk a small team of three people was put together to manage the servers and community until the initial interest had died down, at which time resources could be reallocated.

The risk seemed low, allocated resources could all be temporary, and with half a million players saying they would like to try it, the risk of cannibalisation was outweighed by the potential for new customers. At the very least, Old School RuneScape would be a quick nostalgia hit for disenfranchised players.
With legacy servers comes legacy technical debt

Once Old School RuneScape had launched it quickly became apparent that the community wanted game updates. However, initially we were very limited in what we could deliver. Since RuneScape as a game had progressed during the intervening years, so had all the tools we used to develop it. We were in the unenviable position of having to recreate all the tools we used to develop the game back in 2007 so we could update it. At no point had anyone thought, “We ought to keep all these old versions of the development tools just in case.” I mean why would they?

The lack of development tools was not our only technical debt, we had to rework anti-cheating software, optimise areas of the code, and fix some pretty major bugs for a second time.

Community tribalism

Something which should not really surprise anyone is that there was a rivalry between the communities of the Old School RuneScape and RuneScape. Over time this rivalry increased with the Old School community taking the stance of being purist, and the RuneScape community positioning themselves as progressive.

Although the Old School community saw themselves as purists they still wanted change, so to ensure the rate of change was acceptable to those players we allowed them to vote on every update that happens to the game. If 75% of those voting did not agree, the update didn’t happen. This gave a very strong sense of ownership of the game to the community; they were in control.

What was a surprise was that the tribalism shown by the community started to manifest itself among the development teams. As the small team was left to get on with things they developed their own ways of making things happen without relying on other teams. Although this self-sufficiency might be much sought over by many people, it has a hampering effect when it has to fit into companywide objectives and strategic planning across products.

It came to a point where the Old School RuneScape team needed more integration into the wider RuneScape studio. This was achieved by creating stronger relationships between staff and line managers that traversed different teams, as well as including the Old School team in more of the studio level decisions.

Game positioning

After about six months we started to see player numbers settle and we could see that very few players migrated between Old School RuneScape and RuneScape. What we were not seeing was one game cannibalising the other, so we wanted to understand why a player would play one game and not the other.

Through a series of surveys and data gathering from the game servers we saw there were some distinct reasons why people played Old School RuneScape. The three key reasons were the old combat system (which was changed in the main game in 2012) the grinding of levels, and the straightforward membership monetisation model. This made it very easy to position Old School RuneScape as complementarily to RuneScape and give us a very clear direction of where the game could go. More importantly, it identified areas we could branch into much more effectively than we could have done with
RuneScape on its own.

For example, the old combat system leant itself well to PvP combat, which in turn allowed us to take our first steps into the eSports market last month with considerable success.

When legacy becomes THE legacy

Although the initial impact of legacy servers on RuneScape was expected to be short and sweet, it has grown into a major part of Jagex’s business. The Old School team is now five times the size it was when it started and has more members than the launch period, showing it can reach out to a wider market than the initial audience.

The modernisation of RuneScape meant tensions increased between the traditionalist and progressive RuneScape player base. However, Old School RuneScape gave the traditionalists a safe home and allowed for the continued modernisation of RuneScape without alienating a key part of our player base.
There have been challenges in overcoming the technical debt that suddenly appeared, as well as, ensuring that the product sits well within a wider business. However, it offered something our existing games did not offer and has allowed us to start expanding the RuneScape franchise into new areas such as eSports and streaming.

By keeping the risk of legacy servers low and being focused on how they can grow the franchise, this adventure has just started.

Mathew Kemp is product manager for Old School RuneScape at Jagex Games Studio.

Shanda Games In Severe Damage Control After Losing Two Years Of Data


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Shanda Games is performing serious PR damage control after a “severe technical failure” resulted in two years worth of data being lost in their MMO Dragon Nest. While characters, gold, DNP, and AC are still intact, virtually everything else has been lost. The good news is, according to the news post, Shanda is capable of reconstructing lost data outside of the game, and will be providing players with a reimbursement package and a compensation package.

All titles, missions, quests, achievements, NPC points, guild points, cooking details, fishing details, trading house items, as well as inventory and storage items are gone for now.  Cash Items have also been wiped.

When the servers go live, all characters will be jumped up to level 80. In addition, all characters will have their mandatory and relevant missions completed, along with 100 gold, legendary level 70 equipment, and epic level 80 equipment upgraded to +10. Cash shop reimbursement will be based on how much you spent between November and January, with all purchases prior to November being sent out over the course of the next week.

There is a ton of information regarding player compensation, which you can read at the link below. It’s hard to imagine that there are publishers that still operate their games without redundancies in cases of issues like this.

(Source: Dragon Nest)

Trove To Take Two Days Off, Upgrade Servers


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Who’s to say that MMOs shouldn’t get a nice two day weekend every few years? If you’ve been playing Trove recently, you are likely well acquainted with the ongoing server issues. The issue, naturally, is that the game has grown too large in scope for the current hardware to handle, with player clubs particularly outgrowing in size what the server can reasonably process. As a result, the game is going offline from the 19th to the 21st in order to place in new hardware.

For the last few weeks we’ve been testing our new storage system on the on the Public Test Server. We’re happy to say that it’s gone well, and it’s time to do it live! However, it’s going to take some time – up to 48 hours to complete the full upgrade.

The Trion team hopes that the new hardware will result in less downtime, more stability, and faster reboots should anything go haywire. Anyone who logs in between the 21st and the 24th will receive a number of items as compensation for the downtime.

(Source: Trion Worlds)

Daybreak Servers Slammed by DDOS Attack


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If you’re looking to play any of Daybreak’s games, you might want to take the night off. At the moment, Daybreaks game servers and their websites are experiencing major connection issues which appear to be stemming from a coordinated denial of service attack. The official Daybreak Twitter account has acknowledged the problem and notes that staff are working to fix issues.

According to the Norse attack map, however, there is a massive sustained DDoS attack originating from Mersin in Turkey aimed at the western coast of the United States. Whether or not this attack is related to the server downtime is unknown.

(Source: Daybreak Twitter)

Everquest Promises New Progression Server, Less Drama


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Daybreak Game Company has announced that the next progression server for Everquest, Phinigel, will not allow multi-boxing. Set to launch on December 9th, Phinigel will follow a strict schedule of one expansion release every ninety days, with no voting on the player side or manipulation from Daybreak. In addition, raids will have an instanced mode with an account-wide six and a half day lockout, alongside the open-world version of said bosses.

This is a server where each player will only be able to play on one EverQuest account from their computer. We want to encourage players to play with their friends on this server, and not just form groups of only their alts. If people are truly wanting to multi-box, they’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. Phinigel is a TRUE box server, which means in order to multi-box you’ll need a set-up that looks something like this:

While they’ve proven to be popular among players, Everquest’s two progression servers have not been without a good deal of controversy, not least of which were complaints of players using multiple accounts to make the game very easy and overcrowding in most areas of the game. Daybreak also made a large misstep in the decision to issue account suspensions (later overturned) to an entire guild of several hundred players because one single member was killing raid mobs out of guild rotation.

(Source: Everquest)

ArcheAge 2.0 Rolled Back After Major Server Issues


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If you’ve been out of the loop as I have for the past couple of days, you may have missed the launch of ArcheAge 2.0. Thankfully, you didn’t miss much, as an issue with the Glyph authentication system resulted in over 90% of players being denied access to the game.

As many of you are aware, earlier today we attempted to launch Update 2.0, Heroes Awaken, to ArcheAge. While the lands of Erenor were ready for you, our Glyph authentication systems unfortunately encountered an error that did not allow a large number of people to connect and join the launch. After reviewing our logs, only 10% of players who attempted to log in made it into the game. Over 90% of you were unable to join the launch of Update 2.0.

Trion Worlds assures players that the issue is unrelated to the 2.0 update and server merger. To give the technicians more time to analyze and come up with a fix for the issue, the servers were rolled back to their prior state before the update, with any marketplace purchases and APEX purchases being refunded. Update 2.0 is scheduled to launch today, Sunday, in waves beginning with the European players.

Additionally, we will be splitting the launch of Heroes Awaken by region and by server type. We are targeting to open our European servers 1:00 PM GMT (3:00 PM CEST) on September 13, followed by our North American servers opening at 1:00 PM PDT (4 PM EDT) on September 13. Our Legacy servers will be opened first, our Evolution servers will open second, and our Fresh Start servers will open last. There will be a half-hour delay between each server type opening.

(Source: ArcheAge)