ZOS, there are still people on live with PTS gold and items. Roll back the server.

CameraBeardThePirate

Title. Stuff was distributed - unless you can be 100% sure that you can track where all those went and roll back THOSE accounts too, a full server roll back needs to happen.

People now have PTS items and billions of gold on live. That's not okay.

xclassgaming

yes. roll back and unlock EVERYONES accounts.

manukartofanu

The choice is between finding and dealing with/banning everyone who took advantage of the PTS situation on live, or processing requests from everyone who managed to acquire some important items on live, including those who made purchases in the crown store. What do you think, which group is larger? What do you think, who is more important, people making purchases with real money in the crown store or people sitting on the PTS?

CameraBeardThePirate

manukartofanu wrote: »

The choice is between finding and dealing with/banning everyone who took advantage of the PTS situation on live, or processing requests from everyone who managed to acquire some important items on live, including those who made purchases in the crown store. What do you think, which group is larger? What do you think, who is more important, people making purchases with real money in the crown store or people sitting on the PTS?

You're under the incorrect assumption that an economy crash will not affect everyone.

The cat is out of the bag. They only locked accounts that logged into PTS. They did not lock accounts that received billions of gold from other players on PTS. That gold is well circulated by now and likely impossible to track 100%. The economy is cooked.

Dawnblade

FUD or a self-admission of guilt - not sure which.

Soarora

Rolling back individual people is messing up cores and trial runs too. People already having to drop because they don’t have access to their accounts despite being innocent.

The economy is more important of course but that’s another problem with this strategy.

xclassgaming

Soarora wrote: »

Rolling back individual people is messing up cores and trial runs too. People already having to drop because they don’t have access to their accounts despite being innocent.

The economy is more important of course but that’s another problem with this strategy.

not just NA either, people like me,on EU also getting messed up cause of this, its not fair at all. the server should just bve rolled back and all accounts immedtially unlocked

React

It's mind blowing to me they're choosing to not do a global rollback. They could have made that decision while the server was down and only caused people to lose a few hours of progress, 2 hours if they have hourly save points or perhaps 8-9 hours if the "9:30 AM" time they're referencing is their most recent save point.

Surely it can't be easier to track down all of these items and gold, restore all the deleted characters, restore guild listing that were purchased with fraudulent gold, etc. Apparently they're going to need to reinstate eso+ as well, as it seems the banned accounts are losing their subscriptions.

imaslowlearner

• The people complaining about event tickets, style pages, and the mount asking zos to not roll back the entire server do not care about the health of the game.
• The best solution would have been an entire server roll back, would ensure the affects of the PTS fiasco did not wreck the north american servers economy.
• Then you could pacify the people complaining about the loss of the event with putting the events "rare" style pages in the event merchant and extending the event for a week.
• The guy trying to bring in the transactions of crowns during the 1 hour between PTS going up and and servers going down is sus, he probably has billions of gold hes trying to hide. Like the crown purchases don't come with receipts and would have been easily resolved.

colossalvoids

React wrote: »

It's mind blowing to me they're choosing to not do a global rollback. They could have made that decision while the server was down and only caused people to lose a few hours of progress, 2 hours if they have hourly save points or perhaps 8-9 hours if the "9:30 AM" time they're referencing is their most recent save point.

Surely it can't be easier to track down all of these items and gold, restore all the deleted characters, restore guild listing that were purchased with fraudulent gold, etc. Apparently they're going to need to reinstate eso+ as well, as it seems the banned accounts are losing their subscriptions.

Whilst I completely agree about global rollback most games don't do such a frequent backups, it's more likely be once a day thing as they still need to maintain some older ones also and it's not a small endeavour depending on their overall architecture.

React

colossalvoids wrote: »

React wrote: »

It's mind blowing to me they're choosing to not do a global rollback. They could have made that decision while the server was down and only caused people to lose a few hours of progress, 2 hours if they have hourly save points or perhaps 8-9 hours if the "9:30 AM" time they're referencing is their most recent save point.

Surely it can't be easier to track down all of these items and gold, restore all the deleted characters, restore guild listing that were purchased with fraudulent gold, etc. Apparently they're going to need to reinstate eso+ as well, as it seems the banned accounts are losing their subscriptions.

Whilst I completely agree about global rollback most games don't do such a frequent backups, it's more likely be once a day thing as they still need to maintain some older ones also and it's not a small endeavour depending on their overall architecture.

Even so, they mentioned they have a save state at 9:30AM which they'll be rolling back effected accounts to. That's only about 9.5 hours before the server went offline I believe?

I just don't have faith they're going to be able to properly track and deal with this issue.

Oblivion_Protocol

The economy will balance itself out eventually. It will suck for a good while, but it’s not potentially permanent like people losing style pages they spent hours grinding for. Judging by the responses on the forum, a complete rollback would’ve pissed off a lot more people.

CameraBeardThePirate

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

The economy will balance itself out eventually. It will suck for a good while, but it’s not potentially permanent like people losing style pages they spent hours grinding for. Judging by the responses on the forum, a complete rollback would’ve pissed off a lot more people.

OK but the style page problem is very easily fixed by tossing the style pages into the impresario for 1 ticket each or something.

The entire server should not have to deal with an influx of billions of gold just so a handful of people that got a drop in the 8 hours between the snapshot and servers going down can still have their style page.

xclassgaming

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

The economy will balance itself out eventually. It will suck for a good while, but it’s not potentially permanent like people losing style pages they spent hours grinding for. Judging by the responses on the forum, a complete rollback would’ve pissed off a lot more people.

OK but the style page problem is very easily fixed by tossing the style pages into the impresario for 1 ticket each or something.

The entire server should not have to deal with an influx of billions of gold just so a handful of people that got a drop in the 8 hours between the snapshot and servers going down can still have their style page.

indeed. or just increase the drop rates, by alot

colossalvoids

React wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

React wrote: »

It's mind blowing to me they're choosing to not do a global rollback. They could have made that decision while the server was down and only caused people to lose a few hours of progress, 2 hours if they have hourly save points or perhaps 8-9 hours if the "9:30 AM" time they're referencing is their most recent save point.

Surely it can't be easier to track down all of these items and gold, restore all the deleted characters, restore guild listing that were purchased with fraudulent gold, etc. Apparently they're going to need to reinstate eso+ as well, as it seems the banned accounts are losing their subscriptions.

Whilst I completely agree about global rollback most games don't do such a frequent backups, it's more likely be once a day thing as they still need to maintain some older ones also and it's not a small endeavour depending on their overall architecture.

Even so, they mentioned they have a save state at 9:30AM which they'll be rolling back effected accounts to. That's only about 9.5 hours before the server went offline I believe?

I just don't have faith they're going to be able to properly track and deal with this issue.

Me neither, not surprised they choose not to have a massive backlash at the anniversary and new chapter promo.

manukartofanu

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

manukartofanu wrote: »

The choice is between finding and dealing with/banning everyone who took advantage of the PTS situation on live, or processing requests from everyone who managed to acquire some important items on live, including those who made purchases in the crown store. What do you think, which group is larger? What do you think, who is more important, people making purchases with real money in the crown store or people sitting on the PTS?

You're under the incorrect assumption that an economy crash will not affect everyone.

The cat is out of the bag. They only locked accounts that logged into PTS. They did not lock accounts that received billions of gold from other players on PTS. That gold is well circulated by now and likely impossible to track 100%. The economy is cooked.

Do many people really care about this economy? I understand that we are active players, but in a game with tens of thousands online, how many visit the forum to discuss these topics? Maybe 200 people are interested in this economy?

Is this "economy" worth the real-world risk of lawsuits over crowns disappearing from gaming accounts, crowns that were purchased with real money?

I've dealt with such an issue in another game. There's nothing worse than having to prove to support that you bought something during the rollback period. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, anywhere, ever.

dk_dunkirk

We're just supposed to believe that? Does the OP have any concrete examples? If so, does this extrapolate?

The number of people who log into the PTS is TINY. The number of people who logged into PTS, noticed the bug, and abused it -- during the couple-hour window of opportunity -- is probably numbered in 2 digits. Everything that happens in this game is logged. Do we really think they can't retroactively fix what happened here, even if it takes a day or two to run and spider out to everything that happened downstream?

onyxorb

What about people that got style pages yesterday, and also logged onto PTS?

I mean people are going to be ticked off either way.

I'm really curious how they will handle all the stream team members who logged into PTS? Surely they didn't lock all of them out too did they?

Anyways we'll see how they deal with this. I just have 0 faith in them tracking down all the fraudulent transactions.

Have to assume the auditors are a different group than the one that forgot to flip the switch on where to save save files.

CameraBeardThePirate

manukartofanu wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

manukartofanu wrote: »

The choice is between finding and dealing with/banning everyone who took advantage of the PTS situation on live, or processing requests from everyone who managed to acquire some important items on live, including those who made purchases in the crown store. What do you think, which group is larger? What do you think, who is more important, people making purchases with real money in the crown store or people sitting on the PTS?

You're under the incorrect assumption that an economy crash will not affect everyone.

The cat is out of the bag. They only locked accounts that logged into PTS. They did not lock accounts that received billions of gold from other players on PTS. That gold is well circulated by now and likely impossible to track 100%. The economy is cooked.

Do many people really care about this economy? I understand that we are active players, but in a game with tens of thousands online, how many visit the forum to discuss these topics? Maybe 200 people are interested in this economy?

Is this "economy" worth the real-world risk of lawsuits over crowns disappearing from gaming accounts, crowns that were purchased with real money?

I've dealt with such an issue in another game. There's nothing worse than having to prove to support that you bought something during the rollback period. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, anywhere, ever.

I care about PvP. You know what I need to effectively PvP? Potions, crafting mats, item sets. You know what all of that is bought with? Gold. You know what happens when billions of a particular currency is introduced into the market? Prices skyrocket.

So yah, I'm worried about the economy in this game, because the economy crashing means I won't be able to afford the things I need to PvP.

manukartofanu

imaslowlearner wrote: »

• The guy trying to bring in the transactions of crowns during the 1 hour between PTS going up and and servers going down is sus, he probably has billions of gold hes trying to hide. Like the crown purchases don't come with receipts and would have been easily resolved.

Relax, I don't even play on PC/NA. And do purchases made with crowns inside the game also come with receipts for each transaction? I don't recall seeing any such receipts.

imaslowlearner

Is this "economy" worth the real-world risk of lawsuits over crowns disappearing from gaming accounts, crowns that were purchased with real money?

I've dealt with such an issue in another game. There's nothing worse than having to prove to support that you bought something during the rollback period. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, anywhere, ever.

They would have the issue regardless of an entire rollback, because I'm sure there are people bought crowns and logged into PTS

They send out receipts when you purchase and have records of purchases, the people who bought would be fine.

AlbertoRenan

I don't understand why people are so afraid of a Rollback, doesn't Zenimax create a Database backup before launching the PTS? I saw people saying she had done it earlier in the day. So no one would lose that much, no one would lose days of progress or anything like that. I'd rather waste hours of "farming" than see the game destroyed.

sarahthes

They would lose more paying customers by rolling back the entire server to 9:30AM yesterday morning.

As another person said, the number of people who logged into the pts is small, especially given it was still during the work day for western North America. The number who abused the exploit is going to be even smaller.

If only 2-3 people get away with having that extra billion gold or whatever... the economy isn't even going to notice in a couple weeks. I know people who already have that kind of gold, and already mess with the economy on purpose periodically (by systematically buying the entire market out of a specific resource). I bet you've never even noticed.

Sakiri

AlbertoRenan wrote: »

I don't understand why people are so afraid of a Rollback, doesn't Zenimax create a Database backup before launching the PTS? I saw people saying she had done it earlier in the day. So no one would lose that much, no one would lose days of progress or anything like that. I'd rather waste hours of "farming" than see the game destroyed.

I personally wasn't online when PTS went live and I only had like, an hour of play before it went down, however, today I have:

Bought a house
Spend a few hundred crowns on furniture
Bought a costume on the crown store
Spent 500,000 gold on vendor furnishings
Spent 250,000 gold on guild trader furnishings
And spent 4 hours decorating Humblemud.

Ill be ever so slightly peeved.

I already have the style pages and mount, and have for days, but dang, I dislike wasting my dang time.

Personofsecrets

A server rollback would have probably been the best option, but that option is probably less viable now since more time has passed with people doing various in game things.

They probably have tools which can identify outlying changes in an account held gold or mats.

Hopefully they are able to readjust such accounts back to what they should have. People may try to hide bugged gold or resources in all sorts of ways such as through banks, guild banks, in-game mails, alt-accounts, and even just outright illegally offering these resources for gain via a third party.

While this issue probably shouldn't ever happen, wish the designers good luck in repairing any damage done since, as we all know, we all make mistakes.

Araneae6537

Whether it was the right or wrong choice when the servers were taken offline, it’s definitely too late too roll back the servers now. I hope that those who didn’t exploit the unfortunate situation get their accounts repaired (if a character was deleted, etc.) and reenabled quickly!

maximusrex45

It would be over a 24hr roll back at this point, it isn't going to happen.

DigiAngel

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Title. Stuff was distributed - unless you can be 100% sure that you can track where all those went and roll back THOSE accounts too, a full server roll back needs to happen.

People now have PTS items and billions of gold on live. That's not okay.

Do you have any evidence of this?

Reginald_leBlem

I am tired of this "pts stuff and gold is on live server! I know of some people that moved billions into their guild banks and alts!!"

Oh? Do you have screenshots of the pts items for sale, did you report the names of the players and guild stores? Or is this just speculation about what COULD have happened?

Arrodisia

I just returned 2 days ago after a long break. It's mind blowing to see things like this still happening.

There are some options here but whichever choice is made it should be done quickly.

either they can roll it back or lock all guild sales and personal trading until the gold is trackedand deleted. This can be done by filtering those accounts which directly transacted large sums of gold with other players currently locked from the PTS.


rolling back is a pain especially since I just redecorated my home but at least everything that shouldn't have entered the server will be gone.

manukartofanu

imaslowlearner wrote: »

manukartofanu wrote: »

imaslowlearner wrote: »

• The guy trying to bring in the transactions of crowns during the 1 hour between PTS going up and and servers going down is sus, he probably has billions of gold hes trying to hide. Like the crown purchases don't come with receipts and would have been easily resolved.

Relax, I don't even play on PC/NA. And do purchases made with crowns inside the game also come with receipts for each transaction? I don't recall seeing any such receipts.

[snip]

Yes, I didn't initially think of that because I was previously dealing with another, more unfortunate experience.
A full rollback would have been a solution. However, it is unlikely that it could have been done exactly at the specified time. We don't really know how their system is set up. We don't know exactly how often a full backup is taken, if at all. It's inappropriate to give technical advice in this situation. From a general perspective, it's only safe to say that a full backup is definitely not done every minute. Perhaps, the last restore point was somewhere a week ago. If we are talking about rolling back a week, are you still willing to propose this solution?

[edited to remove quote]