Floss

Ugh, please don't tell me that you honestly believe a wipe is necessary to clean out old accounts. It also should have nothing to do with new hardware. Take it out of the game world, and into the business world. 1) Old accounts - look at last login date, delete all > 60 or 90 days, whatever they decide is old. If they don't know which accounts are old, which have residual dev rights that shouldn't, then they need better account management tools. 2) New hardware - restore the player database to the new hardware. You think a business has to delete its Active Directory when they move to a new box? Saying that a full purge is necessary due to either one of these reasons is just wrong. Significant changes to the database structure or a new database altogether are more logical. Hell maybe they just want more people exploring noob content. All of that aside, I could care less about a wipe, but let's not use bad rationale as to why.

Fighting words.

Last bit of speculation... firewall breach:

Maybe the server somehow got infected with excessive spywear, seeing as the giant spider theory isn't holding much water.

No, and this is why rumours/theories start. We have no reliable way to get information from the team, so when it goes down, we sit here and start guessing. Maybe there is chat in general, maybe something is being said in team speak, no one knows what's happening. A simple "Yes the server is down and we are investigating and will provide an estimate on restoration time later." is really all anyone in this thread is looking for. I don't think anyone is pissy, it's more of a "what's up?". The Live team was just as guilty of this, and it's an easy way to help keep people informed. Maybe a few community reps are needed?

I bow to your literacy skills (and reinforced my own laziness)

I think his question is valid to a degree. If you macroed one button to sell all of your loot, is that bad? Maybe the line is drawn that if what you are doing in game is driven by a third party application, it's probably "bad". This would cover any scripting or bots. Programmable interface devices where you can program a sequence of commands, not sure. If mouse 3 can be programmed to "e", wait 0.2, "f", is that an advantage or just lazy? This game doesn't have a customizable UI, so basically anything other than in-game button presses is "bad". And no it isn't hard at all to deal with gating for people to set up scripts for trade runs. I personally haven't done it, but they exist.

Given a planned upgrade is seeming unlikey, I propose the following hypotheses. Giant spider: Cat: A different cat: Most likely cat:

1235

Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, all coming "soon". Even in live, this was pandemic. "Loot tables wil be fixed soon". lol @ that.

Again more "noise", but a new physical machine was supposedly purchased to replace the current one. The current one was a test box if I'm not mistaken, not intended to be the live server. Live server died Dec 19th roughly.

Haters and doubters!

This was from a GM ticket I submitted yesterday. I airlocked a plague's bite thinking it was bio trash loot, oops Again I'm not saying this is ST4 cutover, but it's apparently coming "soon".

I don't want to start crap, but could be related to this? Maybe someone is flipping on the new switch for the rumored new server? Nearing doesn't imply today, but then I don't know how tight the communication channels actually are. ... Fri, January 22, 2010 10:15:48 AM At this time the GM team is not supporting the return of any items. We are nearing the end of stress test 3 and will be migrating to stress test 4. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope you will continue to enjoy the features that newer releases of the Earth & Beyond Emulator will present for you.

A buddy (thanks Viper) found this screenshot buried on an old HDD. Not sure how many traces of him still exist, but he was quite the threat back when we were all lvl 100ish noobs Used to be kitable, then added summon which lead to the development of warp kiting. Fun times. Later was removed or just reskinned/renamed, but used to be the big cheese at the gate that subsequently dropped craptastic loot (bullwark, cube of the leech, unabating fire). Anyone else have any "archaic" screens still kicking around of obsolete content?

I hope we can fix stuff that was clearly designed poorly in live to enhance the experience going forward. This would be a good one to do. Aragoth prime has horrible pathing all the way around the center if going to/from VG and Mus. BBW gates are a bit screwy as well.

I don't have multiple PC's, but this is very useful for people: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ Basically a program that lets you use one input device across X# of computers. You would just need to have three monitors, three towers. Add in VMware on each machine and now you have a 6-box system, but yeah, good luck using that effectively

That T-Shirt is so terrible that it's awesome. Nice save.

I believe he was clear about legality in his post, looking for strategy, and not exploits.

Locking 3 ships in form, especially missile boats, and just hitting E and then F makes it pretty doable. Once bosses are properly implemented, and your wingmen are getting grav linked, summoned, whatever, then yeah multiboxing basically goes out the window from a strategy standpoint. I don't worry at all about 1 individual KSing something like a properly implemented Controller, not likely at all.

Mehhh... this isn't even at a beta stage yet. I'd be fine if there were terminals where you could just press a button and be lvl 150 at this point cause it really doesn't matter at all. Multibox plvl isn't going away unless you take out group bonuses. Gimp trade, you can still just leech combat and explore xp. It delays it but doesn't change anything in the long run. Selling to the vendor still nets XP, so again, you just kill the fish, leech the combat xp, and then cash in on the trade xp. Make a TT and a JE and multibox trade runs. Yes the current mechanics allow this to happen more quickly than intended, but the effect is nothing at this point. Who cares if someone has 15 lvl 150 toons? The only thing we're testing right now as far as I can tell is basically just server load (see: stress test), so the more toons and multiboxers the better. What they do to level is moot. Repeatable quests, sure, adjust those at this point as having them in live could cause some problems, and the quests are typically more obscure than something like the blanket setting for trade xp calculations. This isn't isolated to the FB at all, it's simply that the xp given for trading looted items from player to player isn't balanced. It's not an exploit any more than leeching combat xp or doing noob tours is an exploit, it's just something that needs to be balanced. Outside of loot trading, currently trade runs are the single fastest way to level a character to 150. Are trade runs exploits? Does it make sense that an epic combat warrior gets more combat XP per hour from taking spices to a base than killing stuff? Is this abusing the game mechanics by "exploiting" trade runs instead of playing the game as intended and actually shooting stuff? Balancing takes a long time to get it right. Ideally you end up with a system where killing/mining/trading all balance out to roughly the same xp/hour on average taking into account class strength/weaknesses, then people won't do stupid stuff like trade runs to 150, noob tours, etc. Job terminals should also be deleted entirely, as that was just a lazy idea by Westwood to assist with progression, and a mindless time sink that adds nothing to the game.

I was going to make a comment about SLI, but thought you had already bought it, and didn't want to look like an ass. Great choice on the 5870, that card will destroy anything you throw at it. I've had a tri-sli board for 2 years, and it still has a lonely 8800 in it that runs everything "great" (not crysis on max, disliked crysis anyways). Big waste of money to get this tri-sli board, with the exception that it overclocks like a champ. (Q6600 running at 3.8ghz for 2 years now based on stock of 2.4ghz on air). I would never go with a SLI/crossfire setup unless I had a 30" monitor where you legitimately need the memory for the 2560 res, or if I was gifted a second card. It fails from a future proofing standpoint as 2 years down the road, you can find a single card solution for not much more money that will perform sli'ed 2 year old cards. We're fortnate at this point that hardware is miles ahead of software, so the need to spend 3k on a system with a 1k video card is gone.

What's more disconcerting is 15 hours later, no one knows if it was a bug or intentional See: Communication.

I'm not sure this would be the best way to do that. Make items free from a vendor, turn off xp debt, make everyone 150, etc. This was more... random. If it was deigned to test gear damage, definitely needs to be tweaked to avoid people raiding in vendor gear, and saving "special" gear for when they can't get hurt. Sort of like owning a nice car and never taking it out of the garage. Someone who spends weeks trying to get an item won't want to see it get blown to hell in one night of tough raiding, assuming tough raiding actually gets implemented with supporting AI. The only apaprent challenge from this stuff is that you are dead before you can even leave or enter the stations. One Controller from live probably could have trainwrecked everyone, whereas these mobs are distant cousins of their live counterparts.

Have to agree with this. I lost 15% on one item on one death. Fortunately an easily replaced item, but this needs to be tweaked for live unless loot is going to keep dropping the way it is now (see 2 hour boss spawns vs 72 hour).