PDA

View Full Version : Clone Wars, The Exploit... A sense of normalcy



lordkator
08-20-2020, 09:36 AM
At this point, all bulk actions are complete for this event.

The staff has discussed the next steps and decided to return ADK's, Resource deeds, and self-powered harvester back to tradeable.

Thank you for your patience as we progressed through this process.

As always, if you see something, say something. We do not ban based on rumors; we use data, however, sometimes a hint can make it easier to dig a bit deeper and discover data that supports action.

Also, I'd like to address a misunderstanding about the Eye of Sauron; this system provides data and alerts to humans investigating and making decisions based on their investigations.

EoS does not do auto-bans. Even if it eventually does come to that, we will always have the CSR team review every action.

Banning a person is a serious thing impacting players and the community at large. We treat each ban with deep respect. Our automation is not a substitute for the human empathy and intuition required to make each ban decision.

Our CSR team is governed by our Terms of Service and focused on keeping our community fair, safe, and clean for our combined long-term enjoyment.

esmiswg
08-20-2020, 04:57 PM
Me and others saw something, said something, it was ignored because it was uncomfortable I guess. After all admitting that EoS has a critical bug that had you delete a massive number of legit items from a lot of honest players because it cannot distinguish between legit items and dupes well enough would not have allowed this massive screw up to go through according to your plan.

You were told to complete it instead of rushing this half-done nonsense, you did not listen to that and it resulted in this issue being handled in one of the worst ways possible. You violated your own #1 rule which is not messing with players for any reason because again it was uncomfortable.

This has been a complete dumpster fire and undermined a lot of the community's trust in 1.0 being any better.

stilgarfett
08-20-2020, 05:22 PM
Me and others saw something, said something, it was ignored because it was uncomfortable I guess. After all admitting that EoS has a critical bug that had you delete a massive number of legit items from a lot of honest players because it cannot distinguish between legit items and dupes well enough would not have allowed this massive screw up to go through according to your plan.

You were told to complete it instead of rushing this half-done nonsense, you did not listen to that and it resulted in this issue being handled in one of the worst ways possible. You violated your own #1 rule which is not messing with players for any reason because again it was uncomfortable.

This has been a complete dumpster fire and undermined a lot of the community's trust in 1.0 being any better.

Exactly this. We have both posted our concerns about this issue in other threads and it has been ignored as far as I can tell. Many players, myself included, have now lost 100% *legit* high end weapons because of this flaw in the EoS. I can't really think of a better way to purge experienced, honest and helpful players from Basilisk than what has happened here. It's bad enough that I lost hundreds of millions of credits on 2 rifles that were justifiably deleted. Considering the sources I can accept that they were questionable and have no complaints. But to also have 2 rifles deleted that were 100% clean and made by a different crafter is really disappointing.

I totally support cleaning up the player base but this move has had some significant collateral damage to innocent players. It would be great if that was acknowledged and corrected.

RecksRacer
08-20-2020, 06:53 PM
Good job on all of the hard work fixing this exploit.

If this had not been sorted until 1.0 it probably wouldve killed the server instead of just wounding it.

I don't know what can be done to restore faith for those that got seriously jobbed by this whole thing outside of launching the new server when it is ready.

hybridtheory
08-20-2020, 06:54 PM
So let me get this strait, you guys play on basilisk..... but you don't want to get ****ed over from time to time cause of developmental issues, bugs, cheats, afkbots, ect?

I think you signed up for the wrong rodeo my dudes. SWGemu has always been pretty clear they don't give a **** about you, your just a tester rat in the maze that you donate to keep going. The end goal is "1.0", whatever that means anymore, and anything till then is the wild west. You can choose to "enjoy" it or find something or somewhere else to play if your not happy with it.

If your going to put your time in on basilisk, your going to have to accept anything could happen to your stuff at any time for any reason and you got nothing you can do about it. Its a test server not a play server. There are play servers if that is what you were interested in.

lordkator
08-20-2020, 11:09 PM
Me and others saw something, said something, it was ignored because it was uncomfortable I guess. After all admitting that EoS has a critical bug that had you delete a massive number of legit items from a lot of honest players because it cannot distinguish between legit items and dupes well enough would not have allowed this massive screw up to go through according to your plan.

You were told to complete it instead of rushing this half-done nonsense, you did not listen to that and it resulted in this issue being handled in one of the worst ways possible. You violated your own #1 rule which is not messing with players for any reason because again it was uncomfortable.

This has been a complete dumpster fire and undermined a lot of the community's trust in 1.0 being any better.

To be clear I listen, I spent 3 HOURS spot checking the list, every single item I checked, yup either a dupe or the components were duped. Additionally after the fact we have had numerous reports and not one ended up in a "oops". Even the "invisible" ADK's, I fixed those in less than 24 hours.

You keep bringing up the original vs the dupe like its a flaw in the system. No the approach was by design. I considered "lowest OID is the original item", but then how do you handle components? Oh, this gets slippery...

Sure we could have said lowest oid tano is the original, whoops, turns out the dupers often returned the clone not the original, the majority of the items found, the low oid object was on... you guessed it.. on a banned account.

I will not go into detail on how they were doing this, its basic policy to not educate more cheaters on new ideas. That said the way they did it left "remnants" that made it super clear what items where dupes vs items that were factory crate manufactured. Also, they took many perfectly simple to manufacture items and duped them, wall units!!! Are you kidding me how lazy and greedy they were towards the end?

You keep telling us esmiswg how we're so wrong, and how you're a full-blown developer with deep experience, then join us! We need strong, smart developers willing to dig into the details and debate the solutions, I would be happy to have someone like that looking at the same data and debating what the next best actions are.

That said, its just not as simple as it looks at first blush, and I have done my best to solve one-off issues as they pop up.

I appreciate your passion, you clearly care, so do I, doubt it look around, I think I have provided plenty of evidence of my passion around the project's success and our community. But, you're not helping anyone by continuing to question what you don't have all the details on, at some point you have to trust we're doing the best we can with the data and the time allotted.

PS: I would like to clarify that you're confused about EoS, it's a logging system, the cleanup was a different set of code written specifically to identify dupes and related items using 8 different heruristic and determinsitic algos to target items. If you join the team as a dev I would be happy to walk you through each phase and the inputs and outputs of the system.

lordkator
08-20-2020, 11:20 PM
Here's an example (oid obsecured to protect innocents):



281477634065--- 2014-09-23 01:41:25
281482693252--- 2018-07-27 03:18:20
281482693252--- 2018-07-27 03:18:20
281482693252--- 2018-07-27 03:18:20
281482757327--- 2018-08-11 03:21:48
281482757327--- 2018-08-11 03:21:48
281482813956--- 2018-08-24 08:35:25
281482813960--- 2018-08-24 08:35:25
281482813971--- 2018-08-24 09:29:13
281482813971--- 2018-08-24 09:29:13
281484006053--- 2019-07-05 17:28:23
281484006053--- 2019-07-05 17:28:23
281484006064--- 2019-07-05 22:41:36
281484006064--- 2019-07-05 22:41:36
281484046240--- 2019-07-17 22:19:37
281484419128--- 2019-12-07 18:21:37
281484419201--- 2019-12-07 19:06:59
281484419204--- 2019-12-07 19:29:35
281484427699--- 2019-12-10 22:50:50
281484427827--- 2019-12-11 00:19:35
281484427829--- 2019-12-11 00:19:35
281484441933--- 2019-12-16 15:35:16
281484447399--- 2019-12-18 22:53:24
281484447400--- 2019-12-18 22:30:54
281484447452--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447454--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447603--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447604--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447606--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447617--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447618--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447620--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447883--- 2019-12-19 02:04:04
281484447887--- 2019-12-19 02:04:04
281484506978--- 2020-01-08 11:02:49
281484506981--- 2020-01-08 11:02:49
281484506982--- 2020-01-08 11:02:49
281484518662--- 2020-01-12 15:57:01
281484543639--- 2020-01-20 13:59:28
281484813477--- 2020-04-20 21:53:50
281484859231--- 2020-05-04 22:07:22
281484954595--- 2020-06-01 13:09:06
281484954595--- 2020-06-01 13:09:06
281484954609--- 2020-06-01 13:09:06


This is a legendary, pre-nerf loot drop from 2014, you think those copies should be floating around?

Which one is the original owner's?

Guess.. oh you won't like the answer..

They duped and deleted the ORIGINAL!

So tell me, how would you have handled that?

This really was nowhere near as simple as everyone thinks.

The goals where: (1) Minimalize impact of cheaters on the community; (2) Build tools to detect/act on these items; (3) Cleanup Basilisk for a bit until 1.0; (4) Make it annoying AF for RMT'ers

I'm sorry if you feel we missed these, but we did our best with volunteer staff and a 8 year old system never designed to handle those goals.

esmiswg
08-21-2020, 06:40 AM
The way I would've handled that particular case, is if a single copy exists outside of a duper's acc, and if it was not sliced by one of the dupers, then it's a legit item, and whatever oid the duper has on their acc is not.

But that's not the case I'm talking about. I have been specifically trying to explain one really important case that had most of the impact on innocent players and can be clearly distinguished from dupes. I'll try to describe it step by step.

1. Crafter makes a component schem (say, advanced rifle barrels, or advanced weapon stocks)
2. Crafter produces a bunch of component crates (compcrate1, compcrate2) from that schem in their factory.
3. Crafter makes a number of final products from those, say gun1, gun2, gun3. All is fine so far.
4. Duper asks Crafter for a bunch of components because they're setting up their own WS and making perfect components with all amazings is effort.
5. Crafter makes a few more crates (compcrate3, compcrate4) of that comp and gives them to the duper.
6. Duper now dupes compcrate3, compcrate4. Goes on to make dupegun1, dupegun2 etc.
7. Crafter continues to produce items from the same factory run and compcrate2, possibly a new compcrate5: gun4, gun5…
8. Your tool now flags all items produced with that crafted component no matter where and when they were made. Even gun1, gun2, gun3 get flagged retroactively because the tool apparently does not distinguish once a single component from an entire factory run is duped at any point in time.

The same goes for stacks of looted components where one of them got duped at a later date.

Of course the most reasonable way to handle this would have been to just leave things alone. If items never passed through a duper's account, especially if those items are unimportant in every way, like unimpressive weapons, any kind of clothing, resources, etc. You did have the judiciousness to recognize that deleting houses, duped or not, makes no sense at all and creates an undue impact on innocent players. Same goes for the rest.


The goals where: (1) Minimalize impact of cheaters on the community;

Unfortunately doing it the way it was done amplified the impact on the community, instead of minimizing it.

lordkator
08-21-2020, 10:11 AM
Only problem with your case is that was pretty much their primary SOP, they would clone components and sucker someone into crafting for them, some of the crafters were quite aware (and are banned) others were innocent.

I am sorry if this process upset people, we can argue for eons about it, you did not have all the data, nor did you see everything we saw, we're just not going to publish it all, first it's an incredible amount of data, second it would expose perfectly valid players to bad actors.

We have some RMT credit sellers next on the list, but hopefully that'll go quickly and we can move on, the dupes where so destructive we had to stop it immediately, and move on from there...

The primary thing moving forward we will have the data on where objects are moving, and as you proposed we can actually remove things only touched by the duper's etc. Sadly as the system was originally designed that just was not an option.

At this point I want to focus on is 1.0, we need to get our processes in place to engage the community on ideas, content etc, and build out our plan to finish major launch-impacting systems and changes so we can get to the new server.

Surrena
08-21-2020, 10:52 AM
LOOOOOOOOL

Its funny that people complaining about EOS wiping their ****...are people that were probably aware of what was going on or even involved to a degree.

You did gods work Lordkator, now lets wipe basilisk all together.

lordkator
08-21-2020, 11:06 AM
LOOOOOOOOL

Its funny that people complaining about EOS wiping their ****...are people that were probably aware of what was going on or even involved to a degree.

You did gods work Lordkator, now lets wipe basilisk all together.

Front to back as our old friend always said.. front to back...

WohenForgotHisPassword
08-21-2020, 11:21 AM
Here's an example (oid obsecured to protect innocents):



281477634065--- 2014-09-23 01:41:25
281482693252--- 2018-07-27 03:18:20
281482693252--- 2018-07-27 03:18:20
281482693252--- 2018-07-27 03:18:20
281482757327--- 2018-08-11 03:21:48
281482757327--- 2018-08-11 03:21:48
281482813956--- 2018-08-24 08:35:25
281482813960--- 2018-08-24 08:35:25
281482813971--- 2018-08-24 09:29:13
281482813971--- 2018-08-24 09:29:13
281484006053--- 2019-07-05 17:28:23
281484006053--- 2019-07-05 17:28:23
281484006064--- 2019-07-05 22:41:36
281484006064--- 2019-07-05 22:41:36
281484046240--- 2019-07-17 22:19:37
281484419128--- 2019-12-07 18:21:37
281484419201--- 2019-12-07 19:06:59
281484419204--- 2019-12-07 19:29:35
281484427699--- 2019-12-10 22:50:50
281484427827--- 2019-12-11 00:19:35
281484427829--- 2019-12-11 00:19:35
281484441933--- 2019-12-16 15:35:16
281484447399--- 2019-12-18 22:53:24
281484447400--- 2019-12-18 22:30:54
281484447452--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447454--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447603--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447604--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447606--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447617--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447618--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447620--- 2019-12-19 06:44:46
281484447883--- 2019-12-19 02:04:04
281484447887--- 2019-12-19 02:04:04
281484506978--- 2020-01-08 11:02:49
281484506981--- 2020-01-08 11:02:49
281484506982--- 2020-01-08 11:02:49
281484518662--- 2020-01-12 15:57:01
281484543639--- 2020-01-20 13:59:28
281484813477--- 2020-04-20 21:53:50
281484859231--- 2020-05-04 22:07:22
281484954595--- 2020-06-01 13:09:06
281484954595--- 2020-06-01 13:09:06
281484954609--- 2020-06-01 13:09:06


This is a legendary, pre-nerf loot drop from 2014, you think those copies should be floating around?

Which one is the original owner's?

Guess.. oh you won't like the answer..

They duped and deleted the ORIGINAL!

So tell me, how would you have handled that?

This really was nowhere near as simple as everyone thinks.

The goals where: (1) Minimalize impact of cheaters on the community; (2) Build tools to detect/act on these items; (3) Cleanup Basilisk for a bit until 1.0; (4) Make it annoying AF for RMT'ers

I'm sorry if you feel we missed these, but we did our best with volunteer staff and a 8 year old system never designed to handle those goals.

I'm sure answering all these criticisms gets exhausting, but I can't be the only non-coder on these forums who appreciates the window into what you guys do and finds these answers fascinating to read.

Hargath
08-21-2020, 11:29 AM
Going by the snippet of data you posted, it very much looks like the duping started in late July 2018. I am curious on how the dupes metastasized on Basilisk. If you have the numbers available that is. Around which date did you find the earliest dupes? When was the bulk of the duping done. How many items and components with 'exceptional' 'legendary' lable were used as blueprint?

lordkator
08-21-2020, 12:06 PM
Going by the snippet of data you posted, it very much looks like the duping started in late July 2018. I am curious on how the dupes metastasized on Basilisk. If you have the numbers available that is. Around which date did you find the earliest dupes? When was the bulk of the duping done. How many items and components with 'exceptional' 'legendary' lable were used as blueprint?

There appeared to be several "rounds", I can't go into a lot of details but something "happened" in Dec 2019 where it exploded, people involved just got greedy as can be (and lazy) and that opened up the ability for me to really deeply monitor them. From there I was able to see the patterns and go backward as much as possible to identify even old dupes.

The "latest" round was based on some weakness in the code, I patched it on Basilisk in June and watched them squirm and create safe houses, trade things to "friends", delete items, it was quite educational. That round left a lot of "evidence" which I was able to use to find the duped items.

Saldy the older dupe events were not logged as well so all I could do was look at high value items, I did audit all Legendary and Exceptionals, and surprise, found some interesting patterns, which, well.. lead to other bans and people complaining we were blindly banning them and they magically never bothered to come back to support to dicusss (gee I wonder why). As an example if you have to Legendary looted items with same s/n on the same character, do you think that's strange? Or did you think you were just super lucky?

I can't tell you the details, but maybe this is an interesting peek behind the curtain:



+----------------------------------+----------+
| test | count(*) |
+----------------------------------+----------+
| test12,test13,test7 | 29133 |
| test7,test13 | 8271 |
| test13,test7 | 7452 |
| test14,test12,test13,test7 | 4185 |
| test6,test7,test2 | 2660 |
| test2,test7 | 2448 |
| test12,test13,test7,test2 | 2070 |
| test12,test6,test7,test2 | 2032 |
| test14,test12,test6,test7 | 1769 |
| test14,test13,test7 | 690 |
| test6,test7 | 425 |
| test1,test7,test6 | 413 |
| test12,test6,test7 | 298 |
| test4,test7,test13 | 263 |
| test14,test2,test7 | 254 |
| test7,test1 | 213 |
| test14,test12,test6,test7,test2 | 192 |
| test14,test6,test7,test2 | 173 |
| test13,test7,test2 | 151 |
| test14,test12,test13,test7,test2 | 138 |
| test11,test2,test7 | 138 |
| test14,test7,test13 | 69 |
| test2,test7,test6 | 66 |
| test4,test7,test1 | 66 |
| test7,test6 | 61 |
| test7,test2 | 60 |
| test14,test6,test7 | 36 |
| test14,test7,test6 | 12 |
| test14,test11,test2,test7 | 11 |
| test9,test13,test7 | 10 |
| test13,test7,test14 | 10 |
| test14,test13,test7,test2 | 7 |
| test12,test13,test7,test14 | 5 |
| test4,test7,test6 | 5 |
| test8,test7 | 5 |
| test4,test13,test7 | 5 |
| test2,test7,test14 | 4 |
| test14,test4,test7,test13 | 3 |
| test13,test7,test2,test14 | 2 |
| test3,test7 | 2 |
| test7,test13,test14 | 2 |
| test14,test4,test13,test7 | 1 |
| test1,test7 | 1 |
| test4,test13,test7,test14 | 1 |
+----------------------------------+----------+


There were 8 phases, 14 distinct "reason codes" and the audit went across 500 Million objects.

dsrules
08-21-2020, 12:10 PM
Long live the Prototype. Death to the Protoclone.

lordkator
08-21-2020, 12:23 PM
Long live the Prototype. Death to the Protoclone.

Hence why I named it Clone wars.. LOL

Permetheus
08-21-2020, 02:53 PM
Absolutely love these updates Lordkator. Great work!

lavoria
08-21-2020, 04:23 PM
Godbless you LK. *pinky out*

Permetheus
08-21-2020, 04:52 PM
I hereby pledge 100$ and a monthly subscription 20$/month if we can have a Basilisk wipe. Who's with me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cmurphy50
08-21-2020, 06:01 PM
Meh. I'm ok no wipe until 1.0.

m5215
08-21-2020, 11:45 PM
Raze the server down to digital ashes. This chaos has gone on long enough.

jeffcue
08-22-2020, 04:13 AM
Mulder and eyelet were way to close to pabst and sire not to know something was going on.

I just wish you were more involved 3 years ago when we started calling out the dupes.

divlas
08-22-2020, 01:30 PM
Name calling is no different than witch-hunting and randomly attacking people after the war is over. And its particularly despicable when you give a player name who did massively contribute to the refunding of affected players (many players).
We all did have different knowledge on this Clone War, but if you come to deny now that something was broken in the economy and you didn't realize is a little late. We all knew pieces of "something" that looked wrong, but when the devs gave us the big picture and made their move some understood and decided to help and repair the community. Insulting them as a reward is community-breaking. Particularly now that we know that the perpetrators were banned. SWG is a social game.
The guilty people were banned.
I never wonder about investigating years ago because Basilik is a test server and we all play the game differently. With different responsibilities, and Eyelet's community management took him time. A lot. That too, I witnessed.
There is not a crafter, a pvper, a community manager on which we can't cast doubts, so we better stop. This clone war was made by players who were banned, so stop turning the players who keep playing into casualties. Its community breaking.

Questor Zarnac
08-22-2020, 04:38 PM
Name calling is no different than witch-hunting and randomly attacking people after the war is over. And its particularly despicable when you give a player name who did massively contribute to the refunding of affected players (many players).
We all did have different knowledge on this Clone War, but if you come to deny now that something was broken in the economy and you didn't realize is a little late. We all knew pieces of "something" that looked wrong, but when the devs gave us the big picture and made their move some understood and decided to help and repair the community. Insulting them as a reward is community-breaking. Particularly now that we know that the perpetrators were banned. SWG is a social game.
The guilty people were banned.
I never wonder about investigating years ago because Basilik is a test server and we all play the game differently. With different responsibilities, and Eyelet's community management took him time. A lot. That too, I witnessed.
There is not a crafter, a pvper, a community manager on which we can't cast doubts, so we better stop. This clone war was made by players who were banned, so stop turning the players who keep playing into casualties. Its community breaking.

And that is a huge crux, we all lost something, the shallowness of a portion the player base, complaining about there lost items, attacking, trolling, not letting go. I have been here 8 years on Bas alone, and find the spell has broken, it has hit to close to home and no longer want to be here, at least for now, I have stated this in other threads " we don't know what the total costs are" and the costs are still coming in, as in players who have left and will continue to leave, you know, your in game friends.
I will also add, I do feel sorry for some of the players who lost there gear, one poor soul from Flo spent a month grinding there tail off to make a 100million credits to buy a duped power hammer he barely had a few weeks, sure there were others out there like that. It's been a travesty for the community across the board. please stop making it worse with the continued animosities.

divlas
08-23-2020, 09:42 PM
And that is a huge crux, we all lost something, the shallowness of a portion the player base, complaining about there lost items, attacking, trolling, not letting go. I have been here 8 years on Bas alone, and find the spell has broken, it has hit to close to home and no longer want to be here, at least for now, I have stated this in other threads " we don't know what the total costs are" and the costs are still coming in, as in players who have left and will continue to leave, you know, your in game friends.
I will also add, I do feel sorry for some of the players who lost there gear, one poor soul from Flo spent a month grinding there tail off to make a 100million credits to buy a duped power hammer he barely had a few weeks, sure there were others out there like that. It's been a travesty for the community across the board. please stop making it worse with the continued animosities.
I know too well what you are discussing. I chose to keep playing. But I chose to start fresh, revamping my templates to be closer to what is fun to me. Okay, I'm also playing Eve Echoes on my iPad, and I have a blast. But you can recover from what happened, and when you find your way back, contact me. I'll move stars to make up for what you loss. Our communities keep going, as well as our alliance. Even more, we should try to transform this disaster into an opportunity for new players. I love Star Wars, and I love my community. This is enough to carry on.
I also want to ./Hug all services providers who kept logging, re-logging, their toons despite Basilik going up and down like our moral. You are what make SWG special. You are the bones of our communities. I regret to see that some trolls keep abusing our patience, but right now we are still much alive and swimming away from that disaster. I want to agree with Michaela, our leader, this will make us all stronger. Although such a statement can sound doubtful at the moment, if you really love our environment, you will do everything possible to make it true. I know some trolls would want to point blame in a random direction to feel important, but we are passed that.
/cheer our communties' leaders, our members, casual, and star players. We are and we will survive the management of this atrocious situation.

Misk Brebran
08-24-2020, 03:20 PM
For assistance to those affected by the duping, please see the link below. OP has general info with more specific info in the second post spoiler thread. For a quick synopsis, see my post #40 on page three.

https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=233707

We are here to help!

Thanks!

divlas
08-24-2020, 07:45 PM
Thank you Misk. I'm glad this project is heavily monitor.

Most of the honest player who lost a lost are out of reach. And I understand. When I was 11, if you recklessly destroyed my Pokemon, my feelings and anger would be all over the place.
We need a new campaign to seduce all former players to trust communities again. Right now, we are experiencing a period of despair, we need to allow it time, and get back in touch with players who felt emotionally betrayed.

However the devs need to be more clearer about Suncrusher. I mean, I don't know where to stand... Any announcement, rumors about a wipe leads people to renounce playing on basilik (especially those affected by the dupes)
Well, this is just my feeling on this unfortunate situation. We truly need clarity for once, and I fear its a matter of virtual life and death. The Soon(™) is no longer an acceptable answer. The trust in the management teams crashed down (because of hackers), I find it hard to continue speak of our community future while we know nothing. Expect that we lost some players that could have laid the fundations of a new server. Begging them to come back may not work. Only time can heal our wounds.

Lolindir
08-24-2020, 08:37 PM
The reason for the SoonTM is that we don't know. Sure, we can tell the team "We will have to be done with whats left and the initial changes to the code for the new server by 06.26.2021" but we would not be able to follow through on it, since no one here, not even the devs them selves, know how much time they can contribute to the project. No one has this project as their job, so RL will have to come first, no matter how much the rest of us wish to be done and move on to a new server. You are not alone in wanting to get this done.

We don't have many devs and the dupe have taken A LOT of time for some of our team. That takes away from other things that could have been done instead, pushing the finish line further away.

The only real clarity I can give is that the server will not be named SunCrusher. There are changes that we want to have from the get go. Wiping Basilisk and then just restart a new server with same code isn't what we wish to do. We want something custom at launch and add other things as time goes by. Discussions have started about the new server, but it stopped with the dupe. We will eventually pick it up again.

Monoxxide
08-25-2020, 06:35 AM
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/705869420261671054/732872268463603822/unknown.png

Columbus DeMaio
08-25-2020, 12:56 PM
I am amazed that a 4 slot shirt was deemed worthy of a delete. The only valuable thing about it was the tapes I had put on it. =/ It was a shock to log in the toon and see her topless.

That being said, I am grateful the guildhall I had purchased was not deleted as well, I guess I should have logged in all of my toons to check them, I was one of the guys going "I don't buy high end stuff, this will not affect me." and not reading my mail.

As an aside, how ****ing stupid/lazy do you have to be to dupe a 4-slot SHIRT of all things? Just petro and fiberplas with no intermediate crafting stages, no premade parts. The guys doing the duping were giving every other player a big middle finger.

DarksideTarq
08-25-2020, 01:38 PM
I am amazed that a 4 slot shirt was deemed worthy of a delete.

Exactly! I was lucky that the tapes in my duped shirt weren't all that great. I was really lucky that was my only duped item.

I have mixed emotions about the way things were handled, part of me thinks they could have been a bit more selective in their deletions, but overall I can understand their reasoning. I'm glad they relaxed their position on structures at least. I appreciate what the team is striving for, and I believe 1.0 is gonna be much better because of this crisis. That being said, I still have no love for the Dupers, testing is one thing, abuse is another. They should all be fed to the Sarlaac in a galaxy wide event!

ForceFielding
08-27-2020, 05:09 AM
Good luck with the wipe

The dupers were banned and 40% of the donations were terminated. (the "guilt money")

Guess what is going to happen when everyones' stuff and houses get deleted.

Not a fantasy, but the reality.

dsrules
08-27-2020, 09:41 AM
i dont know can you tell me

lordkator
08-27-2020, 10:42 AM
Good luck with the wipe

The dupers were banned and 40% of the donations were terminated. (the "guilt money")


The sad truth is I checked and none of the banned accounts contributed much more than a handful of dollars, most contributed zero donations over the lifetime of the project.


Good luck with the wipe

Guess what is going to happen when everyones' stuff and houses get deleted.

Not a fantasy, but the reality.

Not sure what you're implying here, first for this cleanup we're not deleting existing houses, and not "everyone" was impacted.

If you're talking about the wipe itself, it seems many people are actually looking forward to it, it will be hard work to get re-established on a new server, however, SWG is not as hard of a grind as most modern games anyway so that's going to be quick.

Also now with better tools, we can catch dupers sooner and we have detailed logging on the movement of items and credits, we can clean up an incident and take swift action against those involved.

It's my hope now that this is behind us we can focus on 1.0 and get to the new server where we can continue to iterate on the game over time and with the data needed to make good product decisions and keep the server clean.

It'll never be perfect, but at least we will have more tools at our disposal and a new economy to build from.

Permetheus
08-27-2020, 04:41 PM
The sad truth is I checked and none of the banned accounts contributed much more than a handful of dollars, most contributed zero donations over the lifetime of the project.



Not sure what you're implying here, first for this cleanup we're not deleting existing houses, and not "everyone" was impacted.

If you're talking about the wipe itself, it seems many people are actually looking forward to it, it will be hard work to get re-established on a new server, however, SWG is not as hard of a grind as most modern games anyway so that's going to be quick.

Also now with better tools, we can catch dupers sooner and we have detailed logging on the movement of items and credits, we can clean up an incident and take swift action against those involved.

It's my hope now that this is behind us we can focus on 1.0 and get to the new server where we can continue to iterate on the game over time and with the data needed to make good product decisions and keep the server clean.

It'll never be perfect, but at least we will have more tools at our disposal and a new economy to build from.

You freaking rock Kator!!!!!!!!

divlas
08-27-2020, 05:14 PM
Thanks for the answer Lolindir.
ForceFielding, can you elaborate? I think not, but I’d rather ask.

I think the timing of the wipe will also help. We are many to believe that the communities grow more active during winter time (North Hemisphere).
It would be good not to wipe in the middle of July.

RecksRacer
08-29-2020, 04:07 PM
Good luck with the wipe

The dupers were banned and 40% of the donations were terminated. (the "guilt money")

Guess what is going to happen when everyones' stuff and houses get deleted.

Not a fantasy, but the reality.

I would imagine that some people stopped contributing because of lost items or the existence of an unlevel playing field. I dont know tho, not my end of things.

Farelli
08-29-2020, 04:22 PM
I would imagine that some people stopped contributing because of lost items or the existence of an unlevel playing field. I dont know tho, not my end of things.

Speaking of donations, we could use another $1k or so between now and the end of day Monday.

Awila
08-29-2020, 04:43 PM
Speaking of donations, we could use another $1k or so between now and the end of day Monday.

Just donated to the cause!

divlas
08-30-2020, 03:45 PM
Just donated to the cause!
If you give, I give.

Let’s make a chain!

Misk Brebran
08-30-2020, 04:04 PM
If you give, I give.

Let’s make a chain!

Continuing the chain :)

Show your love for the project! Who’s next :)

Misk Brebran
08-30-2020, 08:32 PM
Continuing the chain :)

Show your love for the project! Who’s next :)

Thats the love im talking about! Need 7% more, whos gonna pitch in and skip a few lattès, cappuccinos, designer coffees or a meal at home instead of out this week? Whos brave enough to dare???

Are you?

asomictrumpet
08-30-2020, 10:04 PM
Keep up the good work Staff :))))))))))

neutrineaux
08-31-2020, 01:49 PM
At this point, all bulk actions are complete for this event.

The staff has discussed the next steps and decided to return ADK's, Resource deeds, and self-powered harvester back to tradeable.

Thank you for your patience as we progressed through this process.

As always, if you see something, say something. We do not ban based on rumors; we use data, however, sometimes a hint can make it easier to dig a bit deeper and discover data that supports action.

Also, I'd like to address a misunderstanding about the Eye of Sauron; this system provides data and alerts to humans investigating and making decisions based on their investigations.

EoS does not do auto-bans. Even if it eventually does come to that, we will always have the CSR team review every action.

Banning a person is a serious thing impacting players and the community at large. We treat each ban with deep respect. Our automation is not a substitute for the human empathy and intuition required to make each ban decision.

Our CSR team is governed by our Terms of Service and focused on keeping our community fair, safe, and clean for our combined long-term enjoyment.


Nice to hear. Suggestions to improve implementation of the spirit of this:

When sending a ban notice, don't sign it "Best Regards," or anything of the sort. At least in some cultures, that is just rude and gloating. "Sincerely" conveys consideration, empathy, and respect. You get the idea.

Also, when banning or otherwise penalizing someone, cutting off their access to site communications makes it very difficult for the banned individual to attempt to rectify any misunderstanding or error. At least leave them their private message access for a while.


Just thoughts. Consider at your leisure.

neutrineaux
08-31-2020, 02:00 PM
Front to back as our old friend always said.. front to back...


Just to be clear, you have my support. Good job with a nasty task. Hopefully this avoids worse pains down the road.

Either direction works fine for XY. Just FYI.

speeque
08-31-2020, 04:26 PM
And another continuation of the chain. Lets go peeps! :)

Lolindir
08-31-2020, 05:30 PM
Also, when banning or otherwise penalizing someone, cutting off their access to site communications makes it very difficult for the banned individual to attempt to rectify any misunderstanding or error. At least leave them their private message access for a while.


Your SWGEmu account isn't connected with our support. Even when banned, you can contact live support on this page. You also have access to the top of our forum, where you have access to support via tickets. To send in a ticket, you will have to make an account for that, since that system is separate form the forum/game account.

divlas
08-31-2020, 05:59 PM
Thanks to anyone who followed the chain, we are making it very close to target.
While yesterday it looked like we wouldn’t make it.

I’m adding another donation, keep up the chain!

Farelli
08-31-2020, 06:30 PM
Just donated to the cause!


If you give, I give.

Let’s make a chain!


Continuing the chain :)

Show your love for the project! Who’s next :)


And another continuation of the chain. Lets go peeps! :)


Thanks to anyone who followed the chain, we are making it very close to target.
While yesterday it looked like we wouldn’t make it.

I’m adding another donation, keep up the chain!

Wow! Thanks to everyone who responded to my request. We appreciate the support.

Permetheus
08-31-2020, 07:37 PM
Done. Goal met. ;P

Farelli
08-31-2020, 09:42 PM
Done. Goal met. ;P

Yes, I see that. Well done everyone!

Misk Brebran
08-31-2020, 09:44 PM
Done. Goal met. ;P

Whoop!

Fissile
09-01-2020, 04:01 PM
I can't tell you the details



*won't.

long live the reich.

neutrineaux
09-02-2020, 03:01 PM
You can send a ticket. The ticket system has some problems. For example, you receive an email reaponse, but you cannot reply to that. You must return to the ticket page. And (when banned?), the login does not seem to work properly there, so I ended up needing to open a new ticket and reference the previous ticket. It worked, but it did take a while to figure a work around.

Let me inject that the CSR people have been uniformly nice and helpful. So this is in no way intended to disparage them in any way.

I was not able to contact live support on this page, but that may have been a staffing issue. I understand you may not have 24/7 staffing for a volunteer project.

So my suggestion is still to allow access to the site communications, at least for a while. Additionally, an improved ticket sysystem could further mitigate frustration in dealing with misunderstandings.

Lolindir
09-02-2020, 03:52 PM
If you can't reach us on our support tools, you will not reach us on the forum either. We would be on both, but the CSRs are far from as active on the forum as I am.

neutrineaux
09-02-2020, 04:38 PM
If you can't reach us on our support tools, you will not reach us on the forum either. We would be on both, but the CSRs are far from as active on the forum as I am.

Just relating personal experience and suggestions from the customer side. It is a bit more challenging than I thought seemed desirable. Please feel free to consider or ignore.

Lolindir
09-02-2020, 05:20 PM
Thing is, just so everyone read this know it. If you leave a message to live chat when its offline, our CSRs will read it and come back to you

neutrineaux
09-02-2020, 10:34 PM
Thing is, just so everyone read this know it. If you leave a message to live chat when its offline, our CSRs will read it and come back to you

As I recall, I gave up when the “we aren’t online right now” appeared. I did not try leaving a message there, but moved on to try find my way through the ticket process. So good to know. Thanks.

rwp389
09-22-2020, 02:05 PM
I am glad they cleaned everything up to make it more or less an "even" playing field. I did lose a hammer, and probably 50+M worth of attachments on duped resources clothing, but all in all its worth it, after the loss ill take a small break and come back playing refreshed. After a few month break everything seems new anyway. I feel bad for players who lost a few 100m but speaking from a player who lost 100M or so, im glad to see the items go. It was very difficult grinding credits at the keyboard and watching all these players afk elders and top end mobs. sorry for those who lost who are legit, its a tough one to swallow.

OrumLeader
10-07-2020, 07:59 PM
Nice work - i don't envy you folks but this will only make 1.0 better moving forward - that is what everyone needs to focus on.

bobbyrfletcher
11-17-2020, 04:55 AM
Good work. Continue on the same way

smerconish
11-22-2020, 11:52 PM
I'm really excited about some of the recent work that has been done. I've sliced off the occasional donation to you guys to show a little support. Can we get a sense of when we'll be able to roll? I've been away from the game for quite some time - and was eagerly anticipating a launch. It's been quite some time since the "abandon JTL and we're almost there" announcement. I can't code, and wouldn't presume to know how to test your commits etc. Best I can do is be supportive and toss you the occasional bone. Mind giving us a sense of when we can expect the party to start? Anxious to come back but want it to be fresh and meaningful. Thanks guys

Gribbens
11-28-2020, 09:48 PM
I'm really excited about some of the recent work that has been done. I've sliced off the occasional donation to you guys to show a little support. Can we get a sense of when we'll be able to roll? I've been away from the game for quite some time - and was eagerly anticipating a launch. It's been quite some time since the "abandon JTL and we're almost there" announcement. I can't code, and wouldn't presume to know how to test your commits etc. Best I can do is be supportive and toss you the occasional bone. Mind giving us a sense of when we can expect the party to start? Anxious to come back but want it to be fresh and meaningful. Thanks guys

100%

I'm super excited for the chance to play on a rebooted server with limited character slots. It will breath life into the game. With more updates i'm more willing to invest donations too. Any kind of information would be fantastic.