Unscheduled Server Maintenance - 01.06.2012

Blame Nexon in Korea. They need to hire better people over here in North America or send some here from North Korea. Can't patch shiz here.

North Korea?
Anyway....that too. The dev's are barely even in america. Or the development team. They need to get more people. They're too stingy on so many different points.
Edit:

**Update** We are continuing to work on the issues and will be extending the maintenance by two hours. Please click the link below for the updated schedule. Thank you for your patience and support.Today’s Everyday Hot Time event and the 2x EXP event will be rescheduled and more information will be provided later. Thank you for your patience and support.

*Nexon's extension*

Surprised they told us so early. :o Im used to extension notices like 5 mins before it finishes..or afterwards

Extensions are good. leads me to believe they're actually putting effort into this. Maybe.

Surprised they didn't say the usual "we ran into unespected problems".

good this means no rollback

@swordstaker We don't have in-house game devs. Mama Nexon controls all that.

Mama Nexon controls all that?

Extensions are good. leads me to believe they're actually putting effort into this. Maybe.

Not even 10 hours would be enough to fix everything.

But that's my opinion.

Since rollback is pretty much out of the question, what form of consequences that DON'T affect the legits can Nexon really offer?

Deleting items/banning users with items that go above a certain threshold is a bad, bad idea. While you will get the hackers, you'll also get a bunch of legits. (It's important to note that Nexon will probably determine the "cap" to be way too low and for this reason a lot of legit players could be in trouble too.)

But other than method above ^, I don't really see a proper resolution. Thoughts?

Nexon could first use the obvious cap of 300+ ATK to get rid of those Cravens, Nisrocks, and Stonetooths.
I am not aware of scrolling + enhancing that leads to that attack except for that odd mop out there. (Can EStaff get that high after 12 enhances now? I don't remember the base M.ATK)

And people shouldn't have been buying those 300+ ATK items in the first place.

Maybe nexon comes to their senses and they patch the dupe like they should have long ago?

1. The dupe is private= Nexon doesn't know what to fix.
2. I'm sure these guys have dozens of dupe methods at their disposal, and could find more at will.
3. Unless they completely change the way their server works, they can't stop the duping.

Mama Nexon controls all that?

...so that makes Nexon America the black sheep in the family?

Anyway, so not only did we get screwed out of Hot Time yesterday, we're gonna miss this one too lol. If this SC will fix the Familiar Hack however... I'll be glad to sacrifice Hot Time.

1. The dupe is private= Nexon doesn't know what to fix.
2. I'm sure these guys have dozens of dupe methods at their disposal, and could find more at will.
3. Unless they completely change the way their server works, they can't stop the duping.

3 is correct.

1 is completely wrong.
Duping is always done by using the fact that the individual channel server processes keep information in internal memory for a while before forwarding it to the database server to be safely stored on disk. When the channel process crashes, the information in its memory is lost, resulting in a small rollback. This rollback can cause items to be duped.

Nexon cannot fix this without a major overhaul of the game's database, which would likely require investment in a much better commercial database product, better hardware, and developer time to convert the code to using the new database. Obviously they have no desire to make this investment.

What they do instead is patch every method of crashing the channel server process, whenever one starts getting used repeatedly. These do get patched - even when they are private, the developers can figure them out using debuggers and crash dumps. But whenever one is patched, another starts being used, and it takes several days (at least) to patch, partly because of the way everything has to be sent to Korea.
So, to correct (2), What the hackers do seem to have an infinite supply of, is methods for crashing the channel server process.

Its nice to see some kind of action being taken. I would just like to see or be told of them addressing the massive hacking problem that is running rampant. People hitting 200 with familiar hacks and people using those glitched weapons really does not bother me nearly as much as the fear of my account being compromised do some sort of database/security leak on Nexon's end.

Channel crash, although the most common, isn't the only way to dupe.
Of the top of my head I can think of an instance where a broken map was used.
Not to mention the infamous "El nido dupe".

3 is correct.

1 is completely wrong.
Duping is always done by using the fact that the individual channel server processes keep information in internal memory for a while before forwarding it to the database server to be safely stored on disk. When the channel process crashes, the information in its memory is lost, resulting in a small rollback. This rollback can cause items to be duped.

Nexon cannot fix this without a major overhaul of the game's database, which would likely require investment in a much better commercial database product, better hardware, and developer time to convert the code to using the new database. Obviously they have no desire to make this investment.

What they do instead is patch every method of crashing the channel server process, whenever one starts getting used repeatedly. These do get patched - even when they are private, the developers can figure them out using debuggers and crash dumps. But whenever one is patched, another starts being used, and it takes several days (at least) to patch, partly because of the way everything has to be sent to Korea.
So, to correct (2), What the hackers do seem to have an infinite supply of, is methods for crashing the channel server process.

I've heard that there are crashless dupes out and about too.

I've heard that there are crashless dupes out and about too.

Channel crash, although the most common, isn't the only way to dupe.
Of the top of my head I can think of an instance where a broken map was used.
Not to mention the infamous "El nido dupe".

I yield to your superior knowledge.

However, it doesn't change the fact that as long as they don't change the database infrastructure, channel-crash dupe will be impossible to prevent.

(Can EStaff get that high after 12 enhances now? I don't remember the base M.ATK)

Yes. Requires 9 20% scrolls working and 12 enhances though usually; guess it depends on the mattk it was used on. 180 Mattk clean can be 315mattk.

3 is correct.

1 is completely wrong.
Duping is always done by using the fact that the individual channel server processes keep information in internal memory for a while before forwarding it to the database server to be safely stored on disk. When the channel process crashes, the information in its memory is lost, resulting in a small rollback. This rollback can cause items to be duped.

I still don't get why equips don't have unique item IDs which are persistent. It shouldn't change the key when you put an item in storage, just copy it from one table to the other. And then when you go to insert it back in the first table, and a dupe exists, one of them would be automatically removed from the game. There's something weird going on if they can't even detect duplicate items... Use items are another matter, since all scrolls are alike (in order to stack) but most dupes do seem capable of duping equips.

I yield to your superior knowledge.

However, it doesn't change the fact that as long as they don't change the database infrastructure, channel-crash dupe will be impossible to prevent.

Interesting. Mostly because EMS hasn't had any dupe for a good month or more.

Extensions are good. leads me to believe they're actually putting effort into this. Maybe.

The problem is when they extend, and STILL don't fix anything, which has happened before, I believe.

**Update 2**The maintenance is now expected to end at 7:30 PM Pacific as we need additional time to apply the fixes. (Please see below for the new schedule.) All cash items will be extended by 24 hours. More information will follow regarding today’s Everyday Hot Time event and 2x EXP event. Thank you very much for your patience!