9/1/2015 - What's Going On

[Rozalia]

Including any and all UNDETECTABLE little changes? Wow your attention to detail is horrendous. 

 

Did the game now have magic pixies in it too? How do you know this exactly? Or are you just grasping at straws to justify it?

 

Truly, Rozalia knows what is best for this game.

He always seems to know what's going on and how to fix things.

I nominate Rozalia for admin.

 

[Kemal Ergenekon]

Curbstomping? Our top tier was fine.

 

[LordRahl2]

Having an entire top ten AA taken over by a hack is a pretty big deal, if Sheepy has to roll back the game and change servers to make it more secure then so be it. If Sheepy did nothing then it would probably keep happening to other alliances, and if it were YOUR alliance I guarantee you would change your tune. It doesn't matter who was winning what, the security of the game comes first so it doesn't happen again. 

 

Not really.  It is entirely justifiable that the changes be restored and a fix implemented to stop future hacks.  I have absolutely no issue with that, quite the opposite.

 

It is the rollback that is in question so it is a matter of in game stuff.  Both the restoration of VE and the security fix could be done without a rollback.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

If you are not celebrating then you are fools...well you did ally with Rose but that being said I have generally found your alliance to be alright in this war.

I could care less about the damage we took.   We are at war, taking damage is the name of the game.  What I do care about was the damage we did, and the potential damage we were about to cause, which was all erased by the time skip.

[Avruch]

My guess, is because after the "VE hack" it showed that the actions of a last few days were not a glitch, and actually malitious actions on the part of one, or multiple people.  Who knows what other smaller currently undetected changes they could have made.  So its probably better for everyone to roll it back a few days.

 

And just in case you are wondering, As the head of VE's military, I also really dont like the fact that we are rolling back as well.  So even tho it seems like multiple Mensa members think we are celebrating over in VE, we are not.

 

Purely out of curiosity I'd be interested to understand this better. The rollback added 20,000 points to your score. How could it be anything other than a huge coup for you? (The amount can be confirmed using the API, which is still operating.) 

[Buck Turgidson]

This is how you lose massive chunks of players all at once.

Don't let my foot hit you on the way out.

[LordRahl2]

I could care less about the damage we took.   We are at war, taking damage is the name of the game.  What I do care about was the damage we did, and the potential damage we were about to cause, which was all erased by the time skip.

 

oh lord, dude you were beaten.  There are sexy charts of it and everything.  'The name of the game' is to maximize your damage and avoid damage as much as possible.  That equation clearly put you in the losing category - this would have been even more true without the time warp because your already beiged members got a pass on the additional damage they would have received from active wars.

 

If you do not actually understand this then please, lets continue this war for another month or so.

[Rozalia]

Don't let my foot hit you on the way out.

 

Your foot's quitting the game but the rest of you isn't? I think someone just betrayed the fact they are using a multi here, your foot still counts as you buddy. 

[William of Cobden]

Indeed, this thread has turned into a glorious clusterfu*k

 

Correction, this game has turned into a cluster!@#$ ...

[Bollocks]

If you are not celebrating then you are fools...well you did ally with Rose but that being said I have generally found your alliance to be alright in this war.

 

VE really should be pretty happy at this outcome, Rose too for that matter. 

[Adama]

VE really should be pretty happy at this outcome, Rose too for that matter. 

 

I don't think going back to the 27th is going to change much towards the outcome of the war.

[Hodor]

I think the reset is silly, not because I think VE stands to gain from it even if they do, but resetting now and not resetting when last and co. spawned huge amounts of cash which wasn't all accounted for and was left in the game is just stupid. That breach had a far larger impact and a significantly more disappointing response from admin.

[James II]

Is anyone considering the last backup was done 5 days ago? Or are we just assuming the admin can back the game up to whatever second he wants?

[Isolatar]

Correction, this game has turned into a cluster!@#$ ...

 

No one is forcing you to play the game. If you don't like it you can leave.

[LordRahl2]

Is anyone considering the last backup was done 5 days ago? Or are we just assuming the admin can back the game up to whatever second he wants?

 

He had the current version at the time of the freeze.  So we know but that is not relevant to the discussion.

[Saru]

Is anyone considering the last backup was done 5 days ago? Or are we just assuming the admin can back the game up to whatever second he wants?

 

Yes, that's the case. The issue is that many people of the community, me included, have been ranting about the importance of daily backups, and unfortunately we have been proven right that whatever measures were being taken before were not good enough.

 

Atleast now we have ss23 onboard. So hoping for better responses to these issues in the future.

[Bollocks]

Yes, that's the case. The issue is that many people of the community, me included, have been ranting about the importance of daily backups, and unfortunately we have been proven right that whatever measures were being taken before were not good enough.

 

Atleast now we have ss23 onboard. So hoping for better responses to these issues in the future.

 

One would think daily backups would have been implemented after the cash glitch

[James II]

Yes, that's the case. The issue is that many people of the community, me included, have been ranting about the importance of daily backups, and unfortunately we have been proven right that whatever measures were being taken before were not good enough.

 

Atleast now we have ss23 onboard. So hoping for better responses to these issues in the future.

If we are conjuring an ideal world where backups do not strain an already strained server, nor take up additional server space; It should not be "Admin should have daily backups" It should be "people shouldn't hack/exploit the game." 

[Moreau]

Will the old forum skin comeback?

[Belisarius]

Thanks for keeping us posted, Sheepy. Hopefully this is the end to the hacks. 

 

One hopes ._.

[Malichy]

If we are conjuring an ideal world where backups do not strain an already strained server, nor take up additional server space; It should not be "Admin should have daily backups" It should be "people shouldn't hack/exploit the game." 

Really, it should be both in an ideal world.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Malichy

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

oh lord, dude you were beaten.  There are sexy charts of it and everything.  'The name of the game' is to maximize your damage and avoid damage as much as possible.  That equation clearly put you in the losing category - this would have been even more true without the time warp because your already beiged members got a pass on the additional damage they would have received from active wars.

 

If you do not actually understand this then please, lets continue this war for another month or so.

I understand you cannot see beyond your nation, and at the big picture.  But at the time of the time skip, we had wiped out almost all of Test's military, and started dropping nukes, and we had taken out the military of your top 2 members.  The skip ended all the wars we had with Test, and your members that we had under control, and because we dropped them so much over the course of a day, we already beiged a few of them, and were limited by the redeclare timer, we couldnt redeclare on them.   So instead our entire upper tier had 0 targets, so we declared on a bunch of new guys that then weakend our upper tier's military which allowed your smaller guys to jump in and drag us down much easier than they would have normally been able to.

 

Now could you have dragged us down even without the setback?  Maybe, but it would have been much tougher, because we would have been closer to max military, and had the ability to rebuy that day.

 

Now, once we had those guys completely locked down, my next step was to expand out to the TKR's BK's, and more of Mensa's top tier, and just slowly expand and take your top tier out.  We should have been able to do signifcant damage before Guardian finished rebuilding and eventually took us out (or tS showed up to bail your top tier out)  But I was operating under the hope that the war would be over by then, because we could leverage Feeny's love of his pixels to give us more power in the peace negotiation. 

 

And realistically yes, the top 10-15% of VE that was winning at the time, is probably the most important part of VE, since it was our largest nations, all our nuke nations and our biggest tax providers.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Sweeeeet Ronny D

[PigInZen]

1.  last187 claimed that he had a hack with which he could continue to exploit

2.  IPB has long been vulnerable to Javascript injection

3.  Javascript injection is not a sophisticated hack, any slightly observant computer-literate person with access to their own hosting could do it

4.  If the game and forum DBs are using the DB server then a Javascript injection hack could give a hacker access to the full game DB

 

I'm hoping that the game and forum DB have been separated on the backend.  Given that politicsandwar.com resolves to two separate IP address I have reason to hope.

 

Edit:  forgot to add - Rolling back the game and the database will only undo the damage created by the hacker gaining access to the game database, not protect the game DB from future attacks along the same vector.

Edited September 1, 2015 by PigInZen

[Placentica]

For an alliance that seems to take OOC matters in-game so easily as a reason for war, I find it telling that they so freely are mixing IC with a clearly OOC issue.  And complaining they won't get to use OOC/hacks to their benefit, IC. 

 

This isn't about helping or hurting VE, or hurting Rose before, this is about the betterment of the game.  I don't care if that means short-term pain for some people or annoyance.  These are all short term issues.  I'd like to see the best long-term solution.  Besides all that, all these hacks greatly hurt VE/Rose to begin with, so a reset just puts everything back on an even footing, so not sure where all the fuss is coming from.

 

I agree with Saru and Hodor on their points.  Daily back-ups would be good and the huge exploit cash should've had a reset as well.  But I suspect we'll see much more frequent back-ups now.

 

Kind of nice to have a bit of a break from this game anyway, given all the time I've wastedspent on it lately during this war.

[Dan77]

Can I have a refund on my credits instead?  When I bought them things were entirely different and the goalposts haven't just been moved slightly, they've been completely relocated.

 

This has been very poorly managed.  You're supposed to be running a professional business but you can't access the internet because you're on a boat.  You're in 21st century America FFS.

 

Every major decision or change seems to screw Mensa over whether intentionally or not.  First many of our opponents were getting masses of exploit money which was by no means resolved to the communities satisfaction.  Then the spy system was nerfed because we were doing too well with it.  Now when we're winning what is probably the biggest war in the games history, you've decided to undo a large, key proportion of it.  If you want to earn $1000 less per month, you're going the right way about it.

 

I don't have time right now to watch for when the game comes back online and try to redo everything that had been achieved at great effort, even if it was possible, which it isn't because our opponents now know our every move.  It will probably go live in the wrong timezone for me too.

 

It's sad that others want to win like this

No one is forcing you to play the game. If you don't like it you can leave.

 

This is how games die.  Mensa have made a big contribution to growing this game, especially the active community.  We're now being taken for granted and are having a very real discussion about whether it's worth continuing (cue cheers from opposing inferior alliances).

 

This isn't just about Mensa though.  It's a poor way to run a game all around and I'm surprised at the attitude of some thinking that there are positives in this no matter what side they are on.

 

So yeah, refund please.  Rant over.