There is another gold/item duping bug out there

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

Apparently the extended downtime yesterday didn't actually fix ALL of
the gold/item duping bugs. Apparently there's a new one involving
Battlegrounds instances.

The bug is rather simple - give the item/gold you intend to dupe right
outside of an instance (item can't be soulbound), enter the instance,
hope it crashes (stuck on load screen for over a minute and then loss
of connection), and if it does, you're reverted to a previous state
where you still had your stuff while the person you gave it to also
still has it.

They might've fixed the bug involving Maraudon (fix not yet confirmed),
but there's still one involving other instances :-/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

Hrmmm it's actually hard to know what's going on now because there are
lots of people on the general forums claiming it's all a fake and even
Blizzard said so
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general-en&t=405951
Though it wouldn't exactly be in their best interested to confirm.

So, now I am just confused. This news hit the front page of Slashdot
yesterday, and Slashdot never lies, right?! Hopefully someone in here
can help resolve this mystery. Have you witnessed any evidence
first-hand that there actually is a duping bug in the wild?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

There's not much real factual info to go on. Two of my guildmates
volunteered to "test" the method everyone's been talking about last
night. They were *NOT* able to dupe anything, either a small amount of
cash (1 Silver) or a stack of Medium Leather. No one else in the guild
wants to risk losing their accounts.

Unfortunately this is taking on a life of it's own. All the people
continuously zoning in and out every Instance *ARE* causing the
Instances to re-set frequently. So it's become a self-fulfilling
prophecy as far as effecting the game goes. Even if the economies are
not being ruined, the content is.

As for why there would be huge spikes in gold sale listings on eBay,
etc, I'd chalk it up to a feeding frenzy by unscrupulous parties trying
to rip people off.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

"Cyde Weys" <cyde@umd.edu> wrote in message
news:1121870362.278011.208030@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hrmmm it's actually hard to know what's going on now because there are
> lots of people on the general forums claiming it's all a fake and even
> Blizzard said so
> http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general-en&t=405951
> Though it wouldn't exactly be in their best interested to confirm.
>

Well both should have to enter the instance to be rolled back. But you'd
actually want the one that gave up the gold to enter wouldn't you?
Seems they are leaving out some details or releasing an incorrect version.

> So, now I am just confused. This news hit the front page of Slashdot
> yesterday, and Slashdot never lies, right?! Hopefully someone in here
> can help resolve this mystery. Have you witnessed any evidence
> first-hand that there actually is a duping bug in the wild?
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

for me also.. the person that gives away items will be rolled back to
the state just before entereing instance and NOT to the state giving
items away...

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

On 21 Jul 2005 00:01:53 -0700, maxnews01@web.de wrote:

>for me also.. the person that gives away items will be rolled back to
>the state just before entereing instance and NOT to the state giving
>items away...

You're not thinking in programming terms. There's almsot certainly
not a single "object" changing hands; rather, there are records, of
who has what, being updated. When A "gives" something to B in-game,
it's likely to be a complex (if well-understood) task. Almost
certainly, each character has a list of what they have. So A's list
has to be updated to remove the object,and B's to add it. The two
operations can't happen simultaneously, so you have to choose to do
one first. If the operation crashes between the two, you either end
up with no object or two, depending on what order you did things in.

You can get round *that* problem with techniques such as a two-phase
commit. But that's not the end of the problem - this is a real-time
game with people coming and going, so you need to store the character
state to the central server as well at some point. Doing that every
time something changes is hideously expensive - and everyone would be
whinging about lag and Blizzard's lousy code. So more likely the
server flags a character as changed, stores changed characters at
regular intervals, and has exception code for the "unexpected" things
(such as a connection dropping, or an instance crashing), to store
state and make sure things stay coordinated - if you get it right,
no-one ever gets a hint as to what's actually happening.

The problem with exceptions is you need to think of all of them, and
make sure you *keep* thinking of all of them as the game changes -
because if you miss one, or introduce one, characters are either going
to lose stuff when the exception happens, or you'll get a potential
dupe exploit. Which you get isn't arbitrary, it's a matter of policy
- in real terms, you're going to piss people off a lot more if they
keep losing stuff, because that's personal. So you take the hit of
possible exploits, and fix them if they occur.

All of which leads to a common pattern. A gives "something" to B. A
quickly does something unexpected that the code hasn't got covered,
and gets booted out of the game without the changed state being
stored. A rejoins the game and gets restored from the central records
in a state in which they still have the "something". Dupe. Followed
by some poor programmer spending a few sleepless hours working out
what went wrong and fixing it - until the next time.

(Oh - and if anyone thinks you know how to write code in which there
isn't a "next time" - your fortune awaits you. "Code" equals "bugs",
pure and simple. )

Cheers - Ian

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

"Ian Noble" <fredd@clara.co.uk> wrote:

> (Oh - and if anyone thinks you know how to write code in which there
> isn't a "next time" - your fortune awaits you. "Code" equals "bugs",
> pure and simple. )

#1: You can optimize every program by removing at least one line of
code.
#2: Every program contains at least one bug.

Conclusion: You can reduce every program to one line of code that
doesn't work.

Chris )

--
[WoW] Wildcard - Treehugging Tauren (57) on EN Sunstrider [PvP]
Lonewalker - Striding Tauren (15) on EN Sunstrider [PvP]
Jazrah - Brutal Troll (16) on EN Sunstrider [PvP]
Jivarr - Charming Troll (12) on EN Sunstrider [PvP]

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

Christian Stauffer wrote:
> "Ian Noble" <fredd@clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> (Oh - and if anyone thinks you know how to write code in which there
>> isn't a "next time" - your fortune awaits you. "Code" equals "bugs",
>> pure and simple. )
>
>
> #1: You can optimize every program by removing at least one line of
> code.
> #2: Every program contains at least one bug.
>
> Conclusion: You can reduce every program to one line of code that
> doesn't work.
>
> Chris )
>

It works great with a hammer, or a slab of concrete dropped from a few
stories. you get a one-centimeter-thick computer that doesn't work.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.warcraft (More info?)

The description I read about this made it clear that it only worked during
server resets. Apparently the general world environment would be reset and
go live, but the instances wouldn't be rest for some small time lag - about
10 minutes was stated. So, during this time, if you entered the instance,
and got booted, you would come back to the world in a "rolled back" state.
So, by giving gold to a person outside the instance, and then quickly
entering the instance and leaving again - in hopes to cause a lock up or
whatever, would result in the person who had given the gold away being
rolled back to the previous state (that is, they'd get their gold back).
The other person, that was in the regular world, which had already been
reset properly, would also have the gold you gave him. There's the dupe.

My guild was doing a quest run tonight and had some interesting problems.
The GM had done the tedious quest string to get the blood of innocents to
summon the bat boss in Scholo so a bunch of us warriors could do repeated
runs to get as many of us the valor boots as possible. We were averaging
about 10 minutes start to finish, and then we'd exit the instance, disband
and reform to reset the instance, and go again. On the 3rd attempt to
reset, when we entered the instance ALL of us got locked up. When we tried
to relog, we'd get the "that name is already in existence" message OR we'd
get automatically disconnected. We were all able to log in as alts with no
problem, and in the guild list our main characters names were still there.
pretty weird.

Later, no matter what we did in terms of disbanding and reforming, whenever
we entered teh instance we'd get the message that we were not part of the
raid party. Then we were NOT able to exit the instnace,and so we ended up
getting hearthed back to our home inn. Pretty freaking annoying.

IN both cases, after some time passed - maybe 15 minutes or so - the
problems suddenly disappeared and all was well again - for a time.

I just wonder if this is some deliberate thing that Blizzard implemented to
stop the "duping" behaviors. We were, sort of, entering the instance and
exiting frequently. More likely, I guess, is that Scholo was just bugged
for some reason on our server. But you do wonder...

Mike


"Mike Kohary" <sorry@no.spam> wrote in message
news:dbmel0$vip$0@pita.alt.net...
> Cyde Weys wrote:
>> Apparently the extended downtime yesterday didn't actually fix ALL of
>> the gold/item duping bugs. Apparently there's a new one involving
>> Battlegrounds instances.
>>
>> The bug is rather simple - give the item/gold you intend to dupe right
>> outside of an instance (item can't be soulbound), enter the instance,
>> hope it crashes (stuck on load screen for over a minute and then loss
>> of connection), and if it does, you're reverted to a previous state
>> where you still had your stuff while the person you gave it to also
>> still has it.
>
> This doesn't really make any sense; I don't see why the original person
> would still have the item. Sounds like a hoax to me.
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Mike Kohary mike at kohary dot com http://www.kohary.com
>
> Karma Photography: http://www.karmaphotography.com
> Seahawks Historical Database: http://www.kohary.com/seahawks
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>