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New CCP DevBlog regarding the Boot.ini-issue
batolemaeus
Member CommonPosts: 2,061
So finally i understand how this could happen. Interesting Blog is you ask me..
"My name is Dr. Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson and I have been directing the EVE Online Software Group for the better part of this year. From my previous work experiences in the antivirus industry and following CCP for quite some time now, I have come to appreciate the need for full disclosure when things don't go according to plan.
Shortly after releasing EVE Online: Trinity at 22:04 GMT on Wednesday, 5 December, we started receiving reports that the Classic to Premium graphics content upgrade was causing problems to players by deleting the file C:oot.ini, which is a Windows system startup file. In some cases the computer was not able to recover on the next startup and would not start until the file had been fixed. In this dev blog I want to tell you how this happened.
In the weeks leading up to the release of Trinity, one of our concerns was how to deliver this update to our players in a very short amount of time and to players that might not all have a good internet connection. Significant effort was therefore put into making the Classic to Premium graphics content upgrade as small as possible at various stages in the process. [...]"
Comments
Can't say it belongs on the best seller list, but it does go into good detail about how/why the problem occurred.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Well, they do admit they are at fault, and are providing more than " copy and paste" support for those that reach them directly. CCP may not recover completely from the bad PR that Trinity brought, but they aren't sweeping it under the rug like some users say.
200 effected players is quite a bit.
one player on the forums paid 200$ to get his computer repaired.
He just came back to the forums with tears in his post. happy tears! he called them up and they gave him a free year.
This was a major mistake but it seems to have been handled as well as it possibly could. It seems to be in CCP's nature to put themselves under more pressure that they can handle. It should be pointed out that this was a MAJOR expansion provided free of charge. I don't say this as an excuse, but as a way of explaining where I think the error lay. If CCP had charged money for the expansion this would not have happen, period. And it would have been really easy for them to charge someting for the premium content. They were pushing the envelope and they stumbled....I can live with that.
I thought his comments on windows were dead on. Not to blame Microsoft, but the openness of there OS has always boggled my mind.
I say they handled it mightily well in wrap up. Although I know more than 215 where affected, only 215 had contacted(I know 4 friends who had caught on and seen the warnings and were saved from the troubles and able to fix before a restart). The idea that they are compensating those who already payed for repair services is cool, but to go on and at the end, im pretty sure that was an offer to pay for a 3rd party repair team aka Geek squad, is a call beyond measure. I could have read the end wrong, but that seems to what he was refering too.
200 affected players (to the point where they had to contact CCP) out of around 250,000 accounts (probably something like 120,000 players) isn't really all that bad to be honest. It could have been a LOT worse, especially if CCP hadn't been so quick to act and so open about the issue.
Many more players were 'affected' but most were able to "self-help" themselves to fix it. It's actually pretty stunning how many of the members of the EVE community have computer backgrounds.
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
If CCP really wanted to up their looks they'd pimp that story on the mainpage.
All in all CCP has shown how much they care and sorted it out and helped every single one who needed them when it all went to hell,
that's GOOD PR.
Played so far: 9Dragons, AO, AC, AC2, CoX, DAoC, DF, DnL, DR, DDO, Ent, EvE, EQ, EQ2, FoMK, FFO, Fury, GW, HG:L, HZ, L1, L2, M59, MU, NC1, NC2, PS, PT, R:O, RF:O, RYL, Ryzom, SL, SB, SW:G, TR, TCoS, MX:O, UO, VG, WAR, WoW...
It all sucked.
I've always thought CCP handled bugs and problems rather well and now they've shown they can handle such errors in the same manner. It still seems to me that CCP is one of the companies that cares quite a lot about their players and it shows in the way they treat them and how they respond to problems.
Sure, there are problems and sure, errors are being made, but that's human nature and how they deal with these errors tells a lot more about them than anything else.
Cheers. ^^
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
It is interesting to see how this happened and it was also interesting to see how many people were unable to save themselves due to having a full Boot file delite [as in it was delited but there windows was able to work arount this problem].
Persoanlly i expected it to be more than 215 but then again i guess i should consider it was late at night and only on for 2 hours.
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Retired from: Neocron, Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, RF Online and Final Fantasy VII
Currently Playing : EvE Online.
Nice... very nice.
Much love, hugs and kisses to CCP for not trying to sweep it under the rug and actually offer an apology... and an explanation as to how this happened in the first place. I'm sure that epic piece of code will be remembered and haunt them for the rest of their EVE programming days
But...
They should have acted a little faster on getting those support numbers up and the explanation/apology should have been posted days ago rather than yesterday. Quick damage control is essential in a situation like this.
Anyway...
May the boot.ini be with you.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
The boot.ini-joke will be a running gag that will haunt ccp forever, right?
"We didnt want that Boot.ini anyways"
200 affected players (to the point where they had to contact CCP) out of around 250,000 accounts (probably something like 120,000 players) isn't really all that bad to be honest. It could have been a LOT worse, especially if CCP hadn't been so quick to act and so open about the issue.
Many more players were 'affected' but most were able to "self-help" themselves to fix it. It's actually pretty stunning how many of the members of the EVE community have computer backgrounds.
At fanfest CCP said they have 200K subs and i know some people who have 5/6 accounts in my corp so it's like i wonder how many people are actually playing.
devs have stated that less than 15% of players have more than one account, same as in any other MMO.