Anyone else get a random email from PWE Customer Service? [Resolved! See post #132.]

darknessmuta

Here is what it stated:

This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~BranFlakes

pwebranflakes

Hi Captains,

A friendly reminder that posting private correspondence is against our ToS.

However, some background on the situation: we very recently discovered a gameplay bug (not player facing, so you wouldn't have known and it is through no fault of your own) that has been causing stability issues with the Star Trek Online servers. Our investigation shows that less than 110 accounts are affected by this issue, so we have been forced to temporarily suspend access to these accounts while we implement a fix. We estimate the fix to go live within 48 hours, and once it is, access to STO will be restored.

With the giveaway going on currently, we will be granting the items to the affected accounts, as they will not be able to log in and claim them on their own during this period. We are also investigating other potential forms of compensation for any inconvenience that this matter may have caused.

The accounts affected have all been emailed by our GM team to the email account on file. Once the fix is live, we will email again to let you know access has been restored.

We sincerely appreciate everyone's understanding and apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Cheers,

Brandon =/\=

newromulan1

edit - removed to comply with Brandon's note - pls wait for his clarification and good luck.

Hopefully they will get it resolved in a few days and you can get back in game - that lock-box stuff is looking AWESOME!!

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chainfall

newromulan1 wrote: »

I means that they have had to shut down(aka ban) your account and others because of something which could affect the whole game.

Definitely need clarification on this.

annahmaria1

um what??

Can someone please clarify

darknessmuta

Now with pwebranflakes modding it, it makes it look like I am a dirty cheater or something. It's annoying too since now I cannot get any favors or do any of the other Risa stuff. I did search the forums and didn't see anyone else post about this yet so that is why I posted the original message.

pwebranflakes

Edit complete. Thanks for your patience!

Cheers,

Brandon =/\=

darknessmuta

Now with all the people playing STO and less then 110 affected, I wonder what made us so special. At least I will still be getting the free Summer Giveaway items in theory but now I don't think I will be able to get the Risa favors I planned to work on for the outfits for my characters.

ikuruyo

Also affected and I'm in charge of the fleet SB projects. Neverwinter access was not affected so I can still chat with people. I'm going to lose the abilithy to pick up older lockboxes though. Was planning to grab a bunch of cardassian ones for later.

newromulan1

darknessmuta wrote: »

Now with all the people playing STO and less then 110 affected, I wonder what made us so special. At least I will still be getting the free Summer Giveaway items in theory but now I don't think I will be able to get the Risa favors I planned to work on for the outfits for my characters.

Maybe you were hanging out with those shifty Ferengi at Drozana station?

ikuruyo

newromulan1 wrote: »

Maybe you were hanging out with those shifty Ferengi at Drozana station?

That can't be it. I don't go anywhere near there expect when its required for those few episodes.

riyott

pwebranflakes wrote: »

Hi Captains,

A friendly reminder that posting private correspondence is against our ToS.

However, some background on the situation: we very recently discovered a gameplay bug (not player facing, so you wouldn't have known and it is through no fault of your own) that has been causing stability issues with the Star Trek Online servers. Our investigation shows that less than 110 accounts are affected by this issue, so we have been forced to temporarily suspend access to these accounts while we implement a fix. We estimate the fix to go live within 48 hours, and once it is, access to STO will be restored.

With the giveaway going on currently, we will be granting the items to the affected accounts, as they will not be able to log in and claim them on their own during this period. We are also investigating other potential forms of compensation for any inconvenience that this matter may have caused.

The accounts affected have all been emailed by our GM team to the email account on file. Once the fix is live, we will email again to let you know access has been restored.

We sincerely appreciate everyone's understanding and apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Cheers,

Brandon =/\=

You are literally the most incompetent, stupid, horrible community moderator I've ever met.

devian666

darknessmuta wrote: »

Now with all the people playing STO and less then 110 affected, I wonder what made us so special. At least I will still be getting the free Summer Giveaway items in theory but now I don't think I will be able to get the Risa favors I planned to work on for the outfits for my characters.

It looks like your situation is resolved. A few people I was trying to play some content with were getting hit with a lot of disconnects last night. So hopefully this fixes a few things.

This reminds me I'll have to fill in a few bug reports tonight.

beauregarduk2

Roughly 30 minutes ago I was playing STO as normal, when my connection was abruptly severed to be replaced with the log-in screen and a message in red stating that my account had been BANNED !

I was extremely startled and alarmed by this, as I've been playing STO since its open beta, am a life time subscriber, and have never committed any gaming offence (bannable or otherwise) !

With enormous trepidation and dread, I submitted a query to Support, and exited the log-in screen.

After checking the STO Website for offences that would cause an account to be immediately banned, I noticed that if an account IS banned, the reason for the ban is notified to the account holder by email.

So, upon checking my email I discovered a message from PWE/Cryptic stating that thay have discovered a game-breaking gameplay bug that has been causing stability issues with the STO servers ! And that my account 'is one of the few accounts affected by this issue' and has been temporarily suspended while they try to resolve it.

It could not happen at a worst time ! Although they further state that my account will be automatically credited with the Summer giveaways while suspended, I have a Fleet to run !
Several Fleet events I have organised will now not happen, because I cannot log-in, nor even email the other members to notify them what is happening !

I am/was a regular STO player, with 16 toons, putting in at least 4 hours each evening. The 'bird raising' projects which I was doing daily on these 16 toons to obtain marks will now go to waste, since I suspect they will not fix this problem anytime soon. *sigh !

Anyhoo, out of curiosity; has anyone else been affected with this issue?

N.B. Okay, now I look like a bigger idiot than usual ! While I was typing the above (in a separate thread, I might add) THIS thread was also being created. Now my thread has been moved here, and nearly all of what I typed is now out of context ! Cheers forum moderator !

kaiserkacto

Before the merge

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=824601

newromulan1

I am thinking a thread merge in 3...2...1..

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newromulan1

riyott wrote: »

You are literally the most incompetent, stupid, horrible community moderator I've ever met.

Yikes - flaming the Community mod - wow.

Unknown

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scurry5

riyott wrote: »

You are literally the most incompetent, stupid, horrible community moderator I've ever met.

*Tap tap tap* Not sure if my sarcasm detector is working properly or not....

trekkietravis

riyott wrote: »

You are literally the most incompetent, stupid, horrible community moderator I've ever met.

Sounds like somebody needs a big hug today!

cookiecrook

So far, I know two people who have received this e-mail. Both are lifers and both have been around since the open beta. I hope Cryptic/PWE compensates these players heavily! It's these players that have supported this game, already own the stuff that is being given away for free this week, and continue to buy just about everything that comes out even when it's bugged.

tonyalmeida2

Brandon's post sounded ridiculous. How can 110 different accounts somehow be effecting server wide stability? If the player that called him out was effected by this "whatever this is not even sure what to call this" then I can clearly see how he would be upset. Being banned for 2 days due to a "again I don't even know" would certainly be enough to incite anger. If I were effected I would be angry.

tc10b

Over my various dealings with PR related officials in various companies over various years is that what they say should be taken with a rather large dose of salt.

Now that's not to say that anyone is lying, just that sometimes PR demands that certain bits of information are "spun" in a certain way and then conveniently buried by the forum mods. *cough* stipends *cough*

I have got to say though it is a first that Brandon or anyone from PWE is offering compensation for the downtime, for any reason. I'm beginning to suspect something going on behind the scenes here as it's rather out of character for them as usually it's put up and shut up.

riyott wrote: »

You are literally the most incompetent, stupid, horrible community moderator I've ever met.

I've seen worse, even on this forum before now.

cookiecrook

tonyalmeida2 wrote: »

Brandon's post sounded ridiculous. How can 110 different accounts somehow be effecting server wide stability? If the player that called him out was effected by this "whatever this is not even sure what to call this" then I can clearly see how he would be upset. Being banned for 2 days due to a "again I don't even know" would certainly be enough to incite anger. If I were effected I would be angry.

Having some technical knowledge, I have to agree. 110 accounts affecting and impacting play for around a hundred thousand players seems like a joke. Both of the players I know personally have no idea what the issue with their accounts is, when it will be fixed, and if they will be compensated for being locked out.

hevach

tonyalmeida2 wrote: »

Brandon's post sounded ridiculous. How can 110 different accounts somehow be effecting server wide stability?

We know from when they were rebalancing instance population caps that almost everything in every character's database including ships and boffs they may not be using are loaded into the server side of the instance, and even though it's not sent to client computers it can affect the instance's stability or playability for everyone in it.

It would stand to reason that corruption in that database would also impact others in the instance, and would explain the bizarre clusters of transient unconfirmable/unreproducible connection issues with no tracert abnormalities - certainly a more acceptable argument than several dozen people in the same zone at the same time all lying about the same connection symptoms.

tonyalmeida2

hevach wrote: »

We know from when they were rebalancing instance population caps that almost everything in every character's database including ships and boffs they may not be using are loaded into the server side of the instance, and even though it's not sent to client computers it can affect the instance's stability or playability for everyone in it.

It would stand to reason that corruption in that database would also impact others in the instance, and would explain the bizarre clusters of transient unconfirmable/unreproducible connection issues with no tracert abnormalities - certainly a more acceptable argument than several dozen people in the same zone at the same time all lying about the same connection symptoms.

Your explanation sounds a lot less ridiculous than Brandon's. Not saying I buy it per say, your's just makes more hypothetical sense.

hevach

tonyalmeida2 wrote: »

Your explanation sounds a lot less ridiculous than Brandon's. Not saying I buy it per say, your's just makes more hypothetical sense.

That IS Brandon's explanation - a rare bug affecting a small number of accounts that can impact the entire game. I only speculated a type of bug that would meet the criteria. I can think of a few others, but most of them come down to the same thing - database corruption in a single character that can affect shared locations or mechanics. Database corruption is rare enough to explain only 110 affected accounts, and for a game that's effectively a very elaborate database interface it's easy to see dozens of ways a problem with the database can propagate to other characters who are not themselves corrupted.

chainfall

Even though my account isn't one of the 'culprit' accounts, I am pretty suspicious of this whole thing. What exactly is wrong with these accounts? Compensation is appreciated though, I'm glad you have that handled.

But the bottom line is: What is wrong with them and how did you determine which accounts were doing it?

Full disclosure is in your best interest Cryptic when you start banning accounts, regardless of it being temporary. How do we know we aren't next? Or that it won't happen again for some other mysterious Men in Black reason?

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