Rollback: The Aftermath

June 3, 2009

The rollback happened later than what was scheduled; it was scheduled for 11:00 yet at that time Valhalla is still online, and the actual rollback started at around 11:30. And also it was faster than what I expected. It only lasted for about an hour.

Yes, experience, premiums, items and money were lost but not as much as other expected. In no way did experience return to, well, nothing, and money return to 0z for most but many did lose great amounts of money, equipment and experience.

I, for example, together with amparolicious, was leveling a night before the rollback  with my Blacksmith and his Wizard character in the Geffen High Orcs. I leveled my job two times while amparolicious leveled even greater due to his premium, and at times the party not having shared experience — this really makes me mad. Both of us lost all our experiences from Leveling starting May 30 to June 1 — June 1 is the day before the rollback, and that is three days of lost experience.

Besides experience, people also lost a lot of money, and my Blacksmith lost 2.6 million Zeny due to this rollback. The items that I sold and traded were returned though. This is because, as amparolicious explains, the rollback is pretty much like the system restore that you have on your computer. It’s not like a reformatting that many of us thought. But nevertheless, reformat or system restore, it was a HUGE trouble for pRO Valhalla players.

I would also like to point out that, according to the LU announcement on the night before the rollback, they will reimburse ROK’s that were consumed during the period of May 30 to June 1. And guess what, it was already 3 hours after the rollback, and there was no ROK reimbursement whatsoever.

Many people were infuriated. Even I was furious. Think of it the money that you spent on buying LU load was thrown to waste. But salvation came a few hours afterwards; the players’ ROK Points were returned.

But that’s not the end of the nightmarish rollback event — and it truely complements LU’s 6^th year anniversary especially in terms of its service and response to events like this which are truely of their creation — it seems like people’s ROK’s were not returned fully — that is in its full amount — and there are still some waiting for  all of their ROK’s to be returned — one example of this is amparolicious. And also, it seems that only ROK would be returned not the load spent on Premium game time between May 30 to June 1.

This event really got our morales down — think of the time that we spent on leveling went to waste — so amparolicious and I decided to create new characters all together: I, an FS Priest, and amparolicious, a musical bard.

And finally, it was already 21:00 and a server-wide GM message was put up by GM Anael, the great, and, according to him, all ROK’s have now been reimbursed. That made us excited, and, as soon as we finished our AFM’s and my Job Manual through leveling, I warped as back to Prontera. We went back to Prontera, and checked our ROK points, and, contrary to the GM’s statement, they were not there. So were forced to return back to our leveling spot, and in there I managed to see a furious player’s shout that LU/GM’s must not give false hopes for there are always legal action that they [the players] can make.

Lastly, I would like to report that GM Anael, the great, spawned thousands of Anubis in Veins, Rachel, Louyang and another city that I forgot. <sarcastic>Sure, that really is a great way to compensate for LU’s troubles.</sarcastic>

Less than 10 Minutes before Rollback

June 2, 2009

This is the day, and the hour of Valhalla’s judgement is a few minutes away.

The Wipeout is at hand.

Now, again, for those clueless still, there will be a wipeout aka rollback of all in-game items and Zeny, and, as romours say experience.

It is unnpreventable as of this moment, and I wish the final outcome wouldn’t be much of a carnage. I am just writing this in anticipation.

As of this moment, Valhalla is still online but with much reduced number of players — the number of players is less than 200 — and noticeably the number of Merchants vending in the Marketplace are less than 5 as most people are sitting with chatrooms displaying their requests of a no-rollback or at least a no-rollback on experience.

Even though it’s only ten minutes away, there still remains a percentage of people who remain uninformed about this matter, and even misinformed. I guess people who haven’t logged this week or for the last 3 days, at least, would be shocked about the news of the rollback and more so to the disappearance of the in-game items and money.

While checking out Prontera, I happened to notice a Gunslinger’s chatroom saying “B>drops card 4 pcs”. This is quite odd as there will be a rollback in minutes. So I entered the chatroom, and warned him about the rollback. The following is our chat.

([BS] Lilac) has entered.
..big..mouth.. : ?
[BS] Lilac : magrorolobak din
naman
..big..mouth.. : ou nga
[BS] Lilac : wag ka nang bumili
[BS] Lilac : sayang lang
..big..mouth.. : panolko
..big..mouth.. : pan loko
[BS] Lilac : oo sayang ginastos
nating load
..big..mouth.. : putcha
..big..mouth.. : babalik nmn ung
rok
[BS] Lilac : mga items at zeny all
gone
[BS] Lilac : eh paano yung zeny
..big..mouth.. : hnd ah
..big..mouth.. : bblik ung gm8
[BS] Lilac : di naman makokonvert
..big..mouth.. : hnd ksma items
..big..mouth.. : lvl lng
[BS] Lilac : sure ka ba?
[BS] Lilac : ang pagkaalam ko
baliktad eh
..big..mouth.. : ou sbi nung
mastersmith knina
[BS] Lilac : well iba nabasa ko sa
forums
[BS] Lilac : ge
[BS] Lilac : bb

Apparently, a Mastersmith told him that only experience would be rollbacked.

Yes, it’s true that ROK would be reimbursed but I don’t think that’s enough for the trouble. Don’t you?

pRO EP 19: Fall of Valhalla

Attention Citizens of Valhalla: After a thorough investigation on the 6th yr anniversary exploit, a rollback will be implemented on June 2, 11am. There will be no item compensation for “lost” items but ROK Points will be reimbursed. Thank you!

— LU Announcement on the Valhalla Server, 22:25 June 1 2008

Valhalla has never been so quiet. 

Doomsday is imminent. As the moment of that I am typing this post, LU is now preparing for a full server rollback — but I’d rather prefer the more correct term “wipeout” — of all Zeny, in-game items, and, as rumours say, experience.

I could describe this event in many ways. LU is now acting in self-destruct mode out of panic or like a God unleashing his wrath on unbelieving sinful people — akin to Noah’s arc. This could also be part of the anniversary event where the server is finally trancending, rebirthing in, just like the server’s name, Valhalla; from Level 99 back to Level 1.

Yes this is what’s happening. By 11:00, LU GM’s would start wiping out all Valhalla characters’ items, Zeny, and, probably experience.

What a nice way to celebrate pRO’s 6^th year of existence — destruction.

happy 6th aniv daw eh =))

sisirain n ung pRO… 6yrs n daw kc =))

—  Mai from Ragnaboards

But remember that a wipeout without experience rollback is possible.

From a programmer’s perspective, it’s not impossible. It should be relatively easy for anyone with the proper training. Only problem is, I don’t think anyone at LU has the proper training, so they’re relying on existing scripts/code provided to them by Gravity to get the job done.

— icedagger from Ragnaboards

So to people who are reading this and are still clueless on what I’m talking about. Here’s the thing. Just this week, LU GM’s thought that it would be a great idea to have an event for it’s 6^th year anniversary. And that event is the Festival.

The Festival mechanics are simple; a character of your account will talk to the Festival NPC near the Prontera Central Fountain, you’d pick a dungeon destination, and then you’d go to that dungeon, and find the Festival NPC placed deep in that dungeon, and after successfully finding her, you’d receive tickets which you can use to redeem in-game items, which are foods, white potions and rental items.

Now if you’re playing Ragnarok Valhalla just this week, you would have noticed that there is a great influx of Novices walking around Prontera, mainly from the South portion of the City to its Central Fountain. We’ll identify them as “Noobish Abusers”. These fucking idiotic noobs have found that what is categorised by LU as the hardest dungeon to travel to is practically the easiest one. That is the 1F of the Aldebaran Clock Tower. We’ll that is compared to other “easy” destinations like the Izlude Dungeon where you’d have to go to Level 4 and be mobbed painfully by Mermans, and only get 1 ticket for your troubles. This is nothing compared to the Aldebaran destination where you’d only have to go to the 1F of the Aldebaran Clock Tower, which is the place where you go first when you actually enter the Tower, and — take note — that the Quest NPC is located on the center of the map, and guess what the portal where you enter is on the center of the map.

So in practicality, that really is the easiest dungeon destination of all, even for noobs — this is since most of the time you’ll not even encounter a single monster on the 1F. And remember that these so-called hard maps return 5 tickets.

And now with these 5 tickets you could use them to redeem 20 pieces of foods which sell to an NPC at a very high price. With a Level 10 Overcharge, you’d have 1,240,000z in an instant!

I know this is so unfair as we, legitimate players, spend months earning a million — that is without the help of buy-and-selling elites.

Also remember that an account could create as much as 9 novices, and, if all your novices in 1 account do the quest, raise 11,160,000z in just an hour.

And you could repeat this quest as much as you like as long as you’d have a different character everytime, and, whenever that the account is full, a different account every nine characters.

Of course, we could not take out the fact that these noobs are not actually noobs but real game players who have friends to transfer their money to — that is the money from your noobish novice — and give the money to your main character later on.

In many ways, this is bad because this would have a huge impact to the server’s economy. As .:: dn6abz ::. of Ragnaboards explains, this would result in everyone being millionaires, billionaires even, and with this no one would have to trade stuffs anymore because everyone’s rich already, and with no one trading people would be forced to buy ROK Points to buy in-game items.

So it’s not purely true that this is all bad for LU since more people buying load means more people giving, throwing their money away to LU. It’s just the bad publicity that pushed LU to do this “solution”.

Also it may not be purely true that this would stop trading all together but it will surely slow it down and lower the value of your Zeny, meaning no items would be sold for 1,000z ea a few months after this since a thousand zeny equals no zeny; jellopies could even have the price of 100,000z ea.

People have requested a rollback while others requested other solutions such as:

• having a Level requirement for the quest so that noobish novices won’t have access to it.
• having the foods and other items redeemed from the quest havethe selling price of 0z.
• having the quest removed all together.

All these suggested solutions aim to stop further abuses but it cannot be denied that the damage has already been done, and it is certain that your Zeny’s buying power would go down by the days and the hours — think about price hikes everyday, if not, every other day.

This is a rally on the Prontera Streets protesting against the wipeout. I have never seen this much people in Valhalla act as one ever since I have played pRO.

The following picture is how the Marketplace looks like a few hours before the wipeout. With people discouraged, there are only ~30 people online, and almost no one selling stuffs.

A rollback seems to be the only solution for LU but do we, non-abusing players, Citizens of Valhalla, have to suffer the stupidity of LU and the noobs?

Credits:

• all people aforementioned
• this thread (You’d have to be log-inned to view the thread.) 

As of this moment, there has been no official LU announcement about there course of action besides the single announcement they made yesterday.