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On "private servers"

Started by TonyV, June 19, 2015, 01:28:55 PM

hurple

Quote from: downix on June 24, 2015, 06:24:35 PM
I know what you mean. I have people who still believe that either CoT is nearly done and we are holding back access to people, or that no work has been done and it's just a scam. There is no middle ground.

So, you're confirming that no work is getting done, because it's almost finished and you're holding it back from people as a scam?

AHA!

Ain't the internet great?!?!

Drauger9

I trust the people here at Titannetwork. So when rumors like that start to circulate, I just ignore them.

It's like I tell new hires at work. Don't believe anything anyone tells you unless it come from the horses mouth. I also tell them, don't tell anyone anything you don't want everyone to know. :P

Leandro

#22
I've heard from people in contact with "The Source" that they're taking credit about Paragon Chat being released now, and that clearly by raising such a ruckus, they ensured it was released to appease them. Which is absolutely insane. I've been teasing that Paragon Chat was coming since December, and the intended release date was April 28th for the anniversary. No amount of obnoxious posting in Facebook would make it happen any faster.

I am pretty sure that anyone reasonable will accept that we have a private server for testing code before we release it. We brought Shannon Doyle on it for the latest article and interview and you can see in the screenshots that the chatserver for Pocket D broke while she was on it, so, yeah, still bugs to sort out. We want to release something public when we know it works, not something half-baked that breaks every time you zone.

Victoria Victrix

Quote from: Leandro on June 25, 2015, 03:39:48 PM
I've heard from people in contact with "The Source" that they're taking credit about Paragon Chat being released now, and that clearly by raising such a ruckus, they ensured it was released to appease them. Which is absolutely insane. I've been teasing that Paragon Chat was coming since December, and the intended release date was April 28th for the anniversary. No amount of obnoxious posting in Facebook would make it happen any faster.

I am pretty sure that anyone reasonable will accept that we have a private server for testing code before we release it. We brought Shannon Doyle on it for the latest article and interview and you can see in the screenshots that the chatserver for Pocket D broke while she was on it, so, yeah, still bugs to sort out. We want to release something public when we know it works, not something half-baked that breaks every time you zone.

Having had the fortune to be on some of that testing....yeah.  Seriously, folks, there are still plenty of people in the US that believe:

In fairies.
In a flat-earth.
That the moon-landings were a hoax.
That the Royal Family of Great Britain is composed of shape-shifting lizard people. 

So out of all the thousands of people that were passionate about City, there were bound to be a handful who'd believe in private servers that some mysterious "elite" were keeping them out of.

And I'd like to remind you all that one of those people was the Now-Banned-Guy-Whose-Handle-Began-With-"P".  He whose incoherence was legendary.  He whose YouTube videos made grown men shudder and turn away. 

Just sayin'.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Acanous

Hm.

It's been years since the shutdown. There have been more than a few teasing posts and reopening of old wounds, but still silence en mass.
Human nature, if there were a small group of people who had access to a private server for those years while shutting out the majority- even for good reasons and fear of legal action- they would be right to expect some vitriol from at least a portion of those who were shut out. Giving something to a few and nothing to the masses is a surefire way to foster resentment.
That some would react like this, even in absence of evidence, is also unsurprising. People who are losing hope get desperate before giving up.

That's why I'm so glad that Leo and Codewalker have got this chat program going out to everyone. It's a lot of work and good will shown to the community at large, it's something to reunite us and give us back at least some of the city.
If we have something for everyone, it should kill that resentment and restore a lot of faith in our community.
Thanks, guys.

Arcana

Quote from: Leandro on June 25, 2015, 03:39:48 PM
I've heard from people in contact with "The Source" that they're taking credit about Paragon Chat being released now, and that clearly by raising such a ruckus, they ensured it was released to appease them. Which is absolutely insane. I've been teasing that Paragon Chat was coming since December, and the intended release date was April 28th for the anniversary. No amount of obnoxious posting in Facebook would make it happen any faster.

I am pretty sure that anyone reasonable will accept that we have a private server for testing code before we release it. We brought Shannon Doyle on it for the latest article and interview and you can see in the screenshots that the chatserver for Pocket D broke while she was on it, so, yeah, still bugs to sort out. We want to release something public when we know it works, not something half-baked that breaks every time you zone.

I had to deal with this sort of thing all the time on the official game forums: people claiming all sorts of things while I knew they were completely full of crap, but not really being in a position to call them on it.  Unfortunately, this is part of the gig.  At some point you have to make peace with the fact that you can't argue with people who live in imaginary worlds they construct to compensate for their woefully inadequate understanding of real one.  I don't even know what Codewalker's favorite color is, but I am absolutely certain no one can compel him to release software one minute sooner than when he thinks its reasonable to do so**.  I honestly have no idea where this is happening or have actually read the referenced discussion, but anyone who thinks they compelled you guys to accelerate your efforts in a couple of days on a project that has spanned months has been smoking way too much of their Bigfoot turd collection.


** Why?  Because if those people were as passionate about serving the community they purport to love, they'd know you can't force a volunteer to abandon quality control of a purely voluntary passion project.  You do it for the community, and you want it to be something you can be proud of offering to the community, and you'd never sacrifice that just to appease a bunch of nutballs.  I know that, I'm sure you know that, Codewalker knows that, and anyone who's spend hundreds of hours working on a volunteer community contribution knows that.  You can be berated into quitting, but not into following someone else's demands.

Iron-Emerald

It's really baffling how some people have that attitude, where they'd prefer nobody have something if they can't. I miss CoH a lot, but if somebody somewhere was playing it that's almost a positive thing in terms of giving hope that the game will be more widely available again. And as Leandro says, if waiting longer means the game eventually comes back in a legally safe way, that's the best outcome for everyone.

The thing is too, even if SCoRE comes through, people need to be prepared for the idea that there's probably going to have to be a period where a smaller group of people are playing the game before everybody gets to. Between the 'Eureka' moment and being publicly available there will almost certainly need to be a decent period of testing where some people are essentially playing the game but not everybody is.

I think it's amazing that there's still hope for the game coming back even if it doesn't get officially bought by somebody. I just wish my technical skills were up to scratch to contribute on such efforts, but the people who are making those efforts should be applauded, not looked at jealously.

Acanous

#27
This post starts out kind of negative, but bear with me. The overall message is positive.

Iron, it's a sociology thing. The best example in real world terms is probably in Russia.
It's good that NC is having the power taken from them. Nobody argues that. They were the Tzars, and treated us crappily. That the community is taking that power, that's a good thing too.
When, in Tony's words, it starts to seem like there's "Elites" being allowed access when the common man isn't, like for example early chat server access in "Soon" "Paragon Chat", people who aren't selected are going to be a bit jealous at first. Then comes "Why wasn't I picked?". You try to be happy for the people who did get in, and it works like that at first, let's say 3-6 months, but over a prolonged period of time, it festers.
You behave yourself. Don't ask pointed questions. Try to keep things hushed so Codewalker can release Soon Paragon Chat without NC being dicks. But every time someone else who knows less than you do asks a question, you start to feel bad. You can't give them hope without endangering Codewalker's project.
So you sit and you wait, and news comes in sporadic trickles. Let's say this goes on for another 2 years, till 2017 and a few people have access to the chat server, but still have to keep it quiet. 
The community at large weren't clued in. The selection process is a total mystery. How much can you say, and to whom, without cutting your own chances for participating?
Suddenly it's gone from a "Screw NC we're doing our own thing" into group paranoia, secret police, and all the while you know there's people on the inside, chatting on the program.

You're still on the outside. Stuff goes on in your life and maybe you lose some people you used to play with. They go to the grave and you knew, KNEW you could have had one last toast in Pocket D, if only you weren't both on the outside.

That's the kind of thing that sets people off. They aren't really mad at the people doing the work. The silence is what they get mad at. These people aren't entitled, they aren't whiny and they certainly don't want NC to come back, but if all they get is recrimination, well, when the veil comes off, they're going to be upset.

So what Leandro and Codewalker are doing here, it's brilliant. Releasing a few updates, getting everyone to put the word out, and giving the community something to work with. That's like feeding the masses and making the trains run on time. If there's some people who have access to some further code and they're beta testing it, like say new features to Soon Paragon Chat that include travel powers or something, well now there's something to show for the people who aren't selected. It breaks the silence.


[[EDIT: Fixed the name of the project. ~Agge]]

Arcana

Quote from: Acanous on June 27, 2015, 06:45:36 AMWhen, in Tony's words, it starts to seem like there's "Elites" being allowed access when the common man isn't, like for example early chat server access in "Soon" "Paragon Chat", people who aren't selected are going to be a bit jealous at first. Then comes "Why wasn't I picked?"

They need to get used to it.  Same thing happened with City of Heroes closed betas.  People kept complaining about them, and demanding the practice stop.  I'll let people in on a little secret if you haven't ever been in a closed beta: the closed betas were so much better in terms of quality testing, feedback, and discussion, that before deciding to terminate closed betas the devs would probably decide to terminate all betas and test their content by having chimpanzees throw poo at it.

Its not hard to understand why.  Its not that every closed beta tester was a great tester, and its not that every single person excluded didn't have something valuable to contribute.  Its that the people who were pissed off they were not included were statistically very likely to be the people you didn't want in it.  If you were the kind of player they wanted, one day you could be randomly selected to be in the beta.  You could then prove that by actually making noticeable and unique contributions.  And then they'd remember you and bring you back.  It was an imperfect system that generated exceptionally good results.

Every system needs testers.  Open testing isn't going to cut it.  And volunteer projects can't generally promise deadlines or feature sets.  So they have to be secret, they have to have a small group of testers, the rest of us just have to wait.  And if you can't wait, go outside and do something else.  But there's simply no excuse for projecting a negative attitude and inventing your own facts to create a martyr narrative.  A bunch of malcontents taking credit for getting Paragon Chat released is no different than me trying to take credit for writing it and claiming Codewalker copied it.  Its an attempt to achieve undeserved glory at someone else's expense.  And transparently so.

The thing I find simultaneously the most understandable and yet also the most baffling is that its understandable in a sense why someone would foster this self-delusion.  Among their own circle of friends, its easy to sell.  The only people in a position to see through it are probably total strangers.  People like me, say.  And yet, what's baffling to me, and has always been baffling to me, is why you would want to impress those people, those people around you how obviously aren't creating anything, aren't knowledgeable about anything, aren't capable of anything except sycophancy, at the cost of making yourself look like an idiot and a jackass to the very people who actually know more, can actually help you in theory, are the people more likely to be creating your future.

Something many people explicitly told me they found odd was that often when I was debating someone on the game forums I would be clearly steering the debate away from populist lines of attack.  In other words, the person I was debating was saying things a lot of people, perhaps even the majority, would believe without question, while I would often make statements that were very difficult to easily agree with.  And the truth is that I considered every post to be not just a reply to another single person, but a message to everyone reading it.  And given a choice between saying the stupid thing everyone would agree with, or the intelligent thing most people would not agree with but people who knew as much as me or more would find interesting I always chose the latter.  Why look smart to people less smart and stupid to people who are more smart, when its the people who know as much or more than you that are the only people you can actually learn from.  That's idiotic, or rather a blueprint to stay idiotic.

Jealousy and insecurity are common emotions, and its not hard to understand why some people would act upon them.  But in a larger sense, letting them create a ceiling above you, such that everyone above that ceiling can see you for a jealous insecure person they would rather not have anything to do with, is self-destructive.  Its a sweet form of self-destruction that has an extra helping of self-delusion (it goes like this: if people can't prove what I'm saying is false, then everyone claiming to know I'm wrong is just as stupid as I am, since they can't be certain they are right, so I'm justified in portraying them as inferior), but ultimately self-destructive all the same.  I don't mind the self-destruction, I do mind the collateral damage it leaves in its wake.

Not that I think ultimately Leandro and Codewalker are going to care all that much in the end: its probably just going to be a bit annoying.  But its something they shouldn't have to deal with.  In that sense, there's really no excuse at all.  And that's my counter-rant.

Acanous

when you know more than the audience, you are in a position to see what efforts have been made and where the laurels should fall.
People who do not enjoy that freedom of information are unaware of any variables except that they cannot access any information at all.
I'm not saying that it's righteous to be angry, merely that this anger is inherent to the situation- it's rational, so it should not be surprising.

On the flip side, people who enjoy access to information/money/really any commodity that is desired by many begin to justify that access and the denial of said access to others. (Link: http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/ ) This is especially true in a situation where you already have significant disincentives (Like legal issues) for trying to improve that access.
As a thinking being, this bias is incredibly tricky to identify.

That is why I very much agree with the Paragon Chat approach. It shows that those doing this work are aware of the problem, and are doing something to address it.

If you're seeing people posting on social media about this, they're not out for glory. They've given up hope. Well, except that one guy, but there's anomalous outliers in any group.

An infusion of hope that someday soon (tm) we'll be able to get back to itrials, task forces, or whatever made CoH special for you... if it doesn't solve the problem, it at least alleviates that portion of responsibility from those working on it and places it solidly on those on the outside.

Joshex

Thankyou Tony for clarifying that there /ARE NO COX SERVERS HERE/.

If they exist they exist elsewhere run by other people who have not contacted us.

Spoiler for Hidden:
I really wish I could find that site I found a few years back that claimed to have a CoX private server for issue 3 or 5, it said "just download our patch file" and didn't supply the patch file, and there was no contact info, and whois came up "generic blank". so it was most likely a fake, or was it?. anyways if memory serves they claimed to be an ex-cryptic developer.

I don't have time to fish through 100 pages of web search to find it either, people asking where they can get a CoX private server or how to access it ETC. on yahoo answers ETC. can thank themselves for burying it.
doesn't matter anyways, it was probably just a prank site made by trolls.

Hey google and yahoo I know your bots are reading this, it would be really handy to have a date tag system on search results so we can search by date. "show only results that were available on day/month/year"

I know google has web cache logs up the wazoo recording this info from the beginning of the olden days of web traffic. put it to use already!
There is always another way. But it might not work exactly like you may desire.

A wise old rabbit once told me "Never give-up!, Trust your instincts!" granted the advice at the time led me on a tripped-out voyage out of an asteroid belt, but hey it was more impressive than a bunch of rocks and space monkies.

Victoria Victrix

Quote from: Joshex on June 28, 2015, 10:42:20 AM
Thankyou Tony for clarifying that there /ARE NO COX SERVERS HERE/.

If they exist they exist elsewhere run by other people who have not contacted us.

Spoiler for Hidden:
I really wish I could find that site I found a few years back that claimed to have a CoX private server for issue 3 or 5, it said "just download our patch file" and didn't supply the patch file, and there was no contact info, and whois came up "generic blank". so it was most likely a fake, or was it?. anyways if memory serves they claimed to be an ex-cryptic developer.

I don't have time to fish through 100 pages of web search to find it either, people asking where they can get a CoX private server or how to access it ETC. on yahoo answers ETC. can thank themselves for burying it.
doesn't matter anyways, it was probably just a prank site made by trolls.

Hey google and yahoo I know your bots are reading this, it would be really handy to have a date tag system on search results so we can search by date. "show only results that were available on day/month/year"

I know google has web cache logs up the wazoo recording this info from the beginning of the olden days of web traffic. put it to use already!

I have it on good authority it was a phishing site, designed to get access to your computer and steal your personal data.  Desperate people do desperate things.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Joshex

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on June 28, 2015, 12:42:10 PM
I have it on good authority it was a phishing site, designed to get access to your computer and steal your personal data.  Desperate people do desperate things.

And now we have an answer! thanks muchly VV!
There is always another way. But it might not work exactly like you may desire.

A wise old rabbit once told me "Never give-up!, Trust your instincts!" granted the advice at the time led me on a tripped-out voyage out of an asteroid belt, but hey it was more impressive than a bunch of rocks and space monkies.

Acanous

Actually that one's real, just not very functional. Google CoH SEGS. They've got...something.

Nyx Nought Nothing

Quote from: Acanous on June 28, 2015, 06:51:30 PM
Actually that one's real, just not very functional. Google CoH SEGS. They've got...something.
That's still around? *sighs*
i have yet to see any vaguely credible evidence for functioning private servers besides SEGS, and calling it functional is/was being very generous.


Doesn't mean they don't exist, but as a long dead guy once said, "Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead." All in all in some circumstances you can up the number of living people a fair bit, but several hundred people keeping a secret for several years isn't very plausible. Especially considering one of the people claiming to have been in on the secret. Anyone who would actually invite him to their secret server would have to have had no intention of keeping it a secret for more than a couple months. Or somehow have decided to invite him without knowing his past associations with the game at all, which seems even less likely. So, if secret CoH servers are somewhere out there they most likely have less than a dozen people using them and almost certainly none of those claiming they've been on them.


In an age of easily recording and documenting almost everything you see, online or off, it's amazing how unconvincing and sparse the proof has been. No FRAPS of people discussing ISIL while running an ITF or discussing some recent celebrity scandal? No webcam videos of someone logging into a secret server and playing? Considering some of the yahoos claiming to have played on these servers i'd expect them to have saved terabytes of video and screenshots as blackmail material so that they'd keep access to the secret servers.
So far so good. Onward and upward!

Victoria Victrix

Quote from: Acanous on June 28, 2015, 06:51:30 PM
Actually that one's real, just not very functional. Google CoH SEGS. They've got...something.

I know there was a similar thing--NOT SEGS--that claimed to have I4 up and running and immediately planted spyware on clicking.  It got shut down fairly fast, thanks to some ace work on the part of Titanites.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Joshex

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on June 29, 2015, 04:03:46 AM
I know there was a similar thing--NOT SEGS--that claimed to have I4 up and running and immediately planted spyware on clicking.  It got shut down fairly fast, thanks to some ace work on the part of Titanites.

Yep, I trust this answer. it sounds very much correct.

Quote from: Acanous on June 28, 2015, 06:51:30 PM
Actually that one's real, just not very functional. Google CoH SEGS. They've got...something.

no I wasn't talking about SEGS, it was a website with all the early CoX graphics and less than a handful of pages accessible from the top menu.

if it had been legit it wouldn't need a patch file. it would just need the server's IP and -auth.

SEGS is still working hard they are just not ready to show anything yet, in comparison Icon doesn't attempt to do all the things SEGS is trying to do so it was able to show results quicker. SEGS is going for a full server they are not done yet and it wont run yet (at least that was the state it was in last time I checked).

There is always another way. But it might not work exactly like you may desire.

A wise old rabbit once told me "Never give-up!, Trust your instincts!" granted the advice at the time led me on a tripped-out voyage out of an asteroid belt, but hey it was more impressive than a bunch of rocks and space monkies.

Leandro

Last I heard, Nemerle had thrown in the towel on SEGS due to lack of interest from other developers after several years of working on his own. Maybe he'll get involved once the Paragon Chat source is released. The low level stuff is the hardest and that's finally (mostly) taken care of.

Joshex

Quote from: Leandro on June 29, 2015, 11:01:21 AM
Last I heard, Nemerle had thrown in the towel on SEGS due to lack of interest from other developers after several years of working on his own. Maybe he'll get involved once the Paragon Chat source is released. The low level stuff is the hardest and that's finally (mostly) taken care of.

....

sad. he sounded like he really knew what he was doing, but that was back when I didn't know what I was doing enough for the task he gave me. I've come a long way since then and still feel bad about disappearing.

maybe I'll go over to the segs forum if it's still up and see if he'd like to corral over here to Paragon Chat. Not that I'm anyone special, he might even be mad at me for bailing without a second word.
There is always another way. But it might not work exactly like you may desire.

A wise old rabbit once told me "Never give-up!, Trust your instincts!" granted the advice at the time led me on a tripped-out voyage out of an asteroid belt, but hey it was more impressive than a bunch of rocks and space monkies.

Arcana

Quote from: Leandro on June 29, 2015, 11:01:21 AM
Last I heard, Nemerle had thrown in the towel on SEGS due to lack of interest from other developers after several years of working on his own. Maybe he'll get involved once the Paragon Chat source is released. The low level stuff is the hardest and that's finally (mostly) taken care of.

There were many times I wished I could reach out to him and offer my help, but while the game was running in some ways I was the only person on Earth who *couldn't* help him with a clear conscience.  An outsider could do anything.  An insider could make an informed decision as to whether or not to help him.  But I had access to insider information that I couldn't possibly get informed consent to pass onto a reverse engineer.  It would have been extremely unethical for me to get information from the devs and pass it onto him for SEGS when they had no idea I was doing that.  Since I couldn't very well ask, I couldn't get involved either.  It was an extremely tight knot I couldn't find a way to untangle to my satisfaction.