Author Topic: MMORPG - COH profitability  (Read 88276 times)

Perfidus

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #500 on: January 18, 2013, 10:32:52 PM »
According to Kheldarn on Twitter, occasionally a CoH server will ping as Up.

Ghost in the machine, or something going on we don't know about?

Arcana

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #501 on: January 18, 2013, 11:28:44 PM »
According to Kheldarn on Twitter, occasionally a CoH server will ping as Up.

Ghost in the machine, or something going on we don't know about?
There's no reason to believe that the IP addresses allocated to CoH aren't being repurposed for other systems.  Routeable address space is a limited asset.

dwturducken

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #502 on: January 19, 2013, 12:31:51 AM »
What I'd like to know is: how does s/he know? Is s/he tracing the old CoH servers on Nagios?
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Perfidus

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #503 on: January 19, 2013, 01:02:05 AM »
There's no reason to believe that the IP addresses allocated to CoH aren't being repurposed for other systems.  Routeable address space is a limited asset.

True. I would've just imagined whatever made those server tracking applications work would've been disabled. But then I don't exactly know how it works either.

And I imagine it's something like that, turdy.

Arcana

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #504 on: January 19, 2013, 01:42:57 AM »
What I'd like to know is: how does s/he know? Is s/he tracing the old CoH servers on Nagios?
I used to ping the auth and game servers with PRTG.  I stopped when the game shutdown, so I have no idea what's happening with those addresses now.  But I'm sure there are people out there that still have software that monitors the uptime of the servers that simply never turned them off for their own reasons.

Mister Bison

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #505 on: January 19, 2013, 12:25:28 PM »
I used to ping the auth and game servers with PRTG.  I stopped when the game shutdown, so I have no idea what's happening with those addresses now.  But I'm sure there are people out there that still have software that monitors the uptime of the servers that simply never turned them off for their own reasons.
Could one automate trying to log on the auth server ?
Yeeessss....

Valjean

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #506 on: January 19, 2013, 12:29:41 PM »
It's a Nemesis plot!

Little Green Frog

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #507 on: January 19, 2013, 01:05:19 PM »
Could one automate trying to log on the auth server ?

It should be a pretty trivial thing to do if you know the protocol.

dwturducken

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #508 on: January 19, 2013, 03:59:38 PM »
I would be willing to wager real money that the necessary sniffing/tracing to figure that out has been done by members of this community. :)

(No, that's not suggesting that I did it. I didn't think to before everything shut down, on the assumption that it had been done long before Black Friday.)
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Valjean

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #509 on: January 19, 2013, 04:45:43 PM »
I think it's more likely as others said, that NCsoft is reusing the IP addresses. It doesn't really make sense for them to spin the COH servers back up, even for testing.

Arcana

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #510 on: January 19, 2013, 08:35:30 PM »
I think it's more likely as others said, that NCsoft is reusing the IP addresses. It doesn't really make sense for them to spin the COH servers back up, even for testing.

Unless they are idiots - and I'm talking about the ops people that run the datacenters and not NC corporate - they probably removed the firewall rules related to the CoH servers some time after shutdown, which would include the NATs.  And I'm guessing the CoH servers had RFC1918 addresses and were NATed to the outside routable addresses.  So even if someone accidentally powered on a CoH server by mistake or turned one on to do something like copy data off of it, it should still have not been visible from the outside world.

Arcana

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #511 on: January 19, 2013, 08:38:27 PM »
Could one automate trying to log on the auth server ?
You probably wouldn't even need to do that if you're just trying to see if the auth server came back: you could simply attempt to connect to the auth server on the correct port.  Another system would either not respond or send back an ICMP port unreachable.  A real auth server, even if the data was flushed from it, would respond with a triple handshake at least.

johnrobey

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #512 on: January 23, 2013, 01:29:39 AM »
It can happen and has happened many times in the UK and the reports of the legal cases that ensued were legion in the newspapers. Most of it took place in the 80s and 90s, the Asian firms have mostly wised up now, but a friend who works for a Japanese company in Switzerland says that there are still major cultuural issues with underqualified people being shipped out from Japan above the heads of better qualified Europeans who are expected to defer to them.

I saw this time and again in U.S. private enterprise, even where no cultural difference per se existed - or if there was a cultural difference it would be better described as class-ism.  Yes, as in the military example above the post I'm quoting, I also learned to say "sir" but there are ways of enunciating "sir" which both show proper respect for the person's superior social position, while at the same time conveying how one feels about the person to whom the term is applied (One need not use the 19th Century term "sirrah") tho of course revealing such a sentiment with tone of voice even properly modulated is quite risky.  Pardon this digression, yeah all too often the "chiefs" / middle managers in U.S. corporations had either their not-so-bright ideas and/or were compelled to bring them to the subordinate workers.  I recall many times front line supervisors who in our department team meetings said, listen guys, I too know this is stupid but it's what the head honchos want, and they are our customer, the ones paying us.  What a relief for to work finally in public higher ed, where VP's and top administrators not only welcomed staff feedback but solicited it; e.g. the dean who remarked, "you guys do the nuts-and-bolts, we just do administrative oversight, and we NEED you to tell us candidly if something is a bonehead idea." (I am NOT making this up, this really happened) and thank god, higher ed at least was often light-years ahead of private industry about matters of respect, collegiality, making practical and intelligent decisions not based on inflated ego. (No doubt there are stories that refute this, going the other way.)

Sorry for the Wall of Text, but the point is NCSoft upper management executives are RESPONSIBLE for knowing HOW to interact with social subordinates, i.e. employees.  This is THEIR failure, NOT the employees/contractors.  Being in charge means being an effective leader - not a petty tyrant.  Being a petty tyrant is easy!  Most kids have learned that by grade school if not as 2 year old toddlers!!!
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Sajaana

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #513 on: January 23, 2013, 01:36:34 AM »
Maybe they are showing the game to prospective buyers.

*Shrug*

Or maybe they are diving in there to see what...if anything...they'd like to do with it.

I mean, there are reasons why they might want to do something with it.  I always thought that it would be a rather interesting prospect to offer CoH free to people who buy another one of their titles.  "With a year subscription to Wildstar, get CoH free."

Is it evil of them to do that?  Of course.  That's why they might do it.

houtex

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #514 on: January 23, 2013, 02:18:05 AM »
Sign my ass up for Wildstar then.

/Shamless, and wouldn't care, CoH would be up and runnin'.
//Wouldn't play Wildstar much though... I'd just subscribe and keep it 'fresh' with the updates.

Arcana

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Re: MMORPG - COH profitability
« Reply #515 on: January 23, 2013, 03:00:01 AM »
Maybe they are showing the game to prospective buyers.
Firing up the live server clusters - assuming they even still exist - would be the most difficult conceivable way to do that.  Extremely unlikely.