I agree a good month or a few weeks. If you noticed it went on for about an hours time. He stop a few times for min or two but started back up again. So basicly from 11-12 CST he spammed the words.

test
this sucks ass

Since this has been tested by multiple people already and it was well know that this exist. There was absolutly no reason he should be allowed to get away with this.

some idiot is spamming the game with infinite loop script.

his name is "Testing something crazy".

please ban him asap. i can't do anything - can't get out of station, can't buy anything, all thanks to one little kid who read this board and made his "leet" recursive chat script.

Dont go so far as to ban him, hes is doing what we are all suposed to do, test the game. He has exposed a critical bug in the game so now steps can be taken to fix that bug. Be glad it wont be in the final version.

Still, a bit of reason should be used when testing the game. Running a script like that for a short period of time to determine its effects on the system is fine, but once the effects have been determined, it's probably best to stop.

The facts that you can't get out of the station and that you can't buy anything are important to note.

I think that a protocol amongst players for testing of this sort is in order. My proposal follows:

1. Let everyone know what you're about to do if you're going to run something that you think might be destructive, or stress the system.

2. Give them all 5 or 10 minutes to finish what they were doing.

3. In order to get useful results from the test, get people to note side effects and report them to you after or during the test. Maybe run Vendetta in windowed mode and use IRC for this purpose, as it is not likely to fail while testing is taking place.

4. Don't continue the test for longer than 5 or 10 minutes, especially at peak periods. Attempting to test during non-peak hours would be best. Longer tests should probably be discussed with the developers first and agreed upon and have postings put on the messsage boards at least 24 hours before the are going to occur.

5. If after the test, bugs or negative side effects are noted, compile the results and post appropriate bug reports and message board postings.

I think these seem like reasonable steps to take while testing the system in ways that are beyond normal play or taking actions that are not intended to have instantaneous benign side effects.

Comments on this protocol would be appreciated.

- Mesostel Ze

/ignore is your friend

Ohhh... and I wouldn't call this testing. It's been known since the beginning of time that anyone has the ability to spam the chat, or make a key bind to form a loophole that would result in chat spam. If he wanted to test it, he would've cut it short before everyone started to lag severely. This guy obviously crossed the line of common sense and decided to have a litttle fun. Banning him would do us all a great service.

khral, /ignore won't show its effects until you log off, and I don't think newbies will know that.
http://starfreeze.com/errors.txt

Yea like blaster posted the log is 11.5mb of SOLID TEXT....now that is just sad...

/ignore only stops you from seeing the message.

the SERVER still has to deal with it, so the lag remains.

while /ignore stops you from seeing the message, it doesn't stop you from RECEIVING the message which means death on dial up.
while I agree that things must be TESTED, this guy has definitely crossed the line of TESTING into ABUSE of the system and should be banned forever and assasinated in real life.

WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE!


well, not really. He should be disciplined, but not banned forever. Only a month or two.

A filter that only allows 5 seperate lines of text every 10 seconds would stop a lot of spammers.

Some nice filter would be recommended asap.

2Devs: have you located the infidel that did this? Can you tell us who it was?

For the last time, devs don't give that kind of info out. I can't believe people keep asking about who such and such a char is or whatever. Good grief!

the user responsible for this still needs to be punished. exposing a flaw so it could be fixed is one thing, exploiting it to lag the server and everyone on it is another. the user responsible needs to be dealt with as quickly and as severely as possible.

Arolte, Good grief, errr could you possibly point out where it was stated that developers don't give out information about abusers of the system? :)

Privacy Policy

Guild Software, Inc collects information from its users for a number of purposes. For one, it aids in the debugging process. If we know what type of computer hardware and software you have, we can quickly track down commonalities in multiple bug reports, allowing us to fix problems more quickly. Knowing the locations of our users helps us determine future network implementations. All data is used exclusively by Guild Software, Inc for internal statistical analysis. No user data will be sold or distributed to outside parties.

Email addresses are recorded to allow users to recover their passwords if need be. We reserve the right to contact you regarding bug reports, account activity or suspensions, and the like. If you request it, you may also be subscribed to the Guild Software mailing list. We will not spam you, nor will we sell or distribute your addresses outside of our company.





Arotle, they can sic the Guides on him though, by getting his account name and other characters. They've already said they will, as a matter of fact.

you misunderstood me, damnit, I don't want their stupid e-mail addresses, I want to know names of characters that I should put on my kill list. If you read Guild Software Privacy Policy, nowhere does it state that they will not disclose names of CHARACTERS in the game. If you think otherwise, please quote the EXACT sentence which you think states that. First paragraph deals with user data that you enter when you SIGN UP for an account. I want none of that. Second paragraph is about e-mail addresses. I want none of that neither. What I do want and ask with patience is names of characters that have made this "test" possible. For all I know it could be one of YOU! That would explain why you so against devs giving out names of those characters :)

I feel the same way, that some people are just too damn paranoid about info being released, even if it's a character name. But apparently the devs have decided to respect the privacy of players because that's just the way some players feel about RPG games. So despite what you and I may think, it still doesn't change the fact.

Arolte, point me to the "facts" you are basing your replies on. Character name is not part of account data spoken about in Privacy Policy. Was it you?!?!? :)

Everybody breathe!

Here are the facts:

If a Guide sees chat spamming happening, they will politely ask the spammer to stop. If the spammer chooses to knock it off and spams no more - there's no further action.

If the spammer continues, they will be muted. Muting automatically applies to ALL characters associated with an account. The muting will persist until it is removed by a Guide or developer, and the duration will be as long as it takes to get the idea across. It could be minutes, could be days, could be longer. It's really up to the user to let us know that they are ready.

I am still working out with the devs what should happen to people when spamming occurs without being seen "live" by somebody wih /mute powers.