The Hacker Strikes Back

The two pet-levelling knights got an early start this morning, so that by coffee time the new pale blue pony, in SirPerivale's charge, had reached level 6, and its Sympathy, starting from 50%, had maxxed out. CaptainScarlet had got the pink drake up to level 27 as well; I am still not quite sure what to do with that one, probably it will be taken to a fairly high level, and then there'll be some trading around between characters so that quite a few of my fighters end up with a drake a level or two higher than the one they had before.

After coffee it was time for Galahad and JohnWellington to go to Prokion Temple again. John went first; the Auzura-3 room was occupied, so he moved across to Auzura-4, and for a change found the place emptier, and the room available, so he started fighting, while Gal logged in and hurried to join him. Things were pretty straightforward, though again John's older computer did "run out of memory" a few minutes before, ideally, I'd have logged off. This tends only to happen when John takes part in the fighting, not if he stays in a corner and leaves all that to Gal. It was lucky that I'd moved to Auzura-4, as when I went to the party-making screen to get John and Gal together, Ratel was also on the list, so we provided him with the solo party he needed.

JohnWellington had added 9.31% by lunchtime, along with 73 skill points and 127 guild points; Galahad managed 8.33%, plus 82 skill points, as he stayed a bit longer, and 136 guild points... so the Discipline guild is nicely over the 5000 guild point figure now. After that it was time for the pet-levellers to return, though changing over one at a time meant that the solo party with Ratel could be continued.

For the afternoon, MistressDomina and MrChuckNorris went out to the grassy south-western uplands of Dratan, where the Sphinx Fighters, Sphinx Speer Men, and the Elite Sphinx Speer Man hang out. The first item on the agenda was to get Chuck that last 3% he needed to reach level 62 - and that was managed, in about the 40 minutes that I'd estimated. I then changed the party to Combat, and checked with Ratel, still with us, that the change didn't alter the amount of experience and skill exp he was getting. He assured me that things were unchanged for him, so I went ahead and let MistressDomina start a platinum blessed iris, for triple experience... and once again she used an individual experience booster on each Elite Sphinx Speer Man - 41 in all, though the pbi annoyingly ran out just a second before that 41st Elite finally died.

It was a hectic hour, but luckily I didn't get any interruptions (except for a specialist sorcerer called Gener4L0maR, who only killed two Sphinx Fighters and then left), and MD did manage to level up once more, reaching level 58. MD's total experience gain for the afternoon was 91.40%, along with 863 pet points; Chuck added 3.75%, most of it before we switched the party type, while they also got 10 skill points each.

I stopped for my food break a bit earlier than usual, putting the pet-levellers back into action, since the start of 24 hours of double skill exp was due at five, UK time. A knight called KocsonyaHUN said "hi", and SirPerivale replied - and then he killed CaptainScarlet's Berserker, presumably since he hadn't responded, leaving Peri's alone. Cap just started fighting the Berserker again when it respawned, but the knight killed that one too. "Please don't ks", Cap said mildly, and then, when he did it for a third time, "You can get into trouble for harassment" - which may be over-stating the case, but seemed to work.

For the double skill exp it seemed sensible to send a party to Prokion Temple again; since SirDarth really needs more than double sp (so is carrying a few platinum super skill pills ready), it really came down to JohnWellington and Galahad again, so John headed there, and Gal swiftly joined him, settling in for an evening of fun, frolics and frivolity. Or orc-bashing, anyway.

Unfortunately the "Denial of Service" attacker made a comeback, and things got decidedly laggy at times. Other people suffered more than me, and other servers had more problems than Auzura, but I got disconnected at about 5:56, 6:50, and 7:45, UK time. Luckily the orcs can't do any damage to Gal, and very little to John, in such a situation. The second time I wasn't alone in the room, an archer called Airik0 and a mage called jusTme, teamed up, were there too, but they didn't return after the disconnection - since they were relying on healing, they may have died. When the third d/c rolled up, John was taking a rest in a corner, and, by not doing anything, managed to stay in-game - it was a "soft" type of disconnection, rather than the server breaking and having to restart, and people just standing or sitting around tended to survive it.

A message came up from the GMs, "Attention: We are currently experiencing network issues. Please visit the forums for more details. Avoid using pots/boosters/etc until the all clear is sounded." Aeria_ks1lent kept the forum updated, with at 7:15 "Hatzring 1/3 is back down. We aren't sure why or if it's related to the attacks from before. Stay tuned for more updates shortly" followed half an hour later by "We are under attack again. Please stay tuned for more information" and at 8:25 "Hatzring 1/3 and Katar 5/6 are currently unavailable. All other servers are stable. I will update this post when these subservers are ready to come back up." There was also a more general new forum post:

Dear Community Members,

On Friday 9/4/09 Aeria Games experienced a massive increase in internet traffic causing slowness and disconnections for several of our North American games. After further investigation, we have concluded that this was an intentional malicious attack to part of our worldwide network (DDoS) by a former Last Chaos player who was banned for cheating. Rest assured that during and after the attack, no security was compromised.

As a company, we constantly strive to deliver exceptional personalized service and are doing the following to address this issue:

(1) Collaborating with our internet service partners to minimize the impact of this type of network attack;

(2) Working with authorities to track down and fully prosecute the responsible person(s);

(3) Responding to all inquiries in regards to lost items;

(4) Coordinating a “Community Extravaganza” filled with fun events throughout all games starting on Thursday, 9/10/2009 and running throughout the weekend.

We would like to thank you, our loyal players, for your continued patience and understanding. If you experienced difficulties during this period, please contact us.

Anyway, I was able to play on, with just the minor interruptions of relogging and returning to Prokion Temple. Ratel had been in Egeha when he got the first disconnection, luckily not fighting at that moment, but he still didn't get full value for the 800,000 gold he paid to get there. He switched to a less vulnerable character when things started to get unstable, which was probably sensible. He had moved around a bit during the day, finding the level 59 arcane golems better to fight than the level 57 masters of secret technique, who were much too interested in eating his pet. In Egeha the Bogles gave reasonable skill exp, particularly with the double skill exp running, but he is finding the slog to get 360 sp together for the top level of his current skill a bit dispiriting.

By the end of the evening, JohnWellington had added another 24.04% on top of the morning session's figure, plus 359 skill points and 328 guild points, while Galahad had added 20.16%, 353 skill points and 330 guild points. So, some useful progress there. I guess they will continue tomorrow, as long as the double skill exp lasts. And after that, what else have our Aeria chums got planned...and, more importantly, what has that dastardly hack-attacker got in mind?

With any luck, Peri's pony should be near the top of level 10 by log-out time, with Cap's drake getting fairly near to the top of level 27 as well.