Guild Wars 2

People are getting free GWAMM and HoM rewards, this is a major game breaking exploit and is already spreading across the internet as we speak. Please do something.

Gank.4957:

People are getting free GWAMM and HoM rewards, this is a major game breaking exploit and is already spreading across the internet as we speak. Please do something.

If it was such a simple choice, I’d think they would have done it already, for the whole patch.

As for that particular issue, not sure I would call it game breaking, while it devalues things it doesn’t actually physically break the game (aside from the HoM instance itself being broken and we don’t even know if that and this are related). It is definitely an exploit though, but at least it is not a guaranteed thing nor is there a step by step guide for it that I am aware of.

Also, as far as I know taking away any achievement bugged or not is not something trivial either they probably would have to do individual account rollbacks or develop a specific tool to fix it (ie. for example the bugged placement achievement from the WvW tournament before last is forever on the accounts affected, if it was simple for them to remove it they probably would have).

That said, anyone stupid enough to actively try and trigger it is probably going to get tracked down (at least if they don’t succeed on first attempt, ie. they try for it repeatedly).

Just wait long enough and they hand out what others had to work for.

Its a guaranteed bug. It worked for everyone I know who tried it.

Malediktus.3740:

Its a guaranteed bug. It worked for everyone I know who tried it.

Nope it isn’t, guaranteed that is, I too created an alt earlier today, mostly to reserve a name (since I finally thought of a decent one for my Revenant to be) and I still have the exact same HoM points I have had until now and ever since launch.

It might work, or rather be broken, for a lot of people but saying that it works for everyone or that it is guaranteed is bit of a stretch without any evidence. Besides why would you encourage anyone to test this knowingly, when there is high chance for some kind of action to be taken for people that deliberately try and do it.

did you try using your hall of monument portal stone? i heared that one also triggers it

The patch needs a rollback for more than just the GWAMM exploit.

Green party and /say chat.
Green down state health bars.
Messed up loading screen.
Map-wide voice clips.
Minimap is misaligned.
Various crash bugs.

This patch is a mess.

Malediktus.3740:

did you try using your hall of monument portal stone? i heared that one also triggers it

All it does is crashes the game as far as I know.

Darmikau.9413:

The patch needs a rollback for more than just the GWAMM exploit.

I agree but there must be some reason, likely logistics… for why they haven’t done so.

Physically restoring every server related to GW2 to an earlier point prior the most recent patch is always an option but depending on how frequent their respective automated backups are, or how easy of an undertaking such a thing even is, that kind of nuclear option might be even worse for them.

Imagine then having to loose say even just half a days worth of data. People loosing precursors or legendaries because of said rollback would create a kittenstorm of its own, not to mention other smaller in-game accomplishments. Also, I doubt all of these issues are ones that QA simply missed, after taking an extra week for testing, player volume must have something to do with it as well.

Plus get rid of this new stability nerf kitten.

Delune.4817:

Plus get rid of this new stability nerf kitten.

That is definitely not going to happen, even if they rollback the patch… which they should do ASAP if it is something that they are considering. The stability changes were intentional and made public knowledge when they first showed Revenant to us. So whatever their game plan is for getting through this the stability changes would come back sooner or later.

Right now this is probably the first time I would say do a rollback.

Emergency maintain mode – there should be no indivudals getting HoM achievements without trying.
The numerous bugs that have gone out shows we need to put this patch back on the table and operate on it until it’s finished (It will be ready when it’s good and ready).

Never again will the community ask when is the patch coming out – they might just be a little happier to wait a little bit to get something that is working a bit better.

It’s fine to have a few bugs – but this patch has probably broken more things than it has fixed.

Crise.9401:

Malediktus.3740:

Its a guaranteed bug. It worked for everyone I know who tried it.

Nope it isn’t, guaranteed that is, I too created an alt earlier today, mostly to reserve a name (since I finally thought of a decent one for my Revenant to be) and I still have the exact same HoM points I have had until now and ever since launch.

It might work, or rather be broken, for a lot of people but saying that it works for everyone or that it is guaranteed is bit of a stretch without any evidence. Besides why would you encourage anyone to test this knowingly, when there is high chance for some kind of action to be taken for people that deliberately try and do it.

It didn’t work for me either.

Maybe there are rare cases where it doesnt work. But it sure works for the majority of people who give the bug a try.

You say like there is some special secret to this bug. Any new player, altoholic, keyrunner, grandma can do this without even knowing what is hom points or ap.
Do a barrel roll rollback while it is not too late. Or in 1-2 days we will have a whole bunch of gods running amongst mere mortals.

They don’t have to roll back an entire patch to fix this. They have retroactively ‘fixed’ other issues with achievement points. I’m sure they can fix this too.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

They don’t have to roll back an entire patch to fix this. They have retroactively ‘fixed’ other issues with achievement points. I’m sure they can fix this too.

It took them 6months to make a fix for that. Considering all the testing involved to not break it even more (eg. removing the wrong achievements or from people who legitimately earned them), I would expect a fix to take minimum a month.
If they fix the HoM portal stone before they fix this bug, they also have to find a way to remove ill gained skins from your wardrobe (never happened before so far).

TheRandomGuy.7246:

You say like there is some special secret to this bug. Any new player, altoholic, keyrunner, grandma can do this without even knowing what is hom points or ap.
Do a barrel roll rollback while it is not too late. Or in 1-2 days we will have a whole bunch of gods running amongst mere mortals.

Ummm yeah, this just happened to me as I was creating my usual keyrun character. Since it is quite late at night I wasnt sure at first what caused my to get my achievement chest so I admit I opened it without further examination. It was only after I did so, that I went into my achievements panel and saw what happened :/
I definitely don’t deserve that title so I’m all for a rollback but I’m not sure how they would do that considering that this seemed to have given many players including me achievement chests.

This patch, along with the NPE/China release should have never, never, never went live. If I performed like this at my work, they would fire me.

Malediktus.3740:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

They don’t have to roll back an entire patch to fix this. They have retroactively ‘fixed’ other issues with achievement points. I’m sure they can fix this too.

It took them 6months to make a fix for that. Considering all the testing involved to not break it even more (eg. removing the wrong achievements or from people who legitimately earned them), I would expect a fix to take minimum a month.
If they fix the HoM portal stone before they fix this bug, they also have to find a way to remove ill gained skins from your wardrobe (never happened before so far).

It took them six months to fix what? Some stuff takes a long time to fix, some is easy to fix but hard to test, and some stuff is just… annoyingly hard to nail down completely.

I have no idea why this stuff borked with this patch or what’s involved with fixing it. But I do know that rollbacks are much harder to pull off than it sounds; it would mean devoting resources from all sorts of other things to do properly. It also won’t solve ANet’s “upset customer” problem: sure, the people complaining in this thread would be (mostly) mollified, but it would annoy an entirely new group of people.

Accordingly, I think it’s far more likely that ANet will spend 1-3 weeks developing/testing a way to remove the AP, titles, and skins that people unlocked by accident today. Mostly because there’s a simple 1:1 relationship between the actual GW1 HoM score and the titles/skins/APs granted in GW2.

It might not be clear that I am, myself, upset about ANet screwing this up. I can’t imagine what goes on in their change control/management and QA departments that something this simple to detect wasn’t prevented. But I don’t work there, so I can’t even reliably second-guess them. I expect them to work hard to resolve the issues and I’m willing to wait for them to do it, even though I would prefer to donate my patience to something else.

Its very hard to remove unfairly gained skins again. People can transmute it on their existing items and they can store the skins in their bank etc. So its much more effort than just removing it from wardrobe.
If they have the skins on any of their items they can just unlock it again after Anet removed it from wardrobe etc.

Odyssey.2613:

This patch, along with the NPE/China release should have never, never, never went live. If I performed like this at my work, they would fire me.

Well, when it comes to NPE it is subjective matter because we are talking about intentional changes (although 1 spamming through tutorial is boring as ever), but I completely agree that the most recent patch as it is now should not have gone live.

Crise.9401:

Odyssey.2613:

This patch, along with the NPE/China release should have never, never, never went live. If I performed like this at my work, they would fire me.

Well, when it comes to NPE it is subjective matter because we are talking about intentional changes (although 1 spamming through tutorial is boring as ever), but I completely agree that the most recent patch as it is now should not have gone live.

That’s not what I was referring to. If you recall, the NPE/China release patch was riddled with numerous bugs as well. To the point, it felt like a beta for the upcoming game.

Odyssey.2613:

That’s not what I was referring to. If you recall, the NPE/China release patch was riddled with numerous bugs as well. To the point, it felt like a beta for the upcoming game.

Fair enough, that being said… there seems to be something in common between that update and this (ie. two major separately developed revisions of the game being “merged” into live, then it was the China release and now it is quite clearly bunch of the HoT stuff).

I find it very difficult to believe anyone at ANet was expecting this, though they must have seen something because it was delayed once, which makes it even more puzzling. Some unforseen complications must be at play here related to merging different development versions together. There is no way these kind of issues (well the HoM issue might have as that is a very dated system that is likely not linked to anything but the live servers, but all this other shenanigans no way) would ever have passed even the most lax of QA passes if they were happening on their development or stage clients.

Did they fix this yet or is it still possible?

YourFriendMarvin.4127:

Did they fix this yet or is it still possible?

Nothing has been said, but as has been pointed out in this topic while it is commonplace it is not entirely guaranteed either. I wouldn’t go chasing this though, there is no saying how they will handle this… either way it is damage control going forward.

The only thing that has been officially fixed is the vendor problem as per recent addendum to the patch notes.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It took them six months to fix what? Some stuff takes a long time to fix, some is easy to fix but hard to test, and some stuff is just… annoyingly hard to nail down completely.

I have no idea why this stuff borked with this patch or what’s involved with fixing it. But I do know that rollbacks are much harder to pull off than it sounds; it would mean devoting resources from all sorts of other things to do properly. It also won’t solve ANet’s “upset customer” problem: sure, the people complaining in this thread would be (mostly) mollified, but it would annoy an entirely new group of people.

Accordingly, I think it’s far more likely that ANet will spend 1-3 weeks developing/testing a way to remove the AP, titles, and skins that people unlocked by accident today. Mostly because there’s a simple 1:1 relationship between the actual GW1 HoM score and the titles/skins/APs granted in GW2.

It might not be clear that I am, myself, upset about ANet screwing this up. I can’t imagine what goes on in their change control/management and QA departments that something this simple to detect wasn’t prevented. But I don’t work there, so I can’t even reliably second-guess them. I expect them to work hard to resolve the issues and I’m willing to wait for them to do it, even though I would prefer to donate my patience to something else.

VERY very well said. I concur, fully.

Traits issue has been fixed too. I was able to purchase traits I couldn’t before the latest bug fixing patch.

Odyssey.2613:

Guild chat bugged. Party chat bugged. Downed bar bugged. Necro minions bugged. Ranger pets bugged. Animations while holding staff bugged. Lag bug. FPS bug. Minimap bug. Disembodied voices bug. PC speaks a whole paragraph at a time bug. Game/Audio freeze/Hiccup every 8 seconds bug. Weapon scaling bug. Game loader bug. Client update bug. Story/NPC bug. Item stacking bug. Trait vender bug. Order items vendor bug. Missing textures bug. Camera bug. Reward track bug. Votekick bug. Vinewrath bug. Trait vendor bug. Guild workshop bug. Guild rep bug. Titles bug. In-game bug reporting bug.

This is the patch they delayed 6 days to ensure it was “polished”.

You know, the more I see wrong with this patch and the hatestorm of comments that has come along with it, the more I think someone malicious on the Anet developer team made these bugs happen on purpose and thought it funny. Think about it… Most of these bugs have nothing to do with what was actually changed.

P.S. As a preventive measure in situations like this, Anet should have a backup of every update they’ve worked on so if they ever need to roll the game back, they can easily do so and then go back to the drawing board without losing anything they worked on.

I am usually very forgiving when it comes to bugs but this thing kittens me off. I have played GW1 for a long time and i know, i did not play it to have something to show off in GW2, but still… i have actually earned those titles (as have many other GW1 players) and now people who did not even see GW1 can have the same?

I don’t care what others have – as long as they have earned it, i’m happy for them – but giving these GW1-related things for free due to a bug? Anet has to remove those titles that were given. Period.

A rollback or at least switching off the new stuff is essential. I cannot even get into gw2, it logs in and then just hangs my machine totally. I have had to hard reset 3 times. TOTALLY not impressed.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Just wait long enough and they hand out what others had to work for.

This ^^

All PvE kittens QQ’d about not being able to do world completion, since WvW was part of the world got what they asked..
Next patch a free legendary for everyone probably.. Kittening Anet..

I agree with a roll back, not just because of the HoM bug but because of the ever growing list of bugs caused by this patch. Way too many issues to be released onto a none beta game.

Snow.2048:

I agree with a roll back, not just because of the HoM bug but because of the ever growing list of bugs caused by this patch. Way too many issues to be released onto a none beta game.

If Anet do a rollback it will be because of this; the patch seems to be a lot messier than I first thought.

I can’t see them rollingback solely due to HOM and AP. While it may resolve the issue for individuals it would create a lot of heat for Anet; every other player who has acheived something since the patch landed will log on to roast anet.

Anet simply aren’t going to upset the rest of the player base because GW1 players object to an unearned title and 400 AP. As unfair as it is, I suspect they will cut their losses on that issue and work to prevent othjers from exploiting it.

As HoM seems to be a CTD issue now, I suspect that already have blocked this issue off.

The voices all over the chat is really starting to annoy the hell out of me.

“ASHES AND DEATH” “ASHES AND DEATH”… Seriously fix this, do a roll back or something.

Theorick.2713:

Anet simply aren’t going to upset the rest of the player base because GW1 players object to an unearned title and 400 AP. As unfair as it is, I suspect they will cut their losses on that issue and work to prevent others from exploiting it.

Let’s not forget that these GW1 players are long-time loyal customers. I hope Anet thinks twice about ignoring them.

Anyway, not sure how easy an AP-deduction really is, but I cannot imagine how removing the undeserved titles can be a major technical issue…

Satenia.9025:

Theorick.2713:

Anet simply aren’t going to upset the rest of the player base because GW1 players object to an unearned title and 400 AP. As unfair as it is, I suspect they will cut their losses on that issue and work to prevent others from exploiting it.

Let’s not forget that these GW1 players are long-time loyal customers. I hope Anet thinks twice about ignoring them.

Anyway, not sure how easy an AP-deduction really is, but I cannot imagine how removing the undeserved titles can be a major technical issue…

I would hope that anet don’t ignore them at all. I would aslo like to think there is a workable solution to the problem.

I just think that if the only way to fix the title/AP thing is a rollback, then a rollback for that issue alone is not going to happen.

Odyssey.2613:

Guild chat bugged. Party chat bugged. Downed bar bugged. Necro minions bugged. Ranger pets bugged. Animations while holding staff bugged. Lag bug. FPS bug. Minimap bug. Disembodied voices bug. PC speaks a whole paragraph at a time bug. Game/Audio freeze/Hiccup every 8 seconds bug. Weapon scaling bug. Game loader bug. Client update bug. Story/NPC bug. Item stacking bug. Trait vender bug. Order items vendor bug. Missing textures bug. Camera bug. Reward track bug. Votekick bug. Vinewrath bug. Trait vendor bug. Guild workshop bug. Guild rep bug. Titles bug. In-game bug reporting bug.

This is the patch they delayed 6 days to ensure it was “polished”.

No kidding. It makes you wonder how this even got cleared for release. Do they actually test this stuff?

I heared this bug is still working, is it true?

Darmikau.9413:

The patch needs a rollback for more than just the GWAMM exploit.

Green party and /say chat.
Green down state health bars.
Messed up loading screen.
Map-wide voice clips.
Minimap is misaligned.
Various crash bugs.

This patch is a mess.

Just a comment here. In fact, Minimap isn’t misaligned, it is where it always have been :P Yes, what is wrong there is it’s missing a background texture, what makes it looks like it’s floating. Look closely and you will see the whole skill bar is lacking a background. This issue is also what is making the level boxes to look black. Compare with old pics and it’s clearly noticeable.

Eidolonemesis.5640:

You know, the more I see wrong with this patch and the hatestorm of comments that has come along with it, the more I think someone malicious on the Anet developer team made these bugs happen on purpose and thought it funny. Think about it… Most of these bugs have nothing to do with what was actually changed.

The tinfoilhat is strong in this one… you’d have to be very upset to be willing to loose your job over this. The current employment landscape hardly lends itself for protests that involve getting yourself fired. If you have watched the old GDC panel ANet had you’d know that nothing goes into the game without a clear record being made, so as soon as they had fixed few of these issues they’d probably see a pattern if there was one.

Odyssey.2613:

Another possibility, and IMO a more likely explanation, is under paid/over worked staff, absolutely inept internal testing team(which I’ve heard is outsourced), coupled with lazy department heads, along with limp wristed CEOs that don’t demand high standards.

About their quality assurance, they have both smaller in-studio team of QA personnel and a larger outsourced QA team if I recall correctly.

shadow.6174:

Just a comment here. In fact, Minimap isn’t misaligned, it is where it always have been :P Yes, what is wrong there is it’s missing a background texture, what makes it looks like it’s floating. Look closely and you will see the whole skill bar is lacking a background. This issue is also what is making the level boxes to look black. Compare with old pics and it’s clearly noticeable.

I checked older screens I took, and the mini map is indeed higher now (attached mini map area from both screens. one I took last month (before) and the other I took today (after). there is a clear difference, at least in my game.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

You say like there is some special secret to this bug. Any new player, altoholic, keyrunner, grandma can do this without even knowing what is hom points or ap.
Do a barrel roll rollback while it is not too late. Or in 1-2 days we will have a whole bunch of gods running amongst mere mortals.

I made a new character and I didnt get anything lol

EDIT: I should note I wasnt trying to exploit. I’m making two new characters, one a norn warrior to wear the female heavy arah armor, the other a human to wear the cultural underboob armor. I’m being sexist, not exploitive lol

And to point out also, just trying to be funny. Ignore me :P

My client downloaded something at around 4am today. No patch notes on the forum. Maybe it was a hotfix for this? HoM points are still messed up though.

Yep, the patch is not an improvement to the game.

Crise.9401:

The tinfoilhat is strong in this one… you’d have to be very upset to be willing to loose your job over this. The current employment landscape hardly lends itself for protests that involve getting yourself fired.

The current employment landscape you speak of is made up of short-term contracts at Anet. Nearly everyone who isn’t a member of the old guard will get fired after a time regardless of what they do or don’t do. I could see why a temporary employee would feel exploited or mistreated enough to sabotage a company that isn’t offering any kind of future for them anyway. Along this line of thought, why was the update released out of schedule on a Monday?

Not saying that’s what happened, but it’s more than believable.

Gank.4957:

People are getting free GWAMM and HoM rewards, this is a major game breaking exploit and is already spreading across the internet as we speak. Please do something.

It may be thoroughly undeserved, but game-breaking it ain’t.

Leablo.2651:

Crise.9401:

The tinfoilhat is strong in this one… you’d have to be very upset to be willing to loose your job over this. The current employment landscape hardly lends itself for protests that involve getting yourself fired.

The current employment landscape you speak of is made up of short-term contracts at Anet. Nearly everyone who isn’t a member of the old guard will get fired after a time regardless of what they do or don’t do. I could see why a temporary employee would feel exploited or mistreated enough to sabotage a company that isn’t offering any kind of future for them anyway. Along this line of thought, why was the update released out of schedule on a Monday?

Not saying that’s what happened, but it’s more than believable.

Because it was pushed back 6 days to make sure it was “polished”.

Crise.9401:

Eidolonemesis.5640:

You know, the more I see wrong with this patch and the hatestorm of comments that has come along with it, the more I think someone malicious on the Anet developer team made these bugs happen on purpose and thought it funny. Think about it… Most of these bugs have nothing to do with what was actually changed.

The tinfoilhat is strong in this one… you’d have to be very upset to be willing to loose your job over this. The current employment landscape hardly lends itself for protests that involve getting yourself fired.

It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone wearing a ‘tinfoil hat’. You make it sound like what I point out can never happen or does not happen, because it CAN happen and DOES happen in big companies (Anet is no exception).

The reason such scenarios are not broadcasted to everyone because it would make such companies look bad so as to get customers/players to question the integrity of the company and preventative measures therein.

Think about it… Would you broadcast such things about your company if you owned one unless you absolutely had to? No.

Crise.9401:

If you have watched the old GDC panel ANet had you’d know that nothing goes into the game without a clear record being made, so as soon as they had fixed few of these issues they’d probably see a pattern if there was one.

Nothing about this current update is considered a ‘clean record’ whatsoever because it is wracked with more bugs than I have seen in most other updates to the point of complete absurdity, and it doesn’t make Guild Wars 2 look good at all.

Furthermore, even if they did find a ‘pattern’ (as you say) as evidence to prove someone did tamper with the update to make it go awry, Anet is NOT going to tell their customers/players, “Hey, guess what guys? We caught someone on our team tampering with the update we deployed!”

That’s not going to happen for said reasons… You can call what I am saying is a theory all you want, yet it’s not so farfetched like you seem to believe.