[L2J] L2Pow

[Zigoon]

u didnt answer my question qq

[alexusx]

how about ddos protection?

Edited December 13, 2014 by alexusx

[anhel00]

Do you want me to start talking about Interlude servers?

Please...

 

 

 

Better a noob admin than a pro brown noser.(go google that)

 

On main topic now.Pharos was one of the best servers around at the time and tha'ts why even Deliany played there with some other proz.

Now about Silver,well it could have been great if it survived the DDoS storm.  :alone:

Let's see about this one.

GL.

 

I've to make you sad. It wasnt the real deliany. actualy he was in my cp ( nigg3 cp ) he just steal that nick for some reason however we called him as his nick also .

And ye Pharos was the best server arround. 10X better then all of the stalone / mouse / jakk / otherdumbfucks servers. 

Also it was the most retail likely server with not disabled anakim ( 3month and only 1 was there from the boss itself)

all in all good luck mybe i'll try to bring nigg3 cp back :)

[Eagle_Eye]

I've to make you sad. It wasnt the real deliany. 

  :alone:

Good times though.

[TroubleChick]

Zigoon, on 13 Dec 2014 - 11:47 AM, said:
u didnt answer my question qq
We are 2 persons posting from this account, and that was my thing to answer.
This is my first post on this topic so i will take the permission to make it my personal wall of text. If you don't like walls of text you should stop here :D

So, the question was why changing the files.
The answer is simple:P Because this files are way more advanced and they have implemented scripting side a hell a lot of features that would take months to code and some of them don't even have the support on a classic l2j pack.
Is a well known fact that russian l2j based packs are much more advanced as build and optimized for populated servers. The are faster, lighter for the machine and offer a better game-play feeling for the users.

There are also downsides to it, but you as a player will not feel it. Is more on the developing side of the curtain. Some of the basic features that in l2j needed a simple command in-game, on this packs need changes in the files itself and can not be done in-game. Is harder to change but once is done, it runs better.

As about the reason why we failed last time ... the Almighty  DDoS what can i say... It may be(and i expect it to be) the same story this time.
Dont get me wrong, we do have protection, but we dont know how high can it protect and my experience is not a pleasant one with this protections.
So now some can ask why try again.
I personally did not wanted to try once more and i don't want it even now. But in order to prove a point to my old buddy i will give it a try together with him. I take it as a debt i need to pay to the guy i worked for 5 years now and it will cost me in the worst case 300-400€.
So yeah, i can only hope that this time Stalonka and his ddos dev will let us be and man up to a challange of who can make a better server without fuking the other with ddos, account hacks and other dirty means.  And even so, both Holiday and Cartel servers have a much bigger base of players that expect the opening. So i guess we are the small dogs (yes, i am aware of the fact that this topics are populated by dogs) on the scene atm. And believe it or not, i don't even wanna join the big dogs group.
During this years, we runned a few servers, and i cant say i have a personal favorite name. The thing is that they are all the same and they are all different at the same time. It all depends of the community + files + external factors (ddos, hacks, hdd fails, etc).  

And since is my wall of text sexy time, i will go back in time and remember some of the names that gave me joy and sorrow, virtual places where i met wonderful ppl and greedy bastards, but in the end they all were my babies.

L2PoW.
Not much to remember about it, since it was boomed already from OBT and once we got to live, it became a living hell. DDoS-ed to death in one week or so. After that we had few ppl that remained on the server (70-100 users) but slowly moved to more populated servers. After another 2 weeks there where max 20 ppl on and there was no fun left. Sad story...

L2Silver Rebirth
Epic OBT, epic opening. We had 1500 uniques at the start. The machine we had at the opening was meant to host 500-700 ppl. Everything over that amount made it overloaded the server machine.
Now, don't get me wrong. We did not had this epic start because of how good we advertised and how well known Silver was. Ofc we had a player base of 3-4-500 ppl that joined because of the name. But most of the players that made it to a huge opening were sent by Stalonka. During our OBT, he opened a server, cant remember the name now, and for some reason it failed. I was talking to him and tried to shared some of the things i learned during the years and it seemed, at least at that moment that we like each-other. I always thought and still think that we are very much alike me and him. We both want to do our jobs as best as we can. The only difference is that his job is making dineros and my job is to make a hell of a server. The big problem is he thinks that we can not exist in this community at the same time... and he is so wrong.  I just want a good server. I don't want a huge server. Never did. And the players that have dineros and want to spend them for pixels always search glory on huge servers. So as many ppl as possible can see what a big e-penis they got when they run around in end game gears without grinding an Elpy.
Let's get back to the story, because it is a good one :D
So, Stalonka posted on his website an advertisement where he was telling his players to join my server(i will call it mine and not ours because is my God damn wall oif text! ). That being said, I ended up at the opening with at least 700 - 800 ppl more than i expected, wanted or was prepared for. So, what do you do when u make a party and you get as double guests as you invited? You move to a bigger place ofc. I bought the same day a stronger machine, upgraded the uplink and all was good to go. 1500 ppl  grinding on a server that had 1 admin/dev (this guy's community handling skills are as good as an elephant's dancing skills) +  1 admin/GM/ Forum Admin (that's me) + GM/web-dev/Forum Admin (thx Patrick for everything, you are and angel!) + 1 GM/Helper/Event Manager (my good old swedish friend that knows nothing of how a server is running but he is 100% trusted and fair).
It was a madness. But not the bad kind of madness, it was a exhilarating madness. It must be how a bartender feels like, when  he have 1 bar, 2 hands and 100 ppl that all want something at the same time, and they all want it NOW.
I was sleeping 3-4h / day because i had at least 300 ppl constantly on the forum and hundreds of posts, doubled and tripled topics because no fuking one ever uses the ''Search'' feature and if they want something they just make a new topic and my day still had only 24 h from which i had also a job, travels and a personal life. So yeah, it was not easy. But it was fun and i enjoyed it.
After few days from when we moved to the new machine and everything was running smooth, lags come. And when i say lags i mean laaaaaaggggggsssss. Server freezing, mass disconnects, login unavailable and with them panic in the staff. I try to log to the machine and nothing ... timeout. That could only mean one thing: Welcome to the beautiful land of DDoS. The place where nothing moves and everybody rage! Forum went on fire. FB page went on fire. MXC topic went on fire. I have never seen so many topics telling us that server is down in my life. And is not like we did not knew it ... but the players felt that we need to know it again and again and again. Like spamming the forum with a fact we are aware of helps with anything.  
Out of nowhere, in a moment where the DDoS stopped, and between another 100 petitions, a new petition is coming. Player name - Jakk. Class - Gladiator. Lvl - 50+
I cant remember exactly but i thing it was just saying : ''admin''
When i opened it, the guy started to tell me that if we want that the DDoS stops we have to give him lvl 85, sub-classes and S grade gear. Just told him i don't have time for tricks and closed the petition. Next thing i seen was server freezing + disconnect.
After few minutes where login was down, he stopped and i could log back in. Same petition, same name, same requests.
The server was up for some days, we had already many players with max lvl + subs + nobless + moirai and vesper guns so what the hell. I gave that man his cookies.

And here i have to stop and clear an issue, because there are many players around that don't understand something.
Running a server is not a black and white business.  
It is a very complex process that sometimes requires decisions and actions that at a fist look would seem as they are acts of corruption. But they are not. They are simply the black dots found on the white surface that are needed in order that the things keep running.
We, the server admins are not the US Government that have a policy of not negotiating with the terrorists :D We need to negotiate, we need to make compromises sometimes, we need to have secret agreements with some players where they get some sort of reward because they helped us to kill a global exploit or an unknown bug or whatever can/will harm the server. We need to clean instance timers to groups that failed because of a server side flaw or to low an epic's hp because 30 ppl lowed it to 5% hp using almost 2h of their life on it and than server crashed. We need to do all this because our goal is that you, the players have a good time on our server and not that you have to rage after wasting hours on organizing and fighting something that you cant get because of our or the server's fault. All this are needed and they are not corruption. The are just actions needed in order to bring back the balance in an unfair situation.
Another thing you all should know about me is that i always play my servers. And i mean ALWAYS. I have maybe 10x more time spent on my in-game chars than on the admin char. But... and there is a big thing here: when i have access to everything possible in this game, obviously because is my server, i don't need it. And i don't want it. Because i don't play my servers so my in-game chars shine and rape others. I play it because i have to take the decisions that influence the way you, the players feel my server.
When i test stuff from my admin, lets say when i test drops in a certain region or to a certain mob, i just use kill / res 50 or 100 times and count the drops based on that number of kills. But when i am on my in-game char, i have to kill those 100 mobs like you have to. I have same gears as you do and same party members as you do. When i test Freya from admin i just enter the instance, //kill , //kill, //kill and i am done. It never bugs, it never gets exploited. But when i kill Freya with my in-game char  i find out that you can exploit it by having a healer outside the gate, i find out that some mobs are bugging in the textures and we cant finish it or that the drops suck ass and i rage same as you do. And than i call Joe and tell him to go fuk himself because he told me Freya is fixed and it is not. Oh God, if you just knew how many times i found out things about my own server from my in-game char... things that i could never ever find by testing shit from admin.
And another thing. I never pump up my clannies (because yes, i join random clans at server start and stay there probably until the end if things don't break down inside the clan). The only benefits that a clan get by having me as a member is that i never ask for drops from anything. I am fixed, so yeah, you can call it corruption, i just call it a good server management ;)
It happened countless times that i was on skype with the clannies and some instance or siege or whatever you can think of was going wrong and ppl in conf were raging and telling shit about the GMs and the server. Is funny as hell i tell u.
And here, the ''Corruption'' clearing ends and i get back to the Silver Reborn story.
So, i gave this guy his lvl and s grade shit and we settled down to an agreement that he stop DDoS-ing the server and as the server advances he gets free upgrades to his gear, skill enchants and so on, but never more than a medium to high geared player have already.
It all went well until one or 2 days after when he petitioned me to ask for an upgrade. There were already duelists with vesper guns so i assumed is that... It was not. He wanted a max lvl Weapon Mastery from hierophant added to his passives. I told him that is a no can do issue and i tried to find a agreement where he gets better duals and some top grade ls to get a good augment. He did not liked the idea and kept on his dirty passive. Never got it, started to DDoS and the population was getting lower every day.
After some days of heavy daily attacks, and giving the fact the Tales was in OBT, the player base was down to about 500 ppl. But that's the perfect server population for me so i never felt bad about it.
It was another one or 2 weeks after, when Tales was already up with a huge counter (2000+ showing in community) that the next problem appeared... It was what in fact killed the server or at least what brought it to it's death.
The old element bug, that was working on every l2j server and no one fixed it or told it before. And it came like a storm on my beloved Silver. Forums flooded with complains and print screens of s grade stuff with lvl 7 element on it. Again panic, again rage. The only thing i knew about the exploit was that is something that have to do with trading the stones/crystals. So i made them un-tradable and made a complicated system with a npc that converts them to something else so you can trade it and than you had to make it back in stones/crystals in order to use them. The exploit was stopped (not fixed) but many players already broke the gears during the general rage. I was digging in logs and data base to find the illicit items and more and more players were leaving. When we found out exactly how the exploit is made, we could fix it (toked not more than 1h for Joe to fix it) but it was too late. 2 or 3 weeks since it's epic start, Silver was killed by DDoS + an exploit that was working everywhere. Sad story again...

L2Silver  <3
It was one of my best servers. I just loved it.
Not as big as part 2 could be, about 500-800 real players at it's best times, a lot of action and a lot of fun.
There everything seemed to be running smooth for some months, and i say seemed because in fact there was an exploit we found out about very very late. It was the vote system exploiting stuff. But as the server was populated and at that time not many knew how the exploit is done, the economy only broke over a long period. I remember i was checking in logs and finding dozens of lvl 1 dwarfs with full inventories of bews and beas got from the broken voting script. But when i was doing this, the server already had 3 or 4 months since it was up and in time, ppl got things too easy and too fast because of the bews-beas + element  dealers so they just got bored, as mid-rates players always do and moved to another servers.

L2Pharos and before that L2Evolution
From the start of this short part, you must understand 2 things:
1. It happened at least 2 if not 3 years ago and i cant remember much so back in time
2. Back than, players did not needed a mega-server to enjoy it. Is only after Tales that you all got used with huge communities showing 2000-3000 on (after 3x boosted counters ofc).
On Pharos as i remember, we had a player base somewhere around 300-400 ppl. When i say that, it means counter showing 800 maybe 1000+. But thats because of shops and dual boxes.
Was running on one of the old l2j packs, where many features were not working, but i remember that we did a lot of fixes to skills and pvp balance so it was a fun server indeed. I was playing SE back than and i remember i had shitloads of fun both in sieges, pvp and oly but also the farming was balanced. Not too fast but not a grinding hell.

Before that, i had the biggest fail of my career.
It was called:  pvpwith.us
A server me and Joe made in cooperation with Mouse, based on some fuking expensive russian closed pack (if i remember well we paid 800 usd for it), with a russian looking website and with russian names. I was called Sasha =)))
We failed so hard that is funny even when i remember it. The pack itself was very good, but you could not change almost anything in it. No skill formulas, no scripts, just basic html and multisells. I guess it was working like a dream, but on a low rates with standard buff timers not on full buff basis. We closed it after some weeks because there was simply too much rage about the land chances and we could not do shit to fix it + that players got tired of reading '' We will fix it '' on forum and nothing was happening. That was my hard and expensive lesson: NEVER OPEN A SERVER ON CLOSED PACKS!

Before that, it was L2Stars (the original, gracia epilogue Stars was our server). That was  my first server together with Joe, and i think, even if i said in the beginning that i don't have a favorite server,  but i think this one is my all time, most beloved server.
Back than, if you had a server with a base of 200 players, you were entering the big dogs playground.
L2Stars started with not more than 100 ppl, if i think better it was under 100 at start.
But at that time, on l2j servers (not russians) a hell a lot of things were missing. And as i love to fix dp side stuff, i took my time and fixed a lot of items and skills that never worked before. Ocf i made it custom lol, but the thing is that they were working and on most of the servers at that time nothing worked.
So ppl started to come and after a month we had population counter of more than 500 ppl (200+ uniques) and that was a big deal. And it grow more until it got to around 800-900 counter(300-400 ppl).
I was such a noob back than. We got data base hacked by some russian guy and i wasted an entire summer holiday (2 weeks) to remake players items and skills based on logs and some old backup. Damn it was hard but we were L2Stars heroes :P
Cant remember how long did Stars runed but it was for many months, 7,8 or 9... something like this.
I think it was half a year after having it up that i experienced the first DDoS of my life.
We had no idea wtf should we do, so the server was down for days since you could ddos Hetzner even using tutorials from google. In the end we got some tunneling protection from Dragonara but it was laggy and shitty and the players left until we had max 100 left. Than we put down the protection so server could breath and since it was now a small server again, ddos stopped.
I had so so much fun on L2Stars after becoming a small server. I had my own in-game char, called the same as the admin char, and i was raiding and pvping with the players from it. I think they liked to kill me and flame me as a player knowing is just for fun.

Before Joe, i only had 1 mid server and 1 low rates, and the mid was called L2-AH
Gracia Final, started with an old buddy hosted on his own computer at the beginning.
How epic can that be?
We started with 20 or 30 ppl, all knowing is me and my buddy that own the server and the first month or 2 i was not even a GM. I made some gangsta customs to ''fix'' the foundation items because nothing was working or giving any extra stats. Cant even remember if there where even offline shops at that time, so when we reached 100 on it was time to move to a dedicated machine. The guy came from his own town to my town with his own computer and we moved the server to a 8gb ram computer i bought that was in my living room, with a 20mb optic fiber i had installed at home only for the server (back in 2008 that was rocket science )
Good old days ... where our biggest concern was to catch booters. Damn i miss the quiet times before DDoS and 2000+ on servers!

My wall of text comes to an end (i am sure no one will read it but i just dont care) and i will end it by telling you what i expect from L2PoW 2014 (i dont say 2014-2015 because it might be brought down by DDoS before New Year).
So... if Stalonka will decide is time to let me have my little quiet server, i expect to be able to offer you a H5 mid rates that you will not get so easy bored on.
We will tweak the drop rates and quest rates, so if the server goes smooth you wont be able to reach end game before some months. If this is what you look for, check it up. If you look for a full S84 lvl 7 element in 3-4 weeks just pass.
Epics will drop 1 jwl, heroes will be every 2 weeks and we plan to have of extra activities beside the classic farm+free pvp + auto events. So there will be weekly gm organized events but not before first week of server.
We wont sell pvp ready chars and +30 skills, so if you  look for something like this just pass.
We will try to find a class balance since beta, but as the pack is new to me, and i am the one in charge of balancing classes, changes might come also in live. But it will be a mid rate so, if at any time you will consider your class was ''nerfed'' just re-roll. I make the changes carefully but as we all know, L2 players are top QQers so, if you think you can not handle an evolving server that adapts to the balance requirements, just pass.
We will have the last LameGuard version, but i heard that clickers are now the next big thing, so if i catch you boting more than 3 times you get your char deleted (and trust me i am good enough to find your main). If you cant live with this idea, just pass.
Since there is a NPC buffer and as far as i understood from Joe, some kind of in-game buffs selling system for ++ buffs, the max boxes limit / pc will be 2 or 3. I don't see any reason why you should need more.
I want a clean community so, i will not tolerate highly unfair behavior so yeah, if you know you can not behave in a friendly community again... just pass.

And last but not least, if we will fail, at least we tried.

Sincerely yours,

Me :D

[AchYlek]

nice story, u think someone read it ? :D

[Eagle_Eye]

nice story, u think someone read it ? :D

Ye.

The people who know English cuz they had parents to pay for their tuition instead of throwing a PC in their face and ending up leeching them till they die and then wandering the streets offering anal sex for pennies to buy cigarettes and meth.

 

besides:

 

This is my first post on this topic so i will take the permission to make it my personal wall of text. If you don't like walls of text you should stop here  :D

 

 Nice pointless question you made there.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Eagle_Eye

[AchYlek]

Ye.

The people who know English cuz they had parents to pay for their tuition instead of throwing a PC in their face and ending up leeching them till they die and then wandering the streets offering anal sex for pennies to buy cigarettes and meth.

 

besides:

 

 

 Nice pointless question you made there.

strunkki flamki but i dont have parents  (((

[Granny]

That wall of text is intense. I couldn't get through it. Add some color next time or something I was losing my spot so many times, lol.

 

Good luck though. Seems like you're quite passionate. I did catch a few things though. Mainly, you stated that you expect to get DDOS'd again but hope you don't otherwise you'll get shut down again.

 

This seems like a pretty foolish policy. I mean, if you expect people to play, in all seriousness, then you would need to invest in a good proxy shield.

 

A world without DDOS would be nice, yes. But not everyone is a good person in these forums. ;)

 

Cheers,

Granny

[TroubleChick]

Joe(the other guy):

Indeed. But we exepect and we bought one of the best Protection that is on market, but in this world is better tbe prepared for worst and not to put your hopes too high.

I am sorry if that after posted you understood we do not owe any DDoS protection

[Eagle_Eye]

but in this world is better tbe prepared for worst and not to put your hopes too high.

Indeed.

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

[Granny]

Joe(the other guy):

Indeed. But we exepect and we bought one of the best Protection that is on market, but in this world is better tbe prepared for worst and not to put your hopes too high.

I am sorry if that after posted you understood we do not owe any DDoS protection

 

The best protection on the market cost roughly 12,000 USD / month, I've seen some for more. I've looked into it and received a quote. So you obviously didn't purchase the best on the market.

 

If I were a gambling man, I'd assume you dished out 50-120 USD for a basic protection. When in reality you need 400-500 range to really deflect the more common ddos from these half-assed projects lurking around.

 

Because DDOSing is cheaper than protection, you're on the losing side.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Edit, this comes off as a bit hostile. No offense intended. Good luck with the project :)

 

Cheers,

Granny

Edited December 13, 2014 by Granny

[TroubleChick]

 

 400-500

Kinda this is the price i paid

[Granny]

This should have been enough to handle 80-100 gbps. I'd be surprised if the attacks were any higher than this. But you never know.

 

Cheers,

Granny

[MLU]

Good Luck with server online

2 big servers UP in 19-20.12 ;)