Charcoal Sketch here...

[Charcoal Sketch]

... hoping to get a chance to play before the inevitable server crash from everyone ELSE wanting to play.

I'm the crazy guy that runs drawsomeponies.tumblr.com and askfloofcat.tumblr.com

I'm also notorious for beta testing games; I've been doing it for decades.  Haven't been doing much of it lately, and haven't tried to get into any closed beta or alpha testing; haven't had the time to do it my way, and got turned off by the last company I was doing it for.  Want to know more?

Long story time.  I worked with a team on an alpha, and did my usual bit; I tried to disassemble the client and find ways of totally crashing the game for other players, actually found some, and reported them to the staff.  I also scoured staff and tester pages, and found a weakness in the password system, and logged in as the administrators themselves.

The staff was grateful for all the work I did, and were looking forwards to seeing me in the beta.  When it went to beta, they were working under a different master group, as the game changed hands.  I retested some of the alpha bugs, and found they had returned, and found a few new vulnerabilities.  I wrote up a three page report on what was wrong and how to fix it.

The response?  "You have been banned for life for hacking."

Yep, thanks to someone not understanding the fact that I was TESTING for hack possibilities, and trying to close them, they lost someone who was willing to spend 5 hours a day, seven days a week, with extra hours possible, who would be looking for anything that needed fixing, from major problems down to misplaced apostrophes.

In any case, I'll mess around when it's stress test time, but only to enjoy myself.  I'll let someone else worry about major server stress and security tests.

[Ryo_D_Disk]

Well Greetings and welcome to the forums Charcoal and welcome to LoE enjoy your time here and I shall enjoy meeting you in game next week

[SapphirePony]

[Lord of Madness]

Greetings from Madness!!! If you need any help there is a place with threads for that right Here. There is even a thread where some Ponies ask questions Here. Or you could even ask some of us members, we would be glad to help. Be sure to read the Rules

That sounds like some tough luck! but dont worry. I will be trying to find glitches in order to help fix them. I love to help and I find the staff here really understanding! Anyway I hope we both have a wonderful time playing the game!

[Night Pony]

Hello and welcome to loe! 

[The Wandering Magus]

... hoping to get a chance to play before the inevitable server crash from everyone ELSE wanting to play.

I'm the crazy guy that runs drawsomeponies.tumblr.com and askfloofcat.tumblr.com

I'm also notorious for beta testing games; I've been doing it for decades.  Haven't been doing much of it lately, and haven't tried to get into any closed beta or alpha testing; haven't had the time to do it my way, and got turned off by the last company I was doing it for.  Want to know more?

Long story time.  I worked with a team on an alpha, and did my usual bit; I tried to disassemble the client and find ways of totally crashing the game for other players, actually found some, and reported them to the staff.  I also scoured staff and tester pages, and found a weakness in the password system, and logged in as the administrators themselves.

The staff was grateful for all the work I did, and were looking forwards to seeing me in the beta.  When it went to beta, they were working under a different master group, as the game changed hands.  I retested some of the alpha bugs, and found they had returned, and found a few new vulnerabilities.  I wrote up a three page report on what was wrong and how to fix it.

The response?  "You have been banned for life for hacking."

Yep, thanks to someone not understanding the fact that I was TESTING for hack possibilities, and trying to close them, they lost someone who was willing to spend 5 hours a day, seven days a week, with extra hours possible, who would be looking for anything that needed fixing, from major problems down to misplaced apostrophes.

In any case, I'll mess around when it's stress test time, but only to enjoy myself.  I'll let someone else worry about major server stress and security tests.

welcome to the forums   Nice for you to be able to stop by and help out with the coding and bugs.  Will you be active on the forums as well?

[Charcoal Sketch]

I haven't really decided yet; there's only so many hours in the day.  I'm juggling work, projects I'm doing for someone else privately, a few craft projects of my own, taking care of my spoiled cat, taking care of myself (I've been sick a lot lately, and just spent a few days in the hospital thanks to kidney stones), and trying to decide how to split up my free time, how little there is.

I'll probably browse through the rest of the forums here a bit at a time, and decide whether to stick around depending on what I think of the actual LoE game and whether or not anyone or anything in the forums either catches my fancy or rubs me the wrong way.

I'm older than your average Brony.  Much older.  Trying to predict my movements is a futile task.  The fact my 80 year old mother can recognize Pinkie Pie on sight is an accomplishment...

[The Wandering Magus]

well, I hope you can stop by the roleplaying section and take a look at some of our sign-up roleplays   Swebow might like meeting up with you, seeing as the two of you sound quite similar in age and hobbies

[Anibell April Dash]

Hello and I'm new too! Hope to see you at the stress test~ 

[Charcoal Sketch]

I'm still not sure if I'll even have the chance to be part of it; my schedule has been so random this month it's not funny.

For right now, though, my cat is demanding my time more than anything else.  I went over 35 years without any pets because they hadn't invented Zyrtec yet.  I ended up adopting a stray off my doorstep, and it turns out he's part Maine Coon cat, and he's STILL growing bigger.  He'll be three years old (estimated) next month.  His blog is linked in my original post, and he also has videos at bakaohki.youtube.com

[The Wandering Magus]

always nice to have a pet / be a cat's human

I hope your schedule gets more stable in the following days

[Charcoal Sketch]

Same here.

In the meantime, I'm digging out old testing, hacking, and/or moderation notes from, among other sites and games:

• Ragnarok Online alpha and early closed beta


• MapleStory


• acmecity.com


• Pangya US closed alpha


• Multiple MapleStory, Ragnarok, and World of Warcraft private servers


• Kingdom of Loathing


• Hello Kitty Online closed alpha

As you can see, pretty darn varied, and that's just a random sampling.

I think the largest bug I ever found was in the early days of Ragnarok Online, and I got banned for exploiting the game's economy thanks to the language barrier.  Let's just say that for a week, for those familiar with the game, it was possible to warp from Prontera to Payon or Alberta and pick up as many empty bottles as you could, fill them with milk, sell them, and repeat for a profit.  I found similar bugs in a ton of private servers; one person who thought they took care of every possible bug was astounded when I was able to make millions in 10 minutes flat.

I miss the simpler days of the net, back when AcmeCity was around and I was moderating their Pokémon pages, and running a site called "222 Pikachu Street"... just about every site on the internet was stealing my card scans for the first five sets... even after I started putting some red herrings in my file system so anyone trying to grab by directory or filename got some fake or altered cards.  The only reason I ever stopped working on that site was that it was constantly targeted by hackers, and all the different free hosts finally decided I was too much of a security risk to allow to stay on their servers.  There are still a few Pokémon items hanging around in my room; there's a glow in the dark Mew hanging with Zecora and the blindbag glow ponies, and a poseable stuffed Charizard hanging with the small 5 buck Target pony plushies.

[The Wandering Magus]

have fun messing around with the code

[Charcoal Sketch]

Haven't decided if I will or not; I do know that all I'll do during the test, or at least at first, is enjoy myself as a player and not as a tester, since all we're supposed to be doing is stress testing.  Safeguarding the server from code error induced crashing isn't part of it, and I'm not about to try to crash anything. 

This time.

[The Wandering Magus]

i'll look forward to seeing you in-game in any case   so much computer skills

[Charcoal Sketch]

Odds are you won't see me in-game until the next event AFTER the stress test.  The new announcement raises so many red flags, I've stopped trying to clear my weekend schedule.  If I were out to knock the game servers down on purpose, I'd be already putting my plan together, and if I were at the convention, I'd probably be able to do it solo with the hour head-start on the files.

Everybody better start hoping there's nobody that malicious there.

[The Wandering Magus]

Odds are you won't see me in-game until the next event AFTER the stress test.  The new announcement raises so many red flags, I've stopped trying to clear my weekend schedule.  If I were out to knock the game servers down on purpose, I'd be already putting my plan together, and if I were at the convention, I'd probably be able to do it solo with the hour head-start on the files.

Everybody better start hoping there's nobody that malicious there.

oddly, the team sounds so confident of themselves that I think a massive crash/hack/etc would be a good wake-up call.  Sure, a lot of ponies would be disappointed or enraged, but in the long run it's better to learn that you're not as good as you think you are sooner than later.