Alpha Stress Test Starts .... NOW!

[Ryan Dancey]

We are beginning the Alpha Stress Test today. Over 9,000 emails are going to be delivered to everyone who has a valid goblinworks.com account over the next 24 hours. If you have an Alpha, Alpha invite, Early, Explorer or Open Enrollment account you'll be able to start playing Pathfinder Online TODAY.

To help control the load on the servers, we are staging the notification of the Stress Test and I'm asking that you not log in until you receive your notice if you are not already playing the Alpha.

This should be an awesome weekend to play if you've been waiting for a reason to try the game. There will be lots and lots of new players learning how the systems work and starting their adventures. We can all help them by answering questions they'll have and giving them some tips and pointers as they figure out the game. Making this first weekend of the Stress Test Community Friendly is a big goal of the Goblinworks staff!

[Dazyk]

Go!

[Elorebaen]

Looking forward to it!

[Doc || GenAknosc]

Any way that GW staff can have god powers and kill the guard wolves?

I'm trying to patrol to different towns and kill them solo, but the alpha ones are beyond my ability.

[KarlBob]

Woo hoo! It'll be nice having more players around. Now we can really test the ability of multiple groups to de-escalate escalations.

[KarlBob]

Doc || GenAknosc wrote:

Any way that GW staff can have god powers and kill the guard wolves?

I'm trying to patrol to different towns and kill them solo, but the alpha ones are beyond my ability.

Some of them are Alpha wolves? That's bad. Really bad.

[Black Silver of The Veiled, T7V]

Eh... but Alpha Wolves are so docile. You just lure them over with some goblin meat, then while they are eating, ram your dagger down onto their skull.

[sspitfire1]

WOOOOO HOO! Can't wait :) More meat- er, young minds to manipulate- err.. umm... nice delicious human beings to play with. Yes. That's it.

[Hobson Fiffledown]

*does the happy halfling dance*

I'm ready to bring the stress! ..in about two and a half hours (satellite interwebs...but the contract is $igned and they should be installing broadband this month. woohoo!).

Which brings me to a question for you all. In the switch from Alpha to EE, I understand the toons will be wiped. Will my Alpha character still be a name placeholder for EE? I think I'll be out of town for the transition and was just wondering.

[Hobson Fiffledown]

Heh, sorta sounds like I wanted to name-camp...guess I should follow up. Actually, I've been thinking of getting Brewmaster - Hobson's Choice Ale, 'Ye cannae choose a finer drink'. A crisp summer ale, brewed with only the finest goldenshire hops. With just a touch of Fiffledown longweed and a hint of lemon, this brew is sure to quench your thirst after a hard day of craftin' and fightin'.

Just doesn't make sense until the names are set in stone. Us halflings can be a vain lot, but don't hate us just because we're beautiful.

[KarlBob]

We know very little about the name claiming and name vetting systems that will be used in EE. Some people (myself included) have created a few message board aliases here in an attempt to register our interest in particular names. Hopefully, within the next couple of weeks we might get a blog or a statement from GW covering issues like placeholder names, name restrictions, and how they might handle two attempts to "homestead" the same name.

[Caldeathe Baequiannia]

There was something a very, very long time ago on Kickstarter about names going to the oldest account.

edit: from about 2/3 of the way down this Kickstarter page

Pathfinder Online at Kickstarter wrote:

Adventurer Reward Bonus - Character Name Reservation:

You'll be able to reserve the name of your first Pathfinder Online character! As as part of the post-Kickstarter survey process you'll be able to give us your first, second and third choices for your first character name. They'll be assigned in the order you first backed the project at the $35 Adventurer level or higher. (If all three of your choices are taken by earlier backers, we'll contact you to arrange for more options!) We reserve the right to limit the use of certain names for legal, marketing and community management reasons.

[GysmoSan]

Received mine alas it appears the installer (PFO_Installer_9_1.exe) is being flagged as being / containing a trojan (IDP.Trojan.CB452937) by AVG so time to do a bit of homework first... Submitted to them for confirmation too so hopefully they'll correct the issue...

Good at least to get confirmation here that everything is above board and emails are to be expected (the source address seemed valid).

Martin

[Ryan Dancey]

The issue is related to Mailchimp.

I have turned on tracking so we can see how often links are clicked in the Mailchimp emails. For the Alpha Stress Test email, we included a link to the installer .exe directly instead of telling you to click a button on the website to get it (because that wasn't working on Friday).

Mailchimp appends some parameters to the end of the URL embedded in the email that lets it track the click on those links. Apparently, Internet Explorer interprets anything after the .exe as malware and tries to protect you by stripping the .exe from the filename.

I am not surprised that some antivirus/antimalware software treats those links the same way (which is why you got that Trojan notice from AVG).

In the future we'll not use those kinds of links with .exe files (or not use links to .exe files at all, which is my preference). For now, you can just add ".exe" to the end of the installer to run it.

[Rauxis]

Having high hopes for the game I was happy to receive the invite last weekend - but I was very disappointed with security issues. Please let me explain:

a) the installer shown as http://cdn.goblinworks.com/install/PFO_Installer_9_1.exe actually has a link http://goblinworks.us3.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=.... - this is a technique very common in spam mails
b) the downloaded installer is not correctly signed - the publisher is listed as "unknown" instead of "Goblinworks, inc"
c) you did not publish a checksum (or better a pair of checksums) for the file on your website.

At the moment I have no way of knowing if the file I received is the real thing, or some hacked version. NSA et al aside - your game is a valid target for groups who make a living by hacking systems. If they manage to break into your distribution method, this would be a long term win to get thousands of systems under their control.

Now please call me paranoid, but with 30 years experience in IT I know too well what can be done. I already sent an e-mail to your customer support, but did not receive any answer. I hope you take this serious, thanks for reading :)

[Archiviste]

I've just found the invitation email for the Alpha Test - GMail had decided it was spam, and looking at it

* "YOU ARE INVITED" in bold letter in the subject,
* link in the email pointing to a different URL

I can see why they would.

Also, the goblinworks.com page with the instructions to install the client (https://goblinworks.com/installing-pathfinder-online/install-the-client/) says it "requires an Administer to run the program" (in bold letter to boot...). What the heck is an "Administer" ?..

[Caldeathe Baequiannia]

It's a windows user account control term. You can't run as a limited user and install the software successfully. You must run with administrative privileges under Windows.

[<Kabal> Daeglin]

@Rauxis

I think the post above yours from Ryan Dancey explains your issue as well. Normally the installer is downloaded directly from their website after logging in. My understanding is that a bug was discovered after the announcement of the stress test that resulted in the button directing to the installer not showing up, and the link in the email was a last minute addition until the website could be corrected. I haven't seen any announcement or comments if it has.

@Archiviste

I just never seem to be able to understand what the spam filters are going to catch. I got the same email and GMail sent mine right through.

[Rauxis]

@Daeglin

Yes and no - it explains why the link in the mail showed differences between Link and "displayed information". I only pointed out that this is a standard tactics in spam mails and does not increase the trustworthiness of the mail.

goblinworks.us3.list-manage1.com is an address not directly linked to Goblinworks - so again not something that you could directly trust. These 2 items alone are already a good enough reason for a spam filter to get alerted.

Interesting enough - you CAN download the file directly from http://cdn.goblinworks.com/install/PFO_Installer_9_1.exe. The list-manage address is probably done to track downloads, but again - tracking points to spam, and creates a third point for a spam filter to worry about.

Just to clarify - I have little doubt that the mail I got was original. But I have no way to check the downloaded file has not been tampered with. As I currently have only my company laptop this is a risk I can not take.

[T7V Jazzlvraz]

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

It's a windows user account control term.

I think, in this case, he was more concerned with the typo "Administer" than with the term "Administrator".