MASSIVE drama on Elysium WoW server - corruption and staff revolt

[Veelq]

I hear Elysium servers are neat.

What Elysium servers?

 

[shihonage]

As usual, I get my mage to level 9 before the server goes to shit.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

 

[Gepeu]

Oh, come on. Last evening everything was perfectly fine.

But, they are gonna relaunch it with already existing characters, according to the statement. So here's hoping. The server was really fun, stable and decently populated. A real blizzlike experience so far.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

chinese goldspammers flooding the shitpits of chat mere seconds into lights hope being up
no hope

time to waste my life and any scrap of dignity I had left in some dark corner of the room by giving blizzard my shekles again

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

The grind to keep up with subreddits, forums, discord and a bunch of other sources of drama is incredibly tiring but god damn if the stuff it produces isn't spaghetti sauce worthy.

http://archive.fo/KFlyG

Plot twist:

End result to this autistic server fight is that no matter what happens, the losing server will lose it's shit and give away all the information/login details of the other server considering they both use the same everything.
If you're autistic enough to actually fall for one of these servers, use the horrible .account command or whatever the hell it's called

Currently, we have character database from: 19-07-2017 for Darrowshire, 09-09-2017 for Elysium and 23-09-2017 for Anathema. Those databases will go online in matter of hours. We know this isn't the best case scenario but we are working on a solution and what ex-administrators did is just a reason for us to work harder to restore your characters back. At the moment we have our development team restoring services.

 

[Infinitron]

Drama drama drama: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...egacy-world-of-warcraft-service-elysium-apart

A schism tears unofficial legacy World of Warcraft service Elysium apart
Project leaders alleged to have been pocketing donations and selling gold.

Elysium, the private/pirate vanilla World of Warcraft server that took over from Nostalrius, has imploded amid allegations the people in charge were pocketing donations and creating gold and characters to sell to players for real money.

A coup was led yesterday by a splinter group who completely wiped and took down the Elysium servers after having made their own backups, which they will use to continue a purer - if you can call it that - service of their own.

"Due to failures to uphold the projects ideals and integrity, the Elysium Project is being dissolved and relaunched out of the control of those who have abused the trust of the staff, community, and legacy movement as a whole," the Light's Hope group said in a statement.

It was alleged that the project's former leader, Shenna, "has taken at least roughly 2000 Euros or more for personal financial reasons", and that another senior project member, Crogge, was running a gold and character selling business on the side. There are pieces of chatlog evidence appearing to back this up.

The existing Elysium servers are not dead and can be resurrected from backups, but how recent they are and how much progress will be rolled back no one yet knows. However, there will now be two sets of Elysium servers for players to choose between; think of this as a schism.

"The core team that are stepping down from the Elysium Project are coalescing around the foundational ideals this project is supposed to represent and are relaunching/rebranding as Light's Hope," the statement read.

Elysium has not issued a full response and servers appear to still be down.

"We're currently working to bring all realms online," read a message on the Elysium website. "Elysium will continue to run, and despite what many people believe, will not be shutting down. Further comments about downtime and response to allegations will be made later."

Elysium recreates pre-expansion World of Warcraft - a game and world many, including myself, remember fondly. It's an experience Blizzard doesn't offer officially in the game, which is the crux of the 'is it pirating?' debate surrounding legacy WoW servers as they're known.

It was a debate that erupted in spring 2016 after the closure of Elysium's predecessor, Nostalrius, by Blizzard's lawyers. Hundreds of thousands of people petitioned the action - Nostalrius had attracted players in their hordes. This led to one of the most remarkable actions I've ever seen Blizzard take: invitating the Nostalrius team to Blizzard HQ for a meeting with the heads of the company and World of Warcraft game - and it lasted several hours.

But nothing appeared to come of it, which eventually provoked the Nostalrius team's hand, which gave the Nostalrius server data to the Elysium team to carry on, and the service reappeared in December 2016. It has run without apparent interference from Blizzard ever since.

The question about what Blizzard got from the unprecedented meeting with the Nostalrius team remains. Why do it? Did Blizzard explore, with actual intent, providing legacy servers to the community? Last year at BlizzCon there was anticipation of an announcement but nothing happened. The anticipation has carried over to this year's BlizzCon, where World of Warcraft looks set to dominate proceedings. And we won't have long to find out, with the opening ceremony due Friday 3rd November at 6pm GMT. We'll be covering it live.

 

[Siveon]

Does this technically count as typical modder drama? I think it counts.

Typical modders.

 

[Wulfstand]

The only pserver I'm looking forward to is Twinstar's Hades next month. They're also releasing a fresh TBC server but I can't speak on its scripting quality. Besides, my favorite spec was a 1 button masher up until Wrath.
Getting to play on an actually good Cata server on fresh progression to boot?

That Elysium drama was bound to happen. So glad I decided to dodge the vanilla bullet. Vanilla and TBC (where Gold still actually means something) seem to be the main bastions of chink overpopulation and gold-farming.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

This led to one of the most remarkable actions I've ever seen Blizzard take: invitating the Nostalrius team to Blizzard HQ for a meeting with the heads of the company and World of Warcraft game - and it lasted several hours.

It's one thing when people mess up spelling/grammar early in the morning on a forum somewhere, but FFS this is supposed to be a professional at work here.

Then again it's gaming media, so meh.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ElysiumPro...a_serious_indepth_summary_of_everything_that/

A serious in-depth summary of everything that happened today. self.ElysiumProject

Submitted 1 day ago * by PeprSpry

WhiteKidney (system admin) formed a coup with 9 other devs/gms, created their own backup of Elysium Project (roughly 1 hour before shutdown), and deleted all of The Elysium Project. They did this for a few reasons which are highlighted below:

Crogge was generating currency and selling it to gold sellers. He was also copying characters (maybe generating too, we don't know for sure) including 2 R14's and selling them to account buyers/gold selling sites (we don't publicly know how many copy's, nor how much was generated - although WK seems to know from logs). WhiteKidney went through database logs of items/characters that were being created/deleted and found that something unethical was going on. 'Crogge wasn't properly removing the logs, and perhaps stopped caring' (WhiteKidney) and that is how WhiteKidney got solid proof of Crogge's corruption, and that he was generating currency and copying characters. Both of those accusations have been admitted by Crogge himself in the vod. Despite admitting to both of these accusations, Crogge is adamant that the money that was earned from these ventures was spent on hardware, and that he actually continued to ban gold sellers (even as he generated and sold gold to these very sellers).

Shenna, on the other hand, wasn't generating currency/copying characters but was directly skimming money from the Elysium PayPal. The Elysium PayPal (as per WhiteKidney) was being governed by Vitaly and/or his wife, and Shenna had complete access to the account at her freewill. These direct accusations have NOT been admitted by Shenna, but she HAS admitted to taking $2500-3000USD one time from the PayPal account, on top of $500-700USD per month.

Things to highlight:

-Regarding the deletion and backups of Elysium. WhiteKidney and his team at LH have backups 1 hour prior to server shutdown. From my understanding, WK believes that the best backups that Elysium has could be a few weeks old (Q&Aw/Esfand).

-WhiteKidney said that this has been going on for 7 or 8 months, but that he doesn't have a clue... lol? I think he means 'maybe it has gone on for longer, but I don't have a clue.'

-WhiteKidney originally stated that they had been planning this, 'for quite sometime', but later in the conversation stated that it has been about 2 weeks, and Phoosy then pipped up and said 'less than that'.

Moving forward with Lights Hope:

-WhiteKidney claims that roughly 80% of Elysium staff have left, but did not mention HOW MANY of those staff members joined them at LightsHope. Later, he has does make claims that roughly 80% of those that have left (80% of the 80%) HAVE elected to join LightsHope.

-All loot logs, character logs, system logs, db logs, command logs, will be made available in real time, to as many GMs/Devs as realistically possible.

-Donations will be 'fully transparent' (Pottu, LHDiscord).

-LightsHope anticipates a 1:1 relaunch, meaning: your characters will be identical to your ElysiumProject characters up to 1hour before server shutdown.

-Your characters will be available on both Elysium (which will still be lead by Crogge and Shenna), and LightsHope (which is the new project, lead by WhiteKidney and his team).

-LH is considering renaming Anathema and Darrowshire to Nostalrius PvP/PvE, respectively, to 'pay homage from where we came from'. EDIT: They will be renaming the servers at a later date.

-LightsHope is beginning to go through all logs to delete copied characters, and generated currency.

-LightsHope is optimistic that the servers will be up within 12hours-a few days, but are moving as fast as they can and somethings are out of their control (they are waiting on delivery of the server [it has already been ordered]). EDIT: Login servers are live. Game servers are up 15-40minutes from 10:36AM EST. EDIT: Elysium server is live. Anathema/Darrowshire will be up as soon as possible.

-The lead Burning Crusade developer from Elysium, (Staden) has left Elysium, and has joined the LightsHope team, so development for tBC is continuing.

-The hardware requirements will demand about 500EU per month.

EDIT: WhiteKidney claims to have every single log of every generated account and currency, and that every occurance will be deleted from LightsHope.

EDIT: There are no plans for LightsHope to create a 'fresh start' server. (LightsHope discord announcements. Phoosy)

Believe it or not this is a tldr of what has gone on. I've listened to vods, and sat in streams for over 3 hours. This is a short summary of all that I've heard from Esfand & Ash's Q&A, Esfand & WhiteKidney Q&A, and the vods provided by MonkeyNews' stream. I've tried to write this as neutral as possible, and not direct my words in any direction.

There is a lot more information, that precedes today, that I have not included (ie. Shenna renaming as Akira and returning to Elysium), but if there is any other information that pertains directly to Elysium or LightsHope, that happened today, please provide solid proof in terms of screenshots/videos.

TLDR: WhiteKidney led a coup that shutdown Elysium, because of unscrupulous activity from Crogge and Shenna. Crogge and Shenna were selling currency and characters, and skimming money off the PayPal. Two projects will now exist: LightsHope (a completely separate entity from Elysium, lightshope.org), and The Elysium Project.

Proof:

https://imgur.com/a/hq9jT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huH76MviuCs&feature=

Links:

http://lightshope.org/

https://twitter.com/lightshopewow

https://discordapp.com/invite/mraKxcU

https://elysium-project.org/

https://twitter.com/elysium_dev?lang=en

Efand's Q&As w/ Ash & WhiteKidney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Co4vCA8D7o

This was compiled from 6PM-930PM EST. EDIT: I listened to Phoosy's Q&A in the LightsHope discord from 12AM-2AM EST and have since added some additional information.

Chat logs:

 

[Wulfstand]

Does this truly warrant a thread? Actually why not. Private servers by their nature are shady, so hilarious stuff like what's happened w/ Elysium are a given.

 

[YES!]

I didn't know they had these servers for games still going. I did play a SWG server some years ago, but I thought it was around because the game is closed. Are there any good Vanilla or BC servers that don't plan on changing anything to be more modern wowish and child like?

 

[thesheeep]

This led to one of the most remarkable actions I've ever seen Blizzard take: invitating the Nostalrius team to Blizzard HQ for a meeting with the heads of the company and World of Warcraft game - and it lasted several hours.

It's one thing when people mess up spelling/grammar early in the morning on a forum somewhere, but FFS this is supposed to be a professional at work here.

Then again it's gaming media, so meh.

You are just envious you never get invitated to dorito tasting sessions.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

Don't worry guys, gummy will deliver his server, so everyone can have a swell TBC experience hosted by someone who loves the game for what it is and enjoys dabbling in it, with a bonus of not being in it for the money.

oh wait

 

[Gepeu]

Just bring the servers back online. 99% of the playerbase does not care.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

Just bring the servers back online. 99% of the playerbase does not care.

It's already up under the name "lights hope" with a population of 8k+ on one server
the power of having a server that doesn't stutter like shit and having no queues, despite it being literally the same server???

Guess all of those "pls donate 4 better server" were just scehemes to force people into donating more so they wouldn't have to rubberband around with the drawrange of a blind man

 

[Gepeu]

Could you share the realmlist?

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

set realmlist logon.lightshope.org

Currently only the server named "Elysium" is up with 1 hour rollback, Anathema and other servers coming up later today/tomorrow.

 

[Gepeu]

Thanks! I have a character on Anathema, so it seems I will need to wait a little more.

 

[Rahdulan]

So Alex was right all along? I stopped following what he was doing like half a year ago, but he's been preaching this criminal underbelly stuff for much longer.

 

[Zetor]

I wonder how profitable running private WOW servers can be. I seem to remember a lot of drama about Molten/Warmane, did anyone ever look into their finances?

 

[shihonage]

My level 9 mage is up and running on Light's Hope. Hope to get to level 12 before admins are found dead in a murder-suicide, with Overwatch coupons stuffed in their mouths.

 

[Wulfstand]

On second thought having a thread for this was a good idea after all.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

On second thought having a thread for this was a good idea after all.

I wonder how profitable running private WOW servers can be. I seem to remember a lot of drama about Molten/Warmane, did anyone ever look into their finances?

I had a "friend" called Juvia who made a Ragnarok private server and managed to buy a sportscar simply from the donation money.
Private servers are an incredibly easy way to make money as long as you know how to shill your shitheap.

WHILE ON THE TOPIC OF PRIVATE SERVER MONEY, MEANWHILE ON LIGHTS HOPE AFTER 24 HOURS OF UPTIME

remove my edit button for I edit too much