Thursday, December 06, 2007

Best Bug Ever

The latest EVE Online patch seems to have come with a wonderful side effect for Windows XP users.
After a large number of PCs stopped working following installation of the new Trinity patch for Eve Online, developers CCP were able to confirm that the patch deletes the boot.ini file from Windows XP machines. What this means is that XP users who downloaded and applied the patch within the first few hours (the patch has now been taken down) cannot reboot their PC.
This, along with other FUBAR moments from CCP, really speaks to a poor quality assurance process and a lacking sense that any of the management at CCP has control over the EVE Online project.

Secondly, I don't understand how there are not safeguards in place to prevent such a disaster from going live? The split-second a programmer typed "delete boot.ini", warning bells should have gone off that the code needed to be triple-checked for accuracy. More cowbell maybe?

Fortunately, the problem is easily fixed for the tech savvy. However, knowing that the most addicted EVE players were probably the first to download and install the patch, I have to wonder how many of them ran out to the nearest PC hardware store to start swapping out parts. Actually, I LOL in real life just thinking about that, because at one point in my life I may have done the same thing.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:16 AM

    It's amazing that none of their internal or external testers for their expansion used XP and piked up on this. They must all be running facy Vista machines or trendy Mac OS based machines.

    LOL

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  2. I honestly believe it was an issue going from testing to live. The test version was most likely solid, but in the process of building the patch for live, the . got dropped on the install script and bye-bye boot.ini

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  3. What about the current WoW bug that lets people that were old guild bank administrators directly access the guild bank in the new guild they join? That one was funny

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  4. The best WoW bug has to be the curse of blood fiasco from Zulgurub. Eve Online deffinitely takes the cake though with screwing up your computer's boot file. Wonder how long before someone blames them on a corp wars.

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  5. Should ask, how long before someone sues them.

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  6. Anonymous4:01 PM

    This all happened because EVE uses a file in their own path called boot.ini.

    I learned this long ago... never use file names that duplicate the names of critical system files. It does nothing but buy you trouble.

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  7. Anonymous9:11 PM

    they cant be sued. like all software it is "use at own risk" and "[company] take no responsibility for damage caused by use of software" etc

    No software company can be sued in this way I beleive because they can never make a guarantee that the software will work on every system everywhere. they can only make reccomendations

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