I remember a similar bug in the original Asherons Call (amazingly, still running with regular content updates!). Three or four years in, they added a new, very expensive object to the game (a "Pyreal Scarab" for anyone who cares). It cost a lot, so the idea was that people wouldn't be (at that point in the economy) buying many.
Now, in Asheron's Call, the world is huge. There are hundreds, if not thousands of vendors. And three of these vendors were set to sell their goods in stacks of up to 1000. Unfortunately, Cost of Pyreal Scrab * 1000 > 2^31, which wrapped. I can't remember if you either just got the goods for free (which you then sold back for huge profit), or if you actually got paid to take these things. Either way, overnight, the economy was destroyed. The entire game state had to be reset from backups; a dreaded rollback. Worse, the developer took a few days to do this.
Trust me, out of all the customers whose data you don't want to muss with, it's hardcore MMORPG players. Even though I was just a player, I can still remember the outrage all these years later. It taught me to always use appropriate types for objects with "value", and I've never accidentally used signed or floating point storage for currency again.
Haha - I was the one who was responsible for adding the Pyreal Scarab. I remember freaking out that night when I was playing and went to Teth's vendor and saw what was happening. I called up the producer at the time at 2am and said there was a "problem".
I remember this scenario distinctly because it happened within a month of me joining the game, and not understanding what was going on :) The bug was discovered (or at least widely known) about a day after the patch went live, and rolled back two days later. Nearly every bug that users felt were somewhat punishing led to players hitting the VNBoards asking about possible rollbacks so they could stop playing until it was done. I'm actually not sure if they've ever performed one since.
Consider this completely anecdotal, but I think that around the time this bug actually occurred, Asheron's Call and Everquest were the only two 3D MMOs that were worth mentioning. I recall the delay in rollback having something to do with Microsoft bureaucracy at the time as well -- Turbine was plagued with MS as a publisher having some sort of veto power over their business and was frequently met with resistance.
(Full disclosure: I love Turbine unconditionally for creating such memorable adventuring experiences with Asheron's Call 1 and 2)
That was the first thing which came to my mind when I read this, too. Of course, Asheron's Call didn't have an (official) real-money trading system to deal with too.
A nightmare scenario for the developers in both cases.
Asheron's Call had a very viable (unofficial) real-money trading system via ebay. I never even played the game but knew some people who did and they made fairly substantial amounts of money selling virtual crap on ebay. This was before the rise of the hardcore Chinese gold farming industry, in-game limitations on item trading (ala WOW), ebay restrictions, etc.
>Trust me, out of all the customers whose data you don't want to muss with, it's hardcore MMORPG players.
Welp, that's what happens when you have only online play on only official servers. Single player offline wouldn't be affected - cheat all you want! Online play on unofficial servers means server admins can take whatever action they want - ban offenders, leave offenders alone, or rollback - depending on what the admin and the players want.
Not any more than SimCity 2013 was an MMO. There may have been free-to-play MMO-like monitization of every little thing but the game mechanics are all single-player/small-group-of-players.
No, Asheron's Call was an MMO in every sense of the term. There was no free to play (at least in the pyreal scarab bug time period), monthly sub fee was it, and the game would have been wholly uninteresting without the full on massively multiplayer element.
Sorry, I was unclear. I was talking about Diablo III in my original comment and about it not having an offline mode or a mode where online play could be had on non-Blizard official servers (either dedicated server model or peer-to-peer).
Now, in Asheron's Call, the world is huge. There are hundreds, if not thousands of vendors. And three of these vendors were set to sell their goods in stacks of up to 1000. Unfortunately, Cost of Pyreal Scrab * 1000 > 2^31, which wrapped. I can't remember if you either just got the goods for free (which you then sold back for huge profit), or if you actually got paid to take these things. Either way, overnight, the economy was destroyed. The entire game state had to be reset from backups; a dreaded rollback. Worse, the developer took a few days to do this.
Trust me, out of all the customers whose data you don't want to muss with, it's hardcore MMORPG players. Even though I was just a player, I can still remember the outrage all these years later. It taught me to always use appropriate types for objects with "value", and I've never accidentally used signed or floating point storage for currency again.