Azure Gaming Network - Network Home

Network Status: Online [ Details ]

Quick News: Nothing to report right now.

Network:


>> New to Azure Gaming? Here are some quick links! - Read More About Us - Learn Our Rules - Register an Account We hope you'll enjoy your time here.


>> Azure FPS Azure Gaming is proud to now host First Person Shooter games for the community to frag on. We plan to offer these games: - Counter-Strike 1.6 - Counter-Strike: Source - Team Fortress 2 - Call of Duty 4 - Unreal Tournament 2004 We're still setting these servers up, but we plan to announce it as soon as they go live. Stay tuned to the site for more information.


>> SupremeL2 Has Moved SupremeL2 has now become Azure Gaming: Lineage II. We're glad to welcome all SupremeL2 players, new and old, to our new home. All of your forum accounts, game accounts, characters, items, and donations have safely moved here. Don't worry, everything is working! For more information, visit the Lineage II game page.

>> Web Server Back Online

Web Server Back Online

We had our website down for the past 3 days because of hardware problems with the web server. However, everything is back online now, and the broken hardware has been replaced. No more worries

What Happened?

Remember when Jason stole our hard drives? Well, one of our hard drives broke back then, and we sent it to the manufacturer to get it replaced. That made our RAID 10 array degraded, but we thought we'd be ok. Unfortunately, a second hard drive went bad 4 days ago, and we didn't have the RMA back until 2 days ago

We tried to restore the RAID, but it was impossible and not worth paying a professional company to attempt recovery. After trying to restore the RAID, we just wiped it and reinstalled the server. We had *almost* everything backed up safely, so no worries.

In the future, if we ever have another RAID issue, we will make sure to get the bad drive replaced immediately instead of waiting for an RMA. Much safer that way.

Was Anything Lost?

We only lost forum uploads (like avatars, album images, and attachments) and the Azure L2 Library. However, we may be able to get the Azure L2 Library back from Rikku (have to ask her if she has a copy). If not, we'll see about making a new one (when we have time).

Thanks for understanding. You may now commence browsing the forums since I'm sure you've missed them

>> State of the Network

State of the Network

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately. That's because a lot of staff has taken vacation time for themselves. It felt especially quiet because I was away, and many things slowed down or stopped. That'll change now

Lineage II

Our bread-and-butter game, Lineage II will be getting most of our attention right now. With some people getting worried about the future of Azure L2, we're going to explain exactly what we plan to do in the next few months, and ease any worries people may have.

To the people who say the "servers are dying," listen carefully. We have more players online than retail has "real" players who don't bot. We're bigger than most L2 communities. That's still the truth. We don't have 3200 players online per server anymore, but that's normal for a two year old L2 community. If our servers are dying, then they sure are dying very slowly. It might be the longest community death in L2 history...and we're still far from dead.

The real problem is people are so negative nowadays. Many people have this "we're all doomed" mentality. Let's be positive. Lets get the community fired up, and start bringing more new people here. Leave our website on your chalkboard at school, message your MSN list, and tell your friends about us. If we do this together, as a community, we can surely bring Azure L2 into a new age.

Server Updates

I know you guys and girls expect the world from us, all for free, and we can't deliver Hellbound, Gracia, or any of that to you. However, we will work harder than ever now to restore our reputation as the best L2 server out there. We're still bot free, we still have balanced and functioning economies, and we still have lots and lots of players.

We're organizing and working on new updates. We'll give you a short list to get you excited. We'll do our best to get updates done as fast as we can, while keeping our reputation for stable and correct updates.

Frintezza + Scarlet Van Halisha
Death Penalties + No item drops on death
New C5 Quests + C5 Raid Bosses
Pagan's Temple
Clan Skills + C5 Clan System (Not yet started)

There are other, smaller, updates being worked on as well. Check the Update Log for details when we release updates.

Newbie Event

We are going to bring new players to our servers by launching a Newbie Event alongside our Azure L2 Trailer campaign. For six weeks, players will be able to play without any 1st or 2nd class change quests. Even better, enjoy the Medal Event on the servers as a great way to make money for new players.

More information will be posted about this event in the Lineage II section this week. Stay tuned.

Ragnarok Online

Sorry to any players who were looking forward to Ragnarok Online anytime soon. We have to meet with our Ragnarok Online staff, and decide if we will still pursue an RO server or not. After the Jason incident, the Beta RO server was lost, and the RO staff lost their motivation to work.

I personally would love to see a successful RO server, but it is up to the people running the project if they want to continue. If not, we will consider looking for other people who could run a successful RO community.

Thanks for your patience. We'll post more information in the Ragnarok Online section once we know more. Stay tuned.

FPS Servers

Our FPS servers were actually almost ready to be opened publically, but they were all lost when the hard drives failed during the Jason incident. The FPS staff is still dedicated to getting these servers online. We will recreate our FPS servers, and work on finishing them.

Thanks for your patience. We'll announce more information when the FPS servers are closer to going live. Stay tuned.

>> The Grand Hard Drive Heist

The Grand Hard Drive Heist

I'm going to give some linkage points and a heads up to eAthena, and quote a post by Cyxult on the situation from their website, located at www.eathena.ws.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyxult from eAthena

As you have probably noticed, eAthena's forums have been down the past four days or so. This was due to a dispute between Jason (kib) of VerityNet and Delta.

Things began when Delta, Aderyn, and Onepex (the latter two are owners of Azure Gaming) decided to move from Jason's rack. These three had a lot of hardware in Jason's rack, and were paying a monthly rent for their space, which at times exceeded the amount of space they used. Once Jason heard about them moving, he panicked, and went back and charged the three for miscellaneous fees after the month's contract had ended, and he created a new $12,000 dollar bill that he demanded them to pay. Once this situation was placed in front of them, they found it to be simply absurd, and had decided they would pay whatever debts they owed to Steadfast, the datacenter where this rack is located, and just move their stuff.

Jason didn't agree with this, so he drove down from Michigan into Chicago, where he then entered the datacenter. Karl, the owner of Steadfast, specifically told Jason not to touch any hardware which did not belong to him. Jason ignored this order, and removed 24 hard drives from Delta, Aderyn, and Onepex's boxes, stuffed them into his laptop bag and some boxes, and left with an accomplice. These two then drove back to Jason's residence, where they then called Delta and informed them of the hardware they had taken (read: stolen). These pieces of hardware were owned fully by the three, and Jason had no right to be touching their stuff, per dictated by Karl.

Now, this left them in a serious dilemma. All of Azure Gaming's data, Delta's personal data, FranTech's customers, eAthena, and DaTorrents were on these drives. Jason demanded the $12,000 dollar bill be paid, or he would wipe all of the drives of their data. Now, understand the gravity of this situation, it's extremely volatile because of the stakes involved, and the fact that it's criminal. We could not simply call the police and involve them in this matter, as this would alert Jason, and he would have simply deleted all the data; nobody would have won this way. Delta, Aderyn, Onepex, and a few others discussed this situation at great length, and negotiations went on for three and a half days straight before they finally came to a resolution; Over $5,000 would be paid in full for the safe return of the hard drives. That's is a lot of money, but Delta found it necessary that he retrieve everyone's data, and took that money out of his personal savings to pay off the ransom.

One of Azure Gaming's trusted users, Kurapica, drove to Jason's residence and retrieved all the drives once the ransom was paid. These drives were then transported back to Steadfast, where Kurapica and our very own Jman reinstalled them with direction from Delta and Aderyn. Now, everything is back online, and all the data seems to be in good condition. However, Delta is out a lot of money due to the ransom.

To prevent any similar issues, we have now moved to a new rack which is owned by Delta. Jason has no access to this area. Further preventive measures will be taken within the coming weeks.

If you'd like to help recoup the loss Delta has suffered due to the ransom, you are welcome to send funds to francisco@frantech.ca. All donation amounts will be kept private. Anyone that sends a donation will be given a space on our soon-to-be-created thank you page, along with a banner. Please note that you are not purchasing a banner, this is simply our way of saying thank you for any assistance you may be able to provide.

I'd like to extend my personal thanks to Aderyn, Onepex, and Delta for their tireless work during their negotiations with Jason. Also, Kurapica for retrieving the data from Michigan during the middle of the night, as well as him and Jman installing the drives back at Steadfast.

Questions are welcomed, and will be answered if I am not legally obligated to keep the requested information private. Also, flaming Jason is specifically barred, despite his, in my opinion, inconsiderate and rude behavior. All discussion concerning this topic must be kept within this thread, any other topics covering this situation will be promptly removed.

Thank you.

First off, I have a few things to correct from above. However, for the most part, what's there is true.

The total number of drives stolen was 22. 12 of them were of Azure Network drives, and 10 of them were Frantech drives. All 22 have been returned.
The "ransom" amount was $6000 + another $700. Unfortunately, the only way to get things handled in a timely manner were for me to act as a middleman. I had to pay out all $6700 to Jason to get the drives released. I'm of course expecting to get the $6000 repaid by Delta, but it will take some time. So far he sent me $3000, and the rest I will just have to take on the chin.
The police were alerted 3 days ago, but these things still take some time, and so we chose to pay the ransom and take police action later to get the money returned.

Why didn't we go straight to the police? It's because the police are too slow. Don't worry, there is already 2 police reports filed, and this will be followed through until the bitter end. I just can't accept that Jason blackmailed and extorted so much money, caused so much damage to all of our reputations, and ruined so many of our communities. His selfishness and greedyness, and unwillingness to take proper responsibility for his actions, is what led us to this place.

Yes, Delta did owe *some* money for the rack and bandwidth, but it was not $12,000, and it was not $6000. Even if Delta owed $12000, the right way to handle this is not to become a vigilante and literally rip power cords out of running servers (damaging them physically), stealing hard drives, and running away to blackmail their owners.

Delta is still fighting with one of his hard drives which is physically damaged. Who knows what kind of data loss he and his clients will suffer.

What damage have we, the Azure Gaming community received? Over 3 days of downtime on our game servers, more drama that only ruins our reputation, and time and money lost dealing with Jason and his thuggish blackmailing. I have yet to fully confirm if any of our data is corrupted, but so far we seem to have been able to escape any permanent damage. I consider us lucky on that note.

What About the Money We Lost?

While the money we all lost in this fiasco is a lot, I'm not going to actually ask anyone here for anything. I will survive. Francisco will survive. Azure Gaming will survive. Frantech will survive. It hurts, but we'll all be ok.

If you really, really want to send something my way, just ask me about it.

What About Lineage II/Ragnarok Online?

People looking for Lineage II or Ragnarok Online specific news, please read the Lineage II and Ragnarok Online sections for details.

News posted during the downtime is below, for history keeping

Drives Returning to Steadfast (June 29, 2008)

Finally, after a lot of bargaining and discussion, all hard drives for both Frantech and Azure Gaming Network are in our possession. Our driver, whom we owe a huge debt to, took it out of his time to go and pick up the drives for us and deliver them to Steadfast. They will be arriving soon. Once they do, we will begin installing them and verifying all data is safe.

For the moment, there is still no ETA, but if things go well we can be up by Monday. It all depends on how many problems we run into along the way. Thanks for your patience.

Need Proof? We Got Live Security Feed! (June 27, 2008)

Here are two screenshots from actual video footage from inside the datacenter. We're not making this up. They actually walked into the datacenter, stole 15-16 hard drives, and walked out. It doesn't matter if Delta and him have a dispute or not--he has no right to take our hardware, bought and paid for by us, and walk out with it.

Which hard drives are missing exactly? All 4 drives from our web server, and 8 SQL drives from our SQL server. Since they were hot-swappable, they were easy to remove. He did not remove any drives from the Nanaki machine, and that is where our server software is located. Anyways, trust me on this, Jason doesn't care about us or our L2 software. He is just trying to get "leverage" to convince Delta to settle the dispute on his terms. The details of the dispute are too complicated to discuss here, but let's just say it is a very messy situation of two business partners gone bad.

Also, this has nothing to do with Ashe. I've had quite a few people say, "Ashe had him steal the drives!" but they're wrong. Ashe and Jason, and this situation, are not related.

Azure Gaming Network Temporarily Offline (June 26, 2008)

Unfortunately, due to actions beyond our control, the Azure Gaming Network has been forcefully shut off by Jason of VerityNet. Jason owns the switch and rack that provide service to all of our servers currently. Due to a dispute between Jason and Delta, Jason has taken actions to shutdown all hardware owned by Delta's company Frantech, as well as all of our hardware, even though Azure Gaming Network has nothing to do with this dispute. Unfortunately, Jason has taken hard drives out of all important servers, and the servers simply can not be started until the hard drives are replaced. He claims to have done this for security reasons that I will not try to explain here, but the fact remains what he did is wrong and most likely illegal.

After speaking to Jason on the phone, Azure Gaming Network has come to an agreement with Jason that will get us back online within the next 24-48 hours. We wish it could be sooner, but we must wait for Jason to return the hard drives to the Chicago datacenter.

He has admitted that what he did to our hardware was "excessive" but also claimed it was "necessary" for his security. We whole-heartedly disagree, and never had any intention of running away or skipping our payments. However, since we pay Delta for service currently, any dispute Delta has unfortunately affects us. We do not agree with Jason's methods, and wish we were not involved with this dispute, but unfortunately we are affected by it.

We will post updates as they come. We apologize for the network downtime, but for now all we can do is try to handle this as best as we can. We will be looking into changing hosting providers, or signing a deal with another provider in the same datacenter, if needed. We will take any and all measures necessary to prevent such a ridiculous event from happening again.

>> Ragnarok Online Coming Soon

Ragnarok Online Coming Soon

We've decided to open a low-rate Ragnarok Online server within the next 4 weeks. After seeing and hearing about the tragedy of a low-rate RO server, and their wipe-happy owner, we think RO players deserve better.

Are you looking for a stable, honest, non-corrupt RO server? One where you can play long-term, without being afraid of the server getting 'hacked' or wiping without reason? If you are, then we're the place.

What Are the Details?

We had the idea of opening a 5x - 10x rated server. Low-rate kRO style. No resetter, global warper, healer, or job changer. Just an honest low-rate for the serious RO player.

Everything else is up in the air, but we wanted to keep to kRO-style and not turn the server into a mid-rate or custom server with tons of custom items or NPCs.

Only thing we plan to add on top of the server itself is a GM team and events, as well as a token NPC to trade event tokens for prizes. This is very similar to how we setup our L2 event system, and it has been very successful. We know players would enjoy it.

Will There be a Beta?

Yes, there will be. We plan to open up a 50x-100x beta this week, and let players log on and test things out. You can also just have fun, while we prepare the real server for launch.

Donations?

Nothing that affects the game balance. We will have donations for name changes, clan changes, moving characters between accounts, and other options similar to our L2 donations. No donations for items, period. We believe in a fair game experience for everyone.

Closing

Please, go ahead and register and check back regularly. We'll open up the Ragnarok Online forums shortly, and start preparing the website and server for beta. We'll post more once we have more information.

Thanks. Hope to see you online soon.

IRC Channel Added

#AzureRO - Azure Gaming: Ragnarok Online IRC chat room added. Come and idle if you're interested in playing.

		Home \| Rules \| Forums \| IRC \| Voice \| Downloads \| Staff \| Network Info \| Donations
	Copyright © 2008 Azure Gaming Network. All Rights Reserved. Design by Amartia. Privacy Policy \| Terms of Service \| Powered by Azure Networks