THURSDAY FEB 21 2 pm pst LIVESTREAM NOTES:Cameron & Damon were on cameraSarah & Ivar were in chatDamon starts us off: Here we are on Thursday, and we are not live *yet*. It’s just typical software stuff; things always take longer than you think, we are still working on everything. Will it be tomorrow? I don’t think so, but that’s just to be straight and honest. There’s still more work to do, but we are making progress, looking through files and getting things set up.We look at the Action Plan again - we are now at #7! “Install all scripts to servers and confirming machines”. This is what we are working on right now. It’s not done - This is what we knew would be the hardest and we know the rest of the steps after this are more straightforward, but this is the one where the most of the unknowns exist and the most things are out of our control. #10 (Testing & Fixing) will also possibly be a little difficult because any problems from #7 may not be evident until #10. That’s the update on thatThere was a post on the Forums where someone was asking about getting notified about the data breach. I posted something on the Forums already, and you guys can see what I responded to. Basically they said “Why did I have to find out about this through a news media outlet instead of getting an email right away?”First of all we share everyone’s concerns about letting you know, as you saw on the Action Plan, our #2 item was to let everyone know what was going on. Our #1 thing was to secure the data center.The things that we did: We used the following channels to let everyone know what was leaked (email addresses) and the things that weren’t leaked (Name, address, credit card info, unencrypted passwords) Encrypted passwords were leaked but they were hashed and salted (Editors Note: “Hashed and salted” refers to the encryption process. From Wikipedia: “In cryptography, a salt is random data that is used as an additional input to a one-way function that "hashes" data, a password or passphrase.” Sadly, it does not refer to a breakfast food as Damon had hoped!We notified everyone through the following channels: The official Game Forums, notifications to mobile players, the Facebook page, the player run Discord channel, the Twitch livestreams like these (although not immediately) and we even hired a PR firm, which is an accepted method of notification in cases like this.Why didn’t we send out an email? There’s a very specific reason. We have tried to use email before, to notify our players about things like updates, and they all hit the spam filters. 99% hit the spam filters or go straight to players trash. It’s very hard to get direct email to work. It felt like these other channels were far more effective to let you know right away what was going on. Frankly the only reason to send email was so we could pretend like we did a good job. We actually wanted to effectively communicate the message. That’s why we didn’t send emails. It’s also a lot of work to do that, and it’s work we could spend actually letting you know through effective means. So why do that work if it’s wasted? It would have been pointless.The one thing we did forget to do was send out a Twitter post. We don’t use Twitter a lot, we don’t have a lot of Twitter followers. But we should have, because it was easy, and we sent out a Tweet today letting everyone know.The first post we sent out was one that said “Change your password anywhere else it’s the same as the one you use for Villagers & Heroes” and the second thing we want to say now is “Hey, if you do get an email that says “Hey, this is Matt Otter, or Neonga, or this is Villagers and Heroes, and we want you to tell us your password to fix it, or you will lose your character”, or asking you to click on a weird link to fill out a form - that’s not us, because we aren’t going to do anything like that. We are going to restore your account and you are going to log in.A brief discussion between Damon and Cameron on the origin of the word “phishing” ensued. (Editors Note: From Wikipedia: “The word itself is a homophone of fishing , due to the similarity of using a bait in an attempt to catch a victim.”)Question: “Are you talking to the data center?” Yes, every day we are talking to the data center and working with the engineers there.Question: “Should I change my password?” If you have re-used your password from another account with your V&H account, you definitely should, just to be safe. (Editors Note & opinion: never re-use the same password anywhere, and always use a unique password for every website and program. Additionally, use a good, secure, open source password manager like Keepass https://keepass.info - works on all platforms and does not rely upon the cloud unless you want to store a copy of your database there)Tomorrow Damon will discuss the origins of V&H with us! For now, he has to go do some work; Cameron will take over.Cameron shows us the skylight over his desk - yesterday it was hailing, but today it’s bright blue skies and sunshine!Cameron is going to talk more about his board games and card games - first he shows us his board game wall (the same picture from yesterday) He likes to play cooperative board games, where everyone who is playing is on the same team, rather than playing as enemy teams; an example is games like Pandemic.The discussion had led Cameron to think a lot about how and why he came to love games so much and he brought in some things to share as well. He had video games, but he also loved “Choose your own adventure” books (and shows an example book) because it was almost like a game inside a book. When he and his wife were dating, they wrote a “Choose your own adventure” book together! He also loved/ still loves card games - but his mom was worried about them. So he had to find other games to play, but he also made his own cards & games! Cameron showed us examples of some of his cards (including Star Wars, Star Trek & Pokemon’. Later, he started collecting LOTR cards after the movies started coming out.), and some of the cards he actually made! He continues to make cards today, and prototypes cards quicker using sleeves with a printed pieces of paper. Pogs were also popular when he was growing up. He also paints minis for himself and his friends. Cameron had one older brother, and one younger brother, no sisters.Cameron used to go to LAN parties, where he and all of his friends (about a dozen of them) every Friday night would lug all of their huge CRTs and giant computers to someone’s house, connect to a switch and they would all play together. (Editors Note: This is how we played video games cooperatively before there was modern internet) Highlight of his LAN years was PBX-LAN when there were 500 gamers all connected into a giant LAN party in Portland. Cameron also made a TON of maps on Warcraft3 for himself and his friends.Let’s talk about a few questions from the Forums:There have been a few questions about Threat and some confusion about Stormpower and Shocking Strikes. Someone was comparing a Fury Feat and a Lightning Feat and they were talking about having Stormpower and Shocking Strikes and it didn’t make the difference that they thought it would. Stormpower increases your Threat generation and that’s not Lightning Threat generation that’s ALL threat generation and Shocking Strike behaves the same way. All the things you do generate the extra Threat.There’s currently a bug with “It’s Alive” that the new Intern helped to diagnose - it only heals to about 30% and sometimes it’s won’t trigger when it’s supposed to and that is definitely on the list to be fixed.What does Magic Find do? There is some confusion about Magic Find. It only works on dropped gear that pops out of monsters and lands on the ground. It does NOT work on quest rewards or dungeon rewards or crafting. Basically what it does is it has a chance to upgrade an item to the next tier of rarity. You know it’s working because you see the magic sparkles which means that Magic Find had an influence on that item. Rare drops will never go to Legendary - there are currently no Epic drops, so there is no way to go to LegendaryDoes Fleetarinda work in the dungeons? Yes, it should work in the dungeons.Is there a difference in drop rate on the different servers when it comes to Zorian Stones? No. Cameron researched the drop rates for you and here are the drop rates for Zorian items in the zones:Regular monsters - 4% chance to drop any gem, 1% chance to drop a fossilBounties - 2% chance to drop a recipe, 12% chance to drop a gem, and 3 % chance to drop a fossilZingara 20% chance to drop a recipe, 15% chance to drop a gem, and 65% chance to drop a fossilHousing: houses in the village no longer optically fit. Will they be adapted to fit in the game? Otters are aware. Housing is one of those things that they have discussed. If they made the change, there would only be 3 or 4 styles and maybe 3 skins - a total of 9 looks maybe, but it “matches” better. Would the community rather that it matches, but have fewer choices, or keep our current choices but and wait for new textures? Cameron thinks it would be fun to have village-wide contests for themeing, and see how the villages would look when everyone themes their houses to matchAs we have discussed before, there will be a new talent and ultimate for every specialization. Cameron is going to show us ONE talent and ultimate combo - the winner of a trivia question will get to pick the combo! The winner was: Stavros_Stormcaller and they picked: Nature Hunter. We looked at the new talent, and the new ultimate. The 30 point talent: Volatile Poisons and the ultimate is PlaugueLord. (This is further improved from “Seasoned Botanist” for those who are familiar with that). Detailed discussion followed; and then…There was a knock at the door, and Cameron asked Ivar to get the door.Ivar answered the door.And there was a surprise delivered for the Otters!!! Someone anonymously sent a beautiful basket of fruit and goodies (with balloons too!), with a lovely note! Ivar showed us the basket and Cameron read the note.“To the Otter Family: Just wanted to say thank you to all of the Mad Otters for what you do for our players. I know you are going through a stressful time right now. Please try to relax and rest a little and enjoy this gift. I hope it puts a smile on your face as big as V&H does for me. Anonymous Player”The Otters were all very touched by the gift, and everyone (except Sarah, who was still with us in chat) later came on camera to say “Thank you” to their benefactor.Cameron briefly finished discussion of the new combo he was demo’ing when the basket arrived, and showed how some of the graphics look in use.Thanks to everyone for hanging out with us - and thanks again to whoever sent the basket. We are working hard to get everything fixed and to make sure it can’t happen again, and to get everyone back in the game! Thanks again, we love all of you so much!See you tomorrow, same time!