RinkWorks: Stupid Emails: Murkon Pwned

623. Murkon Pwned

To:  sam@rinkworks.com
Date:  Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:32:32 -0800

     Greetings, folks at Rinkworks!

     I am a big fan of your games Murkon's Refuge and its sequel.
Unfortunately, one day around this past Monday or so, while I was
playing the game, I clicked on a button to do whatever the next thing
was and received a screen saying:

"A timeout occurred while processing your game.  This is most likely
due to a transient network condition, but it could also be the result
of a bug or a corrupted saved game file.  Try again in a few minutes.
If the problem persists, send email to sam@rinkworks.com with your
username and this error message.  Sorry for the inconvenience."

    I was further alarmed by the fact that in the ad space at the
bottom of the page, there was an image of a brown treasure chest
saying "the role-player's vault" or some such -- and across the image
had been scrawled, in bad white handwriting, "graffiti lolz"!  I think
that you've been hacked!

     So.  I have tried four more times since then (the last attempt
being a few minutes ago) to resume my game of Murkon's Refuge.  No
dice; same error message each time. (I've also never seen that same ad
since, nor any other visibly-hacked ad.)  So I am writing to you, in
hopes that you can correct these problems.

This player encountered a rare but real problem (which I fixed by restoring his saved game from a backup), but the ad, of course, was perfectly legitimate and simply appeared with unfortunate but hilarious timing. I presume the writer was being facetious about thinking the ad a symptom of the problem, but it's more fun to think he was actually concerned.