Board 8 > So, three and a half years later, was it a DDoS attack?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Did it meaningfully affect the match? Should Allen have redone the poll?
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1. It's highly suspicious, but I doubt Allen would have outright said "No, it wasn't a DDoS" if he wasn't positive beyond reasonable doubt, because if it was later, even if years later, revealed to be a DDoS, it would be even worse on him if he just said at the time "It may have been a DDoS."

2. The numbers and voting trends say, yes, it possibly, perhaps even probably, affected the winner of the match, and consequently the bracket.

3. Ceej reran/extended matches for lesser problems, so yes, I think that at the very least SOMETHING should have been done.
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It didn't change the result. Draven would have destroyed Link the moment Link actually got close to getting ahead. We saw more evidence of rallies acting like this during Undertale's run where it kept getting "narrow" wins against opponents of vastly different strength. For example, Mario 64 got pretty much the exact same result as a rallied SSBM.
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Undertale had more rallying sources though. Draven was purely the LoL subreddit which would make it harder for it to do what you're describing. Link would've won that match without the downtime.
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I can't believe it's been three and a half years already.
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JJH777 posted...

Undertale had more rallying sources though. Draven was purely the LoL subreddit which would make it harder for it to do what you're describing. Link would've won that match without the downtime.

The LoL subreddit wasn't tapped out. If they pinned the rally topic (which they did for a later match), Draven buries his opponent even harder. Even if the mods don't pin a topic, the match simply getting closer would draw more attention and cause Draven to power scale upward.
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Except for Round 2 where Draven got stupid powerful for no real reason.
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Welcome to the League of Draven :)
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that was really 3 and a half years ago? i feel old
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Yes, yes it was
This site barely goes down, if it wasn't so rare I wouldn't say that it was a DDoS but seriously this site is pretty fucking stable
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IT cost Link the match, he rightfully unquestionably won that Bracket.

He should have rerun the poll, and IMMEDIATELY resigned.

Highly suspicious, and the lack of an extension was, and still is, a terrible decision.

Which happens. He was under a lot of stress. But there should be no doubt that he made a fairly serious mistake. I was happy for Link to lose until the convenient, suspicious downtime and the lack of a response by Allen.
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I still wish to see a chart of all the times Gamefaqs went down, and then see if it was a weird coincedence or not
Assuming this is no secret information, of course
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Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Most notably the last one.

CjayC re-ran polls for MUCH less downtime.

The downtime should've just lead to the poll closing and a re-run the next day.
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Draven Was An Inside Job
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I forgot, what was the official explanation for the downtime?
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redrocket_pub posted...

I forgot, what was the official explanation for the downtime?

Not a DDOS
Both the site and the backup went down at the same time somehow
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redrocket_pub posted...

I forgot, what was the official explanation for the downtime?

"GameFAQs is served by two proxy servers in rotation, and what we see in the logs is that one of them would go down, shifting traffic to the second, which would then get overloaded and go down, shifting traffic back to the first, repeat. Unlike a DDoS attack, there was no increase in inbound traffic, and the two proxy servers were failing one at a time, not simultaneously. It could have been a DDoS, but it looks a lot more like just a bad coincidence. Since the site was never truly offline, just slow and randomly failing, it took a while for the operations team to get paged out, but once they got online and started investigating all it took was rebooting the proxies to bring everything back to normal, which isn't how you'd normally recover from a DDoS.

tl;dr: Earlier downtime most likely wasn't an attack."

~SBAllen
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Thanks.
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It absolutely was.
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Similar enough, probably not, and yes absolutely.

Somebody please remind me how SB's wife came into play later too.
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People still care three and a half years later?
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The site went down within minutes of a Draven topic being removed. In those few minutes, Link was destroying him, then it happened. Link would have won with another clean hour, though I'm just going from memory, not the numbers.
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HaRRicH posted...

Somebody please remind me how SB's wife came into play later too.

idk but she completely DESTROYED Luster
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gearofages posted...

The site went down within minutes of a Draven topic being removed. In those few minutes, Link was destroying him, then it happened. Link would have won with another clean hour, though I'm just going from memory, not the numbers.

And then it ended stupid close, so no it wouldn't have been the same outcome.

The site came down during Link's power-hour.

Yes, it was a DDOS.
Yes, it affected the outcome.
Yes, it should've been redone the next day as per how CJayC would've handled it.
No, the fact that Draven's strength is all based in rallies has nothing to do with following correct procedure to ensure a fair outcome. If you can rally one day, you can rally again.
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HaRRicH posted...

Somebody please remind me how SB's wife came into play later too.

Draven/Sephy/Mewtwo, didn't she turn out to be the one who emailed a Reddit admin and told them to stop the rallies, thus giving Mewtwo the lead for the first few hours of the match?
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Johnbobb posted...

People still care three and a half years later?

Well that depends on your definition of care. I mean, I still have an opinion on it, which I will talk about when asked or when it comes up, if I feel like it. I haven't become ambivalent to it over time. Is anyone still angry about it, losing sleep over it, or trying to generate drama over it? No.

Except maybe InsaneGamer.
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There is no way of proving Link would have won.
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