Gaming

Wasn't me, but a couple friends of mine in Ye Olde Everquest managed to get an emergency patch pushed through by crashing the entire server. He did this by being helpful :b

More detail. So we have friend 1, character name Falash (the ranger), who's pretty savvy about the game. We also have friend 2, character name Cork (the cleric), who's not savvy but an incredibly nice dude. Cork and Falash are real life friends and Cork regularly lets Falash play his account for leveling and raiding when he can't go, which is really friggin' nice because in EQ you lived and died by the number of clerics you could field.

Anyway, Falash is bored and starts going through Cork's stats and inventory, and makes a discovery. Cork never specialized a casting skill. This is something you did at low to mid-level that greatly reduces the cost and fizzle of a specific spell for your primary archetype and a bit less for secondary archetypes, and for clerics this would normally be healing - so for an extremely long time, Cork was playing with one hand tied behind his back. You only need to do it once and from there the skills level themselves, and he somehow skipped this step.

Falash decides to fix this issue, so he takes Cork's character back to Rivervale to talk to his guildmaster and fix this, and does so - one point into specialize alteration. The server starts getting wobbly, creatures start warping, lag starts spiking, group members start dropping to linkdeath. Within two minutes the server completely crashes.

A TM messages Falash (on Cork's account), while we're waiting in the lobby logon for the game to reset - he's not happy and demanding answers as to what Cork did, and he's ready to start banning bitches. Most people never meet a TM - as far as I'm aware, they're essentially an on-site technician and coder that manages the physical server hardware, and they outrank GMs (the Game Masters who can reset zones, spawn mobs, instarez entire raids and so forth) by a couple notches, so this was real shit.

Falash explains the scenario. Minutes pass, the TM replies back:

(paraphrased)
TM: "I figured out what went wrong. When you train a skill, the skill gives you the point equivalent of your level for the initial purchase. This is fine for primary specialization, but it shot his points way past the limit for secondary specialization. You're only supposed to have up to 50 points for secondaries, and because Cork was level 65 when this happened, he immediately went past the hard-coded limit to 65 and the server took a big ol' shit.

I'm going to restore Cork to a prior save. DO NOT train his specialization until the patch or I will ban you and anyone else involved in this. Any questions?"

Falash: "Nope!"

TM: "Okay, have a great evening."

The emergency patch hit on a Sunday. I think Falash made that poor man work the weekend.