Embrace the ghost sombrero
Introduction
The Cinco de Mayo 2 Superior Pack is the first pack to contain a T11 Rogue Hat print and it was given a very lively reception by the community. Let’s take a look at what happened .
Timeline
Pre-launch/Warm up
On the 4th of May 2021, the Cinco de Mayo 2 Mega pack was released. It contained a colorful bow and a pinata amongst other things, and received a warm reception. For many players though they were awaiting the release of the Superior pack, hoping it would bring something meta-breaking to the game.
Launch Night: 00:00 UTC 2021-05-05
The clock strikes midnight, the players await eagerly as the king arrives at their shops to offer them the pack. This was the moment they had been waiting for, another new superior that could be a game changer. Was the initial reception one of awe? Of amazement?
Actually no, it was one of confusion.
You see, even though players had paid the $12.99 to get the pack, the blueprint was nowhere to be found. The pack itself advertised that it contained a new T11 Rogue Hat and players were eager to get crafting them and see how much of an effect they would have on their heroes, but come launch – it was nowhere.
Immediately the messages came flying in thick and fast on discord:
The developers were nowhere to be seen at this time. The questions kept piling in, all wanting to know the answer to the same question: where was the sombrero?
Had it been made invisible because of it being a rogue? Was it hiding out of fear of being mocked by Republic Coiffe? We may never know, but the amount of players affected kept mounting. Some turned to cracking jokes, trying to keep the crowd entertained whilst we waited for a developer to intervene and explain what the situation was.
01:56 UTC
An attempt is made to reach the developers. Another player who had been experiencing account issues tagged Kabam Tristan in a discord message, which would alert him to the channel and investigate what is happening.
02:10 UTC
Tristan has appeared in the channel, however he had no comments to share on the missing sombrero – rather, he was replying to the player who had pinged him 14 minutes ago and the issue they had.
02:26 UTC
Tristan reappears to state he cannot super focus his attention on the bug reports channel – in his defence, it is currently 10:30pm where he resides. He has promised he will be reading and following through with it soon though. This is a promising sign.
03:02 UTC
Tristan appears once more in the channel and says he is catching up on the bug reports now. He says he’s almost positive this issue will not need to be resolved on an acccount-by-account basis. He has relayed the bug to the Quality Assurance team who will take a look at it when they start up tomorrow.
05:46 UTC
An announcement is sent out on discord – Jeremie states they have found the issue and it will be fixed with a server update, however given the time this would not be for some hours yet.
14:19 UTC
A server update is rolled out and the bugged blueprint is fixed – players can finally craft the Rogue Sombrero.
Aftermath
So what actually happened in this scenario? We know that as a countermeasure against players accessing packs early1 a system was introduced that blocked blueprints being crafted before a set date so even if someone had acquired it they would not be able to make use of it.
Multiple sources have informed me that in the case of the Rogue Sombrero the system had been configured incorrectly – it did not have the correct date set to unlock it and that’s why players were unable to craft it. The main lesson from this incident then (and one to just remember for life in general) is:
Always double-check your work.