Silver and Gold Rollback Exploit

For several hours during the morning (PDT) of May 16, 2012, some or all Avengers Alliance game servers were having technical problems.  There seemed to be database issues where some things in the game would be saved correctly but other things wouldn't.  The silver lining in this rollback issue was that it made possible exploits using Silver and Gold.

Many players have complained about various issues related to things in the game not saving properly after refreshing, such as:

• Purchasing new Heroes, but not having them after refresh, yet the Command Points used for the purchase were not restored
• Collecting Silver from remote missions or sending Heroes out on remote missions not saving after refresh
• Progress in missions not saving properly
• Gift acceptances not saving after refresh, but the gifts accepted remain--this allows accepting a number of gifts over the daily gift limit

The game is usually very good at saving currencies--Playdom wouldn't want the foundation of the game economy and their money-making ability to be compromised.  Items are also saved fastidiously, but other things such as newly bought Heroes are not.  This explains why Command Points remained deducted even though newly bought Heroes disappeared after refresh.  SHIELD Points and Unstable Iso-8 are also strictly tracked.

It's very surprising then that Silver and Gold were not being saved properly when the game was having technical issues.  This made exploits of Silver and Gold possible.  You could have bought items or converted to other currencies, and the new items would be saved after refresh but your Silver or Gold would be restored to their original amounts.

This exploit might explain some of the ultra-rich opponents that some players have encountered in PVP.  These opponents have PVP Armories filled with expensive items that grant high PVP bonuses.

The screenshot at the top of this article and the following two images show some of the things you could have gotten with the exploit:



If you missed out on this exploit, perhaps you'll be able to take advantage of it in the future.  Just wait for a time when your game seems to keep rolling back whenever you refresh the game.