During the week of March 23rd, programmers were working on core in-game skills for Path of Exile in preparation of the upcoming expansion. One of the changes being made was to the functionality of Trigger Gems; unfortunately, things went wrong.
The programmers were looking to improve the reliability of the gems that trigger spells like Cast on Death and Cast When Damage Taken. A human error occurred at a pivotal point in the programming process; there was a typo — the word "Cast" was mistakenly entered as "Cats."
The typo went unnoticed and the change for the Trigger Gems was deployed to game realms as part of the 1.3.1g release. Suddenly, there were cats everywhere in-game. Every time someone took damage with the Cast when Damage Taken Trigger Gem was equipped black cats appeared. When a Hardcore Exiles died with the Cast on Death gem, cats appeared.
The gems had become Cats When Damage Taken and Cats on Death gems.
Who knew a typo could lead to such catastrophic events?
A fix should be making its way to servers later tonight.
