character-deletion
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Borderlands 2 hack can 'sabotage' characters through Xbox Live, Gearbox warns [Update: patch incoming]
While PS3 and PC owners can sleep soundly at night knowing that their Borderlands 2 characters are safe from the nefarious plots of evil men, Xbox 360 owners are not afforded such a luxury."Users have begun violating the Xbox Live Code of Conduct by using an external application to maliciously disrupt the experience and sabotage characters of legitimate Borderlands 2 players on Xbox 360," Gearbox Studios community manager Chris Faylor said in a post on the developer's official forums.While Gearbox and its "partners" work to resolve the Xbox-specific issue, it recommends avoiding public games with unknown players for the time being. Additionally, players should always Save & Quit before returning to the dashboard or powering down their Xbox, and if you find yourself kicked back to the main menu after death, select "Continue" immediately.What destruction is actually involved in the exploit's sabotage is uncertain – anecdotal accounts on the forum report everything from wiped character progress to entirely deleted characters. We've reached out to Gearbox for clarification and will update with any new information we receive.Update: Gearbox has informed us that a patch to exterminate the exploit has been submitted to Microsoft for approval and will be released "as soon as possible."[Thanks, Justin!]
WoW Rookie: Tips and tricks for rookies
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to's at WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide. Oh come on, everyone knows that -- well, evidently everyone but you, poor rookie. Ever felt like a chump for not being aware of some game feature or function that would've made life so much easier, if only you'd known? Aww, it's OK. You're not alone. As accessible as designers strive to make games like WoW, it's easy for even a few basics to slip by, especially when you're brand new, thrashing about trying to find your quest objective and attack the monster and talk to that other player all at the same time. Blizzard's tutorial tips help make sense of a lot of that under-the-radar knowledge. Still, players write in to WoW Rookie every week asking questions or offering various nuggets of acquired wisdom. Time then for another info dump -- the latest in our collection of frequently requested, handy things to know.
Funcom threatening to delete noob Age of Conan characters
When it comes to character deletions, just about every MMO out there has a clause in their Terms of Service that indicates they have the right to delete your characters at any time and for no reason whatsoever. With that said, there are very few companies that choose to exercise that right. Up until now it has been Square Enix as part of Final Fantasy XI (even then they occasionally restore characters as part of 'welcome back' promotions), and Alganon's new "trial" which allows you to play for 30 days free before they wipe your character if you don't subscribe. However, as you can see from the above image, Funcom has opted to join the ranks of "will delete characters" in regards to Age of Conan. When contacted for comment about whether or not this was true, Erling Ellingsen, Director of Communications for Funcom said, "Yes, that's correct. It's a database clean-up. We're going through all accounts that's (sic) been inactive for a long period of time, deleting characters under level 20 to free space in the database."
Alganon tries something new for trial accounts
These days, with so many different MMOs on the market, several companies are trying new, varied formats for their trials in an attempt to capture the most players. You really can't blame them for feeling the need to shift from the traditional models. With our busy lives, an old-school 10-day trial may actually only net a few hours of actual uninterrupted time for many casual players -- especially during the busy holiday season! Enter Alganon's new trial format to give players who are curious a chance to try the game for as long as they need to. However, it's not exactly like the other examples currently on the market. As you probably already know, Champions Online and Warhammer Online (among others) employ level-restricted trials, allowing players unlimited time, but not unlimited access to the world. By contrast, Alganon isn't limiting people on the trial to a specific level. Indeed -- players can level as high up as they can, to the game's current cap. The catch is that at 30 days, your character starts pining for the fjords and is deleted if you don't convert that trial over to a paid account. If you level very fast and don't mind the idea of having to reroll once a month, this could be an interesting way to explore the content in Alganon for some time without paying anything. That said, there are other drawbacks to dissuade players from doing that; limitations on crafting; inability to freely chat; only able to take skills to level 3 among others. Overall we still think this is an interesting new tactic for an MMO trial system. [Thanks Robert & Jason!]
Breakfast Topic: Why reroll?
I probably should've mentioned this in my Breakfast Topic yesterday, which asked about your favorite noob moments, but my brother-in-law had a major one with his very first character. Playing a Druid, he eventually found himself in Moonglade. Not the best person with directions, he actually got lost in Nighthaven, unable to find his way out. He even tried to kill his Tauren by drowning in a Moonwell. Didn't work. In frustration, he deleted his toon and rerolled another Druid. My cousin had a similar experience when, at Level 12, we pointed out that his horns were white while the rest of his Tauren was black. He immediately logged off, and met up with us an hour later with an all-black Tauren with the same name. Speaking of names, my wife leveled a Priest but decided at some point that she didn't like the name and rerolled. These were the days before paid character customization, of course. I suppose we all have different reasons to reroll. Before the days of PvE-to-PvP transfers, a bunch of us decided to start from scratch and reroll on a PvP server because we couldn't progress on our original one. As painful as that was at the time (we all had a couple of Level 60 toons already), it turned out to be a great decision as we ended up being able to experience the endgame. Have you ever felt the need to reroll, or start from scratch? Not quite the same as leveling an alt, but to start fresh entirely. With paid server transfers and character customization, I'm certain the need is less urgent, but for those of you who started anew, what were your reasons?
