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WRUP: HDMI converter for GOTY
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us why we should be playing HDMI converter.
Trion's games DDoSed again
E-thugs are at it again: Trion's MMO services are once again under attack. Last night, the official RIFT twitter account announced, "Ascended, our servers are experiencing a DDoS at the moment. We're working to restore network stability as quickly as possible." On the official forums, RIFT Executive Producer Bill "Daglar" Fisher confirmed that ongoing RIFT lag problems are compounded by the attacks: "Adding on top of the oddities that people are reporting, we've also been under DDOS attacks and our network team has been working to minimize the impacts of these." Overnight, even the first few pages (five, as of the time of this writing) of the RIFT general forums were flooded with spam from attackers. Several low-traffic forums on the ArcheAge boards have also been spammed early this morning. [With thanks to Omedon for the tip and apologies to Daglar for the temporary demotion!]
ArcheAge boasts two million registered players
ArcheAge's local launch has gone pretty well, according to producer Scott Hartsman. A recent letter to the players confirms last week's whispers that over two million players have registered for the game, which certainly goes a long way to explaining those launch queues. Between North America and Europe, the game currently has 21 active servers in total, and Hartsman stated that character creation restrictions are being rolled back as the populations begin to stabilize. The letter goes on to address the issue of bots, many of which have already been unceremoniously ejected from the game. The game's most recent patch restricts chatting in several channels (Faction, Trade, Nation, Shout, and Need Party) to characters who are level 15 or higher, and a learning anti-spam feature is on track to be integrated into the base game. There's also discussion about catching up with holiday content and the like, so those two million registered players should have plenty of stuff to do.
ArcheAge bans 16k spam accounts in alpha
Ahh, spammers. They are the mosquitos of the MMO world if mosquitos could email and send global chat messages. Trion is no stranger to spam-squashing and as Community Manager Evan "Scapes" Berman demonstrated in a recent post, the studio is bringing out the big guns against ArcheAge's spammers who have been plaguing the alpha test. According to the post, over 16,000 spammer and gold farmer accounts have been removed from alpha already, and Patch 1.2 (arriving next week) will have even more tools to fight the "general asshats." Scapes encourages players to keep reporting those illegal accounts and contact support if you discover that your account has been compromised.
Who's behind those spammy video converter apps
There's an interesting article from last year over on Macworld about how spammers try to use comment systems on discussion forums to promote their wares. Christopher Breen, one of their moderators, dug into the world of Chinese companies promoting dodgy (as in "don't work very well") video converters. "The software is advertised through forum spam -- usually in the form of tutorials that show you how to use it -- but there's sock puppeting going on as well," he says. "These companies will often first pose a question along the lines of 'How do I convert my videos for the iPad?' and then, under a different identity (but using the same IP address), answer their own question with a recommendation for one of these tools. Additionally, they create shareware sites that, coincidentally enough, rave about these products in fake reviews." Breen managed to confront some of these spammers when they contacted Macworld asking them to review their software. "I was contacted by a PR representative from one of these companies asking for a review. I replied that we don't review software from spammers but if they were willing to forego this sleazy practice, we might consider a review, just as we'd consider a review of any legitimate product." He goes on to detail how the spammers offered to pay for advertising and offer special deals and prizes to readers in return for a review, and he always replied, "We don't support spammers." Breen lists the names of many of the video converters to avoid and offers advice to those running discussion forums on how to recognize and remove their spam. Good stuff.
EVE Evolved: The RMT problem
Of all the problems that plague MMOs, RMT (real money trading) is perhaps the most disruptive to normal gameplay. By design, almost every MMO has some form of tradable currency that can be collected through normal gameplay. The time it takes to collect that currency has an inherent value, which varies from player to player as not every player values his free time at the same level. It's inevitable that cash-rich players who value their time highly will often want to shortcut normal gameplay by buying the currency directly for cash. The negative impact of RMT and its associated problems is felt in every popular MMO, and EVE Online is no exception. The direct balance issues inherent in allowing players to buy ISK with cash are just the tip of a very unpleasant iceberg. Players who buy ISK from shady websites and services are the reason that the rest of us have to put up with spam-bots in popular chat channels, rampant account hacking, and macros taking up a disproportionately large cut of EVE's in-game resources and server load. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look into the problems caused by RMT, why macro-farming operations have become so wide-spread, and what CCP has done to combat this growing problem.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Banhammer time
For a while now, Frogster has been fiddling with how a player can buy diamonds to later trade and sell in the auction house. Ever so slowly, they had to implement more and more restrictions because of credit fraud and gold sellers. Those restrictions came in the form of what you could no longer use to buy tradable diamonds, until there was almost no other way except to purchase game cards from select retailers. Now it seems the ongoing problem has come to a head with the announcement that Runes of Magic has temporarily turned off the trading of diamonds for gold completely. While it certainly doesn't paint RoM in a good light and may look like it has marred their great track record, gold selling issues are nothing exclusive to the game. Bots and gold spam are something that many MMOs eventually deal with and it's a positive sign that the developers are working on it. Maybe they're taking a queue from Aion's RMT videos or maybe they had it planned for a long time, but RoM has recently gone after the player-side of the problem by laying down the banhammer.
EVE Online devblog discusses account security
Every MMO suffers the horrors of gold spammers and EVE Online is no different. The RMT (Real Money Trading) industry is massive and EVE's developers CCP have waged a constant war against it in recent years. The PLEX initiative gave players a way to safely buy ISK for cash while at the same time helping players who couldn't afford their subscriptions pay with ISK. The result was a dramatic hit to the RMT market, who had to drop their prices to compete with a legitimate service replacing their own. As part of Operation Unholy Rage in August of last year, EVE GMs also banned over 6200 accounts belonging to farmers known to be supplying the RMT industry. The effect on the market was instant, with the population in farmed mission systems like Ingunn disappearing overnight. Almost immediately, the farmers reacted with a spate of account hackings to claw back some ISK.
See an Aion GM in action blowing up spammers
NCsoft has always been fairly vocal about about their assault on Aion's goldspammer and bot epidemic. They bolstered the game's spam filter a while ago and their Game Surveillance Unit reportedly banned over 27,000 botting accounts just last week. It's great to hear about these positive statistics, but if your game experience has been ruined in the past by some of these unsavory characters, you might be looking for something more visceral -- and thankfully, we've got that for you. Enter Youtube user MidoriPeanut, who managed to catch an Aion GM in the throes of a banning spree and recorded it all for the rest of us to enjoy. The movie features the GM blowing up a number of goldspammer ad stores, all set to the dramatic Syringe by Emilie Autumn. Sure, this could all take place behind the scenes and the offenders would quietly disappear from the world, but isn't it a lot more fun seeing them cast off to hell by a cutesy animal? Get out the popcorn and head past the break to see the banishing in action.
A look back at Aion's first month and impressions
43,829 minutes. That's roughly how long Aion's been out in the West. Depending on your tolerance for grinding, it may or may not have felt like that amount of time passed. There's no doubt it's been a busy month full of ups and downs, so we'd like to take an extensive look back at the last 30-days and give our impressions on the game. Smooth criminal Aion experienced one of the most technically smooth launches in MMO history, which was the result of hard work, innovative design, tough decision-making, and of course nearly a year between the Eastern and Western releases. Anti-cheat software, GameGuard, was stripped from the client in the 11th hour. This no doubt eliminated most of the open-beta issues that would have sent a lot of potential players packing shortly after release. Players just aren't as forgiving as they used to be.
Blizzard warns against buying gold
If it wasn't already obvious, Blizzard put together a page on their official website making clear their stance towards buying in-game gold, and have just recently given it another big push. To put it simply: don't. The page outlines what we at WoW.com have known for quite some time (hence our collective stance against buying gold) -- that gold buying harms other players. The site doesn't go into specifics other than to say that gold selling companies often acquire their gold through unscrupulous means. They sum up their statement by saying that "players who buy gold are supporting spamming, botting, and keylogging." Basically, if you're a gold buyer, you're part of the problem. No, seriously. Gold sellers acquire gold by hacking into other players' accounts, taking their gold, selling all their items, and sometimes maliciously deleting their characters. That gold you think some Asian spent hours farming in Nagrand or something is more likely to be some other player's hard-earned gold and the seller is just as likely to be some dude from Jersey. As tempting as buying gold may seem -- and I've read many arguments towards why people buy them -- the bottom line is that it is harmful to the game and you're not doing yourself any favors in the long run. Blizzard says that it "diminish(es) the gameplay experience," but that's putting it nicely. Gold selling and power leveling are against the EULA, anyway, so anybody who patronizes these services are in danger of getting banned. And if you don't believe in buying gold (go you!), protect yourself by getting an authenticator or reading up on account security.
Aion's spam filter is bigger, stronger, faster
Gold seller spam got you down; keeping you from purchasing Aion? Fret not, fair... uh, would be Aionites, because NCsoft is working towards fixing the solution through improvements and good will. We already know that essential 24/7 GM support is on its way, so the news that the recent 10.5.0.10 added an improved chat spam filter is delicious, vengeful frosting on our Crytek-powered cake.By our observations, spam has been reduced to the occasional whisper or channel message from a character with an odd umlaut or whatnot in their name. Hopefully the update continues to hold water, and the gold sellers simply recede into the darkness from whence they came. Should the spammers ever return in force, we hope that NCsoft is ready to sweep an otherworldly banhammer of justice across their maw in a manner most pleasing to all of us in the community.
SOE hires crime fighting gnomes to fend off credit card worms
Online credit card fraud is big business and even MMORPGs aren't safe from it's far reach. We recently had a chance to sit down with Executive Director of Global Customer Service, Brad Wilcox, and discuss how SOE is dealing with gold selling and power-leveling services for their games. They are taking this war so seriously that they have put all transactional business under keen gnomish scrutiny.Can you tell us how this fraud prevention task force came to be?Brad Wilcox: Since the inception of EQ1, we always had components of a fraud prevention team. These were game masters and individuals tasked with looking at the game economy and making sure that people weren't exploiting. Since September 2007, we started to see a big increase in fraudulent activity in regards to stolen credit cards. That is when it was decided to put a few more resources specifically related to the fraud that was happening with accounts and subs being created with these stolen credit cards. That's when we formed what we call the NUGIT team, which stands for Norrathian Underground Gnome Investigation Team. As you can tell by the name, our employees enjoy having as much fun on the back end as we do on the front end of these games
Live Gamer interviewed about regulated RMT
We've mentioned a company called Live Gamer in the past here at Massively. Essentially, Live Gamer is attempting to legitimize real money trading (RMT) in virtual spaces, by partnering with game publishers to create a regulated secondary market for item sales and trades. The goal is to integrate RMT with MMOs and virtual worlds and usurp the myriad gold spammers and scammers currently plaguing most virtual spaces that feature economies. Suzie Ford at WarCry recently interviewed Live Gamer Founder and President Andrew Schneider about how the company plans to change a $2 billion industry presently dominated by the black and grey market. The interview touches on the company's background, how the Live Gamer service works, and overall how they handle some of the polarizing issues of RMT in MMOs. Check out the full interview with Andrew Schneider over at WarCry for a brief overview of what Live Gamer is about. Does the prospect of having a legitimate, regulated secondary market for avatars, virtual items, and currency in your MMOs seem like a step in the right direction?
Reporting gold spammers in WAR now easier than ever
The gold seller scourge has fallen upon Warhammer Online, as you've likely noticed. But Mythic Entertainment has taken some rather extreme measures to silence the incessant spamming. To help reach that goal, they're making it easier for players to report gold selling activity and harassment. In keeping with their zero-tolerance policy on gold spamming, Mythic states, "We are committed to making life as hard as we can for Gold Sellers in game and maximizing player enjoyment. To that end we have added a new tool to streamline the gold seller reporting process." That tool is found within the Appeal Interface, as the stand-alone category "GOLD/PL SALES" -- and is not found within the Violation category (which is used for most other types of harassment) as you might expect. Submitting these appeals via the GOLD/PL SALES category is a straightforward matter, as shown below the cut: Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Anti-gold-seller FAQ page goes up at the official EU site
World of Warcraft's European site has posted a new page of their FAQ aiming to describe the effects and consequences of third party gold selling, also known as RMT (Real Money Trade or Real Money Transactions). There doesn't seem to be a similar page added to the American site yet, but we've seen enough to know very well that they disapprove as well. The page mostly focuses on the more underhanded tactics the companies use to get money, such as keyloggers and trojans, or simply stealing the accounts of people who paid for powerleveling, and using them as farming bots, or spamming in high traffic areas on level 1 characters with hard to spell names. It's a good start, and certainly reminds people of the harm that these gold farmers do, and how it can hit close to home. As a veteran MMORPGer who's watched Johnathan Yantis and Brock Pierce practically invent the industry and most of the dirty tricks it pulls, I'm glad to see Blizzard continue to make a stand against these types of leeches and hope they continue to do so. I'd love to see them explain more fully how the constant amount of kill stealing and spawn and AH camping they do hurts the game. A campaign of information might be just what we need to stop the gold farmers once and for all. Legal measures and community shame (and thus shrinking of their customer base) for a one-two punch? Here's hoping! Thanks for the heads up, Richard!
The Daily Grind: Your biggest MMO pet peeves
A recent thread on the Ten Ton Hammer forums about "biggest WoW pet peeves" caught our eye the other day. After reading some of the responses there, we got to thinking about some of the things in general that annoy us in different MMOs. One of the truly universal ones was gold-spam. It seems no matter what format they have to take, up to and including piles of dead gnome bodies arranged to spell out their domain, they'll do everything they can to annoy us. (After all, 300 dead gnomes, while great as a Horde member, still cause lag.) Another thing we agreed on was "1337 5p33k" (or "elite speak" for those who speak actual English) which just makes us want to hang people's characters by the toes and use them as in-game pinatas. While those are two that many of us agreed on, there were far and away many other things that really annoyed us in various games. How about you? Are there any things that really make your skin crawl? For that matter is it the people or the game that trips your pet peeve off? Did they design in a pet peeve on you? Or maybe your pet peeve is how your computer behaves when running certain MMOs?
Blizzard tells trial account users to shush
Word has it that, in response to the widespread use and abuse of trial accounts on the part of gold spammers, character-leveling outfits, and RMT humbuggery in general, Blizzard has eliminated the ability for users on trial accounts to invite party members to groups, which joins their recent embargo on broadcast communication in World of Warcraft entirely.One can't help but wonder if there was a better way to go about achieving this same end of curbing the spammers. Perhaps they could have implemented more thorough standards for authentication prior to being given a trial key, or maybe implemented some sort of referral program where an existing player could "vouch" for a trial user and give them the full benefits they enjoyed before this hotfix. Trial users are usually the most vulnerable and least knowledgeable subset of newbies, and to remove their ability to communicate with the world around them just seems a bit cruel to me.We all know the spammers are going to find another way around it, after all. They're quite the creative lot.[Via WarCry]
Ninja inviting is a no-no
I can't really say I'm surprised to the response to the question Calipsa asked. But what I am surprised by is why she asked it: she wanted to know if sending group or even guild invites without whispering first was rude, and players responded overwhelmingly that it was. Why did she think it wasn't? There's almost nothing more confusing than receiving a random group or guild invite, and considering that even spammers are using group invites to spam, it's just not something you want to do.Now maybe she meant just whether a whisper was necessary or not. If a player is marked LFG, or they're a guildie you know is available for a group, or they've just shouted out "LFG for group quests" in a chat channel, then I'd say they're fair game for a ninja invite. You don't need to actually whisper them and confirm everything you do (well, it's still nice to do, but in those cases, I'd say you don't need to).But yes, invites out of the blue are a no-no. Rude, maybe, annoying, yes, and usually a waste of time for both parties.
What are the gold farmers up to now?
I'm sure you've heard that Blizzard's anti-spam additions to the game have caused gold selling spammers to change their tactics. However, it certainly hasn't stopped their activity -- they're still out there, spamming us with raid invites, says, and messages over general chat channels since they can no longer do so in whispers. Lately I've been joining their raid groups to see what they've got to say, and, of course, report them. However, earlier today in one goldseller raid, I noticed that instead of listing their full site name, they're telling you to visit, for example http://www.i*****.com/. i*****.com? What? Is that even a valid domain name? My questions are soon answered, as later in the message, the spammer explains that the ***** stands for something else, which does turn it into a valid domain name. But I have to ask -- why are they doing this? It just makes it more difficult for their potential customers to figure out where to go, so I presume there must be a reason they'd do this. So, even though there's nothing official from Blizzard, I have to think that they're doing something that causes trouble for the spammers if they use their full domain name. Are they flagging people using known gold-selling domains in chat for further investigation? Since we haven't heard anything from Blizzard, we can't say for certain. But until we hear something, there's room for speculation.
