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PSA: FFXIV, Account Theft, And Ban Investigations

Today’s PSA is brought to you by the letter B and the number 7.

Here at MMO Fallout, I regularly receive emails from people asking me to unban their accounts, in complete ignorance to the fact that I am neither officially associated with nor work for any of the games that I report on. But that’s beside the point. The other email that I get rather often is in response to my articles about keeping your account safe, particularly from people who have the attitude of “who cares if my account is stolen? I just email support and they restore it within a day or so.” Hopefully none of these people are playing Final Fantasy XIV, because they are in for a surprise.

With the success of Square Enix’s latest title, the natural progression of events has lead to accounts being stolen in large quantities and used for botting materials or spamming chat. As I’ve said in previous articles, why would you waste your own money when there are so many unprotected accounts ripe for the picking? It’s like robbing a bank and leaving your neighbor’s wallet at the scene of the crime, and then testifying against him in court about how you never really trusted his attitude. Sure, a simple alibi will get him a not guilty verdict, but that is the end of a long and stressful path and may eventually fail.

In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, reversing a ban because your account was stolen and used to bot/spam isn’t as simple as calling up customer support and asking them to flip a switch. No, according to players who have been victims of account theft, Square Enix is performing full investigations on the affected accounts to make sure that the claims are legitimate, and boy is there quite a long line just to get in the door. What does this mean for you, the player? Imagine that everyone in your neighborhood’s driver’s license expired on the exact same day, and everyone had to go down to the DMV to get their paperwork in. The DMV opens at 9am and you get there a little past four when everyone is out of work and meeting the group who has been there all morning. Imagine that line, and double it, and you have a good idea as to how long you’ll be waiting for your account to be restored. One player in particular was apparently told that the line and subsequent investigation could take at least three weeks as the matter had to be dealt with by Square Enix’s Japan offices.

If that isn’t enough motivation to keep your account as secure as possible from your end, I’m not sure what is.

Dragonball MMO Isn't Coming To The West

Here at MMO Fallout, I have a list of foreign MMOs that fall into my Do Not Report file. This list is reserved for games that, in my untested and unscientific opinion, are likely to never hit western shores. The idea isn’t all that radical, when you consider that a majority of MMOs shut down within a couple of years after launch and how expensive localization is. In the case of Dragonball Online, my hunch was correct. According to MMO Culture, the game is set to shut down in all of its territories, after which the lights will be flipped off and everyone will go home. The Korean server has already been shut down and the server in Taiwan will be shuttering on October 31st.

If you were hoping to see the game release in English, you are sadly out of luck.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Dragonball MMO Isn’t Coming To The West

If you were hoping to see the game release in English, you are sadly out of luck.

(Source: MMO Culture)

MMOrning Shots: Here Sheepy

I’m in the middle of taking a look at Dragon’s Prophet, and I want to impart a lesson upon Runewaker: First impressions are everything, and that means making sure your opening quests actually work. There is a particularly annoying quest at level five where you have to let this woman spray you with a vanilla mist in order to entice the sheep into following you back to the pen. Problem: Only one of the sheep actually works. The others just ignore you no matter how much you run around them, there is no button to press that will force them to follow you, and you only have 60 seconds until the spray runs out and you have to go back and get another. So what should have been an easy quest turned into fifteen minutes of finding the one sheep that would respond, bringing it back to the pen, waiting for it to respawn, getting sprayed, and repeating.

On the plus side, I won’t need sleeping pills when I go to bed tonight, since I’ve been counting sheep.

Jagex Introduces PLEX, RuneScape Bonds

Jagex has introduced the idea of PLEX to RuneScape in the form of bonds. Bonds, like PLEX, are tradeable items that are purchased from Jagex and can be traded to other players through the in-game auction house or face to face, to then be exchanged for in-game goodies. As a measure to stop gold farming, which Jagex believes involves 40-50% of the active player base each month, the bonds can then be redeemed by the buyer for membership (14 days), spins (8), or RuneCoins (160) for the cash shop. Not a great deal at face value, but the goal is that the buyer does not pay real money, and the person who did initially buy the bond is receiving gold from the buyer.

Bonds cost $5 USD.

MMOrning Shots: Twilight Assault

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Arenanet, and offers a glimpse at the upcoming Twilight Assault update set for October 1st. Twilight Assault, which I originally assumed would involve raiding a Barnes and Noble and burning some Stephanie Meyer books, actually involves players assisting in the raid of a secret facility. A secret facility for what, exactly? For the printing of Stephanie Meyer books.

MMOrning Shots: Virtual Convention

ROBLOX’s virtual convention has already come and gone, but the images will remain with us forever. Virtual BLOXcon took place on Saturday the 21st, a four hour block which involved everything from Q&A sessions to streaming game content, hall of fame awards for the best creations, and more. If you managed to catch the event, more power to you. If you didn’t, well there’s always next year.

Support Email: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

If I had a dollar for every email I receive from Jagex telling me that my account is under investigation for suspected gold farming, I could afford to buy the internet. Look at the release of any big name MMO, update, or expansion, and you are bound to see a surge of account theft. Since anti-virus programs have come such a long way over the years, thieves have turned to the next, and arguably more reliable method of stealing your information: Tricking you into voluntarily handing it over. After all, writing viruses is at least somewhat difficult and involves a delivery method and the potential that anti-virus software will quickly swoop in and render your work useless. I know what it’s like to be lazy, occasionally I just hold my hand out and hope that a cup of coffee will magically appear. So think of account phishing as the Keurig machine of account theft…or something.

One of the most common methods I have seen over the years is the “your account has been banned” email, where the player is notified that their account has been disabled for one reason or another, and they need to log in and submit an appeal or process something. While some will still attempt at installing a virus, most will take the safe route by simply creating an exact copy of the official site with a slightly misspelled URL. The user enters their login details and sends them straight to the thief. The idea in this case is to scare the user, and the hope is that they will throw out rational thought and log in without thinking.

As with all methods, this has evolved over the years to become more subtle and cunning. When service providers initiated a process of locking accounts that were suspected of being stolen, emails began targeting users with “your account may have been stolen. Please log in to confirm your ownership.” Others masquerade as beta invitations, or promotional emails, other times just harmless “hey check us out,” etc. The idea with most of these is that the player does not log into the game first to check the status of their account and reveal the scam, and some ban emails will actually state “do not attempt to log into your account via the game client or your appeal may be denied.”

With this in mind, your best bet is to assume that any email you receive is fake until proven otherwise. If you do receive a notice that your account has been banned, do not click on the link in the email under any circumstance. Either log in with the game client or log into the game’s official website to confirm. In the case of beta invitations, if possible always check the developer’s website first. Often times they will have instructions on how to accept the invitation that does not involve the email link, and may even have warnings posted about fake emails with screenshots of said forgeries.

As for “please log in to confirm your ownership,” I can say with 99% confidence that game developers don’t send these out. If your account has been stolen, sending an email (which has likely also been stolen) to ask you to log in with the same credentials that have been stolen is pointless, it’s like a police officer asking you to prove that your driver’s license isn’t fake and accepting that same license as proof.

FFXIV Players To Receive TGS 2013 Earrings

Square Enix’s booth at Tokyo Game Show has an interesting challenge: Defeat a special version of the Titan Battle Challenge from FFXIV and win yourself a free “I Beat The Titan” t-shirt. The good news is that the rewards don’t stop there. For every player who beats the challenge, Square has been selecting one random server to receive Cactaur earrings. The attributes are nothing special, but they are a nice cosmetic item to have. Just about a day and a half into TGS, enough titans had been defeated to unlock the Cactaur across all servers.

Next, Square Enix has offered bomb earrings to players on a random server every time a Titan falls. As with the Cactaur earrings, attendees took little time to fall well over sixty Titans and unlock the earrings for all servers. The details on how the earrings will be delivered to players (presumably in-game mail, as with most of the other rewards) will be revealed in the next week or so.

(Source: Square Enix)

Perfect World Talks: RaiderZ

RaiderZ is an action-combat game from the minds of MAIET Entertainment, the folks behind GunZ: The Duel and GunZ 2. Released in 2012 as a free to play MMO, RaiderZ features active combat which places an emphasis on dodging and blocking incoming attacks, as well as an emphasis on crafting and big boss fights. Sadly, RaiderZ has hit some hard times with the announcements that Gameforge and Neowiz would be shutting down their servers in Europe and South Korea respectively. What does this mean for RaiderZ? I had to know.

So naturally, I saddled up and went directly to the source with my pen, paper, and a box of Necco Wafers in case I needed a bribe. With Perfect World Entertainment as the only western host remaining, I wanted to know where RaiderZ stood in terms of support from its remaining publishers, and developer MAIET Entertainment. PWE was kind enough to hook me up with Senior Product Manager Mark Hill, who had no problem answering my questions.

Omali: RaiderZ has shut down in Europe and Korea, with both announcing their closure around the same time. How did Perfect World manage to come out unscathed?

Hill: We are highly committed to RaiderZ and to the fans of the game, so we haven’t even considered closing our servers at this point. We feel that we can build upon the current success of RaiderZ and continue to improve the game for current and future players.

O: What do you say to players who might be concerned over the fact that half of RaiderZ’s territories just shut down?

H: It is very unfortunate if they were involved in the closure of servers that they were playing on. As a gamer, I know how it feels when a game you’re passionate about is no longer available, and it’s not a good feeling. That goes double for MMOs, and for the players that dedicate hundred and even thousands of hours to the game, community, and the publisher.

While I wish there was a way that those affected players would be able to resume their progress on our servers, it’s unfortunately logistically and contractually impossible. However, we do encourage anyone that is able to start up a character on our servers. I think they’ll find a solid and dedicated community to experience the game with, and it may even give them a chance to level up a new character in ways that they didn’t experience before.

O: With Gameforge stepping out of the picture, has any interest been expressed in picking up European publishing?

H: We’re definitely always looking for new market opportunities, and seeing the feedback from European players that were affected makes it clear that they still want to play. There are license and contract restrictions still in place even after they closed their servers, but we have discussed the possibility of Perfect World Entertainment bringing RaiderZ back to Europe. Of course I can’t promise anything, but it is something we are interested in.

O: Is RaiderZ region locked to North America or are players from Europe capable of creating accounts and logging in?

H: European players are able to create accounts on the Perfect World servers. They can register by visiting raiderz.perfectworld.com.

O: Have you considered putting RaiderZ on Steam to bring in a wider audience?

H: Oh man, you’re reading my mind! Yes, we have considered it. But before we do, we want to make sure the game is in top shape in terms of bug fixes, player retention, and overall game experience, which is what we’re working on now. Keep an eye out on Steam, though!

O: Is MAIET still committed to developing content for RaiderZ?

H: Absolutely! As a matter of fact, we have big expansion coming soon that is current being QA tested. You can read all about it in the forums here. We talk to the developers at MAIET every day, and we are both committed to making the game a success.

O: If MAIET does cease development, is there any chance of Perfect World adopting a license similar to Neowiz in Japan, allowing for more in-house control of content?

H: That’s a great question, but it’s not something that we’ve considered at this point. We’ve heard great things out of Japan, and are always open to new opportunities in order to ensure the continued success of the game, and making a positive experience for the players.

I want to thank Perfect World Entertainment and Mark Hill for taking some time to answer our questions. You can check out RaiderZ for free at Perfect World’s website.

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