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Taco Tuesday: How Will Planetside Manage Cheaters?

Last year I asked John Smedley if Planetside would be shutting down with Planetside 2 releasing, since Planetside was already dead in the water in terms of population. The response I received was that Sony would rather seek options including transforming Planetside into the free to play model before they shut the servers down, and that there would be more details as to where things were going in 2013. Just a day or so ago, Sony Online Entertainment threw a block grant of six months of game time in Planetside for Planetside 2 players. John Smedley also noted on Twitter:

This also gives us more time to make it f2p. So enjoy starting tmw late morning. And yes I’m sure we will miss flag some people.

Even though I knew that Sony preferred free to play to shutting the game down outright, my reaction to the announcement is still a sound “why?” I understand why Sony would want to take that road, since by their own admission no one plays Planetside anymore and therefore anything is better than nothing. On the other hand, players like myself are fully aware of why Planetside doesn’t have a trial system: because hackers were abusing it and mass-creating accounts. So when Planetside goes free to play, it’s hardly unrealistic to assume that the hackers will simply return in droves to ruin the experience once again.

Will Planetside become a den of aimbots, exploits, and hackers? At first, most assuredly. Afterward, who can say? Part of me wants to say that Sony will address the problem of mass-hacking in Planetside because otherwise the investment required to take the game free to play wouldn’t be worth it. A game like Planetside that is fully player vs player will see its population turn right around and leave if the game is infested with hackers. The hope, of course, is that Planetside will generate enough revenue after the transition that Sony can afford to have some full time staffers on hand to update the systems to battle cheaters at a software level while simultaneously having staff in-game to track down and ban cheaters by hand.

And again, this all comes down to how prepared Sony is to deal with the cheaters who will no doubt show up once the doors open.

MMOrning Shots: The Phoenix Project

We’re not just building a game; we’re building a world, which we hope will be able to stand on its own merits in an environment fraught with intense competition. It will only be able to do so with the support of its surrounding community.

I love reading up on the two City of Heroes spiritual community sequels, The Phoenix Project (pictured above) and Heroes and Villains. The above is The Phoenix Project being tested on the Unreal Engine with stock assets. You can check out the current status of The Phoenix Project by heading over to the Missing Worlds Media website.

MMOrning Shots is a daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”

Perfect World Rolls Back Neverwinter Servers To Fix Exploit

Last time we checked in with Perfect World over the Neverwinter auction house exploit, the company was pretty determined to keep the possibility of a rollback secluded only to those accounts that were affected by this weekend’s brou ha ha. At one point the company must have determined that character-specific rollbacks were not on the cards, as Neverwinter has performed a rollback to early Saturday morning.

We took the Neverwinter OBT down for emergency maintenance, found the bug, corrected it and tested it. In order to fix the damage this exploit caused to the in-game economy, we implemented a necessary rollback of our servers to 5:20 AM PDT the morning of May 19, 2013. This means that characters have been reverted to the state they were in at that time, pre-exploit damage. That includes items, level, experience, etc.

All Zen exchanged after this time (whether spent or traded on the auction house) will be returned to its original owner. There is apparently an issue with returning astral diamonds which PWE is still working on. The Foundry was not affected by the rollback, so players who created levels or made changes after the rollback time will be happy to see that their work was not reversed. Characters created during that period will be lost, unfortunately. It appears that Perfect World is working on a package for players to thank them for being patient during this period.

As far as complaints that the bug existed long before this weekend, going further back into earlier beta tests, Perfect World will be checking logs and removing accounts that were already using the exploit in open beta.

We are performing additional log searches and investigations to ensure that the appropriate actions are taken against any accounts that performed the exploit before the rollback window. Exploits that were performed prior to our rollback window make up a fraction of a percent of total impact, so we will be dealing with those issues selectively as not to cause greater impact on those legitimate testers.

You can read the entire FAQ below.

(Source: Neverwinter FAQ)

MMOrning Shots: Dynamic Lighting

The ROBLOX team never fails to amaze me with their continued updates to the game engine, making player creations look better and function on a whole new level with each iteration. It is incredible how much better an image looks with a little ambient lighting and shadows. The above creation is Cold Fusion by Spacek531.

MMOrning Shots is a daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”

(Source: ROBLOX)

Titan Icon Unlocks City of Heroes Creator Offline

The City of Heroes servers may be offline, but why should that stop you from getting in some Paragon City nostalgia? I’m not talking about some weak slideshow or compilation video either, I’m talking a cold hard client with some real play to it. Enter our friends at Titan Network, who recently unveiled Titan Icon. What is Titan Icon? Continue reading.

Titan Icon is a client which unlocks the character creator for offline play. All you need is a copy of City of Heroes updated to the Issue 23 or 24 client, and you can download this handy tool. Assuming you uninstalled City of Heroes, you can get a copy from the link below. You can even load up one of six maps to test your character’s run animations.

Overall, it’s a pretty cool tool. If you are looking for the spiritual, community made sequel to City of Heroes, check out Heroes and Villains and The Phoenix Project.

(Source: Titan Network)

Perfect World Responds To Recent Neverwinter Exploit

The Astral Diamond Exchange and Auction House are temporarily offline after a bug allowing players to duplicate astral diamonds was discovered and exploited by players. Perfect World has posted a notice on the forums that they are currently compiling data to see how widespread the effects of the exploit are, and will be using that data to determine the appropriate action to take place in response. Right now it appears Perfect World will be running character-specific rollbacks.

We are still investigating the situation. There is a high likelihood that we will be performing character-specific rollbacks on any accounts that were found to be utilizing the exploit. Additionally, we are investigating the extent of what can additional steps can be taken to remove any illegitimately obtained Astral Diamonds that have entered into the economy. At this stage, the possibility of performing a shard-wide is unlikely.

You can read the rest of the ongoing updates to the situation at the link below.

(Source: Neverwinter)

Auction House Exploit Tears Through Neverwinter

You’d best put seat belts on your ears, because I’m going to take them for the ride of their life. Perfect World Entertainment are in the midst of some very heavy damage control after an exploit popped up in Neverwinter and threw the game’s economy into turmoil. I won’t go into details about the exploit itself, partially because I would probably butcher the explanation, but the exploit involves the auction house and players duplicating mass quantities of astral diamonds and converting them into Zen.

According to MMO Fallout’s men on the field, the gateway has been shut down, and the ability to buy Zen with astral diamonds has been disabled. Some of those services may be turned back on by the time you read this. Perfect World has posted the following update on their forums:

We currently are in the process of taking action against a subset of accounts that were confirmed to have utilized exploits that affected the game balance or economy.

These accounts may be banned, temporarily or permanently, depending on the severity of exploit utilization. Anyone who is affected by this will receive notification via email.

While we have taken all precautions necessary to ensure that no false positives made it into our final list of accounts to take action against, we do acknowledge that some players who were banned may wish to follow up with us. If you had an account banned and wish to escalate the issue to our support team, please create a ticket at support.perfectworld.com or send an email to customerservice@perfectworld.com

Please note that forum discussions about specific accounts being banned is against our forum guidelines, thus any threads on the topic may be closed. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Thank you for your patience and support while we continue to do everything in our power to ensure that Neverwinter remains a fair and balanced game experience.

-Dezstravus and the Neverwinter Team

(Source: Neverwinter)

Planetside 2 Update Bringing Lattice System

Ask any Planetside player who made the transition to Planetside 2 what their biggest gripe is, and in all likelihood you will hear about the lack of a lattice system. In Planetside, bases and outposts are connected to each other through nodes, where those further into enemy territory cannot be captured until those at the forward lines are. When Planetside 2 launched without this system in place, players criticized the game for having a lack of objectives or direction, with fights breaking out randomly and players taking advantage of the large map to take over undefended bases.

Those gamers will be happy to hear that the upcoming Update 9, coming this week, will bring with it the much-anticipated lattice system. Players will now be funneled down a corridor system of outposts, with smaller outposts having two to three other bases connected to them and larger bases generally having three to five. The idea is to consolidate fighting to certain areas of the map, making for larger battles and giving defenders a better idea of where to go next. With the new corridor system, it will also be possible to cut off supplies to enemy factions with more tactical precision.

The update is being implemented in a test phase, with player feedback used to implement further changes to base connections, map layout, etc. You can read the full list of details at the link below.

(Source: Planetside 2)

MMOrning Shot: Driving In Style

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Fallen Earth, showing off the upcoming Vandal Hatchback vehicle. Players will be able to get their hands one one soon™.

MMOrning Shots is a daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”

Darkfall North American Server Hit By DDoS

Indie MMOs, as we know all too well here at MMO Fallout, are dangerously prone to distributed denial of service attacks, often from either disgruntled (and banned) cheaters/griefers or revenge from recently banned gold farmers. Now Darkfall Unholy Wars has a boatload of people from both categories, so the root cause could be any one of the two.

Aventurine has posted a notice on the official blog that there has been a DDoS attack aimed at bringing down the North American server.

In regard to the ping issues on the NA server the past couple of days, this was due to a DDoS attack during NA prime time. We have taken measures in cooperation with our hosting providers to filter this attack, and we’re monitoring the situation. We’ll keep you updated and we apologize for any inconvenience.

The likelihood of the culprit being caught (or even identified at that) is unlikely, given the nature of a denial of service attack.

(Source: Darkfall Epic Blog)

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