Author: Admin

Community Concerns: How Should Security Be Rated?


In case you hadn’t noticed, Week in Review (much like Month in Review before it) is going the way of the dodo. I’d rather utilize my Sundays to discuss more meaningful topics to MMO Fallout than the metaphorical digging from the trash bin I did in past months. I always have something in the works to make MMO Fallout less of a news source and more of an information database, to make my articles less time-based (less likely to be outdated) while at the same time staying relevant and interesting.

My current project is to discuss and rate the security on a company by company basis, which I will be doing hopefully in each Sunday’s editorial. I can guarantee an editorial every Sunday, but not that it will be on security, because some of the questions I will be asking need direct information from customer support, and we all know how fast they generally respond.

If I don’t bring this up now, someone will point it out: Yes, I am including actual security breaches in the analysis.

1. Prevention

How well do publishers prevent an account from being broken into in the first place?

  • Authenticators (either dongle or app form)
  • On-screen PIN (clicked with mouse, sends encrypted message, not through keyboard)
  • Computer recognition (Only recognized computers may log in)
  • IP recognition (If an account suddenly logs in from another country, it is locked)

2. Recovery

Once the account is stolen, how is the process?

  • How long does it take an account to lock down?
  • What damage can be done while the active account is moving about?
  • Can the thief plant information to later use to steal back the account?
  • etc.

3. Cleanup

Once the account is returned to its rightful owner.

  • Compensation (does the company return lost items/characters)

This isn’t the entire list of questions I’ll be taking into account, but it is rather comprehensive. Hopefully I can get some of these developers to get on board and help me out.

GDC Online Awards: MMO Awards


No, Games Developers Conference Online, the piggy nibbler award is for me. GDCO has come and gone, and although the Golden Joystick Awards won’t be released for a little while longer, I wanted to share the results. Because what makes for more controversy and argument than the opinion of someone who molded a piece of metal to represent that opinion?

  • Spiral Knights (Best Online Game Design)
  • DC Universe (Best Online Visual Arts)
  • Rift (Best Online Technology)
  • Wizard101 (Best Community)
  • Shadow Cities (Online Innovation Award)
  • Clone Wars Adventures (Best Audio for an Online Game)
  • Minecraft (Best Community Relations)
  • Garden of Time (Best Social Network Game)
Everquest was also inducted into the GDCO Hall of Fame, next to Ultima Online.

Important: Final Fantasy XIV Subscriptions Start Soon


It’s been ten long months since someone at Square Enix restructured the Final Fantasy XIV team with the human resources equivalent of a carpet bomb, and since then the game has arguably come a long way, both in the huge number of updates bringing in new content, much needed content, fixing the old, purging the bad (physical levels?) and a new way of thinking for the FFXIV team. Unfortunately for us, the time we all knew was coming has shown is ugly head: The free period of Final Fantasy XIV will be coming to a close.

In a new lodestone, President Yoichi Wada announced that the transition will come in late November or early December of this year 2012. But hey, anyone who has been with FFXIV since the beginning has had a full year to play for free. Unless you are me, who adopted early and thanks to my already slow leveling process managed to get three skills above level ten. More importantly, as any person who bought the game should question, what about the subscriptions we still had to sign up to when the game started?

Anyone who has played FINAL FANTASY XIV at any time since its release is already in possession of a FINAL FANTASY XIV service account. These accounts are set to renew their subscriptions automatically, barring deactivation by the account holder. Therefore, if we were to begin regular subscription billings for all existing contracts, players who will not see this announcement or who may not currently wish to pay subscription fees would automatically begin to be charged for their accounts. To avoid this, we have decided to first suspend all automated renewals for service accounts. Only account holders who have agreed to reactivate the automated renewal system will be billed.

That’s generous of them. Final Fantasy has had a year of player dropoff, making for a lot of people who stopped playing and probably don’t follow the game anymore. You can read the entire announcement, as well as download a few documents outlining the team’s plans for the future.

Warhammer Online Isn’t Going Free To Play


I’m sure a lot of people expect me to do the usual poking of fun at Mythic over Warhammer Online, and truth be told I have enough content to fill more than just an introductory and self-parodying paragraph. So for the sake of getting to the point, I will not be referring to Warhammer as “boring crap,” nor will I make a joke about Mythic apparently not seeing the worth in players investing in the MMO, apparently even if that investment is absolutely nothing. And for once, I will stop inciting Mark Jacobs.

VP Eugene Evans over at Bioware Mythic wants the world to know that Warhammer Online is alive and still fighting for survival, and much like the steak supply in a house full of vegetarians, isn’t going anywhere. Evans stated that subscriptions on Warhammer Online have actually risen since the announcement of the free to play MOBA. That being said, if players want Warhammer for free, they’re going to have to turn to Wrath of Heroes. Warhammer, according to Mythic, has no intention on shutting down, nor does it have any intention on going free.

“We also think this is a better approach. You know, how do you make it more accessible? How do you make it a fun experience out of the door? So we’re really starting almost from the ground-up but having the benefit of being able to draw on everything we’ve learned from producing Warhammer Online.”

Since today has seen some conspiracy theories, let’s take a guess on the intention behind Warhammer never going free to play. It’s a successful business move, and if WAR needs anything it’s a bigger community, so who is behind it? Does the team really think that keeping the subscription is best, or does this have to do with EA’s refusal to move their other MMOs into the free to play realm?

Warhammer Online Isn't Going Free To Play


I’m sure a lot of people expect me to do the usual poking of fun at Mythic over Warhammer Online, and truth be told I have enough content to fill more than just an introductory and self-parodying paragraph. So for the sake of getting to the point, I will not be referring to Warhammer as “boring crap,” nor will I make a joke about Mythic apparently not seeing the worth in players investing in the MMO, apparently even if that investment is absolutely nothing. And for once, I will stop inciting Mark Jacobs.

VP Eugene Evans over at Bioware Mythic wants the world to know that Warhammer Online is alive and still fighting for survival, and much like the steak supply in a house full of vegetarians, isn’t going anywhere. Evans stated that subscriptions on Warhammer Online have actually risen since the announcement of the free to play MOBA. That being said, if players want Warhammer for free, they’re going to have to turn to Wrath of Heroes. Warhammer, according to Mythic, has no intention on shutting down, nor does it have any intention on going free.

“We also think this is a better approach. You know, how do you make it more accessible? How do you make it a fun experience out of the door? So we’re really starting almost from the ground-up but having the benefit of being able to draw on everything we’ve learned from producing Warhammer Online.”

Since today has seen some conspiracy theories, let’s take a guess on the intention behind Warhammer never going free to play. It’s a successful business move, and if WAR needs anything it’s a bigger community, so who is behind it? Does the team really think that keeping the subscription is best, or does this have to do with EA’s refusal to move their other MMOs into the free to play realm?

I Love A Good Conspiracy Theory: LOTRO Forums Hacked?


Nothing says loving like a hot conspiracy bun in the oven, I always say. If you use the Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons forums, you’ve likely noticed that Turbine has taken them down due to an unspecified issue:

We have identified a potential issue in the forum system.  As a precautionary measure we have disabled our forums while we investigate.  We will bring the forums back online when we complete our work.  We thank you for your patience.

In all honesty, and given the unseen amount of people who work to crack forum software, this will likely turn into a vulnerability issue. If my assumption is correct, they wouldn’t be the first forum knocked out today (my favorites list shows three fan sites down due to a breach of security). But the important thing is that Turbine is able to do damage control and get the forums back into a working state. Tweakers.net is reporting that the servers have indeed been breached, via SQL injection, although there has been no confirmation from Turbine. Reportedly this issue stems from some poorly assembled coding used to transition Codemasters customers over to Turbine’s service.

While the Turbine forums are down, why not browse the third party forums and take in the conspiracy theorists?

I found it amusing that just after they added the thread saying they want to hire new developers that the forums mysteriously were brought off line

I love the idea of the ex-employee happening to be a skilled and vengeful hacker. It’s like a murder-revenge story, but suitably nerdy.

Fallen Earth Free to Play Today


About an hour and a half ago, Fallen Earth came down to begin the process if integrating a new patch. On a less relevant note, today also marks the transition of Fallen Earth to free to play. GamersFirst predicts five hours of downtime, although players should anticipate heavy server load once the game comes back online. G1 acknowledges this inevitable issue, and has delayed world events until server stability can be dealt with. You can check out the announcement at Fallen Eath’s website, as well as read the patch notes and get acquainted with the new facets of free playing.

The server went down around 8am PST, or 11am EST, or 4pm GMT. Until then, you can make sure that your Fallen Earth account has been properly merged to GamersFirst service. You can do so by following this page.

Important: Sony Was Not Hacked, 93K Accounts Compromised


A title certain to cause confusion among my readers, but I did so to force the few of you who only read the title to read the article itself as well. Despite how some of my fellow MMO journalists have been wording their writing, the Sony database has not been hacked. Rather, Sony announced on the Everquest forums that they’ve detected an attempt to test username/password combinations for a massive amount of accounts ranging from the Playstation Network (PSN) to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). RadarX, otherwise known as Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer, posted that

“these attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources. In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks.  We have taken steps to mitigate the activity.”

Approximately 93,000 accounts passed the “test,” and Sony has subsequently locked them down to prevent further intrusion. Players will have been emailed if they are affected, and will need to unlock their accounts and change their passwords. Since now would be the best time to be preachy, one of the most efficient measures you can take to protect your account is to not use the same password on fan sites.

Lineage 2 Heading Free To Play


NCsoft wants you to play Lineage II your way. Coming off the heels of City of Heroes taking the free to play route comes the announcement that NC is pairing up with Innova to bring free to play to Lineage II. The new model is being called “Play Your Way,” and is not being referred to as free to play, but rather a hybrid model, by NCsoft. So far the details are sparse, but user Pocket Medic of the Lineage II forums posted specifics from Innova’s other services:

Anyone can play for free. However, if you pay the monthly subscription, you get permanent 2x Exp, SP, Drops, Spoils.Item store includes items like Buff Milks, 30-day rent-a-Buffpet, 30 day rent-a-Mount, New Hair Accessories, etc.

More on this to come. Lineage II is one of NCsoft’s best performing games, and I think the dip this past quarter may have been the first indication that the west would go free to play or follow in Lineage’s footsteps and simply shut down.

World Of Warcraft Legitimizes Gold Buying, Tradeable Cash Shop Pets


I thought I smelled something burning while on the drive back home today. Games like Eve Online fight gold farming by allowing people to purchase game time and sell it for in-game currency. This serves the purpose of keeping the big players playing (for free) while allowing people who need an influx of cash to do so without dealing with Chinese identity thieves. Games like Hellgate Global allow players to trade items they purchased from the cash shop in-game for currency, offering the same system but with a different virtual currency.

World of Warcraft recently released a new cash shop pet, but with a twist. This pet can be traded in-game for gold, and the function is deliberate:

 While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re OK with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services.

It’s up to the Warcraft community to decide how to take this move, but for all intent and purpose Blizzard has begun selling gold for real money. There isn’t much of a difference between selling something, and selling a coupon to get something for free at the same price as simply buying it outright.

Check out the rest of the page here.