Cheat Makers Are Still Shady, Black Desert Online Botters Figure Out


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Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve made several attempts to warn people of the dangers of downloading bot software and doing business with gold farmers in online games. Not only do you risk the safety of your accounts, but you also take a chance of having your computer compromised and your identity stolen. Gold farmers, it may surprise you, have a heavy hand in actual crime, and I’m not talking about selling gold to teenagers/adults who feel inadequate in their electronic wealth. I’m talking about people who deal in actual stolen credit cards and often steal from their own customers.

Such is the case, once again, as botters in Black Desert Online recently found out that a popular program was bugged with a keylogger. Users are logging into their accounts to find their characters wiped and items stolen. Hopefully this will serve as a lesson for players looking to get ahead through illegitimate means, but given past history it is only a matter of time before the next incident.

(Source: Reddit)

MMOments: Meg’s Cases In May [RuneScape]


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This is going to be a short piece. RuneScape is getting into May and that means another month-long update. Meg is an NPC normally found in player owned ports, she asks the player questions and disappears for a while to show back up with a reward based on how well the player answered her previous questions. This month Meg is sending the player on various short mini-quests, real simple stuff that only takes a few minutes each day and rewards a small lamp containing experience.

The update, naturally, is a precursor to a future update. Jagex has been teasing the eastern lands, a completely new continent, for well over a decade now. I’m speaking literally, the Eastern Lands are an archipelago first hinted at back around 2005, probably earlier. So Mega May is a daily quest that tasks players with figuring out mysteries. Right now all we know is that there is a ten part “The Eastern Mystery” series, a six part “Robber from the Darkness” series, and a ton of seemingly unrelated quests. The finale, currently unknown, says that you’ll have to visit Meg in the ports to find out why there is no description. Player owned ports are where the player first sends ships to the eastern lands to open trade.

The mini-quest series runs until mid-June, which I’m assuming is going to be the big unveiling of the Eastern Lands update or some big hint of it coming at some future points. It isn’t a well kept secret, but one of Jagex’s shticks has always been the secret that everyone knows about.

In other RuneScape news, the start of the month means it is time to check your giant oysters.

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The Park Out On Xbox One and PS4


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Funcom’s experimental title The Park is out today on modern consoles, letting games of all stripes to experience the same horror that PC players went through last Halloween. Set in the secret world of The Secret World, The Park puts players in the shoes of Lorraine, a mother desperately searching for her son Callum who becomes lost in the dilapidated amusement park.

“We are very excited about bringing ‘The Park’ to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and this launch holds special significance for us, not least because it is our first console release in almost ten years,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “’The Park’ feels truly at home on PlaySation 4 and Xbox One, and it was the perfect title for us to get back on the console scene again.”

MMO Fallout reviewed The Park on PC and found it to be a fun, short game albeit highly predictable and unappealing to those outside of the “walking simulator” genre. You can check out our coverage here.

(Source: Funcom press release)

[Not Massive] Dark Souls III Bans A Mark of From Software’s Incompetence


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From Software is putting the kibosh on bad gameplay in Dark Souls III and you’d better watch out, especially if you’re not cheating, because the developer doesn’t understand how to protect its own customers from exploits in its game design. The premise is simple, the system detects anomalies and “invalid data,” such as equipment modded outside of its capabilities or players absorbing more souls than can be feasibly obtained, and restricts online play to those players. Again, simple, right?

“The warning message will continue to be displayed until the Dark Souls III server team has determined whether or not a violation of the End User License Agreement (EULA) occurred. At that point the account/profile will either have restrictions placed on it (to limit the online interactions during multiplayer sessions and a further penalty message of ‘You have been Penalized’ issued) or the ‘Invalid Game Data’ warning message removed.

Here’s the problem: A major part of Dark Souls III involves being invaded and summoning other players. What happens if a player drops you an item and that item has been hacked? Good luck, you’ll be banned. If a player invades your world and is using a cheat that grants you massive amounts of souls? Too late to turn back now, you’re getting banned. Get invaded by a player using a hack to give himself invincibility or infinite Estus Flasks? Your next invasion is by the ban hammer.

Now From Software has a workaround for this that is very easy to follow. You simply need to constantly back up your save data onto a third party (they recommend a USB drive or a cloud service) and just use that backup if your data gets corrupted because someone ruined your file because From Software allowed them to and subsequently punished you for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

To make matters worse, the anti-cheat system is obscure by design. You’ll never really know when and where your file got corrupted, who corrupted you, and what was corrupt. Did the system flag your account two days ago or two hours ago? Is your backup safe or are you royally screwed? Why doesn’t Bandai Namco have a cloud system that saves your last non-corrupted file? It also doesn’t help that, by Bando Namcai’s own admission, the system is falsely flagging some users.

It also begs the question of, if the anti-cheat system is worth anything, why cheating is still rampant in the game? Forget the guy who gets banned because someone entered his world with infinite Estus Flasks, what about the guy invading other players worlds with his infinite Estus Flasks? What about the guy using the hacked dagger to modify the save game files of others?

All of this screams of a developer that has no idea what it is doing when it comes to online gameplay, stepping into pitfalls that other, more competent developers, figured out how to avoid years ago. Cheats like aimbots and wall hacks will never go away. Allowing players in an online environment to dupe and hack items, not to mention allowing them to trade those items over your servers, is basic protection 101. It’s the same sort of incompetence and inexperience that led to Grand Theft Auto Online becoming a cheater’s paradise while Blizzard figured it out back in the days of early Battle.net.

The Dark Souls series is one of a kind and deserving of all of the praise it gets, but protecting your online game from cheaters and preventing legitimate players from getting caught in the net is an entirely different understanding. From Software should be baking sanity checks in at more than one avenue to ensure that players aren’t bringing their hacked items into other’s worlds. It’s a simple checksum that exists server-side and that compares equipment and items to pre-defined limitations. If those limits are breached, the offender is booted. Again, so simple it makes you wonder why neither From Software nor Namco Bandai ever thought to put it in. It allows people to do whatever they want on their own game without infecting the gameplay of others.

Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter.

VAC Bans Will Extend To Accounts Linked By Phone Number


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(Editor’s Note: The article incorrectly stated incorrectly that the ban on associated accounts lasted three months. The ban on the phone number itself lasts three months, the ban on accounts is permanent. Thank you to Matt in the comments for correcting our mistake.)

Imagine a world where cheaters use burner phones to mask the identities of their individual Steam accounts, not unlike drug dealers, because just such a scenario could become more prevalent with a recent policy change at Valve.

Presently, if you are caught cheating in a VAC-protected game you are banned from VAC-enabled servers on that game. But what is stopping a person from buying Counter Strike: Global Offensive when it goes on sale for fifty cents (or whatever low price it hits during seasonal sales) and stocking up on 10+ accounts? Or Team Fortress 2 which is free to play? Nothing, and it is a noticeable problem in both titles.

Valve is taking on the issue two-fold: The first is to institute a matchmaking system for Counter Strike: GO that only links players whose accounts have phone numbers attached for two-factor authentication. The second is to ban any Steam account associated with that phone number if one of the accounts cheats. The bans on associated phone numbers lasts for three months, during which the number cannot be applied to any other account.

The benefit is that it is effectively impossible to buy a new phone only to find out too late that the guy who held the number before you was VAC-banned and still on probation.

(Source: Engadget)

Surprise! DC Universe Launched On Xbox One Today


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Daybreak Game Company previously announced that DC Universe Online would be heading to Microsoft’s latest console generation, and the less patient of you need wait no longer. As of noon today EST, you can download the free to play superhero MMO on Xbox One and create your dream hero or villain. While there is no cross-platform play with PC and Playstation gamers, content on the Xbox is on par with what is available on the other platforms.

While the game is free to play, you do need Xbox Live in order to play.

(Source: DC Universe)

Guild Wars 2 Polling WvW Content


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How should Arenanet prioritize world vs world content? They want to know, and they’d like you to tell them. In a post on the official website, players have been invited to vote on which project the team will work on next.

The polls are open until May 4th.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

ArcheAge Producer Letter Discusses Security, Servers


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ArcheAge senior producer Merv “Khrolan” Lee Kwai has posted a new producer letter for April 2016, discussing a range of topics from security to server structure. The post starts out by commenting that the western ArcheAge is only one update behind the Korean version.

So where does ArcheAge stand? You may recall Trion warning not too long ago that they would no longer be going easy on certain players for “minor offenses” and had sent a final warning to correct their behavior. The end result, naturally, is that not everyone responded and as a result players were banned. So far this year, 750,000 accounts have been banned for a variety of offenses from gold farming to bot use.

While some players took us up on our offer and corrected their actions, others didn’t and found themselves permanently banned from ArcheAge, regardless of their tenure with the game. It was hard but necessary for the integrity of the game, and players far and wide have expressed their support for our stance on hacking and exploiting.

Last year saw ArcheAge merging servers, prompting players to ask if more servers will be merged in the future. While Trion Worlds has no more mergers planned for the foreseeable future, the company instead intends on offering incentives for players to move/create characters on said low-population servers instead.

Our initial proposal is still in progress (and not final), but the goal is to highlight the appealing qualities of those servers to new players, players who are leveling, players who want to gear up in a less stressful environment, and players who may have trouble finding land. These ideas include providing boosts to experience or vocation, tagging them clearly in the server selection screen for new players, and allowing free inbound character transfers.

The letter goes on to discuss a number of planned updates, re-introducing rapid fire abilities that were altered from their Korean versions and moving event schedules to more reasonable timing. You can read the entire letter at the link below.

(Source: ArcheAge)

Construction Hits Planetside 2


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Daybreak Game Company has deployed the latest major update to Planetside 2, introducing the ability for players to deploy custom fortifications. The three factions are now competing, in addition to territory, for Cortium, a resource that can only be harvested using 4-man transport vehicles known as ANTs. An ANT also grants schematics to create new buildings like Cortium silos and HIVEs which generate victory points over time.

Cortium, a powerful new mineral, has recently been unearthed. This limited resource allows for the near-instantaneous deployment of player-built fortifications. The discovery of Cortium has prompted the deployment of Advanced Nanite Transports (ANTs), which harvest the mineral and convert it into material that can be used in the field.

In addition to Cortium, the entire continent of Indar has been reconstructed. Numerous outposts have been renovated or outright removed in order to make room for player-built bases.

(Source: Planetside 2)

Lego Minifigures Online License Ends In October


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Funcom’s latest quarterly report is out and it looks like Lego Minifigures Online is getting ready to kick the bucket. Launched in 2015, we’ve covered numerous statements from Funcom over the ensuing quarters that the game was not performing up to internal forecasts. Last year, the company even wrote off $2.9 million due to the performance of the online game, making the unprecedented move of taking the title off of its free to play model and converting it over to a buy to play system.

Lego Minifigures Online has been relegated to a lost cause in the latest report, with Funcom stating that there is no hope that the game’s metrics will improve, that it will meet internal expectations, and therefore investment into the game has been adjusted accordingly. Furthermore, the statement specifically mentions that LMO’s license is finished in October.

The Company has during 2015 been unable to improve these numbers. As a result of this the revenues generated by LEGO® Minifigures Online did not meet the internal forecasts. The Company has therefore fully written off the underlying assets of the game. As of the time of this annual report, the Company does not find it likely that any of the game metrics will improve, and has adjusted its investment in the game accordingly. The license agreement with LEGO for the LEGO® Minifigures Online game ends October 2016.

If you’ve yet to buy into Lego Minifigures Online, it is probably in your best interest to keep it that way. While Funcom has not explicitly stated that the service is shutting down, nor have they given a date, the message is quite clear.

(Source: Funcom)