The odds of getting caught while firing off denial of service attacks against corporate servers may be low, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that the act is any less criminal. Romanian citizen Calin Mateias found that lesson out the hard way when a judge issued a one year prison sentence and $30,000 in damages after the man was found guilty of attacking the World of Warcraft servers. The distributed denial of service attacks lasted from February to September 2010 and were primarily motivated out of a “juvenile desire” to beat his rivals.
Yes, a 37 year old man will be spending a year in prison because he so desperately wanted to beat people in World of Warcraft that he committed a criminal act. Mateias was also required to foot Blizzard’s costs in preventing his attacks at the time, which ran close to thirty thousand dollars. In case that doesn’t paint enough of a picture, Mateias used the online handle “Dr. Mengele,” after the infamous Nazi doctor.
In some MMOs, the idea of players being able to engage in PvP combat outside of designated areas can be horrifying. Someone gaining the ability to engage in combat where they shouldn’t could go on a rampage and make use of the full loot systems in games like RuneScape, and make the lives of many players miserable before they are eventually banned. In MMOs like World of Warcraft, the threat is slightly less present. Death is little more than a time setback, the penalty paid in a moderate fee to repair armor.
And speaking of World of Warcraft, everyone is dying. In the streets, in the houses, but mostly in the main cities. For several hours yesterday, on multiple servers, a kill exploit ran rampant through the major cities of Azeroth, with low level characters mowing down players and NPCs without a second thought. The exploit was hotfixed by Blizzard, and the perpetrators have presumably been banned. Eurogamer tracked down the source of the exploit, and found quite an interesting justification for the action:
“We had to. The first account ban for using the kill hack was issued around 30 minutes before we started nuking cities. We did so because we knew it was going to be fixed,”
Now might be a good time to explain that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you are obligated to.
Here’s an interesting story out of Blizzard. According to this post on the Blizzard forums, World of Warcraft will see the introduction of cross-realm dungeon finder, for players who have friends on different realms, but still want to go through dungeons and heroics together. A new system in development will allow players with RealID friendships to dungeon together, regardless of what realm they are on, as long as they’re on the same faction.
Of course for Blizzard this spells l-o-d-s of e-m-o-n-e, and what does that spell? Loadsa money! Probly…
It’s important to note that as with some of the other convenience- and connectivity-oriented features we offer, certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based, though only the player sending the invitations will need to have access to the premium service.
The above is causing quite a bit of discussion on the thread about whether this violates Blizzard’s promise to not charge for services that offer an advantage, as well as questioning the necessity in charging for a service that is hardly a technological feat at this point in World of Warcraft’s lifespan (The game already supports cross-realm dungeons and realid invites).
So much for Bobby Kotick not having his greedy little fingers in Blizzard’s pie. Big thanks to Verterdegete on the MMORPG.com forums for pointing this out. I’m guessing the service will be just as successful as the $25 pet, although I know plenty of people who are hoping this is thrown out with the mandatory real-name forum update.
With all the talk over the Japanese relief aid, it’s easy to forget that MMO developers are still doing charity for other purposes. Late last year, Blizzard introduced the Moonkin Hatchling, a $10 cosmetic pet selling with 50% of the proceeds being donated to Make A Wish. Blizzard also worked with Make A Wish to bring two kids to their headquarters to visit and see what the development team does on its daily routines.
According to Gamasutra, Blizzard has released their figures: $800,000 donated to Make A Wish. Between now and July 31st, Blizzard has added yet another pet, in which 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross efforts in Japan.
Private servers being shut down is nothing new, and as much as players like to discuss the legality of them, at the end of the day they are illegal. Now, being illegal and warranting action are two separate things. Lawyers cost a lot of money (generally around $500 an hour), so paying a lawyer to draft up a threat against little Timmy’s private WoW server that peaks at twenty people who don’t pay anything and crashes every couple of hours makes no sense from a business perspective, and odds are neither Timmy nor his friends on the server are going to just go and start paying for WoW afterwards.
It is this idea that directly corresponds to why you see only certain servers shut down, and generally they fit into two categories: Massive amount of users and profit. You may see developers shut down the private servers with the most amount of players, and that is likely because, unlike Timmy’s server, they can presume a number of those players will indeed go back to playing regular WoW, owing to a newfound belief that any large server will be inevitably shut down and their progress gone. Free servers rarely see the ire of the developer, as they can be somewhat seen as free advertising: a lower quality version to incite people into paying for the full product.
Servers that make profit, either through charging subscriptions or introducing cash shops, are the type that are most likely to face litigation, and this is exactly what happened in the case of Scapegaming. In the case of this lawsuit, launched in October 2009, the operator of the server (Allyson Reeves) was operating a microtransaction system on her server, and according to the lawsuit managed to accrue more than $3 million in fees from players.
I will admit that the extra $80 million or so that the judge slapped on for willful infringement is a little exaggerated, and unfortunately it is required by law and will be appealed (and most likely reduced), but it takes a lot of stones to set up a server you know is already legally dubious, and then go ahead and start making a profit off of it.
I don’t normally post my Youtube videos here, but I figured I’d make an exception. In Hillsbrad Foothills on WoW, I encountered this NPC. Despite my multiple attempts at killing him, he would fight me until his health hit a certain level, and the he would rubber band back to his waypoint (like an NPC usually does if they chase you out of a certain range), heal back to full health, and come after me again. You’ll notice I tried a few times in the video to figure out if I was outside of his “range.”
I did see the Chuck Norris NPC a few times several days after that and after a few server restarts. It seems this NPC in particular is bugged, rather than simply being the fault of a desync, or connection issues. All of the other NPCs in the area were fine.
So I guess you win this battle, Chuck Norris NPC…until I hit level 40 and can one-shot you.
Check it out in HD. I’ll be adding more videos as time goes on, from various games.
Because you didn't look enough like a nerd before.
Ask someone who strays away from MMOs what their biggest fear about the genre is, and chances are one of those answers will be along the lines of “looking like a nerd.” Despite World of Warcraft, among other games, bringing MMOs into the mainstream audience, many MMOers (alongside video games as a whole) still fear the age old stereotype that we are all basement dwelling nerds with pale skin who live with our parents at the age of 30, dress up as female characters, and participate in LARPing. Now, I may not have a basement, and my Irish/Croatian/German mixture does leave me with mayonnaise-esque skin, and I am under all consideration a nerd, however I am at least ten years off of 30, and still in college.
But I’m getting off track here. Blizzard’s recent update (as with all updates) is causing quite an outrage among privacy advocates. The update to the Armory now broadcasts all of the player’s feats in real time, with the option to subscribe via RSS. Players are also unable to opt out of this feed, or keep it protected to friends and family, making it the bane of players who either shouldn’t be playing World of Warcraft, or those who happen to boot the game up at work.
Now, these players may just be wearing their +10 armor tinfoil hat, but there is something to be said about not wanting your activities broadcast for all to see. Chances are, most of you have had marathons that you wouldn’t want broadcast, staying up that extra half hour that turned into a 3am raid, and by the time you got to sleep the sun was coming back up. But I digress.
One of the MMO Fallout Scouters in WoW reported that this is in fact a useful tool to guilds. Using the RSS feed for raids, Guild Leaders could consolidate the members of the raid to a feed, where they could monitor what the players are looting to ensure that no one is breaking the guild’s rules secretly.
I’m not going to bother going into the legality that people are bringing up, because the move is legal. Blizzard does still have full ownership over everyone’s account, and this is in the terms of service and EULA. Whether or not Blizzard adds an opt-out for this feature comes down to how many players are willing to vote with their wallets and leave over this. Other than that, this all comes down to player’s prerogative.
In a recent interview with Joystiq, J. Allen Brack (Lead Producer over at Blizzard) had this to say on the game’s longevity:
I have said, internally, and I think externally as well, that I fully expect WoW to be around for at least 10 more years.
Good news for anyone getting worried (IE: Borderline paranoia) about World of Warcraft shutting down. 10 more years? Hopefully by then World of Warcraft will have transferred over to a neural system beamed directly into our cerebral cortex so we can monitor real life with one eye while leveling to the 100 level cap, raiding, gaining tier 25 armor in the other.
Crimecraft launched today, and if there’s one thing to say about the developers, Vogster Entertainment, it is that they are very self aware. They recognize that Crimecraft is foremost a shooter, and secondly an MMO (the persistent lobby). They are stout in their belief that Crimecraft is not, as many naysayers seem to believe, a “Grand Theft Auto IV MMO” and is more focused on team play than soloing. More importantly, when asked about their upcoming competitor All Points Bulletin, Vogster has nothing to say other than bring it on.
MMO Fallout 