Shadowbane Servers Hacked, Chaos Ensues 773
Vanguard(DC) writes "There was a major hacking incident last night on the servers of Shadowbane, a newly released MMORPG by UbiSoft/Wolfpack. The attackers wreaked havoc on at least one game server, with apparent god-like capabilities in-game. There's already an official statement on the forums - 'Ubi Soft and Wolfpack Studios are now working with law enforcement, and we promise all of you that these individuals will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.'" There's a little more information via a post on the SBCatacombs messageboard - apparently the carnage (including many less powerful players getting killed) involved "..teleporting people all over the world, teleporting hostile guards into the safe-holds, bringing in hordes of special event monsters, and teleporting everyone to a city at the bottom of the sea."
Anyone who played this game in beta surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
This is probably just an exploit from in the game, rather than someone r00ting the server or anything remotely interesting. I had many instances where the server accidently gave me dialogs with GM powers, I imagine that's just what happened here. The culprit(s) may have figured out how to gain access to the GM dialogs dilberatly, but that's about the extent of the "hack" here.
SB was so buggy in the last few weeks of beta that I was finnaly convinced it would not be a worth while game in retail. I likened it to being slightly less bug riddled than UO, and now it appears I was correct. I will say though that OSI never prosecuted (or even remotely punished) me for exploiting their game to "House Loot", because at the time they had the sense not to sue fans for their own mistakes.
It was unbelievable last night (Score:2, Informative)
The weird events started out kind of slowly, like the hackers were testing the water at first. You'd hear of something weird happening, and just think some newbie was lost or confused. But then senior players were getting f*cked up. At that point, I just assumed the servers were crashing or something, and I just left the game. I had no idea that the game was being hacked. I should have stayed on longer to see all the wackiness unfold.
Re:unfortunately this is par for the course (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is a *VASTLY* different problem than anything we've been experiencing.
> Massive warfronts and assaults utilizing seige weapons and a slew of powerful spells and powers. None of this has come to pass.
What server are you playing on? AFAIK, every server has had at least one battle that would put some of EQ's big raids to shame.
I've personally been a part of most of the raids between TBW + allies and TBI/L7F + allies on the Dread server.
> The game lag is too terrible to support even the smallest of battles. PvP is almost impossible during primetime hours due to the inability of most casters to launch spells in a timely manner.
Again, on which server do you play? 90% of the time, Dread is pretty much fine. Sometimes, we experience lag spikes. What are the detailed specs of the computer on which you're playing Shadowbane? Does it suck? Do you have the detail turned all the way off? Are you talking about Latency, or Low Framerate?
Let's be specific here: if you can't give me a server and system configuration, I can't effectively rebuke you. Yeah, some of the highly populated servers can get pretty bad (Mourning and Death), but others are pretty smooth most of the time.
> Server downtime is extreme.
Sorry, WRONG. You're getting login bottlenecks and 'server downtime' confused. Yeah, the servers gone down periodically for maintainance.
> Login is at times completely impossible.
What a stupid thing to say. Yes, IF THE LOGIN SERVER IS DOWN FOR A PATCH, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO LOG IN. What I think you MEAN to say, is that SOMETIMES (meaning infrequently; less than once a week) the login servers get congested, and it takes a while to get into the game. Yeah, it's a pain in the neck, but not all MOGs have a launch like DAOC. Remember EQ (probably not, you wouldn't be complaining)? Yeah, it was worse. Don't make me bring out the Terrible Two (AO & WWIIO).
> Rollbacks are nightly.
The last rollback was on Dread on 3/21. It's been a week since any rollbacks, invalidating your comment.
Check out the "SB Support Announcements" of their message boards before making unfounded comments easily rebuked with proof.
> The attrition rate among players is amazing.
Do you have anything to back this up with besides speculation? So your guild has 'vanished', so what? That could mean your guild sucks, or that they created alts, or they switched servers, or any other of the endless posibilities. Give me hard numbers, or quit the bitchin'.
> Ubi/Wolfpack blatantly reject petitions with no regard or consideration for the players.
Wrong again. When I lost my characters to a bug, WP_Ubiq was quick to respond and kept me fairly regularly posted. Yeah, it sucked at the time, but I was by no means ignored or disregarded.
> Every patch makes the client actually worse that it was before.
More sensationalism. I've watched the patches actually fix bugs. I crash less in Shadowbane now than I do in BF1942. Maybe you should take a look at your computer's setup.
> This has been a nightmare for most of us.
You + myself = 2 people. It's a nightmare for you, I'm at least reasonably satisfied and expect things to get better. 1000-1200 people on Dread at peak seems to question this 'nightmare for most' comment.
> Just another account cancelled in a long line of departing players.
See ya, don't let the door hit you on the way out. I'm sure I'll see you complaining on the release of every other game ever made, with the same parting comment, and the same vapid complaints.
-lw
Re:law? (Score:3, Informative)
If I see a door open to a warehouse I *KNOW* I'm not supposed to be in, is it a crime to walk in and take a couple High-Def TVs?
If I see a gun just lying around, is it a crime for me to shoot people with it? I mean, it's not my gun.
YES!
So why is it so unusual that manipulating private software, even if the entry point is public and easily accessible, should be a crime? Why should we expect the virtual "world" to be any different, especially considering that it's much more anonymous and therefore much more enticing to break the law?
If I expose a bug in an online ordering system to get a stereo for $.01, I'm breaking the law. If I append &debug=1 to the end of a URL and suddenly get into their CMS, I'm breaking the law.
And if I use a bug I've discovered, and KNOW I shouldn't be manipulating, to ruin a game for thousands of other people...well, it's the same as causing a public disturbace at any large function. Might as well have streaked at the superbowl; at least that would have impressed the chicks.
Jesus Christ you're a retard. (Score:4, Informative)
That was the Velious expansion with ToV, not Luclin. Obviously, taking both your posts together, you know precisely jack shit about the game and its CS history.
Corruption and preying on players for amusement is rampant in the EQ guide program. For most people, it's a slack way to get yourself a free account. You can sneak onto the server at 3am when nobody else is there, and do whatever the hell you want. You don't even have to answer a single petition, the guide reports are on the honor system. I and many others simply made up reports and bullshit petitions to fill in for the manditory 6-hours per week. Bingo: Free account, no work, and endless hours power-tripping across the game world.
For example, a guide friend of mine would sit outside the North Freeport bank, and open the locked door at the back of the bank. This door is never opened by players, because the lock level on the door is some absurdly high level. Invariably, someone curious would wander into this back "closet" behind the door to have a look around. This is when the guide would close the door, locking the player inside. If the player was a caster, they could just gate out, but a melee-type character was stuck more-or-less forever. The guide would wait for this player to petition after a few minutes, then delete the petition, and
Don't pretend this doesn't happen to GMs also. The GM of Mithaniel Marr back in 2001, "Chaolash", was fired for doing favors for friends on his server. Making them free items, spawning mobs for his friends, and so on. Occaisionally these GMs turn abusive, Chao did it, and I'm sure other GMs have also. He wasn't the only GM "quietly" let go for abuses, and he won't be the last.
I don't know if you really were a guide, but I suspect not. If you were, You must have been one of those dumbass Apprentice guides we'd flunk out of the program within their first trial week. You know, the ones who couldn't answer a petition for free GM lewt inside of 10 minutes, and without escalating it two times for the GM to smack you down like the idiot you were for wasting his time.
The one invariable fact of MMORPGs is, in that they are just artificial social ladders to climb, there will always be people who base their entire lives on trying to climb them. They define their self-esteem from these ladders, because these games are the world to them. Generally they have no social lives, and/or are young, or are disabled/sedentary. THESE are the people who are capable of doing the things mentioned in the Shadowbane article. Coincidentally, these are also the prime market targets for the gaming companies. It's inevitable that someone would take advantage of a bug granting GM abilities, and the game companies have only themselves to blame for leaving the back door wide open.
As for the EQ Guide Program, I quit after about 16 months of service. In general, they treat(ed) their guides like small mushrooms: kept in the dark, and eating shit all day. The guide liason at the time was about as friendly and responsive as an IRS Tax clerk, and the system itself was biased to mistrust guides (perhaps justifiably) to such an extent that we couldn't do anything significant for the players besides get them unstuck from a wall. Anything of note had to be handled by a GM. It is this atmosphere that breeds reactions like the Veeshan's Peak incident (for which the person was banned from Everquest permanently, BTW). And this atmosphere, according to friends of mine still in the program, shows no signs of changing anytime soon.
Lastly. I wrote a long article about Everquest and its flaws for Slashdot. You can read it here:
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/27/1748252.sht
Re:What about the judge and jury? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Every MMORPG learns the same lessons (Score:4, Informative)
For instance, you have to have all of the ray-tracing and occlusion logic (or at least a lot of it) running on the server to know when each client would be able to see a particular object that may or may not be behind a wall AND you have to be able to tell the client everything it needs to display that object in real time, instead of just giving position. That would be hard to do in a high-framerate 1st person shooter, for instance.
Luckily enough for me, my project is not a high-framerate 1st person shooter. But still, this kind of thing can be very difficult.
When you are a company with a budget and a deadline, it just may not be worth the extra cost to eliminate the risk. After all, the reason companies are making such games today are because previous efforts (which got hacked) were successful, not failures.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Informative)
OTOH, If I owned a private, pay-for-membership chess club, with a sign out front which says "no tresspassing" (pronounce it "terms of service") and you came in and flipped over a chess board and then ran out, I _could_ call the cops on you and file charges for tresspassing. Then sue you in civil court for damage to my business as well.