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Comments: 104 +- Games: NCSoft Drops GameGuard From Western Launch of Aion on Saturday September 19, @10:17AM
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chalkyj writes "NCSoft has announced that they will be dropping GameGuard from the western launch of their upcoming MMORPG, Aion. The flawed Korean anti-cheat software has been heavily criticized for employing root-kit like techniques and conflicting with many hardware configurations. The final straw is thought to have been the stability issues experienced by players during open beta and the community outcry it caused. The decision makes Aion, which recently announced over 400,000 western pre-orders, a real contender in the western MMO market."
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That's nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice thing about MMO's is that the companies actually *have to* listen to customers or they will stop playing and paying. Blizzard alone has 2500+ people working on customer support related jobs.
You of course cant listen to or adjust the game by every single person, but you have to listen to the larger group. This is true even more because Aion is NCSoft's try to create real competitor in the western markets.
And the game does look good with its Crytek Engine and with some of the gameplay mechanics. I haven't played it myself, but some friends have been playing the beta and say it is quite fun. However I will wait for more reviews first, as I cant concentrate on WoW that much either. What I'm worried about is that it will have lots of grinding like WoW, specially because thats even more common in Asian games.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"Blizzard has 2500+ people working POORLY in customer support related jobs. They make decisions based on hearsay and ban without even doing a thorough investigation into the matters at hand. It's beginning to cost them in playerbase (I know, they still have a lot of players) just as it did with SOE and EverQuest when WoW was initially released."
I can confirm that. Bought a copy of Diablo II LOD about a month ago, played for two weeks, tried to log on again today, and found out my CD key's been disabled/bann
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I actually read all of those support pages and wrote a few e-mails to Blizzard before coming here to complain ;)...
As for the comment about the CD key generators - are you sure? Are companies actually dumb enough to generate their keys with such an easily duplicated algorithm? I find that a bit hard to believe.
As far as I can tell, Blizzard screwed up.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. They are obviously all generated on server-side, so theres no cd key generators. However, there are lots of malware that claim to be "WoW cd key generators" that just steal accounts for their owners.
Re: (Score:2)
I hear you. But you're way behind on current events! If you want the best DPS class, roll a retribution paladin!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They make decisions based on hearsay and ban without even doing a thorough investigation into the matters at hand. It's beginning to cost them in playerbase (I know, they still have a lot of players) just as it did with SOE and EverQuest when WoW was initially released.
Any real evidence behind this assertion, or are you just basing this on, well, hearsay? I've played the game since launch, and ALL of the bans & suspensions that I have seen happen have all been more than merited by the players' conduct. So unless you have some sort of evidence or even an anecdote that might support this claim, this sounds like an angry, bitter rant from someone who got banned/suspended, or had a friend get banned/suspended for good reason. Given said angry rant, I would imagine that
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Any real evidence behind this assertion, or are you just basing this on, well, hearsay? I've played the game since launch, and ALL of the bans & suspensions that I have seen happen have all been more than merited by the players' conduct. So unless you have some sort of evidence or even an anecdote that might support this claim, this sounds like an angry, bitter rant from someone who got banned/suspended, or had a friend get banned/suspended for good reason. Given said angry rant, I would imagine that it was well deserved. :)
I was on the forums one day and saw a post about "sex toys." I clicked to view the post and it was rather nasty. I replied to the post, simply saying; "This will probably get you banned for sexual harassment and various other reasons." I then left for work. When I came home, I tried to log back into the forums (I used to post helpful information for people, true story) and a message saying - "You have been banned from the forums for the following reasons: Making threats, demeaning someone for their sexual
Re:That's nice (Score:4, Interesting)
Blizzard has 2500+ people working POORLY in customer support related jobs. They make decisions based on hearsay and ban without even doing a thorough investigation into the matters at hand. It's beginning to cost them in playerbase.
The few times I've had to contact GMs, the experience has been uniformly positive. And I know of a number of people who were hacked and had their stuff ripped off. Each of them got their gear back in a few days. I don't know of anyone leaving the game due to customer service. I played Everquest for years, and WoW CS is head and shoulders above SoE.
Now take that above and toss nerfs into the mix. Not just item nerfs or class nerfs, but CONTENT nerfs. Making "epic" raid encounters so trivial that almost any casual guild with all green gear and ventrilo can take out most of the upper-tier content.
I used to be upset about reducing the difficulty of content. However, it's actually a really good move on Blizzard's part. Unless they do stuff like that, the game becomes a filter where fewer and fewer players get to see the content. Once the hard core "uber" players have seen some content, what's the problem with easing the encounters so other players can see it?
I mostly did PvP with my rogue and not to float my own boat, but I was good at it. Then some warlock made a video that showed his poor class playing ability and how rogues were somehow so uber they needed to be nerfed to Hell and back. It got to the point where every PvP nerf they gave me hurt me in PvE high-end raiding content. Even with tier 7+ gear it was hard to do what a rogue SHOULD do - damage things better than the tank at least.
So they nerfed your class and then you got pissed off and decided to stop playing. Well, guess what, every MMO is going to need rebalancing, and that may include nerfs. I was seriously annoyed when they nerfed fear ward on my priest, but that's just the way it goes.
Yes, I am bitter toward WoW and Blizzard. In fact, I hope WoW dies a horribly, slow burning death
It's a game, it's not worth getting that pissed off about. Play a different game. Go outside and see the ball of yellow light in the sky.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, no...
We will however continue to pursue ways to effectively utilize GameGuard within Aion in the future.
So once you've payed for the game, they'll bring it back.
Re: (Score:2)
But the idiots are apparently the ones who pay the bills, so they get what they want. What's wrong with that?
Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
No, they basically say the exact opposite.
The entirety of the relevant text from The Full Article:
After analyzing our open beta test results Aion will not feature GameGuard at launch. We will however continue to pursue ways to effectively utilize GameGuard within Aion in the future. Right now we're focused on providing players with the best possible Aion experience.
Essentially, they're saying that the implementation is flawed, not the concept.
-- 77IM
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I hope they work with GameGuard to make their system less invasive. Some anticheat protection is needed in online games, just to stop the kiddies getting hacks and ruining the game for every one. Those who make private hacks will always know their way around, but on the other hand they also know how to use them and wont ruin the game for everyone (for leveling or fishing or whatever - but they wont be running around killing people with hacks for fun, because they know that'll get them banned by gamemasters)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, and that protection should be "design your server on the basis that every client is a bot". Every one of these dumbfuck companies makes the same fundamental mistake - trusting the client - and even outfits that commit to burning resources playing an never ending game of Whack The Hack always lag behind the exploits [mmowned.com].
Re: (Score:2)
They aren't trusting the clients just for fun. Current technology has to put lots of things on the client so it works good. I surely hope this will, and probably does, change in the future but currently it's not applicable.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Except that Blizzard has made their own DRM/antihack software invisible to almost all of their players, and that's the important difference. Anecdotally, I've never met anyone who was unable to play because of it. I've met several unwilling to play because of a healthy paranoia about spyware, but even as spyware it's quite technically competent.
Parent
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Now if they promise not to 'include it' in future patches that would be swell. I might actually considering trying it.
Yeah, that really stopped people from buying World of Warcraft.
Notice that the WoW Warden is much less intrusive than GameGuard (it even allows for playing WoW on Linux using wine, which means it is very much standards compliant). Big difference here.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The difference being that blizzard's warden actually works properly. Gameguard is a buggy, ineffective piece of crap. It gets rebroken within days (if not hours) of being updated and causes frequent BSODs when it screws up.
Poor Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not DRM.
It has nothing to do with DRM.
It was used previously in FreeToPlay games like 2moons to prevent cheating via game hacks.
It failed utterly in that regard and was dropped.
If Aion was relying on it as an anti hack measure - and "may introduce it later" - the game is already doomed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the program rootkits your system and prevents you from running certain software... well that sounds like DRM to me. I'd be happy to use a different term if you have something that's more accurate while conveying the same information.
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo. If they trust the client - which they apparently do - then the game is Epic level fucked from the get-go.
At this point, the best outcome they can hope for is that the game is so unpopular that nobody bothers owning the client. Talk about lose-lose.
Re:Poor Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
WoW and other gamers are quite easy to make hacking tools to too, but players reporting cheaters to gamemasters and the fact one account costs whole new game limits it goodly.
WoW also has Warden to detect cheating programs and bots. I don't know how effective it is, but unlike some other anti-cheat programs, it shuts off when WoW does, and it doesn't stay on the system if you were to uninstall WoW.
It's also been reported that Blizzard is suspending accounts that are played on machines that they detect have spyware on for 24 hours. It's started happening when they began collecting "Non-identifiable system information" again. They don't won't suspend the account though if you have an authenticator attached to your account.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems people just like to throw "DRM" word around because of its bad image here on slashdot.
Anti-cheat software, however, employs similar tactics and has similar effects. Example: Blizzard's Warden checks for certain programs running in the background. SecuROM does the same thing. Only difference is, SecuROM doesn't like DaemonTools, while Warden probably cares more about Glider (if it still exists).
The biggest difference between DRM and anti-cheat in general is motivation -- legitimate players actually do benefit, much more directly, if the anti-cheat software works, whereas if DRM could ever wor
better example (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't accept a rootkit from my bank to do my online banking, why the hell would I accept a rootkit for playing a freaking video game?
I hope you understand the technical differences between online banking and an online multiplayer game. Because of latency, internet connections, servers still not as capable and so on, its still not possible to let the server control process everything. For example player movements are not send to the server, but only their x,y coordinates. Then server doesn't need to calculate everything, but client can handle it. On the other hand, server can still make some calculations based on movement speed (I think I
Re: (Score:2)
Any word on Exteel? (Score:3, Interesting)
GameGuard doesn't cause any problems (Score:5, Funny)
I was in the open beta (hey, free game!) and I think the accusation that GameGuard introduces security vulnerabilities into your system, which linger after you uninstall it, are an exaggeration.
No-one wants to hack my desktop, anyway.Being well-endowed is the biggest gift the nature can give to a man. You are ashamed to take shower in public pools and gyms because of your tiny pecker? Now you can leave all your inhibitions behind as we know how to help you enlarge your instrument. Widest selection of desire lifters for men and women! We sell products for making your nights perfect!~
Gameguard Problems (Score:2)
I did not like that, especially when I've ran games before that used Gameguard and that action wasn't necessary with them.
I don't mind the idea of Gameguard, I just don't like it's implementation and lack of effectiveness.
(Especially when it won't play nice with my security.)
Preorders not an indication of MMO success (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The game has been out in the Asian market quite a while already where it really has been a big success so far. The pre-order numbers are just for the Western market, so that's actually a really high pre-order figure compared to even past MMOs that have had high pre-orders but then still failed.
I think it's that- the extraordinarily high pre-order, coupled with the fact it's already a success in Asia that has people wondering if maybe this time we really are seeing the arrival of the next big MMO.
Bad conclusion (Score:2)
"The decision makes Aion, which recently announced over 400,000 western pre-orders, a real contender in the western MMO market."
I think having over 400,000 pre-orders in the western market makes it a contender, not the decision to remove their DRM. But hey, I don't assume the general population has the same slashdot groupthink mentality that I may have.
Re: (Score:2)
No, that number is lower then both AoC and Warhammer by a good deal. You call either of those a "contender" these days?
The number of people still playing in six months is the only indicator of success for a MMO. The number of people who pre-order is a function of hype generation and has nothing to do with the long term success of the game.
GameGuard thinks battery backups are for cheaters (Score:2, Informative)
Misleading (Score:2)
They dropped a feature to meet the launch date. (Score:2)
We can only hope.
gameguard circumvention is easy (Score:3, Informative)
As Auxis alluded to below, you can simply write a hack to tell the game that gameguard is running when it's not. These hacks are readily available for Lineage II (and I suspect almost every other game popular enough to warrant them), so all gameguard does is treat the gamer like a criminal while doing little to actually prevent unauthorized use.
Re:Rootkitting is a-okay for cheat protection (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You clearly know nothing about MMO design. You have to trust the client for many things, or the game will be unresponsive or unplayable. Anti-cheating software is absolutely necessary.
Re: (Score:2)
But if upper end players are failing the bot tests (determined to be a bot, by some process), then maybe that'd be okay - just move them over to a server with other upper-end players and, yes, those bots. They've clearly gotten too good for mere mortals anyway, might as well let them brag about how they pwned the latest aimbot? :)
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong.
A game that needs to prevent cheating on the client side rather is just broken by design.
Just make the server check each action requested by any client is valid according to the game rules. That's not nearly as expensive as people like to believe, assuming the developers knew a bit about algorithmics.
Re: (Score:2)
What you mean like warden? It looks for hooks, but doesn't root. And operates from within the game.
Re: (Score:2)
What does requiring an user account and illegitimate copies have to do with an *anticheat* program?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
absolutely nothing
He saw the letters DRM in someone's post and his brain crashed
Re: (Score:3, Informative)