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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Neocron Cheaters Get Unexpected Surprise 26

Posted by simoniker from the welcome-to-karmic-payback dept.
Thanks to Avault.com for pointing to a Neocron news posting warning users of the MMORPG against fake cheat programs. According to administrators of this PC cyberpunk MMO title, "Several third party programs containing keyloggers or other malicious spyware have shown up recently. Skill-Chart.sfx.exe was posted on the Newbie forum and has quickly been removed. NeocronHook.exe claims to make you level faster and get more items and credits, but all it does is install a keylogger that sends its findings to an IRC channel." Those hoping to escape the levelling treadmill programmatically are, no doubt, very disappointed.
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Neocron Cheaters Get Unexpected Surprise More

Neocron Cheaters Get Unexpected Surprise

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  • I have only one thing to say about those who downloaded these ersatz "cheats"...

    Ha-ha! *points*

    In all seriousness, aren't cheaters supposed to be extra paranoid, lest they be cheated themselves?

    • Re:Speaking as someone who despises cheating onlin (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cheating? MMORPGs are usually just tedious repetative tasks. Most modern technology is centered around preventing humans from having to bother with tedious repetative tasks. I'd think programs that run the level treadmill would be the natural evolution of such games.
    • I think that this is great....

      If you are cheating and not using a firewall, you are a MORON. If you have cheats, there is no need for them to go out to the internet. That is why I use open source cheats, or I write my own.

      I prefer to write my own, I get more functionality and I get what I want. For some MMORPGs, I was able to write a crafting program that did all of my mundane work for me. The program worked on a variable timer, so there was no real pattern to the automation. Since I never released t
    • I have no problem cheating in single player games. Making it rain cars in Vice City is hilarious. People who cheat online are scum.

      Astout firewall would stop these trojans from sending anything. Kerio pops up a requester everytime an unauthorised program tries to access the net. Scary the amount of programs that do try and phone home.

      I discovered a trojan on my system recently, but I think it was inactive. I think it came in in a Vice City trainer. (The aforementioned raining cars:)) I could find nothing

      • I discovered a trojan on my system; thank god it wasn't a used one.

        But seriously, a lot of people feel safe with "personal firewalls" as part of their DSL routers. These often just do a 'pass out any keep state', allowing no connections initiated from the 'outside' to your internal network, but permitting everything outbound.

        That being said, (a) it's yer own damn fault if you have nothing better to do than play a game that requires you to spend 8 months getting a decent character together, and (b) serve
        • A big reason I no longer play Counterstrike in the wild is because of the cheating. I have a bunch of guys I play it with that I know won't cheat and that's that. Don't play as much as I'd like, but if I get 0wned, I'd much rather know it was through skill than wonder if the guy behind the gun is an asshole running a wall hack.

          I run Kerio Personal Firewall and have it set so that ANY software that tries to connect out, unless I've given it explicit permission in the past (and I ONLY permit stuff like WS-FT
  • Write software all your life, get a computer science degree, become professional programmers and reverse engineer the game yourself, then make your own fucking cheats.

    It works for me, and I don't have to assault my sense of decency by uttering "h3y j00 g0t n3 cr4ckz 4 3v3rkw3zt" in chat forums.
  • +xxx +"right-click to download"

  • ...Speaking as a Neocron player... (Score:4, Informative)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @02:09PM (#6668164) Journal
    There has been a thread on the Neocron Forums about this. [neocron.com] It surprises me that many people still have boxes that work - one guy today was bragging that he doesnt patch or use any form of firewall or anti virus on XP for 2 years and has had no problems.

    Talk about lucky!
    • how is neocron otherwise nowadays? i tried it in the beta for a short while, and found it, eh, rather empty back then except the cellar where everyone was killing rats, and i couldn't find the way out of the 'city'(dunno if one existed then even).. so, is there finally something worthwhile to do?

      • Re:...Speaking as a Neocron player... (Score:4, Informative)

        by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @02:54PM (#6668617) Journal
        how is neocron otherwise nowadays? i tried it in the beta for a short while, and found it, eh, rather empty back then except the cellar where everyone was killing rats, and i couldn't find the way out of the 'city'(dunno if one existed then even).. so, is there finally something worthwhile to do?

        It's pretty good - I've been playing it since November 02 and I'm still not bored. What I particularly like about it is that because its done by an independent company there is a lot of stuff in there that you just wouldnt see elsewhere - strippers for example.They have a free 10 day trial at the moment so why not check it out? [neocron.com]

        If you want to see some other stuff try the Nema magazine:

        Nema Issue 3 [neocron.com]

        I play on server Pluto as Skinfitz.

        *hides to escape hoards of /. PK'ers*
      • I have had the chance of becoming a beta player back in the days, but since Reakktor had given out duplicate ID's to people in their "You've been chosen as a beta-tester!!!!1" e-mails, and someone else had already signed up using the ID I received, I was back to being a fanboi on the forums, waiting and waiting for the open beta.

        Once the open beta arrived, I downloaded it off some semi-official FTP and installed. Soon I saw the servers become full of exploiters becoming uber-leet after 3 days of play or
    • It's just a matter of being careful. Well, patching has to be done. But firewall or anti-virus? No, just be careful. I've had anti-virus installed for 2 years, it's never had a hit. Never hit anything before that either.

      It really disturbs me how many people just blindly stick 'products' on their computer to make it 'safe'. Safety is something you only get by being careful and taking care of your computer. Software can help, but it has to start with knowledge.

  • Why Cheat? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Neo Bahamut ( 697128 ) on Monday August 11, 2003 @02:32PM (#6668416) Homepage
    I've never understood why people need cheat programs for so many of these games. Why can't they just be happy and play the games as they were meant to be played? I can see the retort now: "It makes the game more fun." But if you need to do something like cheat in order to make the game fun, what's the point in playing it? Ah, well, I'm no psychologist. And then there are those that love to capitalize on a player's "need" to cheat. They make these malicious programs to trick players by offering them the means to cheat, but only providing themselves with an advantage. Cheating, as with any game, can only result in everybody getting hurt.

    • Re:Why Cheat? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why? Because the games are imperfect.

      If I created an flawed character (a smart warrior, any kind of druid) and slogged it up to the end game only to find that I can't compete, why should I have to xp grind another character all the way up? There are hundreds of other stupidities that can be overcome with a tweak or two.
    • What boggles me even more is why some people are willing to pay massive amounts of money for powerful weapons/armor or in game cash. Isnt this basically the equivalent to cheating without hacking the game?
  • of that Quake3 cheating prog, that would steal your Cdkey in the process.

  • hmmm (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Would it suprise you if the game companies themselves were doing this to discourage cheating in the MMORPGS? I've written cheats for FPS's before, and although I did put in a backdoor to disable the bot if I wanted to (so I wouldn't have to play against my own aimbot), I wouldn't ever put in malware because it ruins your rep. And yes, you do have a rep in the cheating community :P -NoClanNeeded
  • . . . thousands of playa's were somehow surprised to discover that they had been infected with a virus after cheating on their wives.

    Guys, when you do something you're not supposed to do, you get in trouble.

    This is not a new concept.

    This is not a surprise.

    This is a natural consequence of getting involved with low-lifes and morons.

    Don't do it.
  • I'm a little surprised that it took an Adrenaline Vault article now to tell game users about something that's been going on for years.

  • I'm a coder for a MUD (yeah... old skool, sucka). Over the weekend we had some idiots in there who were asking if there were any cheats. I calmly explained to them that the last time there was a major cheat there was a player file wipe (pwipe). Of course they didn't seem to care... Once they realized I was an admin for the game they quickly changed their tune ("Cheats are no fun anyways") after defending their actions to other players who thought they sucked...

    My point is non-existant... just that people w
  • I used Windows Macro Recorder (from Windows 3.11) to make a simple macro that attacked monsters, killed, them, and healed me. Left it running until I hit level 100.

    Leveling in that MMORPG (and so many others) was no more than a menial time sink. The fact that a program could easily and unintelligently do it without one whit of input from me gave me very little incentive to waste time. There was no skill involved, no excitement, no fun: just XP >> Levels.

    Computers are designed to automate menial t

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