Europeans Find Trouble In Camelot

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Europeans Find Trouble In Camelot

Posted by simoniker on Monday September 22, 2003 @08:15PM from the dark-ages-indeed dept.

Thanks to GamesRadar for their investigation into trouble with the European version of Dark Ages Of Camelot, following an earlier 'hacking incident' on the PC MMORPG. The piece discovers that: "Customers say access to their subscription accounts and ability to contact GOA.com (who hosts servers for the Mythic Entertainment game in the UK, France and Germany) was disabled without notice by the company, who later went on to disable all game passwords as well. Subsequent statements about time frames for services to return to normal have not been met." GOA's comments on the lack of notice: "...we were unable to communicate that this was a hack in order to prevent further attacks or damage."

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Sucks. by evslin · 2003-09-22 20:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

One more reason so many Euros play on the US servers. The servers in Europe are several patches behind, GOA handles support instead of Mythic (as I understand it GOA's support is subpar even compared to Mythic), and now this. Sad because it's a really good game once you get past the support problems.
1. Re:Sucks. by Shembrylae · 2003-09-22 21:05 · Score: 1
  
  Why play DAOC at all anyway? If you large and small scale PvP, politics and nation building, play Shadowbane. If you want snazzy graphics and a relaxed atmosphere play SWG.
Modding Simoniker down? by RobotWisdom · 2003-09-22 21:18 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I'm quite interested in game news, but Simoniker has been posting about six trillion 'news' items a day lately, and I don't think more than a fraction of them are of general interest.
Can someone convince him to keep most of them off the front page?
1. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-22 21:46 · Score: 0
  
  I think this is a very interesting news article, as it illustrates the divide between how a 3rd party is handling the running of a game differently than the original company.
2. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by RobotWisdom · 2003-09-22 22:28 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  I think this is a very interesting news article, as it illustrates the divide between how a 3rd party is handling the running of a game differently than the original company.
  The point of Slashdot is to FILTER the most interesting news stories. If the filter is set to include everything this specialised, then you get so many items that they belong in a separate weblog for game-obsessives.
  The real giveaway is that Simoniker always attributes the stories to the websites rather than any Slashdot reader-- he's spending all day reading game-news sites, so even if he only posts one-tenth of what he reads, it's still vastly more than any normal human could care about.
  Two-star game reviews? Handjob interviews without screenshots or gameplay details? The Slashdot crew needs to draw a stricter line... imho.
3. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by PainKilleR-CE · 2003-09-22 23:06 · Score: 1
  
  Filter out the Games section if you don't want to see it. Most of them will only show up if you have 'Collapse Sections' selected in your preferences anyway.
  
  Personally, I just go straight to games.slashdot.org anyway, and then visit the main page when things slow down.
  
  --
  -PainKilleR-[CE]
4. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by RobotWisdom · 2003-09-22 23:34 · Score: 1
  
  Filter out the Games section if you don't want to see it.
  Learn to read, bozo. I said "I'm quite interested in game news..." but Simoniker is not filtering for a general audience.
  I just go straight to games.slashdot.org anyway
  So obviously your interests are specialised. This is fine, but it's not what Slashdot has always been for.
5. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by JavaLord · 2003-09-23 01:27 · Score: 1
  
  I'm quite interested in game news..." but Simoniker is not filtering for a general audience.
  
  In general, I would say the slashdot crowd is interested when MMO's get hacked IMO.
6. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by analog_line · 2003-09-23 01:31 · Score: 1
  
  The point of Slashdot is to FILTER the most interesting news stories.
  
  Yeah, and you've got this nice little "Preferences" section on the left, that lets you completely filter everything you might not want to see out completely, so you'll never even know it's there. I personally use it so I never have to see another story about Star Wars prequels, or John Katz's inanity.
7. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by RobotWisdom · 2003-09-23 02:00 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  I think this is a very interesting news article
  Okay, let's analyse how interested the Slashdot community is in Simoniker's links. If you click on older stuff from a games.slashdot.org page, you get a summary of how many followups there were to each of his postings over the last five days:
  September 23rd (2 so far): 9, 19
  Sept22 (7): 19, 172, 133, 27, 27, 77, 43
  Sept21 (5): 360, 111, 14, 26, 67
  Sept20 (5): 17, 32, 20, 23, 29
  Sept19 (6): 12, 37, 125, 44, 40, 9
  Sept18 (5): 11, 23, 36, 237, 256
  So out of 30 stories, HALF got under 30 comments.
8. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by PainKilleR-CE · 2003-09-23 02:08 · Score: 1
  
  Learn to read, bozo. I said "I'm quite interested in game news..." but Simoniker is not filtering for a general audience.
  
  Then filter out Simoniker and get your game news elsewhere. Game news doesn't filter well for a general audience anyway, and neither does Slashdot news in the first place. Better yet, filter the Games section and then check it once a day to see if you are interested in anything on there, because the truth is that there're rarely more than 8 stories in the games section a day.
  
  The only reason I read the games section of Slashdot is because it DOES filter the game news that I would normally get from reading a half dozen other sites. Slashdot has always been specialized in some way, and there are filters for a reason. Hell, there are even more specialized filters for filtering portions of the games section.
  
  --
  -PainKilleR-[CE]
9. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by simoniker · 2003-09-23 02:23 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Wait, wait. None of these posts are front-page posts, Jorn. You have 'collapse sections' turned on in your preferences - there's a tickbox that does that. If we were posting this on the front page, then I'd agree there was a major issue. But just about all of these games posts are subpage-specific. The reason there aren't so many comments per post is that the majority of readers only read the front page. Which is fine. But we have a good, significant (for the games website world) and growing community who log directly on to games.slashdot.org to check out the games news. So you can filter to remove these posts - and more to the point, you've already filtered to receive them.
10. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by RobotWisdom · 2003-09-23 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  just about all of these games posts are subpage-specific
  I don't have any problem with the filtering-level of other topics, so I don't want to un-collapse allthe sections. And I don't want to filter all games posts or all Simoniker posts-- I just want a reasonable level of filtering that leaves out two-star reviews and handjob interviews, etc. Is there some preference setting that will accomplish this, or is it all or nothing?
11. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by simoniker · 2003-09-23 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  I don't believe there's a 'remove subpage posts from x section' choice in preferences, yet. But it would be a good thing to feature-request by going to the Sourceforge Slashcode site to show there's public demand, and I'll try to bring it up with the appropriate people.
12. Re:Modding Simoniker down? by RobotWisdom · 2003-09-23 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  I don't believe there's a 'remove subpage posts from x section' choice in preferences, yet.
  Another way to help me skip boring posts would be to describe more carefully who the target audience is, and/or why they might or might not be interested. Mostly what interests me is theory about game design and insights about the gaming biz-- I could care less about nostalgia or rumors of upcoming sequels. (I do like screenshots when they advance the state of the art, too.)
I wonder why, I wonder when... by ihatesco · 2003-09-22 22:15 · Score: 1

I wonder about two things
First: when the opensource community will produce a playable, high quality distributed mmorpg, just like all those IRC or Jabber networks.
Second: when the first grid-based MMORPGs and multiplayer gameservers will be online and running :(... they are a sooo interesting concept.

--
"I am slashbot, hear me roar!"
1. Re:I wonder why, I wonder when... by gl4ss · 2003-09-22 22:37 · Score: 1
  
  **First: when the opensource community will produce a playable, high quality distributed mmorpg, just like all those IRC or Jabber networks.**
  
  1) try muds for size.. sure not gfx pretty or distributed(but i find distributed to be too much subject to cheating).
  
  2) dunno.. but don't the major games already have different servers for different areas?
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
2. Re:I wonder why, I wonder when... by ihatesco · 2003-09-23 00:47 · Score: 1
  
  1) try muds for size.. sure not gfx pretty or distributed.
  Heh, yes, Muds are good, but they are all different and rather small communities, at least here in Europe :/. I am also researching them, not bad, anyway a mud experience is rather different than a mmorpg one.
  A distributed mud could be an interesting programming exercise...
  (but i find distributed to be too much subject to cheating)
  That's because closed source games still rely too much on clients :(
  2) dunno.. but don't the major games already have different servers for different areas?
  Well... what I was saying with "Grid Computing" is that there is no physical server tied to a zone. If a zone becomes too crowded to be managed, it wanders on the net and finds a faster server with a better bandwidth.
  
  --
  "I am slashbot, hear me roar!"
3. Re:I wonder why, I wonder when... by flonker · 2003-09-23 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  Try http://crossfire.real-time.com or http://daimonin.sourceforge.net/ They're both open source, and they both run under *nix and win32.
theories anyone? by gl4ss · 2003-09-22 22:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

my theory is that they're unwilling to bring it back online because they know how vulnurable the system is(and as such, can't or wont bring it back online before they know where the attacker got in or get a proper fix to it from the actual developers).

mythic on the other hand might not care and so seems to be providing 'better' service(hey, you get to play, who cares if your cc information might be compromised).

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Hacking? by darkmayo · 2003-09-22 23:04 · Score: 1

Personally I think it was just a GM who decided to quit and have some fun with the GM tools.

--
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
I'm not surprised by markh1967 · 2003-09-22 23:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

I bought DAOC about one week after it was released in Europe. I went through the registration process and waited for the email with my password to arrive. When it hadn't arrived after a couple of hours I tried to register again only to get an error message stating that my account had already been opened and I should login with the email they had already sent me.
Next morning I still had no password, so I tried to contact them. Their website and documentation only give one email address for technical support, so I sent a polite request asking for this to be sorted out but got no reply. Over the next week I sent an email every day, getting more blunt and less polite each day. I never received a reply to any of these emails.
One week, and seven unanswered emails, later I returned the game for a refund - the only game I've ever returned. MMORPGs live or die on the quality of their support - DAOC Europe didn't have any support at all when I tried to use it.

--
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
Mythic lied to their customers about the hack... by I+am+Kobayashi · 2003-09-23 01:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

From: http://www.camelotherald.com/more/1021.shtml dated August 22nd, 2003

"Q: I heard rumors about DAOC's servers and possible security problems. Is there any truth to this kind of rumor?
A: No.
But let me explain how I can be so definite. (Sorry if this is an overly simplified explanation - remember, I have to print my answers for both the technical and the non-technical people out there.) A game like ours has two kinds of code, client side (the part that happens on your computer at home) and server side (the code on... you guessed it... our servers).
Dark Age of Camelot servers have never been hacked. The tools that allow creation of monsters and other world items on live servers are internal development tools. (Here at Mythic HQ, access to these things means you work here in our office and are closely supervised.) These tools are mainly used for two purposes - on Pendragon during encounter testing, and on live servers by our customer service people who are replacing lost quest items and other such things. There has never been a misuse of these tools on any of our live servers.
Our password server has also not been hacked. Every case of "account hacking" has been people not keeping their passwords secure. If you share your password with others, if you email your password to strangers, and if you say, boot up a third party program and then type your password, your password is not secure. We feel bad for people who get taken advantage of, but we can't restore their accounts or their treasures. So never give out your password, and change it frequently.
There are, as many of you know, some client hacks out there. While they cannot create gold or monsters, or provide you with any actual gameplay skill, they can affect things that your client controls, such as your run speed.
We ban people using these every day. Because we do not want to ban innocent players, our investigation process is painstaking and a little slow. But we get the cheaters eventually. It's unfortunate, but a fact of life - you get a lot of people together, and the odds are good that a very few of them will be... special people... who can't compete without cheating. So, we get copies of all the cheat programs, learn how to find their users, and make frequent and daily use of the ban stick.
But I digress. The short answer is that DAOC servers have not been hacked.

From this article:

Wanadoo communications manager Tiphaine Locqueneux confirmed: "On 18 August our game logs revealed that GameMaster commands were used by someone external to the company. We began an immediate investigation, closed the incriminating accounts and worked to identify the hacker and how he had managed to intrude.
"Three days later the hacker used GM commands on one of the UK servers which gave us more information. At this stage players were still able to access the game but we needed to ensure the hacking would not escalate and close off his access. We closed down the subscription pages and RightNow, our customer support pages, in order to close off all external access to these services while we were adding new layers of security.
"At this stage we were unable to communicate that this was a hack in order to prevent further attacks or damage. Players could still play but new subscribers were prevented from joining the game."
The Camelot Herald article was August 22nd.... So they knew that an external hacker had used the supposed "internal" GM tools... But they still decided to say otherwise. I don't have a problem with them not admitting a hack ocurred (if it is for legitimate security reasons). But to outright lie about it is not legal (much less ethical) behavior here in the U.S.

--
--Kobayashi--
Think for a second, will you? by analog_line · 2003-09-23 01:27 · Score: 3, Informative

Mythic does not control GOA's servers. GOA's servers, even if they run software that Mythic developed, are not Mythic's servers. Sandra never said GOA hadn't been hacked, she was referring to the US version of the game, which is obviously kept under far tighter control than GOA keeps their stuff.

She didn't lie, outright or otherwise. You're basing this accusation on wild speculation and a misreading, intentionally or otherwise, of the statements people have made. Not to mention the fact that you're completely obvlivious, or choose to appear so, to the plain facts of the situation. Get back to the VN Boards, troll. That's where your particular kind belongs. We've got plenty of our own kind of troll here.
1. Re:Think for a second, will you? by I+am+Kobayashi · 2003-09-23 01:58 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Mythic does not control GOA's servers. GOA's servers, even if they run software that Mythic developed, are not Mythic's servers. Sandra never said GOA hadn't been hacked, she was referring to the US version of the game, which is obviously kept under far tighter control than GOA keeps their stuff. She didn't lie, outright or otherwise. You're basing this accusation on wild speculation and a misreading, intentionally or otherwise, of the statements people have made. Not to mention the fact that you're completely obvlivious, or choose to appear so, to the plain facts of the situation. Get back to the VN Boards, troll. That's where your particular kind belongs. We've got plenty of our own kind of troll here.
  
  First, by definition "DAOC servers" includes both those operated by Mythic and GOA. Sanya (not sure who Sandra is) may have meant "Mythic servers," but that is not what she said. And actually my recollection was she later stated that when she stated DAOC servers she intended to include the GOA servers (but I can't find that story/clarification - it was probably removed from their site.) And this question was specifically made because of the GOA situation, she was responding to that. So if she meant only Mythic servers she should have made that clear. It is obvious her intent was to include both GOA and Mythic servers, and hence her choice of language.
  
  I suspect GOA lied to Mythic as well, but they shouldn't have made such a broad sweeping statement without getting the facts first.... How can you really know your servers are secure, when you don't know how the GOA servers were hacked? Hmmm? Please answer that for me... Even if this wasn't a lie (probably a poor choice of words on my part) it still shows incompetence and ignorance (and perhaps hubris?) on the part of Mythic.
  
  My intent was not to troll (but thank you for enlighting me with all the facts you provided (that is sarcasm by the way)). I simply provided quotes from two articles. They speak for themselves. I trust in the readership of /. to be intelligent enough to judge for themselves. As far as my "misreading," I am not misreading the text. Perhaps Sanya misspoke. I hope you are right and Mythic does do a better job than GOA of controlling and securing their servers. But my point was that personally, I don't like to be mislead, especially when it is in regards to my personal and financial information.
  
  But that is just me....
  
  --
  --Kobayashi--
2. Re:Think for a second, will you? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-23 07:19 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  DAOC servers haven't been hacked. The GM tools that the European server use were.
  
  By the way, any time Sanya speaks of DAOC she is only speaking of the American servers. She's the internet relations something or other for the American DAOC servers. She couldn't speak of anything going on in Europe if she wanted to.
3. Re:Think for a second, will you? by Aggrazel · 2003-09-23 08:08 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Mythic != GOA
  
  Totally different entities, totally different theories on how to run servers. I don't think the Mythic servers will even accept remote commands from a GM tool or anything.
  
  I am the Cleric Team Lead for Mythic Entertainment, its a volounteer position and I'm not an employee of the company. However, I don't think you have the full idea of the situation, I know I don't. But really, I think the security situation is much different on the US servers than the European servers.
Camelot! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-23 03:22 · Score: 0

It's just a model.
Re:Mythic lied to their customers about the hack.. by evslin · 2003-09-23 07:08 · Score: 1

Had that question specifically mentioned the European servers (notice it didn't, and keep in mind that grab bags have always been US-centric), Sanya's response would probably have read more along the lines of not being able to answer based on the fact that Mythic has no control over GOA.
don't worry by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-23 10:02 · Score: 0

I'm sure King Arthur will return and sort this out!