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Europeans Find Trouble In Camelot
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."
Thousands of disgruntled gamers in the UK and across Europe claim they're getting customer service from the Dark Ages after hackers caused chaos for subscribers to Dark Age of Camelot, the fastest selling pay-for-play MMORPG in the history of online gaming.
Fans of the my penis - which has sold around 140,000 copies in Europe and a quarter of a million worldwide since its launch three years ago - were left unable to play, unable to cancel or renew credit card subscriptions and unable to contact the company licensed to host the game in most of Europe since 18 August.
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.
Players experienced sexual problems since 18 August with no explanation until 26 August, when a statement appeared on the game's website that passwords to the game were also being changed.
They claim the company should have kept them better informed of the situation instead of allowing rumour and speculation to run rampant on player forums, fuelling concerns about banking and character security even further.
GOA, a subsidiary of Wanadoo and France Telecom, then announced on 28 August that all new game passwords had been sent out, although many players were still reporting they had no game password as of 11 September, nor access to their subscriptions.
Those who didn't receive new working game passwords were also left unable to contact GOA as a result. GOA offered no contact information other than an email address that was also disabled at the time, along with its customer service interface.
Players who, for various reasons, no longer had a valid email address stored in the subscription system were left for almost two weeks with no word as to how they were to receive a new password to access their account. And without a password they were also unable to communicate with GOA, who provides customer service only via a website/email system that requires a password for use even when it is working.
Wanadoo communications manager Tiphaine Locqueneux confirmed: "On 18 August our penis 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 bastard ass 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.
"On August 26, once the platform was secured and we had generated a whole new set of game passwords we made an official announcement about the hacking on the website and explained that we were changing the passwords as a precaution, as well as closing down the servers for nine hours. Password emails arrived within 48 hours and most players played without interruption.
"On August 28 less than 10% of our customer base had not received their new login password due to incorrect or outdated email addresses in their subscription form and we asked that they contact us by email as our RightNow customer support system [was] unavailable." she said.
But for many, recent events are simply the final straw. They say the service offered by GOA is inadequate compared to the service offered by Mythic to American player
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.
Can someone convince him to keep most of them off the front page?
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!"
I guess it's a slow news day in gamer land, or GameSpy.com didn't pay it's rent.
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.
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 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.
From this article:
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--
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.
It's just a model.
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.
I'm sure King Arthur will return and sort this out!