Anarchy Online and Age of Conan Vulnerabilities Fixed

dachshund writes "The Baltimore Sun reports that security firm Independent Security Evaluators has disclosed vulnerabilities in the popular MMORPGs Age of Conan and Anarchy Online. The flaws (which have since been patched) allowed a malicious user to read files from and take control of another player's computer. The full details of the attack are available, including a video (hi-res MOV) showing how the targeted player's client can be crashed, and how an attacker can save and run scripts on the victim's computer."

Comments

Re:Anarchy Online?

[ilovegeorgebush]

Anarchy Online's been very successful. Before Age of Conan was released, it had a relatively large player-base. That's since dwindled due to AoC, but it's still around.

There's a graphics update due to be released (if ever), that would revamp the game entirely. Lots of players are waiting on it.

Ahem

[Moraelin]

Ahem. It was IIRC the first major MMO where they just went ad-supported and otherwise let most people pay for free. Because the player base which was willing to pay for their game, had started small and was imploding.

(And if anyone wonders why, read the two reviews on Something Awful. I can personally vouch that every single problem in there was true, and a lot more. And yes, that was after the devs had proclaimed it 110% fixed and working as intended.)

According to MMO Charts, it peaked at a mere 60,000 subscribers. Then AO subscribers hit an all time low of 20,000 (yes, I'm not missing a zero or anything), and after some major rework, it peaked again at 40,000. And went downhill again. Currently the _paying_ subscribers are around 12,000.

Not exactly a sign of a great success, if anyone asks me. In fact, that's piss-poor. The pile of turd that is post-NGE SWG still does about 10 times better. _Vanguard_ does 3-4 times better, and God alone knows why would anyone want to play that one. Heck, I haven't even heard of anyone who liked Tabula Rasa, but apparently some 7 times more people are willing to pay for that, than for AO.

Yes, apparently they have some more free accounts. I wonder how many are (A) actually played, since there is no disincentive to just let your accound active for free instead of bothering to deactivate it, and (B) how many of those are there only because it's free. I.e., as a prime illustration that you get what you pay for.

So basically, heh, let's stop waving around "very successful" and "large player base". It doesn't qualify as that by any sane reckoning. There are probably MUD's out there with a larger population base.