Slowest MMO Ever |
Friday, May 17th, 2013 |
So just a quick post – I know it’s been a while. I will one day be better at this I swear! Anyway, I picked up this cool new browser-based MMO called Mine Things a week or so ago and it is super fun if you want something to do in the background at work and check like two or three times a day. Check it out and register 
You won’t regret it.
GaloRant: On the Subject of Hacking in Games |
Friday, February 22nd, 2013 |
So, this morning around 2am EST my account in Path of Exile was hacked and all of my currency items were stolen, along with some other highly valuable things. At first I was angry – just lost weeks worth of stuff from farming after all – but after a while I calmed down and now am reflecting upon what happened. Here are the facts:
- Around 1am, Path of Exile was taken down for a security patch (patch 0.10.1d) for less than a minute, then came back online
- During this initial patch to 0.10.1d, the servers were extremely unstable and crashed over and over again for some reason (I was on at the time and kept getting kicked off for about 10 minutes)
- Grinding Gear Games (makers of Path of Exile) rolled the whole game back to 0.10.1c to fix issues with the security patch about 15 minutes later and shortly afterwards I logged off and went to bed
- I logged on this morning about 7 hours later to find all my aforementioned items gone, my main character in town in Act 1 normal, having clearly traded all the items away to the hacker
So, now that that’s out of the way, here’s some facts on my computer game usage/past history with hacking:
- I’m an amateur web developer (in fact, I coded the site you’re reading this blog post on right now) so I know a bit about how code works and how forums work, etc.
- I have been hacked twice before in the past – with at least one other attempted hacking that I know of that was unsuccessful – both times in World of Warcraft; each of these times was as part of some huge hacking issue where it turned out some community site like wowhead.com or other information databases had been compromised and literally tens of thousands of people got hacked
- As a result of the hacking that has happened to me in the past, I’ve always bought authenticators when offered by game publishers and taken extreme caution when making accounts/creating passwords/etc. – basically I never give out information to anyone and I don’t use the same username/password combinations for accounts linked to one another to prevent a wildfire of destruction wrought on my identity; I also rarely visit forums and when I do, I rarely take links out to sites outside of the official forum’s domain
So it seems a bit strange/coincidental to me that someone who is pretty careful about account security on the web, understands how phishing and other exploits work (and does not get drawn in by these schemes), and took basically all the normally recommended precautions was hacked on the eve of a security patch that destabilized all of the Path of Exile servers so badly that they rolled the patch back to fix the deployment.
The first thing that comes to memory for me is “Patch Tuesday” for Microsoft, which is the day they release all their new patches and tell everyone all about how to hack their systems before users update. Since many users do not update regularly and updates are not forced, the hacking community sits around and waits for these patches to be announced, then preys on slow-updating folks until they finally update. If patch 0.10.1d was downloaded by a potential hacker who took the time to see what vulnerabilities it was fixing, it stands to reason they could work up something quickly to take advantage of vulnerabilities and hack a number of people before the patch was reinstated. I’m not saying that’s what happened, I’m just bringing up the possibility.
Speaking of bringing up possibilities, here’s something that annoys me almost as much as being hacked: people on forums who react in the following manner to people who just had their things stolen on the internet:
- “Dude, you shouldn’t have been so free with your account information – clearly someone got ahold of it and that’s why you got hacked. Your fault, your problem, not mine.”
- “Stop whining, your info got stolen and it’s your fault so you deserve to get hacked.”
- “Don’t blame the game maker for your shortcomings, this is all your fault – next time use antivirus software and you won’t get hacked.”
The fact of the matter is all of these people are morons – lucky morons who have never been the random victims of hacking – but morons none-the-less. I used to look at it this way myself. How could people be so dumb? How could you give out your information to your friends and post gifs of yourself typing in your username/password on reddit? You’re such a moron for getting your stuff stolen and you really deserved what you got!
Tell me, oh wondrous pinnacles of personal identity security and web account safety, what do you do to further protect your account? Let’s compare internet history logs? Let’s see… went to google, searched for some stuff, clicked on… HYPERLINKS!!?!??!???!?!?! OMG HOW COULD YOU!?!?!?!??!?!!?
This is just to illustrate the point that really any one of the high-horse-sitting, pinnacle-residing, naive computer users out there could have gotten hacked instead of me. Internet security is a strange beast and making any sort of claim that hundreds or thousands of players should be blamed victims of someone else’s wrongdoing is just ridiculous. UGH – enough ranting for now, time to take a break… to be continued…
eSports News: League of Legends LCS 2013 |
Thursday, February 14th, 2013 |
The latest big thing in eSports for a while has been League of Legends, a game based upon tug of war game mods like Defense of the Ancients (DOTA), starting back in Starcraft and Warcraft. The creators of LoL, Riot Games, have taken on eSports in a whole new way with this season of the League Championship Series (LCS). Riot has created a “real” league, where the teams of pro LoL players have signed contracts with Riot to perform – similar to the way professional athletes do. The LCS will take place at locations across the United States and Europe, with the top teams battling it out for a chance to compete in the world championship later this year.
The season is 16 games, with a break in the middle that allows challengers from the amateur ranks to compete against the pros and move up into the LCS for the second half of the season! You heard right, if the pros lose they’re out of the LCS and have to challenge their way back in next year. Intense!
The US matches are played on Thursdays and Fridays and air on the Riot Games Twitch TV Channel. Thursdays begin at 4pm EST and Fridays begin at 8pm EST. The European matches are on the weekend.
Latest Obsession: Path of Exile |
Monday, February 11th, 2013 |
Okay, so I’ve been away for a while… we’ll call it a few months or so. Maybe six… look married life is tough! Lots to do!
In any case, I’ve found a new gaming obsession that any fan of hack and slash dungeon crawling will love. It’s called Path of Exile. When I bought Diablo 3, Path of Exile is what I thought it was going to be. And lucky for me, PoE is free! Completely free to play! When you get into this game and check it out you will be impressed that it is a free game and marvel at its well thought out mechanics. Here are some examples:
1. No set classes. The game is built upon a skill tree not unlike the Final Fantasy X Sphere Grid. There are no class requirements on items (meaning, there is no item that says “you must be an [insert class here] to wear this item”). All that changes between classes is your starting position on the PoE Passive Skill Tree. There are no “ranged classes” and no “melee classes” though your starting areas may lean you towards one more than the other. (more…)
