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EverQuest II: Hacking the Economy
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Gamespot is reporting that hackers have crippled SOE's flagship EverQuest II as they have attacked the economy of the game. This is quite an interesting read.
| Sony claims that a group of hackers illegally created a huge amount of EverQuest II currency over the weekend, and it says the players caused the game's economy to suffer 20 percent inflation in just 24 hours before being caught.
According to Chris Kramer, director of public relations for EQ2 publisher Sony Online Entertainment, the players had, on Saturday, begun using their so-called "duping bug" to make large quantities of platinum, the game's currency. (A duping bug is a hack that exploits a weakness in online games' code to effectively create counterfeit currency or other goods.) |
Click here for the full article.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
ha.
That is all.
Reminds me of the movie with Richard Prior where hes working in some sort of bank or insurance company and works out a scam to rip 1c from the accounts of every person. He gets away with it for a while and when the bosses find the scam they say "well we will never catch the guy, who would be dumb enough to like spend it all at once so people would notice" Then RP pulls up out the front in a new white Lambourghini.....
The question is how many other people who new the dupe werent dumb enough to exploit it so obviously.
One day SOE will release a game with a secure economy, one day they will grow the testicles necessary to roll back servers when they get things so badly wrong...
I wont be holding my breath...
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
This probably happend in a lot of places, but never on this scale. The financial incentive is the one that makes EQ2 a prime target.
I see a little contradiction, they say they eliminated all duped money, what about those people who bought those duped money? were they reinbursed? if so, from where? Does SOE have reserves of SOE money??? This exchange thing was a very unpopular idea, SOE wanted a piece of the market and now they burned.
I doubt this would be the first occurance. As someone stated above, only those who make it very visible get caught.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
What? People hacking a system to make quick money?
Well, I never....
That explains why I couldn't log on to EQII.
I'm suprised those people tried selling the money on Sony's Station exchange. It made it that much easier for Sony to track. That's probably a reason why Sony wanted to implement the Exchange in the first place. From what I see, as long as someone doesn't get too greedy and spreads duping out over time, they should be able to stay under the radar. Selling somewhere other than a Sony-hosted site wouldn't be a bad idea, either.
I'm definitely not promoting anything illegal, just saying that it's going to always be a problem when online games merge with real money.
My name is...
Caveat Emptor : buyer be screwed.
Well SOE sure reacted fast. WOW has had its dup bug for several patched now. They just dont seem to care.
Edit: spelling
Never seen or heard anyone with worthy information about any dupes in WoW. I read a whole article on WoW dupe and it seems to be a big hoax.
http://wow.ogaming.com/info/Editorials~6.php
Sure a lot of people say they "saw" someone dupe, or they did it themselves, but wheres proof? where are screenshots as in http://plaguelands.com/?page_id=172
Till i see some evidence, its nothing but a rumor.
PS: i forgot to mention, in game economy just went down 20%. Someone claims hackers got away with thousands, tens or even hundreds of thousands of cash. SOE caught them, but caught them way too late. It should of been stopped at the beginning, not the end. Realy shows how weak security is and how vulnerable EQ2 is. Hope they dont find some other way to dupe or it might be a downfall of a good game.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
Notice how the article neatly failed to mention what SOE did to compensate the PAYING customers that paid REAL MONEY for that currency on good faith, only to have it deleted out of hand with no warning.
...but then, Sony has a long, sad history of lying to, and not caring about its customers as long as the money keeps coming in.
They only pretend to listen when a) it costs them cash, or b) people start leaving for other games.
theres really not much you can say for SOE, they just never learn. Theyre the kind of company that likes to beat a dead horse, if it coughs up some cash
I'm glad it happened.
I've been playing EQ2 since it came out and I'm pissed they would sanction the selling of virtual items for real money. As soon as they did that, it opened them up to a whole new level of scams/attacks/dupers.
Station Exhange Sucks.com !!!!!
It's always something...
Shock horror someone is hacking a program to make money, what did SOE expect? Plain stupid and now they are feeling the cost.
SOE seem to be on a course for self destruction.
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve