Anti Hack measures

[Gulldan]

I'm sorry, but I read the post about Astaroth who paid a lot (100.000+ USD?) lost everything, and he wont get help. I read the topic even after months, and he still did not get help. In my sane mind, I could not came up with a reasonable explanation why he did not get a rollback, and why someone else did. If he would be my customer, he would have to at least murder a close relative of mine to get help denied. And when you read that a 100k USD customers character is not restored, you wonder what happens when some "small" fish with a 1k USD payment (or god's forbid, only 100 USD) gets hacked. So honestly, that was not a good PR for your company.

OMG!!!!! 100,000 US dolars??? O.o

[R2_Sanguine]

I am R2, not a moderator. I can't speak specifically to the case this thread is pointing to as I don't know the details: I didn't handle the case myself, and don't know when this happened, so I won't comment on something I know nothing about.

My original comments were on the major ways to reduce "hacking". As I've stated, players share their account at their own risk. You're pointing to "getting the maximum of everything every single day". Yes, I agree this does take a lot of time, and not everyone has this opportunity. But sharing is a complete violation of our ToS, and the ToS of every other browser company out there. It protects us and you. In reality, is it worth sharing if you have the opportunity to lose months, or years of hard work and potentially money spent just to get a couple legendary shards? Would you give your new Porsche to someone you have never met before just so they can grab you some Doritos from the store? If that person wrecks it, your insurance company and Porsche would probably tell you the same thing we are forced to relay to players who shared their account (an unhappy task for us, if want the honest truth). Denying restoration of an account is one of the most heartbreaking responses I have to give. 100%. I play PLENTY of games, both R2 and otherwise, and have felt the frustration of being denied account restoration, so I know it from both sides on multiple occasions.

I do agree with Fherlayt's comment about an easy-to-use account recovery, that it would be useful. This kind of system takes an immense amount of logistics, seeing as we have roughly 18 browser games, and I believe all of them are completely separate publishers. I will, however, take this suggestion to heart as we are actively working on improved platform functionality and ease of operation. I'm part of the team working on this feature so I'll make sure it gets heard, although I don't know the technical and physical requirements.

What Esme said is true: they are players, and we as R2 staff don't reveal player information to other players. They give us the issues, we handle the issues or give them to the Devs (depending on the type and severity of the issue) and we go from there. Don't blame the mods: you're welcome to flame me, but I'll just take everything as an opportunity to listen and improve how we operate.

If we are to get back to the OP's concerns, the reason I pointed out 3rd party software and account sharing was because it's so difficult for us to tell the difference. We see the same IP being logged into a character, regularly, for months on end, and then "I've been hacked". ......................... Then, when we dig, we find out there was a big fight over calling someone a "fat loser" or something ridiculous. "ban this guy!" "omg someone hacked my computer and knows everything on it" or an enormous amount of excuses that amount to the data showing us it was carelessness. So we take hours of our time to figure out someone was being careless, when we could have been working on submitting bugs and documentation to the devs to get the bugs fixed that everyone complains about. Where we prioritize our time? How do we prevent tickets that prevent us from fixing the in-game problems? How can we get R2 staff on the forums more? These three questions, along with countless other problems, can be solved by you helping us.

I'm not here to complain and give you my problems. My job is to worry about your problems, and something I'm SO HAPPY TO DO, but sharing accounts and then inquiring as to why your items got deleted affects everyone in the game. It means hours we're not reporting bugs, hours we can't read through the forums and appreciate your complaints, hours we can't work on improvement measures. We want to help everyone, but where to start?

[ArnaudBo]

at least i really thank you for posting in the forum.

because what personnaly i wish is r2games to COMMUNICATE, not only letting moderator and mentor to get the hits.

for what i see in the next patch, you are trying to limite the danger of item destruction with a new password system.
i'm not on the test servers, so only saw some picture.

i played many other game and one who had a good system was (it's now dead) Lord of ultima who, every month of play, allow the player to have "holidays". when the user was gone for some days, he could give his account to someone else directly ingame for a limited of time (depending of his holidays). the player could do the usual stuff but nothing who could harm the player. perhaps it could be possible to add such a feature in wartune (but i know it's not something easy to program)

[Fherlayt]

Thank you for this detailed answer, I'm very grateful for that. And special thx for forwarding the suggestion to the developers. This should be not your responsibility, prolly, but 7roads.

About the Porsche example, even if I borrow it to a friend who breaks it, the insurance company pays. From your reply I understand that in case of Astaroth, you checked logs and found proof that someone with whom he shared account destroyed his char. Still, I would have done him the rollback (and wouldnt even waste time to check logs).

Yes, sharing account has risks. But trust is one of the most important human virtues. If people wouldn't trust anyone, they would live in pits alone in the wilderness, with a weapon in hand even while they sleep. I have no problem sharing an account with my wife, kid, or a friend whom I know since 10 years. Ofc, a stranger or someone I know recently is a no-no.

Maybe you should make some money on "account insurance". Some balens, and if anything wrong happens, player can request a rollback (limited time).

[AkumaDeDiablo]

This was done in another game I used to play. How about adding a 2nd password or bank pin in game to the rare items and/guild bank where we store most of it? Just make sure it different from the login password. At least slow down a hacker some if the player has a lot of good stuff. Happened to a friend in my guild and luckily his account was suspended or temp banned, but the hacker still sold 2k dragon souls. This issue is fixed, but those dragon souls should have a 2nd password to really stop intruders.
Before you flame on sharing password and such that did not happen. It was a genuine hacker with full intent on harm. Took over email, FB, and game. Just glad the player has their player back.

lol that sound like something from MAPLESTORY about the item lock with pin/password.

[goordo111]

I really believe if players stopped sharing their info, then 90% or better of issues would stop, in my opinion, if you give out your info, and then your account is dumped, it is only your own fault that you have your stuff lost, you will learn to play your own game, and not hand out secured info the next time around.

[Xander.]

Thank you for this detailed answer, I'm very grateful for that. And special thx for forwarding the suggestion to the developers. This should be not your responsibility, prolly, but 7roads.

About the Porsche example, even if I borrow it to a friend who breaks it, the insurance company pays. From your reply I understand that in case of Astaroth, you checked logs and found proof that someone with whom he shared account destroyed his char. Still, I would have done him the rollback (and wouldnt even waste time to check logs).

Yes, sharing account has risks. But trust is one of the most important human virtues. If people wouldn't trust anyone, they would live in pits alone in the wilderness, with a weapon in hand even while they sleep. I have no problem sharing an account with my wife, kid, or a friend whom I know since 10 years. Ofc, a stranger or someone I know recently is a no-no.

Maybe you should make some money on "account insurance". Some balens, and if anything wrong happens, player can request a rollback (limited time).

I have seen this being implemented on the first patched servers during the last maintenance.There are a few areas in game which you can protect with a 6 digit code.
Hope this is what you and others were hoping for
Have a nice day.

[Nox03]

What amount of money is it worth to hack a wartune account?

First you need to penetrate a computer that also is used to play wartune
Then you need to install a dataloggger/keylogger or any other logging tool.
You are just receiving data so you need to look into this data to filter what u need

Or you need to have an emailaddress that is bound to a wartune account, a lot of personal info (can be bought from internet (and is legal))
and invest some time.

The money and time it cost to put into this is not worth hacking an account unless its personal to begin with.

Most (lets say 95.%) "hacked" accounts are likely shared account info OR bad stored account details.

[R2_Sanguine]

We can go into liability claims for insurance companies, but I think we understand the issue I was trying to bring up. Even if you get it back, the headache is enormous. Again, the case with that player I have zero knowledge about, not even a timeline. Even if I did know about it (judging by your speech this was a long time ago, maybe before my time with R2) I wouldn't be able to post it here ^_^.

@ArnaudBo The idea of a "holiday grace period" is rather interesting, but something we would have no control over. Something we can suggest, but the chances of this being implemented are slim. This is Dev-side and, although a good suggestion in my book, not everyone thinks like I do and it's their decision.

@Fherlayt I don't think account insurance is a route we will take. I'd personally advise against this and I know many people here would agree. BTW great blog: nice analyses of events, promotions, and "bang for your buck." Well thought out and provides good player-made resources. Just remember to keep it non-commercial and keep up the good information.

[ArnaudBo]

We can go into liability claims for insurance companies, but I think we understand the issue I was trying to bring up. Even if you get it back, the headache is enormous. Again, the case with that player I have zero knowledge about, not even a timeline. Even if I did know about it (judging by your speech this was a long time ago, maybe before my time with R2) I wouldn't be able to post it here ^_^.

it's a few month old (09-28-2014)
http://forum.r2games.com/showthread....aroth-hacking&

and for my point of view, isn't it better to spend a little time to get a consumer back than doing nothing and losing it ? you personnaly can't do much about it probably, but i still can't understand r2games logic on those cases.

[sweetwaters]

Account sharing..trust is 100% ingredient so don't risk your time and effort or money in other cases.So you can change your password occasionally in a given period of time might help

[Gulldan]

Thank you for this detailed answer, I'm very grateful for that. And special thx for forwarding the suggestion to the developers. This should be not your responsibility, prolly, but 7roads.

About the Porsche example, even if I borrow it to a friend who breaks it, the insurance company pays. From your reply I understand that in case of Astaroth, you checked logs and found proof that someone with whom he shared account destroyed his char. Still, I would have done him the rollback (and wouldnt even waste time to check logs).

Yes, sharing account has risks. But trust is one of the most important human virtues. If people wouldn't trust anyone, they would live in pits alone in the wilderness, with a weapon in hand even while they sleep. I have no problem sharing an account with my wife, kid, or a friend whom I know since 10 years. Ofc, a stranger or someone I know recently is a no-no.

Maybe you should make some money on "account insurance". Some balens, and if anything wrong happens, player can request a rollback (limited time).

Fher, when I first read your relate about this player that spent around 100,000 US dolars (or more) and had his char destroyed... you didnt mention (or I misread it...) he has shared his account.... now, knowing this info, I must admit I disagree with you (respectfully, of course).
I think he has taken the risk when he shared his account...
More then believing what I am saying... I act according to my beliefs: I never shared my account in all the games I played, even when I lost stuff cause of days off, or hollydays... in another game (Goodgame Empire) maybe I was the only person in the entire server that didnt share the account, and most people laugh at me...
Here at Wartune I was one of the few that never shared the password with "friends". When I finally decided to stop... I gave it away... and guess what? My "friend" bethrayed the guild, changed the name of the toon... and then, guess what? Many of my mates wrote me e-mails asking me to try to recover the account.... they told me that was not fair... bla bla bla... I simply answered them: "I took the risk, so I wont do anything to try to recover my old account". It was a toon with 5 months old, 136k BR, with enhanced Hades and enhanced Appolo. No need to say how much effort and money I invested on it.

With your other comments I agree with hearth Fher: about trusting is a human virtue... about sharing just with people we know and trust... and your idea about the insurance is also a great one

I regret, of course, and I want to play the game once more now that I have time (and more money ^^). I will start in a brand new server, with a brand new char

[AkumaDeDiablo]

....
account sharing was because it's so difficult for us to tell the difference. We see the same IP being logged into a character, regularly, for months on end, and then "I've been hacked". ......................... Then, when we dig, we find out there was a big fight over calling someone a "fat loser" or something ridiculous. "ban this guy!" "omg someone hacked my computer and knows everything on it" or an enormous amount of excuses that amount to the data showing us it was carelessness. So we take hours of our time to figure out someone was being careless....

Oh i would love to spend hours looking at stuff, i just want to let you know that, since i have done that before and i find it quite entertaining after back tracking and see how it all started.