This week is Gamer Safety Week! It is an initiative created by the Gamer Safety Alliance to help educate MMO enthusiasts around the world and across many games. Gamer Safety Alliance's member companies, including NCsoft West, are presenting general tips for gamer safety as well as tips specific to their own games. NCsoft West's presentation is PlaySmart, which focuses on account security and how to protect yourself from possible hacking.
Gamer safety week: shifting the responsibility of account security and support away from the company and onto the customer and an invisible boogyman. Always remember, real money trading is bad and causes all our problems... except when it's from the official cash shop! Never share your account, every member of your family and friends needs to pay their own way! This is for your own good and profitability has absolutely nothing to do with it. Ever.
Gamer safety week: shifting the responsibility of account security and support away from the company and onto the customer and an invisible boogyman. Always remember, real money trading is bad and causes all our problems... except when it's from the official cash shop! Never share your account, every member of your family and friends needs to pay their own way! This is for your own good and profitability has absolutely nothing to do with it. Ever.
The company has to be profitable, don’t be ridiculous, without funds the servers would be shut down. The accounts are free... everyone in the family can have their own accounts. Most of the rules you complain about in your above rant are designed to protect the end user. Do you not lock the doors to your house and check your windows before going to bed? Do you leave your car running and the doors unlocked when you go shopping? Most “security breaches” are the cause of an individual user’s actions or their lack of precautions. Do you really believe informing the community to take some basic precautions is “shifting the responsibility of account security and onto the customer and an invisible boogyman”… really??
This is true, but they don't need to rip people off. If they actually gave people what seemed like real value, more people would purchase things. $15 for 50% 7-day after level 86? Yeah, that's not expensive at all...
Use a different, unique password for each of your online accounts.
I would ... but your forum doesn't let me. You yourself insist on us lowering our online safety by forcing us to use the same password on these forums as we do in the game.
It was a crap idea when you implemented it, I told you it was a crap idea back then, nice to see you actually think it's a crap idea now too. Now fix it, please.
...You yourself insist on us lowering our online safety by forcing us to use the same password on these forums as we do in the game....
I get goosebumps every time I see how many logged peeps viewing this forum and most of them are likely to go on with surfing the net without loggin out.
Select a strong password. A strong password is at least six-to-eight characters long with a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters and at least one number.
So you will have much more fun typing this password 100500 times due to high traffic xd
The company has to be profitable, don’t be ridiculous, without funds the servers would be shut down. The accounts are free... everyone in the family can have their own accounts. Most of the rules you complain about in your above rant are designed to protect the end user. Do you not lock the doors to your house and check your windows before going to bed? Do you leave your car running and the doors unlocked when you go shopping? Most “security breaches” are the cause of an individual user’s actions or their lack of precautions. Do you really believe informing the community to take some basic precautions is “shifting the responsibility of account security and onto the customer and an invisible boogyman”… really??
Without funds it would be shut down? Wrong. You clearly know nothing of how much it actually costs to run a few servers. The vast majority of our monthly fees (back then) and cash shop sales now does not go to pay for server costs you twit. It goes to pay people like Sace. Go read any one of ncsoft's quarterly reports. Server and bandwidth costs are negligable, the vast majority of funding goes to pay staff. And in case you haven't noticed, we haven't had any staff since october. Fallacy after fallacy after fallacy. I never implied any of those things. And accounts aren't free, freeloaders like yourself are subsidized by paying players like me. Everyone in the family can have their own account, but they can't all have their own exp rune or mount, that adds up ridiculously fast. You'd know this if you actually paid for things. 1 paragraph isn't a rant, sweetheart. You want a rant? Here you go: It doesn't matter if you feel that they are designed to protect anything. That's just the propaganda talking. It's like pretending the american highway system was designed for civilian use just because civilians use it. It was designed specifically for military and industrial capacity. The fact that civilians benefit for it after the fact is a side effect, not it's purpose. The purpose of this public relations blurb is to
1. paint ncsoft in a positive light, make them look like they really "care". There is nothing inherently sinister about this, some people might call it shady and misleading but that isn't the point.
Number 2 is the point: it shifts the responsibility of account security from the company holding the account information to the end user. While both parties traditionally hold responsibility, this shifts it more to our side which is irrational and unacceptable.
Certainly, we as players may make bad decisions. We may be tricked or coerced into doing the wrong thing. But think about other aspects of your life. When you lose your credit card, are you liable for the charges? NO. When something is stolen from you, is it your fault (legally)? NO. But the world of mmorpgs is BIZZARO world, suddenly everything is some how our fault and even though ncsoft takes our security very seriously, they don't seem to want to take any responsibility for it! Is that not a contradiction? They are essentially the gods of this world, they choose who lives who dies, who gets what, who gets to keep what. They just made a huge thread about banning players and taking stuff they earned through time and effort (exploit or not) and then they want to pretend they can't do the reverse when an account is compromised? NONSENSE.
For example, No, it's not a good idea to change your password every x amount of months! That's security theater, and nothing more. The real world isn't like some hollywood movie where some dastardly hacker is running some magical program that figures out your password by a letter by letter basis! The only time it's a good idea to change your password is when your password is compromised, either on your end or theirs! and if you are compromised on your end, changing your password on the compromised machine isn't going to get you anywhere.
But by placing the blame entirely on you, this allows them to pull ******** like "oh we simply can't replace items once they are lost" LIES. It is entirely within their power to manipulate the in game data bases directly and generate or retrieve items. BUT that costs them time and money because someone has to manually do it. This is a sham. By taking a hands off approach, they convince you to take full responsibility for things outside of your power which allows them to free up resources and save money.
Many of the security issues we have specifically in lineage are entirely ncsoft's fault. We can't use multiple passwords for everything. Ncsoft doesn't let us. We can't separate our game and master and forum accounts, ncsoft won't let us. They don't even have a decent prevention system for multiple login attempts nor do they have a 24/7 team to cover security breaches as they happen. And since they won't replace a single thing if items are lost you are totally out of luck. And of course, what do idiots like you say when someone comes here crying about being hacked or having their stuff stolen?
Well IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT BECAUSE OUR SIMPLE MINDS ARE INCAPABLE OF MAKING INDEPENDENT STATEMENTS OUTSIDE OF THE CAREFULLY VETTED PROPAGANDA FED TO US BY A FACELESS CORPORATION. YOU MUST HAVE SHARED YOUR ACCOUNT? NO. YOU MUST HAVE BOUGHT ADENA. NO? YOU MUST HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG. NO? WELL YOU ARE A LIAR AND A TROLL.
Certainly, sometimes they are. And sometimes they aren't, but your puny mind can't comprehend that. Just like you naively believe that the entire purpose of a corporately created piece of public relations media is deisgned exclusively for our benefit. Not a single for proffit company in the world would make such a thing. Because, as you said, everything they do is for profit. How is it profitable to have players play securely? By forcing them to take all the responsibility, that frees up resources in support. You answer your own questions and you don't even realize it. Hillarious.
The fact of the matter is, that the hacking epidemic that has plagued mmos is a very recent phenomena, created specifically by companies like ncsoft. First of all, the secondary market (real money trading) is an offshoot of poor game design and is entirely the home company's fault. Secondly, by making that market illegal, they create a criminal element of the community that disregards any and all rules put forth. In the original ultima online, real money trading was no big deal. Everyone did it, nobody cared. Ea certainly didn't care (unless you botted which was already against the rules), but nobody did because there was no reason to due to everyone being able to do it (think prohibition). The secondary market was made illegal out of SPITE. Before the advent of cash shop, real money traders made more than 10 times the amount of money the corporations were making with subscription fees. RMT was banned not because it was immoral, not because the players hated it, but because corporate fat cats were jealous someone was making money off of them! Then they have the audacity to imply that real money trading is both the problem and the solution? Give me a break! Do as I say, not as I do paints this picture perfectly! It's their game? Sure. Their rules? Fine. But we don't have to like it, nor do we have to leave it (I'm preemptively writting this one out for you, because you are just that predictable)
When ncsoft decided that their game was going to keep people playing by making everything rare and expensive, they invited in gold farmers. When they decided that they would ban gold farmers, they invited in account hackers. When they decided to cut out almost all of their support team that was paid to stop gold farmers and hackers, they gave those people all the more incentive to redouble their efforts. Then they made their job just that easier with things like the path to awakening web interface, nearly unprotected and buggy as hell. It's 2012, I can't help but wonder why anyone would still take a pr press release at face value but I guess some people really are that stupid. Or maybe they are just children that don't know any better.
By all means, practice those safety tips. Play smart if it makes you feel better. But most of it is just smoke and mirrors. Go read your terms of service agreement. Don't you find it odd that we don't technically own our accounts, yet when it's convenient ncsoft will pretend that we do and claim everything is our responsibility? Well guess what. It isn't, it's theirs and they need to start acting like it.
And by the way, no I don't neurotically check my doors or my windows before I go to bed. I don't live in a ghetto surrounded by criminals so that isn't really an issue for me. I guess it might be for a free player like you... young dumb and poor, a dangerous combination. Hope you save enough money to get out of there soon sweetie. I'll be sure to buy an extra exp rune this week so you can continue to play on these forums for free. Oh wait, that's a faulty premise as well. Ncsoft doesn't need any of our money to keep lineage going. They need it to keep it profitable, but they don't need it to keep it going. I can hardly wait for the next quarterly report where ncsoft will show some record making profits and then a month later idiots like you will continue to pretend that they are living like beggers!
Change your password and hint questions on your game account as soon as you can.
Contact NCsoft customer support (https://help.ncsoft.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4654). The people who work there are experts at restoring accounts and are ready to help.
Change passwords and hint questions for other games, user forums, and any other online accounts you may have. Hackers can sometimes get to your accounts by attacking a vulnerable third-party site or game.
Promptly follow up on any requests for additional information from NCsoft customer support.
sure .... experts they are .... :rolleyes:
I would ... but your forum doesn't let me. You yourself insist on us lowering our online safety by forcing us to use the same password on these forums as we do in the game.
It was a crap idea when you implemented it, I told you it was a crap idea back then, nice to see you actually think it's a crap idea now too. Now fix it, please.
Yeah.
I suggest everyone to make a separate master account just for posting on this board.
They should add this kind of tips to their "PlaySmart" page, at least it would be somewhat helpful...
Yeah.
I suggest everyone to make a separate master account just for posting on this board.
They should add this kind of tips to their "PlaySmart" page, at least it would be somewhat helpful...
^ THIS is a must.