My bad!

Regarding my last post, it wasn’t that signups were being closed, beta was wrapping up. That’s what happens when you have announcements that contradict each other, but here’s the official announcement regarding the end of the gKR Beta:

” Greetings KartRiders!

We’d like to thank our beta testers for all their hard work in testing KartRider!

The Closed Beta will come to an end on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 5pm (PST). We encourage you to get your last few races in!

We will announce the full launch of KartRider at a later date.

Thanks for playing!

– The KartRider Staff -”
(Source: Nexon America and KartRider Global)

Hopefully the time between now and final won’t be that far off. It would be sad if it is.

KartRider Global closed beta signups now closed

 Well, if you wanted to try out KartRider and haven’t yet, you’ve missed your chance. As of 6 PM tonight, signups for the KartRider closed beta are no longer being taken.

People who have already played should still be able to login to the game; However if you haven’t, you’re gonna have to wait until Open Beta comes around.

I just wanted to make a post about something, so that I didn’t create the sense that it was becoming inactive… lol

Batten down the hatches… again

A VERY SERIOUS warning for everyone:

A new PIN crack has been leaked to the script kiddies. This one in particular allows them to skip the PIN entry screen, giving them access with only your ID and password.

If you’ve ever given your account info out to someone you might not trust all that much anymore, (something that should never be done anyway) or if you believe your account info may have been obtained by someone else, change your password NOW.

This is simply another reminder to never, EVER, share your account info.

Statement from NXJoeW

So… were you wrongfully banned yesterday in Scania’s mid-SC mass ban yesterday?  NXJoeW seems to have realized this.

Unlike in the past, where a recent “legit” user that has been banned whines about it, and Mr. W comes around with decisive proof (i.e. a video) showing that they were in fact hacking, he really did find something this time that caused quite a few legitimate claims as to wrongful bans.  It’s a fairly long post, so instead of copying/pasting it here and linking to it, I’ll just tell you to view the original post.

So, as a result, a bunch of oPQers that exploited a certain glitch for EXP got owned by the logs, and Joe says he slipped up by not noticing it  and processed the logs, resulting in these glitch exploiters getting banned.  He says in the post that he is in the process in getting those bans reversed.

That being said, I would assume that they’d try to fix this oPQ glitch in the next patch as well in order to avert them from being banned again. :P (Technically, exploiting a glitch is never really considered illegal, but to some people some can be considered unethical.)

Nexon Putting Their Foot Down

And not just on hacking, too… EVERYTHING.

A big announcement was made on the Mapleglobal website earlier today, following their mid-SC mass ban:

“For a while now I have been telling you all that we have ?Hacking Detection?. I hinted that we have been watching. I expressed how serious we are about getting rid of hacking in the game. It seems many people still have not gotten the hint. So, we have decided to adapt our methods a bit. For several months now we have been logging all hacking that has happened in-game.

Since these logs were implemented we have been running tests and scenarios to determine the accuracy of these logs. As of this time we have not found any false positives in these logs.

Additionally, we have run several control scenarios in which players during late hours were found in-game hacking. We waited to ban them until the next day during known work hours. This lead to several claims of ?Legit Bans? of course, this was wrong, as we had the evidence in hand.

Out of the thousands of accounts we have looked into at this point, I have only found a couple accounts that were actually wrongfully banned. And those were either related to KSing hackers, or leeching from a hacker, which we have informed players not to do in the past.

I think many of the members of the Maple community who read the forums can probably remember some of the effects of this. Yes, this is why we saw such a rash in ?Legit? claims, and also why we could prove these were false with videos. We have found that the “Legit” claims stem from bans that take place in any way different than normal. For example, when our weekend shifts ban people, when we ban on verified logs, and when we ban FM hackers. These all receive “Legit” complaints, because these individuals did not think they could have been caught as they weren’t disconnected while they were actually hacking. Obviously, this isn?t the case.

On that note, I have a few announcements. Starting today we are banning out of our logs, almost exclusively. As all hacking in the game gets logged, there stands to be a great deal of players banned. If you are hacking, you are going to be banned. This will continue until the implementation of an auto banning system. Don?t think bypassing gameguard is going to save anybody, gameguard is not the tool used to log, this strictly server-side.

Unfortunately we can not implement permanent bans at this time. That time is coming soon as well, but we aren?t quite there yet. However we have adapted to this as well. From here on out we are also implementing hack severity ratings. This means, the more we see that you have hacked, the longer you will be banned. Many players received up to 90 day bans today. This is not the most severe penalty, only the most severe issued today.

I also need to announce that Rank Blocking has been put into place. All players banned for hacking will now be taken off the rankings permanently, regardless of severity rating.

Finally we would like to announce that we will be banning guilds in their entirety if we believe them to encourage illegal activity. This means, if a hacker is in your guild, and you are NOT a hacker, you need to kick them out immediately.

Guild leaders are responsible for the members of their guild in ALL activities. You are the roll model and the authority figure. If your guild rules do not encourage fair play, you might want to implement that rule now. If your guild is a problem, it will be banned.

These bans will take place with or without warning depending on severity. This does not mean that just because one person got banned for hacking the whole guild gets banned. But it does mean that if we believe that the guild is a problem, it will be resolved.

We are committed to fixing this situation. While we have been focused on hackers, many players have taken advantage of our decreased presence when dealing with Community Standards, harassment and other in-game issues. This stops today.

KSing, holding maps (i.e. Zakum), foul language, harassment, scamming, mass defaming; these will all be met with 30 day bans from now on. Additionally, all accounts tied to your account will also be given a 30 day ban, as well as your entire guild in some cases.

Many players are expressing their frustrations over the hacking and general ?drama? going on in-game right now. We appreciate all of the suggestions, comments and constructive criticism. Not only does it help us focus, but it is always discussed, and often times used to determine priorities.

The Maple Community has been a strong force in our motivations on the decisions and policies implemented today. We have a lot of work to do, and we thank you for your continued support.

-The MapleStory Staff-”
(Source: Mapleglobal)

In summary, this means a couple things:

• Nexon America has (obviously) put down stricter anti-hack policies
• Nexon will be almost exclusively using their hacking detection logs to ban hackers and those that associate themselves with hackers.
• The more a user is caught hacking, the higher the severity, and the longer the ban. (As it says, some users were banned up to 90 days but in some cases this can go even farther)
• Being banned for hacking now results in a permanent disqualification from the ranking system.
• If Nexon has to ban players from the same guild repeatedly, the whole guild risks getting banned.
• All harassment and scamming bans are now 30 days. This includes KSing and mass defaming!
• Bans will be followed up with banning every account accessed on that IP.

This also means that us legits must be VERY careful when confronting hackers, and thus I have only a couple of tips to make sure the legits don’t get caught up in a major ban:

1. When enterning a map do not attack ANYTHING until you are sure the map isn’t being hacked.
2. If you do encounter a hacker, report and leave the map immediately.
3. When joining a guild, make sure they have a strict anti-hacking/anti-harassment policy.
4. If you are a member of a guild and find someone in that guild hacking, notify a guild Jr. master or the guild master immediately. If you are in a guild that openly allows hackers into their guild, leave it.
5. You now have an definitive reason to NEVER, EVER SHARE YOUR ACCOUNT.  It’s already been against the rules since the beginning of gMS, and now if your info falls into the wrong hands and that person gets banned on a different account, you can be banned as well.

Alas, this announcement seems to be a bit of a scare tactic, but what else can be done?