Posted on December 12, 2012
Solomon’s General Store: Captain and Crew Outfits
If you’ve yet to visit my establishment, why not drop in and receive 200 RuneCoins absolutely free? Remember that if you wish to purchase additional RuneCoins, you can do so here or by clicking ‘Buy RuneCoins’ inside my store. Don’t forget that I offer a 10% discount to all members.
Posted on December 12, 2012
Managing your Port
Using the resources you bring back from the Eastern Lands, you’ll be able to build and upgrade structures within your port. As well as making your port truly distinct, these offer benefits when managing your captains and crews. If you want to attract potential crew members with better-than-average Seafaring stats, for example, adorn your port’s bar with nautical regalia to get the saltiest sea dogs in Gielinor on board.
Your port will grow to be a living town that’s well and truly yours. The content is fully voice-acted throughout, the decor and buildings are of your choosing, and your captains (whose appearance can also be customised) and adventurers can be found at the town bar for a chat.
Scrolls
Forgotten scrolls, pieced together over the course of your voyages, will unlock the permanent ability for your character to make some of the best food and gear in the game.
Melee fighters will find themselves honour-bound to wear the lordly tetsu armour; eagle-eyed rangers will love the Death Lotus gear; and the elite mage will settle for nothing less than the sea singer’s robes. These come in both tradeable and non-tradeable versions. The non-tradeable versions have even better stats than the tradeable ones, making them not only the best armour in game, but true status symbols for RuneScape’s most dedicated players.
High-level fletchers can also make accessories known as scrimshaws, which fit into a new equipment slot called the pocket. These impart a range of benefits, many of which are geared towards increasing level gain during that steep curve towards level 99.
Finally, RuneScape’s best food – rocktail soup – can also be made in your port’s workshop, if you happen upon the recipe.
Meg
Meg – a wannabe adventurer – can be found in the port, regardless of whether you have the levels to take over its management. Even those of you who do not have the levels to own a port will find that you can give Meg adventuring pointers, offering a taster of the player-owned port voyages. Even once you’ve taken control of your port, Meg will still hang around looking for advice – she needs all the help she can get!
Once a week, she’ll ask you a set of questions about adventuring scenarios and then head off to tackle dangerous dungeons and ferocious monsters. Depending on the quality of your advice, she’ll come back bright-eyed and beaming with a healthy cut of her profits for you, or bruised, abashed and with more meagre pickings to offer.
There’s months of amazing content and truly epic rewards here for high-level players, so what’re you waiting for? The East beckons!
Posted on December 12, 2012
Player-Owned Ports
Those of you with level 90 in at least one of Fishing, Herblore, Prayer, Runecrafting, Thieving or Slayer (as well as RuneScape membership) can take ownership of your very own port town, accessed via a portal at the north end of Port Sarim. The place has seen better days, but – after a chat with worldly entrepreneur John Strum – you’ll soon have it up and running as a bustling, ever-evolving hub of commerce, sending ships to explore, do battle and find exotic treasures in the Eastern Lands.
Voyages
Once the port’s re-opened, you’ll be the proud owner of one ship. You’ll name her, hire a captain, crew her with an assortment of diversely skilled nautical ne’er-do-wells, and send her off on voyages to the Eastern Lands, with the goal of harvesting the east’s untapped bounty. The likelihood of success depends on how well the skills of your ship’s crew fit the task at hand, and also on how you’ve fitted your ship – for example, you’ll stand the best chance of waylaying a roving band of pirates if you fill your ship with fierce combatants and top-notch cannons.
Voyages will progress in real time. Depending on your success, they can yield resources such as bamboo, spices, chi and lacquer, among others, which can be used to upgrade your port and ships, and to craft amazing new gear for you to wear and food for you to eat.
Posted on December 12, 2012
There is a neat feature that lets you only allow a connection from certain ip.
If the hackers gained access to the database, then they would be able to do whatever they want. The character data, account data and the notices/news/events on the maple story website are all in that database; they would do a lot more, and would hack better accounts.
Also, for databases, there is a neat feature that lets you only allow a connection from certain ip. You cannot change your ip to their ip because you need a unique ip to connect to the internet, technically.
Ok, so you think a lot of people are getting hacked, right? No, at the time that I made this thread, there were 34637 people online in global maple story. On max, you will only play for 5 hours a day at most, and over two 5 hour periods, it is reasonable to say that the number of players online would be steady, meaning around 70000 people play maple story. If you say that around 300 people got hacked so far, that is a 0.5% chance of you being hacked. I took into account the minimum people that play, not everyone plays every day. The 0.5% would be the minimum, I estimate to around 0.01% of the total population of 2009 to be hacked.
I am a computer programmer, I know my stuff. Please feel free to ask questions and I will provide the answers I know. The program I used to get the number of people online is legit, it acts as a client connecting to the server, sending the same packets, the server sends the amount of people online, I am fairly sure.
I have some theories about how you would be able to hack an account, but if Wizet has coded login properly, I see no possible way. Hacker, come get me, I dare you.
Posted on December 12, 2012
Hacking of 2009/2010
I know this part or section conflicts with others, the facts/information here applies to this section only and overrides the other information in this section online.
There are three ways the hacker could have done it, one, he got database access; once he has that he can do anything. The second way he could have done it is to find a flaw in the source code programming. Lastly, he could have planted a virus, a very powerful one, in an often used source by people who play this game.
Database access is a likely option, but he would not have had it, perhaps an administrator dump of the accounts once inside would have been enough. This option is favoured and though of to be likely by many people and it is not impossible. The passwords were most likely encrypted in the database, meaning that the hacker would either have to brute force the passwords, if encrypted in hash, or would have to decompile them. Some say that Glacia was not hit, but the truth is that the accounts being used there were around for a long time, every world was hit.
The flaw in the source code programming would have been a likely explanation, it is very easy to bypass pins and a flaw in the source code programming was the cause of the guild hacking last year. It is very possible to send packets that the client doesn’t really want to, such as a packet to disband guild when you are not the leader. These exploits are easy to patch if found.
Planting a virus is a very likely thing, but there are a ton of secure people who have been hacked. Do not be so sure that you have no virus; always scan before answering that question.
Posted on December 12, 2012
Account Hacking from In-Game
As I explained before, you can not get hacked from in-game. I also explained how the client works. In this part I will explain how you can not get hacked from in the game, it’s impossible.
People think that you can get hacked if whispered to or traded. To explain this, I looked at a few packets (legit). When the client sends the whisper packet, it sends the header, same as in all data packets. After that it will send the recipient and the message that you are sending that person. Based on the recipient, the server will most likely then send a data packet to the receiver. Nowhere in this relationship to the two clients communicate at all in any direct way; the server does all that for them, as it should. In no way can a hacker abuse whispers.
Trades are similar. The client will send a packet for spawning a trade, the server will then most likely make a new object for that trade. An object is basically a data space reserved for a set of data containing properties and such. After that multiple packets are sent between the two clients and the server, but the two clients never directly interact in any way. A hacker can not abuse this relationship in any way either.
Surly you must think that the clients have a link when you are in the same map. Sadly, that is not true. There are packets for spawning the player, moving the player and just about everything you can think of. When coded properly, this does not lag at all. Look at google; it searches over 8000000000 pages every search in less than 1 second.
Posted on December 12, 2012
The internet and your computer communicate via data packets.
First of all, I want to clear up some lies that foolish people here have been telling you. First of all, accepting trades, party invites and chats is completely safe and you cannot be hacked as a result of it. The free market is safe and a great place to go to merchant. You are completely safe if you take the proper steps.
When you are a target for getting hacked, the hacker will do one of two things. One thing he may do is contact you somehow, and talk to you normally. He will seem nice, and you may know him for a few days if not weeks. This is what we call social engineering. That is the act of �playing� someone. The people you know on maple story that you do not know in real life, you do not really know them. All you know from them is what they tell you. You do not know if they want your password.
The other thing a hacker will do is wait for you to disconnect. If the hacker doesn�t want to try to get your password from you, he will try to key log you. I tell you the truth basilers, if you buy a computer and only have one program on it, maple story, you will never be hacked. If a website other then the official maple story website asks for any information, do not use the information you usually use.
So you people must be wondering how you get hacked, it is one of the two ways I listed above. If they can get to know you, they can play you until you like them and give them your info. They can also plant programs inside your computer to see what keys you press.
Here is another truth, the hacker cannot hack any account he wants to. If he did, the top 100 players would go down, he hacks the people that come to him. The top 100 players are the same as all of you; they do not have extra protection. If they can protect themselves then you can also.
Now I will explain how hacking works, and how you cannot hack someone from in game. To do that I need to explain how the program maple story works. To do that, I will explain how the internet works.
The internet and your computer communicate via data packets. Data packets are small pieces of data that contain information. These travel from one place to another. The maple story server and your computer send data packets back and forth. Each data packet has a header that tells where the data packet will go to. A hacker cannot re-direct these data packets to their computer, easily. You would need to give them a little something before they could do that, hackers are not Gods.
As I said before , maple story sends packets to your client and your client sends them back, when you log in with your username and password, the client sends the username and password to the server, that is the only time that the username and password are send between them.
One other player here on these forums claims that the hacker takes your player on screen, that is false. To do that, he would need to tell the server to stop accepting his clients packets for his character and start accepting them for the player that he wants to hack, basically impossible in programming as each player would have an object to themselves, but that�s just programming.
If the hackers gained access to the database, then they would be able to do whatever they want. The character data, account data and the notices/news/events on the maple story website are all in that database; they would do a lot more, and would hack better accounts.
Also, for databases, there is a neat feature that lets you only allow a connection from certain ip. You cannot change your ip to their ip because you need a unique ip to connect to the internet, technically.
Ok, so you think a lot of people are getting hacked, right? No, at the time that I made this thread, there were 34637 people online in global maple story. On max, you will only play for 5 hours a day at most, and over two 5 hour periods, it is reasonable to say that the number of players online would be steady, meaning around 70000 people play maple story. If you say that around 300 people got hacked so far, that is a 0.5% chance of you being hacked. I took into account the minimum people that play, not everyone plays every day. The 0.5% would be the minimum, I estimate to around 0.01% of the total population of 2009 to be hacked.
I am a computer programmer, I know my stuff. Please feel free to ask questions and I will provide the answers I know. The program I used to get the number of people online is legit, it acts as a client connecting to the server, sending the same packets, the server sends the amount of people online, I am fairly sure.
I have some theories about how you would be able to hack an account, but if Wizet has coded login properly, I see no possible way. Hacker, come get me, I dare you.
Posted on December 12, 2012
There are some really negative comments here about RaiderZ
There are some really negative comments here about this game. Most of them i wouldn’t take into account considering their first sentence is either all in capitals or contains profanity.
The game is unique, in that it employs a more skill based fighting system in an open world setting. There are other games that use this style, however. Other games tend to be instanced based and sometimes have a Stamina system that make it hard to play for more than 2 hours at a time before putting money into the game. RaiderZ is fun and lets you mix and match classes, but because the level cap is low it really is not wise if you want to be effective. Playing with a group of friends, and trying to defeat some of the larger bosses is a lot of fun. End game is the same as every other mmo, grind grind grind the same thing over and over.
I reached lvl 35 within a week and still had quests to turn in by that point. If you do quests you should have no issue with leveling at a decent speed. PVP is a little broken considering that Clerics really have no hope and some classes can stun you till you are dead. The voice acting is pretty bad at this stage, party composition doesn’t matter (which can be nice in certain situations), armor designs are pretty, and the GM’s are little cheaters. Total biscuit played with some and his cleric kept maxing out their health and mana. Shame on those GM’s.
Posted on December 12, 2012
SWTOR – F2P model… good and bad…
Hey peeps, some of you already know that SWTOR is finally F2P… Well, in theory the game is F2P, unfortunately the F2P component is not exactly what I call ideal. Is very limited and you cant play effectively as a F2P player.
There is a few good things in the new model, its free to try it out and you can get extra stuff with real money, if you really like the game. You can buy the things you need and get away with it, if you do have the money to expend in a short burst… (Credit Cards are wonderful sometimes!!!).
The bad thing is that your F2P experience is going to be very restricted unless you put some real money into the game, its kinda strange that after all the failures and mishaps in SWTOR, the developers want to force people into giving them money, its a bit more pleasing if you are persuaded into giving them a few bucks from time to time…
I am serious, the game is forcing you to put some money into it, otherwise you wont be able to do the most basic things like using all your skills, because you only have 1 skill bar as a F2P player, you need to buy more skill bars if you want more hotkeys and the ability to use your skills.
I can understand that you limit the ammount of warzones and instances that you can do as a F2P member… but, CMON!!!! I need the skill bars to play the game, one skill bar is not even good enough at all if you have a level 50 character.
Right now, SWTOR is not F2P, its a trial version with a F2P mask on top of it. At the best, the Rift Freebie trial is a lot better than the whole SWTOR model… Sometimes I wonder why in the hell they decided to do this and call it F2P, maybe it looks good in their financial sheet, after all, they are lacking subscribers.
In conclusion, The F2P model is a Trial version of the game, you still need to pay if you want the full package and not just extras. If you do want to play the F2P game…
Posted on December 12, 2012
Ghost Recon Online: The Fact That It Is A Difficult Game
Over the course of the Closed Beta, and Open Beta season I have seen players quit Ghost Recon Online because they claim it was too difficult. With the cover system being the main feature of the game, along with special abilities for the three different class it is no wonder why players claim that it is too difficult. Difficult in a sense that this game takes a bit more strategy, skill and especially patience compared to the generic run and gun shooters. In Call of Duty, players run and gun all the time with no sense of hesitation, but being ghost recon is a bit different, running and gunning will get you killed (unless your a recon that has cloak). The cover system is what I think makes this game so difficult, it is either players learn to adapt to a new game setting, or players learn to quit a game so soon. But other than the games mechanics, the level up system is what I also truly see frustrating players. I do agree with the fact that higher level players shouldn’t have a major advantage over lower level players, but with time comes great opportunity. I know it is difficult versing players who have a higher level weapon (which often is considered better than the lower level weapons), with better armor, devices and a major experience gap but that just means it is more difficult to kill them. If you are a true “Ghost” then you will stick it out through good and bad times.
The truth behind Ghost Recon Online is that it is a difficult game that require a lot of tactics, skills, and a whole bunch of luck. The cover system along with the use of abilities will either make the difference between an average player, to a highly competitive player. Anyone can go behind a wall and start shooting, but with the use of effective timing, and a little bit of luck a kill can be reached. I have always talked about luck, but with the critical system having a certain percentage to activate after every shot, it can really make the difference in a battle. Having a critical hit can relieve you from firing one more round into another player, which saves you time, ammo and sometimes your life.
With three classes to choose with from such as an Assault (Assault Rifles, and shotguns), Recon (Snipers and Sub- Machine Guns) and Specialist (Light Machine Guns and Shotguns) it might make it a difficult choice for players to choose from. But along with other variables such as the type of armor, health and even abilities players are always complaining about either other classes being too strong or too weak. Every class has their respective strong points and weak points and should be played accordingly for maximum efficiency. Perhaps it is the lack of knowledge of each class but when you are having trouble with a class, there is another player who excels at it. Know each class, guns, armor and even devices strong and weak points and players shouldn’t have a difficult time choosing. Whether you play the class the way it is suppose to be played, or play the class how ever you want it will be a difficult match if you don’t know what you are doing.
Leveling up and having access to better weapons is what players sometimes complain about. Also known as a leveling system, players are being frustrated with players having better access to weapons. Here is how difficult it gets facing a higher level player. I know the cheytac or dragunov is much better than the GI~level 10 snipers, or the f2000 having better control than the super fast firing sar-21 c assault but these weapons are much better (stat wise than the lower level weapons). The armor difference between a low level armor and a high level armor is huge. Players who have high level armor, either move faster, or receive more hits compared to a lower level. Devices can also be an issue as the squad device can give a little boost to players. Devices can range from faster device recharge, gunshot detector to more armor. Having a high level device ability can mean a player can use that ability more often, have better effects and/or be much more deadly than a low level using the exact same device. Other than the controls of the game, this is one huge factor that makes the game a bit more difficult. Facing a team of higher levels can ultimately spell defeat if your team cannot counter attack. But don’t be discourage just because these players have higher level armor than you. By playing the game fluently and giving your best shot tactically, and skillfully these “higher level” enemies will not bother you. Take upon the challenge and if you are a low level beating a high level with full equipment, imagine what you can do once you buy full high level gear and weapons. Just because these enemies have a higher advantage stat wise, doesn’t mean that they are invincible. This will help you become a better player as you know that the enemy has an upper hand while you try your best to kill them.
This game has a steep learning curve, so steep that Ghost Recon Online has implemented a matchmaking system only for low levels (1-5). This goes to show, with a lot of quitting threads and posts that this game is not your typical shooter. With a difficulty that is evident, players who quit always say that this game should not be recommended to anyone. I agree that this game shouldn’t be recommended for anyone, anyone who can’t take a good skill base challenge.