Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

wow.joystiq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 179 posts

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#41

Post by yozmsn »

ben0x539 wrote: post #28
tibbon wrote: post #15

If I remember right, there was a post on HN here a while ago about how there's a dot pattern embedded in all WoW screenshots, so they can identify who the user is even if they remove the character name from the screen. If they have the account information on this, I have to wonder if they could actually sue someone (instead of just banning them) for using this hack?

Those screenshots are probably the victims', anyway. While Blizzard probably does have enough logging to track this down on their end, it's fairly easy to get a trial account with bogus account information, so it would be back to grabbing their IP addresses and pleading with some ISP to reveal their real identity.

As it turns out there are a couple of guys publishing videos youtube of their, POV as the attacker/killer, so if the dot-pattern thing isn't a hoax then those guys are screwed... but from what I read it sounds like it's a bunch of guys who are annoyed that the hack exists and so they're abusing it until Blizzard fixes it.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#42

Post by saurik »

DigitalJack wrote: post #38
bsphil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes EVE so much more interesting to me. There's only one server. The monthly fee can be earned in-game. The economy is tied to actual dollars because it's so reliable. There have been plenty of universe-spanning conflicts that impact the entire game with genuine political drama, and the dev team steps back to let it unfold with minimal intervention.

There are many servers in eve. Each time you go through a jump gate you are usually hopping to a new server.

I don't think he means in terms of implementation detail like "how many machines are running the world": the idea is that there is only a single shard (to use UO terminology; I believe WoW calls these "realms"), which means that everyone is playing together in a single massive alternate universe.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#43

Post by pooriaazimi »

bsphil wrote: post #13
jpxxx wrote: post #5

I think that there's something kind of fascinating and romantic about the idea that an entire world and the ongoing social affairs of thousands of people can fit on a single server blade in the middle of nowhere.

That's what makes EVE so much more interesting to me. There's only one server. The monthly fee can be earned in-game. The economy is tied to actual dollars because it's so reliable. There have been plenty of universe-spanning conflicts that impact the entire game with genuine political drama, and the dev team steps back to let it unfold with minimal intervention.

Can someone explain what EVE is? And explain it like I don't know anything about it (and I don't). Wikipedia, etc. don't cut it and I still don't understand what EVE is and why people like it.

Thanks a lot!

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#44

Post by adrianpike »

tibbon wrote: post #15

If I remember right, there was a post on HN here a while ago about how there's a dot pattern embedded in all WoW screenshots, so they can identify who the user is even if they remove the character name from the screen. If they have the account information on this, I have to wonder if they could actually sue someone (instead of just banning them) for using this hack?

Wow, I missed that first time around. Neat. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505584

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#45

Post by trafficlight »

patio11 wrote: post #24

Admin consoles: the soft underbelly of billion dollar software operations since... Seriously, though: you almost certainly have one if you run a software business. Client side SSH certificates are your friend. If you're not able to do that, because it is really annoying, separate it from the main app and lock it down as much as possible. (Separate authentication from the main site/app's authentication scheme. Lock do…

Take a look at Authy for a reasonably easy way to add two-factor auth to your normal SSH login. It's intended for website authentication, but there is a Github project for adding it to sshd.

https://www.authy.com/

https://github.com/authy/authy-ssh

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#46

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

patio11 wrote: post #24

Admin consoles: the soft underbelly of billion dollar software operations since... Seriously, though: you almost certainly have one if you run a software business. Client side SSH certificates are your friend. If you're not able to do that, because it is really annoying, separate it from the main app and lock it down as much as possible. (Separate authentication from the main site/app's authentication scheme. Lock do…

>Client side SSH certificates are your friend

Of note, if you do use a client-side SSH cert, disable username and password auth.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#48

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #43
bsphil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes EVE so much more interesting to me. There's only one server. The monthly fee can be earned in-game. The economy is tied to actual dollars because it's so reliable. There have been plenty of universe-spanning conflicts that impact the entire game with genuine political drama, and the dev team steps back to let it unfold with minimal intervention.

Can someone explain what EVE is? And explain it like I don't know anything about it (and I don't). Wikipedia, etc. don't cut it and I still don't understand what EVE is and why people like it. Thanks a lot!

EVE Online's a space massively multiplayer online game. Unlike World of Warcraft, instead of there being multiple servers for a given areas (hence not everyone sees the same people in that area), EVE allocates one server per area, or something like that, meaning there is only one EVE online world. EVE's considered very interesting because there's a quite sophisticated virtual economy and a larger emphasis on trade.

I don't play the game though, so I might be wrong :)

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#49

Post by waterlesscloud »

dangrossman wrote: post #33
waterlesscloud wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly raises some questions for the "notability" police.

It's a historical event that affected millions and spawned research in at least 4 distinct fields. The wiki article cites several scholarly journals on top of BBC, Wired, Reuters, NPR and The Times. How much more notable could you want?

It was a short-lived bug in a video game. There were research proposals that never went anywhere because it was concluded that the model would be a poor match for the real world.

Plenty of things happen every single day that affect millions and are covered in multiple world news sources. They don't have their own pages, so clearly that's not the standard.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#50

Post by aesopiate »

yozmsn wrote: post #41
ben0x539 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those screenshots are probably the victims', anyway. While Blizzard probably does have enough logging to track this down on their end, it's fairly easy to get a trial account with bogus account information, so it would be back to grabbing their IP addresses and pleading with some ISP to reveal their real identity.

As it turns out there are a couple of guys publishing videos youtube of their, POV as the attacker/killer, so if the dot-pattern thing isn't a hoax then those guys are screwed... but from what I read it sounds like it's a bunch of guys who are annoyed that the hack exists and so they're abusing it until Blizzard fixes it.

The dot pattern only exists in in-game screenshots, and only if they're set to 9/10 quality or lower. They won't exist in a frapsesque video.
Post reply on HN