Rift account gets hacked. Slow response from Trion Worlds

A friend of allroundgeek informed us that his Rift account got hacked. One day he logged in to find his characters stripped from all his items and gold. This is not a situation a player that put hours into advancing his character wants to find himself in. Our friend contacted Trion Worlds immediately explaining to them the situation. It took a full week before he got his stuff back. In addition the customer support gave him some special in-game items and a month's subscription to compensate him for the trouble. Despite that, the fact is that his account got hacked in the first place, which is Trion Worlds fault. In addition, it took them a whole week to reinstate the characters. For a new MMORPG trying to break it into the market this is not good at all.

At the end of the day MMO accounts are not simply game accounts that you 've put hours into. Any MMO account is not less important than any other e-shop account were you put payment and personal information in. You do not want to be in a situation where it is compromised.

Our friend was kind enough to provide us with the email conversation he had with Trion Worlds customer support.

Customer (xxxxxxx)	03/15/2011 11:35 AM
Hello i logged in to the game just now and i noticed most of my chars are naked and and dont have any money one them... Could you please check out what has happened.. Customer (xxxxxxx) 03/15/2011 12:15 PM i just found out that some of my chars on another server are as well naked... do i need to contact a gm there or this ticket is enough?

Response Via Email (GM XXXXXXXX)

03/16/2011 07:45 PM

Hello XXXXXXX! Thank you for contacting us regarding Rift! We do apologize for the delay in responding to your hacked account inquiry. Hacked account appeals are our #1 priority and we are attending to each ticket as quickly as possible. While waiting for us to respond to your petition, we recommend NOT playing on the affected characters until your account has been secured. Once we have investigated your account, we may offer you one of two options. Based on how severly your character was altered, we could restore your character to the most recent back-up we have prior to the account becoming compromised. The second option would be restoring any coin which may have been lost. Again, we do apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you, as well as for the delay in responding to your inquiry. I want to assure you that your inquiry has not been lost and we have not forgotten about you. We are taking steps to both increase our account security as well as increase our customer support staff in order to reduce these wait times. Thank you for your patience while we continue to strive to provide the level of customer service that you should come to expect from Trion. If you have any additional questions or concerns then please don't hesitate to let us know. Thank you for your continued support of Trion Worlds and for playing Rift. Your reference number for this question is 110312-xxxxxxx Sincerely, GM XXXXXXXXX Trion Worlds Inc. Customer (xxxxxxx) 03/17/2011 01:18 AM i would prefer for my characters to be restored from a backuped state before i got hacked... last time i logged out before i got hacked was 4.30AM (GMT +2) on 15/3/2011 around that time at least:) i hope those information help Customer (xxxxxxx) 03/22/2011 12:23 AM five days and no reply...... Customer (xxxxxx) 03/22/2011 03:36 PM And you expect people to renew their subscription with this kind of support? Response Via Email (xxxxxxx) 03/23/2011 01:20 PM Hello XXXXXX! Thank you for contacting us regarding Rift. We are very sorry to hear that your account's integrity has been compromised. We advise that you immediately run a virus/malware scan on your computer, as well as changing your account password in an effort to safeguard your account. After reviewing your issue, I have gone ahead and rolled your characters back to a point in which they seem to look in good shape. This means that all data would be lost between from when your character was compromised to now if you played your character during that timeframe. Please be sure to never visit any questionable websites or open mail that looks questionable, as they could be phishing attempts by seedy websites attempting to siphon off your account information. Remember, never share your account information with anyone to help prevent issues such as this from arising. If you have any additional questions or concerns then please don't hesitate to let us know. Thank you for your continued support of Trion Worlds and for playing Rift. Your reference number for this question is 110315-xxxxxxx Sincerely, Game Master Trion Worlds Inc.

Age of Conan:Unlimited Free Trial till level 20

Funcom announced a new trial program for its not so successful MMORPG Age of Conan. The game suffered from a bad launch with very few content available after a magnificent first 20 levels. Funcom fixed that with many content and balancing patches so far and now tries to win new players. Will the company succeeds in that I do not know. What I know, is, that quality free gaming is always welcomed? It is important to note that you can level as many characters as you want to level 20 and try them without any time limit as long as you get the trial before the 1st of January.

The original announcement:

Our original seven day trial has been very successful so far," says Morten Larssen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom. "But with the holiday season coming up this is the perfect time to shake up our trial offer a bit and try out something new. So everyone who downloads the trial before January 1st will be able to play the first part of the game for free, forever.

We are confident that many of those taking advantage of this offer will choose to become permanent players, allowing them to experience all of what the game has to offer including all the additions and improvements introduced since launch.

The rumored Fallout MMO might be something more than just rumors

The post-apocalyptic world of Fallout was rumored for sometime now to being turned in to an MMO setting. Vault published some screenshots claiming to be from this project and that they come from a very reliable source. The screenshots are said to having been used in court.

The graphics on the screenshots look very dated and they might be just long lost screenshots of an old project presented in the court to serve a purpose. I am not entirely convinced that this is evidence of the game being in development.

The vault says:

Thanks to an anonymous, but reliable source, I have managed to acquire the very first screenshots from Project V13, which everyone knows is a Fallout Online MMORPG even though Interplay is not allowed to say it because of its legal struggle with Bethesda.

As you can see, they show a ruined city, some supermutants and a hero with a 13 on his back. These screenshots were actually submitted by Interplay as court evidence to show that the game is in full production already.

MMORPGs: Not RPGs just boring game mechanics again and again

It is true that I am not a big fan of massive multiplayer online RPGs (MMORPGs). I am a big fan of computer RPG games though. How come, you might ask. It probably has to do with what I love about a good RPG such as Baldur's gate, Fallout, Final Fantasy, or Oblivion that I simply cannot find in an MMO. I like a good story and I like this story to be told in steps and to be firm. I like the character development to affect the gameplay and my part in the story. I like non-repetitive meaningful quests that feel truly epic. I like the character stats to say a little bit more about my character than be just numbers. I like being able to play the game at my own pace. All these are just things I simply cannot find in MMORPGs.

MMORPGs in their current form all they represent, is leveling and gear hunting. There might be a story but the game does not let you see it. There might be quests but all feel, and essentially are, the same(bring me 10 of x items and kill 5 of y monsters). There might be character development but the whole experience is ruined by talking to a fellow player that disregards your selection of skills or a friend that pushes you to level up to to go grind together. It is all about leveling. Ok, there might be a cooperative aspect that is enjoyable but even that can become frustrating. Your guild will have strict rules about raiding and you will be forced to play at other players' pace. If you just want to get in on your own and go do a group quest or a dungeon you will have to wait for hours only to find out that you do not like the people you play with. This was World of Warcraft for me. I got bored, I got fed up with it. I am not saying that there are no MMORPG that I like. There are and there are some that do not fall into the aforementioned “mistakes”. I guess though that these “mistakes” are simply game mechanics that are used to get players addicted. The majority will go into a frenzy to get one more level or one more epic item.

In less than two weeks WoW's latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is coming out and I simply do not care. I do not care that I will be able to do the same sort of quests in new environments just to get 10 more levels and start the, get better gear, game all over again. Many friends of mine are pretty excited by the expansion coming out but then again they love all the things I hate about this game. I guess it is just a matter of opinion.