SERVER HACKING

Pls Read

Well, Friday the thirteen is no more and yet the sadness of having our friends and gaming mate banned from the game is there for us to remember. While some of you aware of what is happening and some of you do not, i will hereby trying to explain the incident the best i can within the suitable context.

First of all, there is the problem of hackers. Some of us remember the experience of DOS attack on the game server back in March, 08, what happen by then is where hackers forcefully attack the server resulted in frequent disconnection. What uncovered this round is technically different as this time round, instead of hacking the server itself, they attacked the database. The outcome of this resulted in many unauthorized scripts, items, and spells being distributed around. I am not going to go into details on how serious the damage these violation brought to the balance of the game. You may take your time to imagine that.

These series of violations brought a long term damage to the game database. To halt the immediate crisis, the server have no choice but to roll back to the nearest backup point, unfortunately, these backup data is well corrupted due to the hacking. In a results, the server suffered a 2 days roll back.

This also lead to the banning of players involved in these damage, in total around 40 of them. Roll back is never welcome in any game. Raiding, reputation and level grinding, profession etc all being affected if you somehow hardworking that 2 days. To compensate for the loss of players, the server increase temporarily the experience and reputation rate to 150x for a short period of time.

Now, what is done is done. How are we going to avoid or minimize the re-occurrence of such incident? First of all, the players themselves play a vital role in tackling the problem. What players need to know is that hacking will ultimately result in messing up with the database. Hackers might get himself some uber gear or spells, getting some short term gain and fame. Unknowingly, these actions is destroying the stability of the server in the long run. So, if you love the game, love the server, you might as well do your part and distance yourself from hacking tools and programs.

There are not more than 6 active GM in the game. But averagely we have not less than 50 players minimum online in the game. Every players are well empowered to report on any suspicions and illegal event. If everyone hold to their own belief, i am sure there is no way or less successful a group of hacker is able to proceed with such illegal hacking.

As some of you might know, all the Guildmaster or their guild representative recently have an emergency meeting with GM- Zulkapan on numerous game issues. While some of the content i see it as confidential and therefore i choose not to reveal it here, some of it, i felt is vital for me to channel it to every guildmembers as well as non-guildmembers who browse the blog.

1) A new forum thread will be created and accessible mainly for GM, admin, guild representatives. More information will be channel to guild rep to disseminate to players hence reducing the burden of current GM workload and enable for more bug fixing, hack prevention etc.

2) Zul acknowledge the server's need for more Coder (C++) and GM's in the coming future. Recruitment campaign will be done possibly in the coming months.

3) Zul warn all players to avoid further hacking. NO excuses for players to prompt for even the
smallest hack (e.g. Emuhack). He mentioned that GM will no longer be lenient against hackers. No negotiation with terrorist just as no negotiation with hackers.

4) New website is in the middle of development, where more features will be added on.

Please show your respect and gratitude to those GM's who assist and ensure a smooth game. Most of them doing the job for free at their free time, which could be better use elsewhere. Donation in many ways support the server and its misc costs. In case some of you not aware of it, the Wodnet server is currently run on ascent core and it is now no more in support as ascent closed down recently. Expert is scripting most of the sunwell content himself based on the open ascent core. Before you questions the server on its commitment, do ask yourself on what you have done for the server.

Hidden