Tag Archives: gaming

If We Give Back the Ads, Can We Have Our Accounts?

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Well, well. It would appear that last week’s rumors about all the World of Warcraft account thefts were true. DO NOT CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK IF YOU USE INTERNET EXPLORER. In fact, no one click, I’ll quote for you.

From Allakhazam’s front page, posted last Friday (10/7/05):

This only applies to you if you are running an older version of Internet Explorer, have not updated windows with the latest security patches and do not have virus protection on your computer. Apparantly one of our ad providers was affected by a trojan and was serving it to our site for several days last weekend. This is a keylogger and could possibly compromise your game login and password. As soon as we discovered it, we pulled all of their ads.

To see if you got the trojan, go to Program Files/Internet Explorer in your directory and look for a file named “syssmss.exe”. If it is there, then open your task manager and delete the file. Also go to %WIN_DIR%\Downloaded Program Files and delete a file named either “fucksnow.exe” or “muma.exe”. Then once you have done that, log into the game and change your password. In fact, change every password for every place you have typed since you got the trojan.

There are also several online sites that scan your computer for free.

http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

We apologize for this. In 6 years of running this site, nothing like this has ever happened. It kills me to think that we may have, even inadvertantly, caused anyone to have their account compromised. We’re all about making the games better and more fun. Believe me, we will do everything in our power to make sure it does not happen again.

Along with the advertiser who sent this, and in cooperation with the FBI, we are attempting to track down the people who sent this. I hope I get a few minutes in a back room with the bastards.

– Allakhazam

The news finally made it’s way to the Warcraft General stickied posts (the last paragraph is the update) over the weekend, otherwise I would have had a good laugh last Friday. Not that Blizzard or the stricken players have any blame here, but infuckingcredible.

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Taking the MM out of MMOG

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World Of WarCraft – Private Servers — If a private server’s experience rate is listed as very high, does that mean you gain a level every 10 minutes? If your guild disbands, or reforms without you, wouldn’t that make your playing time very … uncomfortable? Anyways. From the FAQ on setup of your own private server: “How to set up a private WoW server? We have no idea how it works nor do we know anybody who knows how it work. So you dont need to send us mails regarding this subject.” Nondenial denial disclaimers ftw.

Your Prize Got Away!

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Usually on Sundays, I take it easy, both in Real Life (that you’ve heard so much about) and in Game Life. I do check the World of Warcraft Auction House a couple of times to make sure some ne’er-do-wells aren’t trying to lowball my corners of the market, maybe I’ll check combat supplies for the next week and empty the mailbox of Saturday’s sales.

Yesterday, however, I happened to glance at the clock and realized, sonuvabitch, it’s almost time for that fishin’ contest in Stranglethorn Vale! Hot damn! Not too late and not too hungover!

I hightailed it down south, checked on the position of the quest NPCs so I’d know exactly which boards to jump down for the fast turnin and headed for the coast to pick out a choice stretch of abandoned beach.

That abandoned beach part is what proved to be the most challenging. I’d find a spot with no players in sight and few minutes later, along comes an interloper. Then another, and another, until I gave up on abandoned and settled for relatively uncrowded.

The public conversation turned to the recent account hacking problems and the resultant rumors, the fishing contests in weeks prior, buying gold off ebay (really IGE and its many knockoffs, but everyone still calls it ebay) and all the level 60 hunters that spend their game lives in Maraudon doing whatever it is that hunters do in Maraudon all day. heh. I think we all know what they do.

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