Sunday, bloody sunday

Was quite an eventful day today. Not really as bloody as the title may suggest, there's been far bloodier days on Rubi-Ka, but nevertheless one to remember.

In the early morning hours (umm... well... it was 10am my time, normally unimaginably early for me to be up on a sunday - but the switch in daylight savings time made it possible :P), a bunch of Omni-Tek personnel gathered in Omni Trade and went raiding. Target for the day was Genesis, and their ql200-300 base in Eastern Foul Plains.

And, surprisingly enough really, all went well. Not even any major LD issues or other server related "added content" to it all. We came, quite many of us, we started pummeling towers and we took the site down. By the time the clan mustered any real defense, it was too late really. The clan control tower was at around 50% health, and well.. takes quite some time to remove 50+ determined players from _any_ location in the game ;-)

As retaliation, they managed to remove a lower quality base in Belial Forest, but (no offense) nothing really valuable. We'll grab it back, I trust. That, or another.

Future will tell, how this base will hold up to future retaliation strikes. Can't predict that, can only promise anyone trying - we'll be there, defending ;-)

Happy Birthday :P

Well not me.. :P

But was just checking account information, and noticed that it's now been 4 years since I made my first payment to Funcom. I know I know... in every MMO - _everyone_ has been around since the beta - everyone except me :P But there... If first payment was made 22nd of november 2001, and 30 days of playing time was included in the retail package - the official 4 year birthday must be right about now :-)

Wasn't Upana btw, who was my first toon. Was a young foolhearted adventurer who went by the name of Madcap0666. Was my first time in ANY MMO, and well.. after gaining some experience in "how things work" in an MMO community (tho some would claim I still haven't a clue I spose :P) and learning a few hard lessons I took a break of a couple of months when my 6 month subscription ended. Came back in August '02 and that's when Upana was born.

Ah the memories hehe.

Come to think of it - one of the very first things I still remember from those very first days, is being chased down by a Pumpkinhead somewhere in Omni Forest (or possibly Greater Omni Forest)... oooo... Halloween is around the corner - guess there's some payback due :P

Halloween on Rubi-Ka, for those interested, tho I dunno if this link will be active indefinately :-)

Denial of service

Wellp, been quite a while since I last posted an entry here. Reasons for that are quite many, but mainly it's due to the fact that Upa has been enganged in his post 220 symbiant/perk cycle - and isn't even out of it yet. When done, I will make some notes about it here - but for now, Upa is pretty much in stasis, regaining lost perks.

Spent some time on Divestoor though, and managed to get him to 210. Also got him a set of Lava Protection Boots and Skin Galvanizer, a Hold Hell at Bay and a Pure Novictum Ring for the Control Unit. He's all set for raiding the Beast of Pandemonium now - and I'm gonna level him up a bit more. Maybe to 215-217 or so.

However.

Guess the "buzz" of the moment is the recent Distributed Denial of Service attacks made on Funcom's servers. Obviously, it's not really possible for someone on the outside to know much about the source of these attacks - but I mean... come on... who other than a disgruntled (ex)player would have any kind of interest in setting up an attack like this on a low profile target such as Funcom? No offense to Funcom, but I fail to see what prestige is to be gained or what other motive there could be.

Oh well.

I doubt we will ever know. We, being the outsiders, the playerbase. Am fairly sure though, that the attack will be tracked down and someone held accountable. Is a common misconception that things like these can be gotten away with - but that's (mostly) only in Hollywood movies ;)

Maybe have a look at Gibson Research Corporation's Web - if wanting to dig deeper into the topic of DDoS. In particular, this attack seems similar to the one at Funcom.