The Hacker Project - a free online game

I can improve upon that: I just don't finish installing until I can finish 10 or more so AVs don't work. If I get 1000 or so servers, and start downloads to an equal amount of Corp. Servers, then activate them, I can probably get 200 in. You then have 24 hours to disinfect 191, while simultaneously stopping me from starting new Revelations.

And yes, I am perfectly willing over some week-long vacation from college to get a couple friends, and spend time on making 1000 accounts just to do this: You can slow us down, but you can't stop us.

I bet with just 250 accounts, I could (solo) unleash a barrage of Revelations that would require the efforts of SGP to stop. The issue is that I can stop deletion processes, I can accept the AV and begin installing another, and with that many accounts, you'd be hard pressed to beat them all.

And you would need to beat them all: as far as I can tell, if I get 15 installed, even if you shut down 6 of them, if I can get another one up, that clock is still going. And if I can get another 10 up, that clock is as good as finished.

Everquest lasted how many years? It only dies because newer, better games came out.

WoW is still going strong, as is EVE online (7 and 5 years respectively).

Puzzle pirates is also 5, and has over 3 million people playing. Granted it has 8 "oceans" (servers) now, but it has no resets (even in the 8th "test server")

Even Pardus, another browser-based game puts the lie to that: it is approaching it's 4th birthday (and I've been playing for over a year), and it is going strong. The closest thing it has had to a reset was last June, when they opened two more servers. The first server, however, continues onwards.

On the flip side, there is no game that has achieved any level of acclaim that has resets.


The Statement "Persistent worlds are destined to get boring." is not supported by any facts: what is shown is that the best MMOs available do not reset, and instead continue to expand to keep experienced players challenged and new players supported.



Siremi, While I am a novice game developer (I have yet to publish a game in any form), I still know that the voice of the players is far more important that one's own goals: I lost a good game to my own blindness (I added a major change that was unpopular, and didn't listen to people say they didn't like it). Heed my warning: your current path will destroy this game, as surely as anything you can do.


And if you ignore my warning, I will have no choice but to consider this game dead, and cease to expend energy trying to make it better.

Just to say it:

Your idea sucks. drop it.


Now, here is why it sucks:

1) I am a mediocre player: I am, and will always be, a second-tier hacker (and I'm happy here). There are 5 servers I all but own, and another few that I might have to fight for. Therefore, the best players must have more (they are better), and instead of seeing people with 1, 2, 5 servers, you'd see 5, 10, 1000 servers. The only limitation is how much time I have (Make a new account, connect, do a few missions, and decide the game sucks. Come in with my main account, "find" the IP, change the logs, and start the process: Untraceable as a ToS violation).

2) Think about balance: do you want to be given 5 extra servers, if it means I get 10, and each member of SGP gets 50, or 100?

3) It would make the ability to destroy servers even more powerful, because by destroying a server just out of newbie protection, you make the player stop playing (Maybe not, but if you do it enough...). Instant decent server. And so you are aware: "Destroy" does not mean delete everything, "Destroy" means hide everything, load virii in the rest of the HDD, and install said virii.

4) It would make inactivity for any vacation longer than a week potentially lethal. The only way to avoid this is to change your IP right before leaving, and pray that nobody purchases your IP.

5) After your only server gets taken over, you get left with nothing: so what do you do.

Sure. Most games also have it in the ToS that you can not trade in-game items for Earth money. It doesn't stop it.

We agreed that we were aware that you could change things without warning. You, however, gave us a means other than quitting to voice our opinions, and we are doing so. We are well aware that if you choose to go through with this, we may have to resort to that final option: to quit for good.


It goes both ways. It appears as if much of the community would rather not see this, and with several of the critical groups saying that they will kill Revelation at all costs, even if you do implement this, it may never happen.

I am going to add my voice to the crowd against a reset.


You led us to believe, whether intentionally or otherwise, that the game we were playing would be persistent. That what we did would last, and continue to serve us. And we are not satisfied by simply being in a Hall of Fame somewhere: Hall of Famers aren't making a difference any more.



I would be satisfied as long as we keep something after doomsday: perhaps we keep 1/10 of our upgrades, and our best secondary server (with 1/10 it's upgrades).

Smoking is Strongly correlated to lung cancer.

Chewing tobacco has been correlated to various forms of oral cancer.

There is (possibly questionable) evidence that Cigarettes are highly addictive: something like a 90% chance of being addicted after one (I doubt this, but I have seen that number used).

That said, several Native American tribes smoked tobacco (not Cigarettes, but Tobacco leaves) for hundreds of years. If there was anything that hurt their survival, it should have killed them off. However, they didn't die off, so it appears that there is nothing in Tobacco that is harmful. Perhaps the lesson here is that the processing that turns Tobacco into Cigarettes is harmful to human health.

You can just reactivate them with a Virus Breaker.

Theraze has a point. Depending on file size, I might be able to run 3 to 6 researches simultaneously. I've seen private servers several times better than mine, which means much more simultaneous research.

So, if this were introduced, SGP could probably get both to v5.x, and be unstoppable. In one day.

As has been mentioned, that's not enough.

1) As soon as I get in, I delete logs, and AV any sniffer good enough to see me (IP blockers are way better than Sniffers right now)
2) Then I delete you Log Deleter
3) Then your Spyware AV.
4) And upload/install the Back door.

At this point, your only hope is to figure out when I sleep, and do everything while I sleep. As soon as I catch any processes on you, I kill them. I clog your Bandwidth with downloads and Virii. I clog your processor with more virii.

Checkmate.


When it gets really dangerous is if I can build a bot to kill everything it can on your server every couple minutes. Now I can even sleep knowing you are all but dead.

From Dilbert: TTP: "The TTP Project"

I'm not sure: this kind of thing is called a Back Door whenever I've heard of it.


And just to make sure I understand, the thing gives you Admin Access to a server, but deletes itself after running for 48 hours, and is killed by a Spyware AV.

That's a weird pattern, but a nice one.

Depends on how much it hurt.


Though probably, I'd play the scientist, and see if it happened the same way if someone else pulled the lever.

What are those patterns?

Umm. Hatejacket is one of the best players in the game.