Tip.It Times: 12 July 2009 - Addressing the Anti-Hack Key

Time for a new release of the: >>>Tip.It Times!<<<

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I like this week's articles, the overall mood will make for some good opinionated debates and discussion.

As for the fictional, yet another great continuation by Zonor. I really enjoyed the pleasant imagery. :twisted:

The Anti-Hack bribe article is spot-on. I know that most people want the bank space and would probably forget about the USB device or lose it.

Whole anti-hack key article gets a +1 from me. Echos a lot of people's sentiments about it.

I really like how the times adjust to the current situation, makes it a lot newspaper like! :thumbup:

I thought the inflation article was interesting to read, although I would've liked a longer read as it is such a big problem at the minute I feel the author could've taken a more in depth look into it. The author of the anti hack article also should realise that the key doesn't require you to use a USB slot, it is just the size of a USB stick. ;)

I don't like the Anti-Hack. It seems that the author missed the point with this one.

Yes, we know that offering bank space is a bribe, but consider that no matter what you do, people won't take in better security until a) their valuables are compromised, or B) they are offered something in exchange. The only way that Jagex could roll this much needed security booster was to offer bank space.

Second, the editor makes an erroneous comparison to Blizzard and Jagex's tech support. Do you want to know what the difference is between the two? Blizzard has six times the amount of staff that Jagex does, so yes, they can afford to flip through whatever logs those characters have and give back the items. Jagex can't. Even if they wanted to, the amount of work required to do that for half of their staff would be immense.

Lastly, yes the reason to hack another player has been reduced to nothing more than to be a jerk, but that doesn't stop me from wanting better security. Security is a good thing to have; even if you may see it as unneeded, the possibility exists for your account to be compromised, and and you should have some way to keep that air-tight secure. Passwords and PINs are only as strong as the person that types them in, and if they use their favorite something-or-other, or some other socially engineerable password, then it's not strong at all.

I'm not sure I feel any pity for the "then I couldn't play at work" statement.

Overall though, sounds reasonable.

I think the anti-hack article was a good read, but made the key sound too negative. Sure it could be small and easy to lose, but so are car keys. Your car keys could certainly be lost/stolen, but because they're important to us we keep them safe. The same would apply for any player who cared enough to buy a security key I would imagine

 

Second, the editor makes an erroneous comparison to Blizzard and Jagex's tech support. Do you want to know what the difference is between the two? Blizzard has six times the amount of staff that Jagex does, so yes, they can afford to flip through whatever logs those characters have and give back the items. Jagex can't. Even if they wanted to, the amount of work required to do that for half of their staff would be immense.

 

So instead of taking a loss on keys, why not....Hire more support?

I feel it is a bit excessive of security for this game, so I doubt I'd ever buy the key, but I am a bit peeved at the thought of offering extra bank space with it. I would rather see a greater investment made in customer support.

Also, I am willing to bet a large portion of players are quite young and will be prone to losing their key. Not everyone who plays carries a set of keys with them.

 

Second, the editor makes an erroneous comparison to Blizzard and Jagex's tech support. Do you want to know what the difference is between the two? Blizzard has six times the amount of staff that Jagex does, so yes, they can afford to flip through whatever logs those characters have and give back the items. Jagex can't. Even if they wanted to, the amount of work required to do that for half of their staff would be immense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So instead of taking a loss on keys, why not....Hire more support?

They only gross about $60M a year, whereas Blizzard's earnings is in the billions. To hire more staff, they need more customers, and to get more customers, they have to protect the ones they have. It's honestly a tough thing to think about - but working with 400 staffers, probably one half of which are devoted full-time to support, being able to do anything on the scale of Blizzard is, at best, a pipe dream.

The key was offered to help keep the current, existing players supported/protected. Losing money to a glitch is unfortunate, but they can't sit back and go through every log determining if Player X lost money due to a bug or something else.

On a fun related note. I run a call center at night for an ISP and know my part timer/full timers (makes no difference really as to quality of support) can support AT LEAST 10k people efficiently per 1 person working a shift. It's not like they all ever will contact jagex, hell - i've never personally used jagex support. we have some customers who never call either. So it's not like you need a support person per customer.

As a CSR, i wish my boss was half as forgiving for my employees having a call wait time as you are to jagex. Lol 60 million a year eh? Support is cheap - especially in this economy where everyone is looking for a job

Inflation is very bad for people like me who not played in the last few months.

I just wonder how much I have lost due to inflation :(

The key was offered to help keep the current, existing players supported/protected. Losing money to a glitch is unfortunate, but they can't sit back and go through every log determining if Player X lost money due to a bug or something else.

No, but they do have time to make smarmy comments without even bothering to check.

I feel it is a bit excessive of security for this game, so I doubt I'd ever buy the key, but I am a bit peeved at the thought of offering extra bank space with it. I would rather see a greater investment made in customer support.

I'm not wanting to have to enter 3 sets of information to log in, I'm tempted to get rid of my bank pin because of the general annoyance it causes as I hop worlds, log in and out often. Though not as bad as it used to be there are still places in game where world hopping can make a lot of money (Cooking apples from Culinaromancer's chest for example).

I'd feel like I was just paying for the bankspace as this key would be a hinderance rather than help - I have never been hacked before and even so I'd recover my account within a week (by the time my bank pin runs out) with my email and recoveries.

About the second article too. Many items are beginning to drop already, and high level alchemy was already bringing literally billions of gp into the game every day. It's actaully benefitting me in a way because i'm flogging some duplicate items onto the ge then rebuying back later.

Both great articles. I really should read the fiction because of the great reviews it seems to be getting.

The key was offered to help keep the current, existing players supported/protected. Losing money to a glitch is unfortunate, but they can't sit back and go through every log determining if Player X lost money due to a bug or something else.

 

 

 

No, but they do have time to make smarmy comments without even bothering to check.

He did check, and he did apologize. I know what you're talking about. The reason that they get so defensive is because they usually get a lot of bogus lost-item glitch notices. It happens, you know.

The anti-hack bribe article is completely off the mark.

First, while the bribe is there, it is also necesarry. Who would pay for added security except for people who had already been hacked? what is that, 25% of players? Less? Maybe. The point is, the bribe would allow the device to sell better, and that keeps accounts safe. A little extra bank space is a good way to bribe players! It doesnt add much loading time, and it can help hold back a lot of frustration!

Second, who among us has a truly unbreakable password? And who would want to have to change our password to something less breakable? A USB anti-hack device is far easier to remember than a harder-to-hack password.

I thought the inflation article was interesting to read, although I would've liked a longer read as it is such a big problem at the minute I feel the author could've taken a more in depth look into it. The author of the anti hack article also should realise that the key doesn't require you to use a USB slot, it is just the size of a USB stick. ;)

I realy didn't see much more I could have gone into besides maybe what inflation is and overall explain most of the article. But I felt that with all the recent talk about it people would understand what I was talking about. But this was my first article and if depth is what you you guys like to see I'll try to do it.

Feel free to comment on my article I'd like some constructive criticism :)

Inflation is very bad for people like me who not played in the last few months.

 

I just wonder how much I have lost due to inflation :(

Depends what you have in your bank whether it's items or cash. Also as pointed out above items are starting their descent so you arn't hurt too bad and if you were your going to rebound.

I liked the article about inflation, even though most of it has been said already.

I would just like to add this thought:

What if it gets fixed? The inflated money is still there. Okay, part of it leaves the game through summoning and construction, but that happens anyway, even without the extra inflated money. Because of this fact, I'm inclined to say that prices will stop rising when its get's fixed, but shouldn't crash. Of course, with panicking and such, we will have a crash, but to me it seems logic that most rises in prices will at least keep up a bit, and will never reach the old level.

thoughts?

Hmm, what happens when the USB key thing needs recharging?

Hmm, what happens when the USB key thing needs recharging?

Andrew said it had a battery that lasts around 5 years. If your still playing by then I'm sure it's just a simple watch battery you can replace.

I liked the article about inflation, even though most of it has been said already.

 

 

 

I would just like to add this thought:

 

 

 

What if it gets fixed? The inflated money is still there. Okay, part of it leaves the game through summoning and construction, but that happens anyway, even without the extra inflated money. Because of this fact, I'm inclined to say that prices will stop rising when its get's fixed, but shouldn't crash. Of course, with panicking and such, we will have a crash, but to me it seems logic that most rises in prices will at least keep up a bit, and will never reach the old level.

 

 

 

thoughts?

Once the 26k trick is fixed I have a feeling that the fix will include some sort of money drain, whatever that may be. Just a thought, but I have a (hopeful) feeling they are doing more to stop it than just making it hard to 26k trick.

I agree almost completely with the Anti-Hack Key article.

I disagree with the inflation article though. Thousands of players are 26king around the clock. Alone, the yield is not great - only about one million per hour potential per player. But this profit is in pure cash. Combined the threat is huge. If 10000 people got 4 hours worth of potential per day (the core group of players), this pumps 40 billion into the game per day. For reference, that's another 65000 hours of alching (2713 days) that's contributing to inflation daily. Considering alching alone was slowly lowering the value of gold pieces, this is amazingly unwelcome.

The problem with alching is that it inputs huge amounts of cash into the game while the person alching gives previously earned cash for the supplies. However, alching is hindered because you lose a substantial amount of money while alching and it is boring. Getting PvP potential, on the other hand, is painless, afkable, and laughably easy. You can even alch comfortably while earning potential.

And the hourly yield of 26king in pure cash is higher than the hourly yield from alching anything with a value of 1250 coins or less.

And don't tell me I won't feel the effects - I was holding several hundred millions coins before the latest PvP update. Even hastily buying raw materials didn't turn around my losses - it only slowed them.

Honestly, dropping slayer and boss monster items was a better temporary solution than artifacts.

The key was offered to help keep the current, existing players supported/protected. Losing money to a glitch is unfortunate, but they can't sit back and go through every log determining if Player X lost money due to a bug or something else.

 

 

 

No, but they do have time to make smarmy comments without even bothering to check.

 

He did check, and he did apologize. I know what you're talking about. The reason that they get so defensive is because they usually get a lot of bogus lost-item glitch notices. It happens, you know.

It was good that he admitted he made a mistake in the end, but that was entirely after the fact. There was no need to make those comments to your customers. "One is a liar, so they all must be liars" is not a viable defense. Furthermore, this seems to be the rule Jagex practices instead of the exception. I've had several friends get their accounts banned or muted for ridiculous reasons they were completely innocent of, and forget about explaining it in your appeal. Yet, at the same time I see other appeals work with this explanation:

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I think it shows either where investments are needed more, or the staff needs to change their attitudes.