Avatea

This should now be fixed. Please let me know if there is further issue accessing the North American website from Europe.

Many thanks for your patience with this!

This should now be fixed. Please let me know if there is further issue accessing the North American website from Europe.

Many thanks for your patience with this!

We're looking into this, apologies for the inconvenience. I'll update this thread as soon as I get more info to share with you.

We've just restarted it again and your characters should be copying over now. Sorry for the late response, please don't hesitate to PM me next time it happens. We appreciate your patience with this, we do!

I trust all of you Justice super people to be wary and vigilant! The carnies are up to no good and we know that their little party hides more nefarious activities! Fill your inspiration inventory with greens and awakens and don't let them deceive you! They're not the sort to throw a party without expecting anything in return from you and the price could well be...your soul!

We have secured intel suggesting that the Carnies are planning a massacre in the coming days, so make sure you stock up on greens and awakens wherever they'll take you if you plan on attending their little party. Unfortunately they seem to have chosen a time of day that doesn't have so many law enforcing officers patrolling those areas in cap au Diable and Steel Canyon. Keep an eye out for trouble is all we ask of you!

Cheese! Just showing my tremendous screenshot taking skills...or lack thereof.

I present you: Team Union Wrong Times!



Thanks for putting up with my leeching, which incidentally resulted in me not faceplanting that much this time. I learn fast

And my hardy Justice team:



Fret not if your server hasn't been selected this time, there will be more to come on a server near you!

I had a brilliant time faceplanting with you, Justicians! Sorry I had to leave before the last Guest Author Arc but I'm glad you managed to squeeze it in last night!

I now fear what Samuraiko will do with me....Actually can I be a 50-foot-tall monster?

Congratulations kidengineer! That went even faster than last week...obviously the Commodore 64 sacrifice did not achieve anything for good old Ebil-o, what a waste!

Send me a PM with the costume code and territory you wish to get, and I'll facilitate it as quickly as I can

In the meantime, your title has been changed, congratulations again!

Submissions open every Monday only from 10 AM Pacific Time (1 PM Eastern Time / 6PM GMT / 19:00 Central European Time) until 5:00 PM Pacific Time (8:00 PM Eastern Time / 1:00 AM GMT / 2:00 Central European Time) between January 11, 2010 and July 26, 2010).

Welcome to our "Search the words, save the world" forum mission!

Last week's victory was a thundering one for humanity but super evil computer Ebil-o is really not pleased this week. We have managed to secure intel that suggests that he is actually quite cross...so cross that he's sacrificed his Commodore 64 lackey on the binary numeral altar of all digital things in order for this week's challenge to be a much tougher one. My little finger tells me someone will figure it all out in a matter of minutes again though...

Your opportunity to save us all is through a word block located at the bottom of this post.

The goal is to be the first one to find the words based on the theme (without being told what they are), circle them in the word block (using Paint or an equivalent program) and then list them below it.

If you are the first one to answer with the correct words, you win and only then will we be able to input the words into Ebil-o's matrix, thus delaying our impending doom. As a token of our gratitude, we'll give you the "Ebil-o FTL [date]" forum title as well as 1 (one) costume code amongst the following ones:

• Carnival of Shadows Harlequin
• Freakshow Tank Boss
• Paragon Police Department Hardsuit
• Carnival of Shadows Ring Mistress
• Knives of Artemis Lt.
• Praetorian Clockwork

Have fun…but not too much as each week we’re counting on you to save the world!

Rules

1) Reply in the official City of Heroes® forum (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/) thread created for each weekly " Search the words, save the world Contest” with your submission.

2) Your reply must contain a number of words or names that will be defined every time this contest is run.

3) Your reply must also contain the following statement. Please note that your submission will be disqualified if this statement is not present in your post:

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

4) To enter the contest weekly, as of January 11, 2010, you must be 13 years of age or older. If a winner is under 18 or a minor in his or her state/province/country of residence, his or her parent or guardian must also sign any applicable releases and documentation.

5) Please note, only 1 (one) entry per forum account will be accepted. If you post a second time, you'll get disqualified, so make your one entry count!

6) Entries must conform to the Official City of Heroes Message Forum Rules and Guidelines and to the Contest Official Rules and Conditions.

7) If you win the City of Heroes® Search the words, save the world Contest one week, you are not eligible to do so again for the next 8 weeks. This is to allow other people the opportunity to win. Please be courteous to others and refrain from participating during the weeks you are not eligible to win.

Monday, January 25th, 2010 - Word Block



This week's word search is a bit different. You are looking to find 10 words contained in the name of places scattered throughout Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

[/B][/U]Good luck all, and don't forget that the fate of the world is in your hands!

The line between heroism and villainy gets blurrier and blurrier as we near the apogee of Emperor Cole's reign. We have already introduced you to both Maelstrom, a soldier disavowed by the government he fought so hard for, and Desdemona, a sulfurous demon-summoning sorceress once bent on revenge. But it is now time to unveil the biography of the most prominent figure in Praetoria.

Learn how Marcus Cole ascended to power and became Emperor Cole, a.k.a. Tyrant, in a world torn apart by the Devouring earth and the biggest menace of all - Hamidon - in the latest Going Rogue Website Update!

The Riktis have fled St Martial but are now in Cap au Diable! Join us there for some Friday Rikti Goodness!

Heroes, your Founders' Fall Vanguard base is under siege.

Villains, your St Martial Trainer needs assistance!

Attention Heroes & Villains, we are getting intel that Fredom is next on the Riktis' list. As with Union, Vanguard facilities and Trainers are also at risk.

This is a serious threat and you should not take it lightly. We need you to react witha ll your might or the Riktis will bring Freedom to its knees!

Warning! Bring friends and make sure to team up with higher levels, this is not a drill! Founders' Fall and St Martial seem to be their initial targets!

The line between heroism and villainy gets blurrier and blurrier as we near the apogee of Emperor Cole's reign. We have already introduced you to both Maelstrom, a soldier disavowed by the government he fought so hard for, and Desdemona, a sulfurous demon-summoning sorceress once bent on revenge. But it is now time to unveil the biography of the most prominent figure in Praetoria.

Learn how Marcus Cole ascended to power and became Emperor Cole, a.k.a. Tyrant, in a world torn apart by the Devouring earth and the biggest menace of all - Hamidon - in the latest Going Rogue Website Update!

The Rikti do not give us much advance warning but I hear this is not the only threat looming over Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Thanks all for being up for the challenge

The attack on St Martial has been repelled, they are headed towards Atlas Park now!

Riktis spotted in Founders' Falls and St Martial.

Attention Heroes & Villains, the Rikti have broken through our defences once again and are now trying to invade Union and several Vanguard facilities in order to facilitate the transportation of more Rikti offensive forces! Trainers are also at risk. I fear without your fierce resistance they may be winning this battle over. Please join us in resisting this alien menace!

Warning! Bring friends and make sure to team up with higher levels, this is not a drill!

"Greetings, all.

I’m Scott Jennings, otherwise known as GM Luminary, working with NCsoft’s Game Surveillance Unit (GSU). I’ve been asked to take some time to speak for a bit on the fallout from the war that we’ve been fighting in our games against real money trading (RMT) companies and others trying to violate your account security, and how you can help in the fight.


Make no mistake—it is a war. One that you, our players, see the effects of whenever you play our games or visit forums related to our games. Many of you have noticed the decrease in bots, farmers, and gold spammers as a result of our efforts.

In the game industry, we have also seen an increase in attacks by third parties in an attempt to steal your account information by any means necessary, including phishing, obtaining passwords from third party sites/systems, and using account information provided by those engaged in power-leveling services and other prohibited activities. Recently, the number of these attacks has risen dramatically.

As a result, our game support queues have drastically increased, with thousands of support tickets from players who have lost access to their game accounts and are suffering extended wait times for help. Our game servers, account databases, and support sites are under constant attack and being probed for any vulnerability. It’s a war that by no means is over.

Our enemies are playing for high stakes—the estimated $2 billion dollars that RMT companies earn off the back of game developers and players like you. And we are playing for high stakes as well—the right that we believe we have as a company, and you as players, to play games that are free from the corruption of in-game currency sales and all that results from that.

It’s a war that we’re committed to winning, but one that we’ll need your help with to achieve a real victory. I’ll describe first our responsibility to you to provide a safe and secure gaming environment, and then what you can do in return to protect yourself.

Our job: Provide a secure environment for your game.

With the increase in account compromises that we've been seeing in this past month, I think it’s worth taking a moment to review how seriously we here at NCsoft take your account security.

The news from Google regarding a serious, high-level attack by hackers on the most secure technology companies in the world is sobering. We continue to refine our systems to counter the various attacks that these RMT companies employ. We have a team of security professionals with years of experience in massively multiplayer games and online security in Seoul, Seattle, Austin, and Brighton that is striving to make our servers as secure as they can be. Any vulnerability that is discovered is addressed and fixed.

For example, a thread on a third-party Guild Wars forum this New Year’s attracted a good deal of attention. It detailed a list of security vulnerabilities that supposedly had been discovered on our account website, ending with the alarmist note that “the only responsible thing NCsoft can do is to shut off their website, as soon as possible.”

Despite the fact that this report occurred over the holidays, when the majority of NCsoft employees were home with their families, our security team responded immediately with a point-by-point testing and analysis of the erroneous concerns that were raised. As a result of the point-by-point testing and analysis, our security team concluded no critical vulnerabilities had been demonstrated or identified, but our security team continues to research, to monitor closely, and to implement security improvements to address any potential weaknesses raised.

We’ll continue to audit our systems, and you will see some dramatic changes in the next few months. NCsoft views account security as a very important matter.

Your task: Help protect yourself.

So how you can protect yourself from the sort of constant attacks that we’ve been seeing?

Many of you reading this letter are experienced online game players. You’ve heard the “don’t do this” and “don’t click that” and “don’t run that thing” warnings over and again, you’re not dumb, you’d never get your account stolen simply because you know better.

You’re wrong. I know this because I know many people who thought they knew better—people who work in the gaming industry, and have done so for years, and still tried to log in one day and found their password changed and someone else logged into their account cleaning out their inventory.
(If you’re not an experienced online gamer and want the basics in account security, there’s no shame in that. We have a complete guide online.)

The following brief guide in self-protection is going to be a bit different than what you may be used to. It’s going to assume that you know the basic rules of how to protect your account, and it will detail how we’ve seen accounts stolen anyway. Think of it as an advanced class in account security. And don’t think that these guidelines apply to other people who don’t pay attention. If you do any of these, your account is at risk of being stolen.

Don’t share your password with anyone. Don’t let your friends log in to your game account.

There are two simple reasons for this. The first, and one you may not want to particularly acknowledge, is that your guildmate or childhood friend or relative may do things on your account that can get you banned, such as using bots. Another is that once you share your account, your security is as vulnerable as theirs—and any mistake that they may make that allows for an account intrusion will compromise your account as well.

Don’t use bots. Ever.

If you use “third party applications that control your game play”—which is the literal definition of “bots”—you will lose your account, and nothing you say will get it back. We can detect bots. We have multiple ways of detecting bots. We have banned thousands of accounts and will continue to ban such accounts due to bot usage. Bot usage is one of the key ways that RMT companies use to fund their operations, and removing bots from the game is one of our best attacks against them. The GSU “banhammers” against bot usage will not stop, and if you use a bot, you will be caught.

You may not be caught immediately, but it will happen.

Don’t buy in-game money.

Aside from the fact that you are funding the very people who are at war with our games—and thus at war with you—many RMT companies use web browser vulnerabilities to attempt to load Trojans onto your system. In some cases, they ask you to create website logins for their system and then check to see if that information is the same user name and password you use to log in to the game with. A few companies simply ask you for your user name and password. In any event, these are not companies that can be trusted. Because your accounts can be compromised as a result of RMT, we specifically prohibit this type of activity in our User Agreements.

Don’t use power-leveling services.

Again, these services are run by the same people who are attacking our game, and by using their services, you are funding their attacks (and the money that they earn while power leveling goes to fund in-game currency sales). The same potential attacks that exist with in-game money sellers apply here as well (especially since, obviously, you have to supply your account information for them to log in to your account to level it), but with one important addition: Power-leveling services level your character quickly using bots. We can detect this. It will cause your account to be banned, quickly.

Don’t run programs designed by third parties for use with our games.

Aside from the small matter of NCsoft banning you if you use a bot, using third party applications is asking for trouble. You are allowing code someone else wrote to run on your computer. Do you implicitly trust the creator of that program not to add a virus or Trojan horse that is used to steal your account?

Beware of phishing. One of the recent plagues that it is hard to miss of late is that of the “phish,” or the attempt by RMT companies to get you to simply hand over your account information through crafting a copy of our website and placing it on a web server with an address that is similar, but not identical, to ours. Many of these phishing attempts are laughably obvious because they are created by people who are not fluent in English. However, there are others that are not so obvious. Regardless, NCsoft will never ask you, for any reason, for your password in game, to go to a website to reset your password, to add you to a beta, or to give you a free holiday gift. If we need your password reset, we can do so without asking you to go to a website. If there is a new beta, there will be instructions for how to enter on our official websites and forums. When entering your user name and password, you should always check the address bar of your web browser to ensure you are at https://secure.ncsoft.com/. And if you get an odd error message after logging in to what you think is an official NCsoft site, change your password at the correct NCsoft site immediately. Please carefully check the spelling of the address in your browser. Any misspelling may lead you to a phishing site.

Beware of keylogger links on forums.

This is akin to the previous point on phishing. Keylogger links are created as forum spam to get you to go to a website loaded with attacks on your computer through web browser security holes. Some of them are very obvious, such as the recent “Wii sex toy” ads posted everywhere. Some of them appear very innocent, such as links to view a screenshot of someone’s character. Avoid the obvious ones. Protect your browser from the less obvious ones by ensuring that you are using the latest version of your web browser and that it is set to automatically update itself when new security holes are found.

Adobe Flash, a tool used for website animations that comes with every web browser, has historically been an attack vector for loading malware (hostile programs) on your computer. At minimum, be absolutely surethat your version of Flash is up to date by visiting http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/. If you run a browser that supports extensions such as Mozilla Firefox, consider running an add-on such as Flashblock, which only loads Flash movies if you click on them.

Protect your system.

There are many viruses and Trojan horses, such as the recent “Aion2010.dll,” that target your account information for our games specifically. Hackers constantly strive to find new ways to load software on your system without your consent or knowledge. It is critical that you run virus protection software and a firewall to protect yourself from these attacks.

Free, effective virus protection software is available. Here are links to some of the more popular solutions. Note that we cannot endorse or recommend any specific program, but we recommend you run something and ensure that it remains updated.

Avast!: Avast! Home Edition
AVG: AVG Free Anti-Virus
Microsoft: Security Essentials

Having a firewall, or system which protects your computer from unauthorized access, is also important. If you have a router that provides broadband Internet access for your home, it’s likely that a firewall system is included with that. Every version of Windows also ships with a software solution, Windows Firewall. Ensure that one of these is active and protecting your home network.

Don’t use the same password for your game account that you use on Internet forums.

There have been instances of forums that have had their security compromised and the user names and passwords from their system were then used to try to gain access to game accounts. To prevent the possibility of this happening, ensure that you use different passwords for each forum that you frequent. This can be managed easily through password managers, such as Lastpass or RoboForm.

This letter has been quite long, and I thank you for your attention, especially during the parts I’m sure you’ve heard many times before. Our fight for the security of the games that you play is neither an easy one, nor a short one. But it is one that we are committed to seeing through, and it is one that we very much appreciate your help with. Your continued patronage as a customer, and the enjoyment of the games that we provide, is what makes this all worthwhile.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another gold farmer cartel to ban."

Be wary, next week will be as tough as the bread I left out in my flat when I was on holiday in December! It was hella tough!

Oh wow...I need to up my game, I do, I do! And I thought it was extra special this week

Congrats to Caligdoiel though!!! Well done you word finder!

Submissions open every Monday only from 10 AM Pacific Time (1 PM Eastern Time / 6PM GMT / 19:00 Central European Time) until 5:00 PM Pacific Time (8:00 PM Eastern Time / 1:00 AM GMT / 2:00 Central European Time) between January 11, 2010 and July 26, 2010).

Welcome to our "Search the words, save the world" forum mission!

As mentioned in our previous mission briefing, super evil computer Ebil-o is still attempting to take over the world and exterminate human beings. Your opportunity to save us all is through a word block located at the bottom of this post.

The goal is to be the first one to find the words based on the theme (without being told what they are), circle them in the word block (using Paint or an equivalent program) and then list them below it.

If you are the first one to answer with the correct words, you win and only then will we be able to input the words into Ebil-o's matrix, thus delaying our impending doom. As a token of our gratitude, we'll give you the "Ebil-o FTL [date]" forum title as well as 1 (one) costume code amongst the following ones:

• Carnival of Shadows Harlequin
• Freakshow Tank Boss
• Paragon Police Department Hardsuit
• Carnival of Shadows Ring Mistress
• Knives of Artemis Lt.
• Praetorian Clockwork

Have fun…but not too much as each week we’re counting on you to save the world!

Rules

1) Reply in the official City of Heroes® forum (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/) thread created for each weekly " Search the words, save the world Contest” with your submission.

2) Your reply must contain a number of words or names that will be defined every time this contest is run.

3) Your reply must also contain the following statement. Please note that your submission will be disqualified if this statement is not present in your post:

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

4) To enter the contest weekly, as of January 11, 2010, you must be 13 years of age or older. If a winner is under 18 or a minor in his or her state/province/country of residence, his or her parent or guardian must also sign any applicable releases and documentation.

5) Please note, only 1 (one) entry per forum account will be accepted. If you post a second time, you'll get disqualified, so make your one entry count!

6) Entries must conform to the Official City of Heroes Message Forum Rules and Guidelines and to the Contest Official Rules and Conditions.

7) If you win the City of Heroes® Search the words, save the world Contest one week, you are not eligible to do so again for the next 8 weeks. This is to allow other people the opportunity to win. Please be courteous to others and refrain from participating during the weeks you are not eligible to win.

Monday, January 18th, 2010 - Word Block



You are looking to find 8 words corresponding to the following theme: Arachnos.

Good luck all, and don't forget that the fate of the world is in your hands!

Heroes and Villains, mobilize for that one opportunity you have every year to make your voice count!

Vote for City of Heroes in the Best Sci-Fi/Superhero MMO of 2009 category of Beckett Massive Online Gamer Reader's Choice Awards.

Aion and Guild Wars 2 are also present in other categories so here's your chance to support NCsoft games.

Make us proud and vote away!

Join in the Community Discussion here!