Hacking/Modding
 

I've been reading about several instances of somebody using a hack/mod to change the game to their advantage, or allow their pirate to do things that others can't. There are also people who hijack other accounts, but that was already covered here a few months back.

Something that happened today prompted me to make this thread. This topic was already in my mind, and this happened by coincidence.

It was about half an hour after I'd got online. I was standing on Tortuga on the Lempona ocean, and I had just finished speaking to a person who had approached me. I switched away from the game briefly, and came back to find someone running around the beach. I looked at the chat log to see that he had changed the colour of his text and it was in Italics. He ran to the sea and started running around on top of it, instead of swimming.



Soon after that he ran back to the beach and started running in midair. He wrote a couple of identical messages in black and continued running.



Finally, he fell down into the ground and started running around with only his head showing. I didn't get a screenshot of it, but by then he had drawn a crowd. There were lots of 'LOL's and 'This is hilarious!' but I didn't find it the least bit funny.

While I am on this topic, I would also like to warn about someone posting outside links to a URL that downloads a virus to your computer. I read on a website to do with POTCO (can't say it on this site) that the player was targeting that website, Pirates Forums and POF. Be careful with any outside links you find, and only click on them if you're certain they're safe. If the virus is downloaded to your computer, the attacker will have access to it. Please be careful.

POTCO is still a safe place, and so are the forums. I'm just raising awareness that this sort of thing goes on, so it doesn't happen to you. Chances are low that we'll even encounter this person spreading the virus, because the mods will quickly edit out any suspicious outside links. Just watch out if you're sent a PM by somebody unfamiliar, telling you to check a link out or something.

Back to the hacker today. I've sent an email to Disney with these pictures, and hopefully he'll be put to justice. Unfortunately I'm confident that this was a noob account, but I think Disney does IP bans. It really angers me how some players change the game to their advantage. It's 100% cheating, and needs to be stopped.

I agree this is just sad! This needs to stop and fast.

They use to a certain program to mod the game. I obviously did not use it at all. The problem is, the game is so big that it's vulnerable to easy exploits like this. Like runescape and rgsp bots. I hope this will get fixed. For now it's not though.

I have in fact seen numerous videos of the glitcher/hacker guy. DP, if it's ok, do you think you could PM me those screenshots? The videos didnt do that, the videos showed that you could increase speed, and weapon timing as well as removing the cooldown on skills, and the charge-up on skills. They may or may not be of the same origin.

If it's alright with the mods, I'll put the screenshots back into my first post. The problem was that the name of the hacker was there for all to see, so I'll remove the names first.

Sad to say, but this isn't new to Disney MMOs. Many people have began glitching, hacking, and exploiting many aspects of the different Disney MMOs. Many do it because they're bored or just wish to cheat. Frankly, it ruins the game for many of us other players that just wish to play the game as it was intended by Disney. Many of us grew up enjoying the various aspects of Disney's productions and just wish to experience their MMOs for what they are.

Sure, Disney could do a better job at the MMOs, make more updates to them, and other various aspects to the games themselves. I can't help but feel they are so busy trying to remove glitches and trying to figure out how to combat hackers and cheaters that they just don't have the time or money to deal with just adding new content to the games. Which is a real shame for the majority of us. There could be so much more to the games, if they didn't have to deal with such obvious abuse of the MMOs by some.

For example: POF was the first MMO to allow linked accounts. If you had 1 account that was had a paying membership, you could link other accounts of your family to it so your entire family could play together as a pay membership account. This was one of the greatest aspects of the game and my entire family took advantage of this. We had a lot of fun playing together on several occasions. This became almost a nightly event for my family, we had such a good time together. This was removed later by POF because people used linked accounts to avoid their banned status of their paying membership accounts. Guess as the saying goes, it only takes a few bad apples.. My family no longer plays POF together.

I'm sorry but we don't allow naming of names of anyone in a bad light. If you were to remove or hide the name from the screenshots, that would be ok.

I hid the names and put the pictures back in the first post.

Cool pics, DP.

On a youtube channel this guy makes videos on his "mods" which are really just illegal hacks, and in one he taunts disney members. Do you think if we mailed the videos to disney enough they would acknowlege whats going on and take action for it?

They're not illegal as far as I know.

ALL hacks are Illegal EVERYWHERE if it's not yours.

The term "hack" can be used loosely here. There are 2 ways it can be used.

1) Someone getting unattended access to something they haven't. This is what is illegal.
2) Modification. A hack is also modifying/tweaking something. This doesn't necessarily have to be illegal.

What I'm seeing here are exploits. Members of POTCO find exploits in the game and find ways to tweak it to do some things they consider cool or fun.



- Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

But the exploits are getting them access to something they dont have - IE: Super speed, coloured chat, ect.

Even if they are modding it, the ability to mod it without permission makes it illegal.

Illegal means "Its against the law"

Modding a game is against Disney policy but its not illegal.

If it is a matter of exploiting glitches in the game then no its not "illegal" but if it is a matter of hacking into the game engine then yes it could very well be interpreted by authorities as illegal.

I got anwsers to everything ur saying ppl werent getting hacked they were simply giving out info to there friends not very good ones and shareing accounts until one of 'em decided to change passwords to accounts that wernt really theres others told there friend and they told others and they stole it... ik cause it happened to atleast 6 ppl ik 4 of 'em being my friend, its kinda sad cause we were all friends its madness <.< and still happening.Another so called (hack) auto lvling. It's were you can turn the program on and it will click for you thats not really hacking because it doesnt increase or decrease anything or speed up anything just allows you to attack enemys while ur afk which is easy for lvling....the glitch were the guys standing on water and stuff isnt a hack its a old glitch that anyone wit a light sloop and phantom spirits could do havent seen anyone do it in a while tho cause like i said its old.......but as for the color text im clueless and ik some hackers that i havent gotten along with... they use some program that somehow increases ur accuracy and decreases the chance of you getting hit i hate goin in to pvp with ppl like that cause it just aint fair...

Umm... Nate?

1st of all : I am amazed at how much you wrote! :P
2nd of all: I ask this constantly, could you add periods and caps please? Thanks! :)

3rd: We are talking about actual HACKERS. The get into the game and change the system. and that program is a 3rd-Party and the rules say that those are against the rules and you can get a Perma-Ban for using it.

LoL... /EndMini-Rant

All modification of the game is illegal. . . and is against your terms of service agreement.. as is using an out side game modification program such as a cheat engine. Many use game modification and cheat engines in privateering... and I have talked to Disney about this till I am blue in the face. Guess they allow it because someone at Disney favors them.

I "lol" at the people who actually think modding or hacking is okay. Sure, it's not like you'll go to prison like others like lerzba said, but it's not like you can actually do what you want. Look at this way. Let's be in Disney's shoes. (Probably yellow, because that's how the Mouse uses it.) Let's say we create a game for players to enjoy. All of a sudden, people are reporting hacking and modding third party programs. Would you tell them, "Hey, it's all right. After all, it's really fun to do. Heck, let them all hack and mod as much as they want. It's fair!" I wouldn't think so. Now, let's be in the hacker's and modder's shoes. This is what they're honestly thinking. "If I found this, then certainly everyone should know how. *tells everyone the glitch*" Now, that was only the glitching point of view. Now, let's really try the hacker's and modder's shoes. They're thinking, "Gaining rep is too hard. I wish there were a way to make it easier. Why not use a third party program?" Now, I am NOT trying to offend anyone in any way but honestly, gaining rep isn't SUPPOSED to be easy. Why do you think they use the phrase "Most feared pirate in the Caribbean"? It's supposed to be an accomplishment! Not the click of a button and then boom, you're all maxed. How do you think I felt when I mastered my pirate, then all of a sudden, I saw people using auto clickers and mods to master themselves and cheat? Honestly, that's not how it's supposed to work. How would you get that sense of accomplishment if it only took maybe a day to master? Seriously, my two cents is that this is what people need to think about. End of rant. (I'm pretty surprised at myself, 'cuz this is one big rant compared to the small ones I've made. O_o)

Toontown has been having some similar problems with hacking and players. Players can be banned yet it's still a pretty big issue. I'm sure developers weren't aware of any flaws in Panda3D or python which would lead to Toontown or POTCO being vulnerable.

Unfortunately, unless developers can fix the vulnerability issues the best they can do is ban the hackers.

It became pretty serious on Toontown, though, from what I'm aware of. I hope it doesn't become a big issue here, though.

I dont mod or do any of those things but really....who cares?? It's just a children's game....
People take this game WAY TOO SERIOUSLY as if its a full time job or the army.

Real life> fake animation that gets u nowhere in life

The main issue with hacks and mods are when it is applied to the level system, and when used to obtain items that are otherwise rather hard to obtain. It can take a few hours or even a few days to obtain levels that people who hack their way to the top can obtain within minutes. The time issue is what makes this an issue. People are putting their time into the game, and when you find someone who achieves this too easily, you're peeved. My real life time seems wasted in this animation that is supposed to entertain me.

While font color changes seem like they aren't important, people who can achieve that are probably able to cheat the system and reach level 50 in record time. What seems like something insignificant can just be the stepping stone to something far more rule-breaking.

I dont know of anyone who can change their lvls. This is something thats been happening in toontown for years, its only begun in potco recently.

What he meant is that the hacking/modding allows the person to level quicker because there is no restrictions.

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On a similar note, pretty soon, I imagine, they will find out how to pack enough exp to get automaticly to level 50 from any enemy, automaticly master any weapon with the complete of one kill/complete/catch/sink. Probably change their names and the colour of their names, their body type and make it so they can purchase any clothing item for 0 gold. Probably max their gold and allow themselves to become founders and get the skull and bones above their heads. That was just the tip of the iceberd. We must stop them while we can, or POTCO may be destined to end up with VMK.....

You can do all that now, but client sided. Meaning only you can see it. No one in this game is going to do all that server-sided so it's actually real.

Hacking/modding is not good and I would never do that I would never steal rep from others. This needs to be stopped it's scary what people can do.

LOL. Doing it server sided is not very difficult, hackers can easily do it just as they did it to towntown.

Don't worry about it he cant do any real harm to the game because the only hacks he is doing are local and he cant make any permanent changes. This Pirate is injection code into the running game and getting those outcomes because they can be modified player side. All level, unlock, money code is server side which would require literally hacking into Disney and there is no way any one would attempt that all.

It is illegal to do this, however it doesn't really cause harm to other players in game. The only hack that could possible be done player side that would effect their outcome of their level would be a cool down hack that would make it faster to use skills and destroy ships and as far as I know that gets sorted out by the server timescale as well.

:turkey3:If it IS illegal, whenever I see one of their hack videos on youtube, I feel like calling the athorities, and pointing to the video. One guy actually DISGUISED his voice in these videos.

The little research I have done on the net (I am anti-hacking btw/support POTCO as it is presented) has shown an effort to where an individual is seeking POTCO hacking beyond client-side, towards server-side. He (or she) is doing this apparently on-behalf of a organized, hacking group effort. *(Within my own notes, I possess proof of this in the form of links dated April 2012 which shows the explicitly probing for information in support of server-sided POTCO manipulation).
Currently, I am doing just that...emailing those companies shown publicly within those youtube video tutorials, hoping to convince them that use of their "magic" tools/software remain not only in direct violation to POTCO/Disney's policies and terms of service but also in violation of the terms of service held by these same companies' whom remain indirectly responsible for the hacking against POTCO.

Actually I saw that same request on several gaming sites. In a couple of instances the other gamers posting were laughing at him.