A Warning on Public Ships
 

I was on a public ship last night and received a warning from a pirate that was on board. I don't know much about it myself, but thought I'd tell you all just to put the word out.

Apparently, there's a group of pirates going around in some sort of PvP glitch where they leave the PvP areas and are able to fight anywhere. However, this isn't your usual PvP glitch. I was told that when they do this, they appear as the PvP zombies. The thing is, apparently they can attack anyone, inside or outside of the glitch, and are boarding public ships. When there, they attack the people on board, ko'ing them. Once they remove the people from the ship, they take the ship, sink some ships with it, port it, and steal the cargo.

The guy who told me about this said it's happened to him multiple times already, and 4 hours of plundering was wasted. While there, another person on board told us that it happened to a friend of his. Another friend has since told me that it has happened to him. I don't know exactly how they're doing this glitch, and I've yet to see them myself.


I was told the names of 1 of the pirates, as well as their guild, as captured in a screenshot by the one who informed me of this. Of course, I won't say it on here. The people have been reported a few times, so something may change soon.


So everyone, have good luck, and be safe/cautious out there on your public ships for the time being.

@Plat - Forget PermaBanning them. PermaIPBan/TerminateAccount. <----- Worst ban you can get.

Question: In the event this occurs, are the shipmates aboard the ship able to fight back, or is it kept to a one-way battle?

Ship mates on board can fight back.

Interesting.

I always encourage pirates who want to sail on public to grab a few of their friends before hand and create a "central crew" so that way the captain is not left alone in having to deal with an entire ship of unpredictable and often unruly pirates. Having a few guildmates or close friends to help run the ship while you focus on captaining can really make the difference between having a ship fall in to disorder or not.

Of course, the rise of this glitch brings that to an entirely different level. I would advise all pirates who want to sail on public ships from now on to make sure they have at least a few loyal and hopefully high-leveled friends on in their crew before they open the ship; this at least establishes a base crew that will be willing to fight to defend the ship in the event of an "attack."

A good strategy to follow in an event of one of these attacks is to try and distract/stun the attacker long enough so that the captain will have enough time to find out what is going on and hopefully make way for port. If the attacker does make it to the helm, make sure that the entire crew understands the ship needs to make it back to port as quickly as possible, encouraging others to grab the wheel and drive if the wheel is open. This will at least limit the attacker to one spot (the helm, to limit the movement of the ship) which should make him easy pickings for a group of pirates with their broadswords swinging away.

So, remember:

1. Sail in groups with at least a few battle-ready friends aboard your ship.
2. Keep the captain and the rest of the crew informed in the event of an attack.
3. Stun the attacker and distract him long enough to sail the ship to the nearest port. (Killing him works as well, though that may not guarantee that he will not come bacl.)
4. Work together to make sure the ship survives.
5. Remain calm, and remain loyal to your crew.

That is very frightful, in multiple ways. I truly makes the game a lot less safe, and makes the public feature on ships very risky to use. The old PvP glitch just caused lag to others, but nobody could really abuse others with it (other than lag). This is completely different. Perhaps it would be a good idea to even pick up most of your crew before going out to sea, so that you don't have to risk opening to public for too long, if at all.

It truly saddens me that there are players that would do something like this. Hopefully this bug is fixed ASAP, with all the players IP-banned from all Disney Games and terminating all Disney accounts... and fining them doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it unfortunately isn't too realistic.

I have a question myself: Does anyone know if these pirates stay undead after dying? Are they carted off to jail, or do they resurrect where they stand, or what?

We can only hope this issue is resolved soon.

I sail open public 90% of the time. I have yet to encounter this. If I do the "attackers" will have a rude awakening. I will put him / her / them to the sword myself or scuttle me ship.

My ultimate solution to an unruly crew or crewmen is that I scuttle the ship. I have done so a few times. I announce in crew chat for all hands to abandon ship. I then park and allow my ship to be sunk.

Last time I did this the unruly pirate tp'd off when the ship was about to go down. The crew tp'd back we repaired and finished the material run.

Disney just needs to give us the boot from ship feature, like in svs. With this simple exception to stop abuse: When booted from a public ship the offender marooned gets his / her cut of the plunder if the ship ported at that time.

Then fix boarding privileges and this problem goes away. :piratealt:

This sounds like a major problem. Del is definitely right though, especially about having a big crew. If you have 10+ higher level pirates, then it will be very hard for the glitchers to take it over.

It really makes you wonder why they would do this though. It would be much easier, faster, and beneficial to everyone if they just joined the ship and helped the crew. It shows how they're just doing it for the sake of glitching... There's really no point.

A friend told me how its done and Ill tell you. It involves the "programs name which i cant post". The "program"is a tool used to inject codes to make your pirate big, small, zombie form, fly, change colors...etc(most of it is client side only, ONLY the person using it can see it). Well, what these guys do is..They whisper a friend, who is on a ship
then they go to pvp....inject a code that makes them HUMAN in pvp then they tp to the friend, once on the ship they use the zombie code, then they attack


In each of these instances they have had spies in cahoots that get on a ship.They MUST have someone to tp to, they cant just board a public ship from land.
It cannot be fixed by disney like regular pvp glitch...

Dang it, whats with all the hackers? POTCO will most likely end up as the new VMK....

Unfortunately, that has come to what the generation thinks is "funny" these days. It's probably not even just POTCO. As long as hackers/modders know what to do, they might be able to hack any game. Now, they should think "How fun is this really? Trying to make people feel sorrow?" It saddens me that a majority of the population of POTCO is becoming what we see today. Now, only a few majority of the players today are actually mature enough to handle not glitching OR hacking.
Just my two cents.

Even with all the screen shots collected, the GM of the ones involved is denying everything. On another site, there is at least 1 member and even an admin of the site that seems to be supporting the glitchers. It's all very frustrating to me how some of these people are treating this.

This new threat is just a extension of some players fascination with glitches. They are not content with just the game play the Developers intended. So they go about and search for all the "holes" in the game code.

The only way to combat this new epidemic is two fold. First screen and report all abuses of the game to Disney. Send emails to Disney referencing the bug report ticket number. Request return emails to follow up on the problem. Send email often. Make sure Disney knows we are very upset. The next thing will be tough for some to do but it needs to be done. Stop using any and all "glitches" "exploits" and anything not intended in the game. Then start to encourage all around you to do the same. If this is not possible for you, then leave the game, find a new game. Do not ruin this game for those of us that enjoy it.

One thing is for sure. This type of activity is here to stay. Some people have to be involved in this type of activity. So it is not going away.

You the player need to make the choice: Support it or not support it! Or find a new game.

I agree, POTCO has been going downhill somewhat in terms of bugs, hackers, glitchers and such, but I don't think that this problem is really a hack. I really know very little about this, but it seems to be a glitch, not a hack, and is growing in popularity.

EDIT: Sorry, I just assumed it had a been a glitch. It is actually a program used to enter codes and cheat, not just like the pvp glitch. Sorry.

Wow... never heard of this glitch. I am really glad I joined this site, there is some really good info and news here.


And it is very interesting that the pirates on the ship can fight back. My ship will not be in the public section until I know for sure that this bug is patched.

What is also a good idea is to just gather a crew before going on your ship, with friends, guild mates, or just asking the public.

Ahoy!

These are the precise "exploits" which make my blood boil, pirates who make it their sole mission in the game to Bully and cause Grief to other pirates.

Sadly, this is in most instances the use of "Third Party Programs" which allow them to alter the game both Client and Server end.

Also just as sadly, the solution someone raised of resetting their account and removing their Weapons/Items... I regret to inform you, the same program they are using also enables them to alter their "Rusty Cutlass" to behave just like a "World Eater Blade" and they can also make their pirate ANY level they like.

Worse still, MANY of these pirates are also using the same hacking software to also emulate Unlimited Access, which means that they don't pay anyway. :(

Sadly, Disney really only have one solution to really fix the game, sorry to say but they need to restart from scratch and use a more sophisticated "Programming Language", since the one they currently use is the reason MANY not all of these hackers target it.

Just my two cents, but I speak from both sides of the fence having once (NOT in POTCO) been engaged in what these pirates are doing. I was quite skillful at it (before "Third Party Programs") and sadly know just how easy some "Third Party Programs" have made doing it.

And FYI - I left that scene behind a VERY long time ago.


Regards,
Kriss.

It saddens me to see yet another Disney game abused by hackers. :( I remember being shocked by the fact that Disney's other MMORPG; Toontown, was being utterly overrun by the little Script Kiddies, and this game being pretty much unscathed. But I believe this was some time ago, and alas it looks like we're finally catching up with them in term of hackers.

Another thing that isn't helping these matters is the fact that Panda3D isn't the latest software anymore, and to put it lightly it's easily hacked/modded. The sad truth is I highly doubt Disney would give the Developers the man power and money needed to convert these games to a better Program, Heck they barely even have enough people to juggle handling hackers and updates.

Even though I really love POTCO, I'm not seeing much of a future if this situation keeps going downhill.

During the first surge of these incidents, Disney did manage to ban a number of pirates who were the main perpetrators but obviously they can simply create new profiles etc.

Best we can do is stay vigilant and try to minimize the damage these folks are doing until things can be locked down.

The same can be said for the SvS glitchers who get rapid fire, speed etc. and can attack other player ships not in SvS mode. These players fall back on the excuse that they are acting like real pirates but they just can't resist making the playing field completely unlevel.

Its not a matter to me that pirates could attack other players, as much as they have to stack the deck because they're afraid of losing.

ROFL

Yep. if that was REALLY true... I'm sure they would have removed completely SvS and PvP capabilities, since it's these precise capabilities as well as events like Muertos Moon that the Hackers are using to capitalize on.

Sadly, it's these same things, events and activities which are the very back bone of this game, so they can't really fix it properly, which leaves them with the only other choice to solve the problem being to completely re-code the game and leave Panda 3D behind.

Somehow, I seriously doubt they take the game and it's maintenance seriously enough to fix it, because it's simply just bringing in money for little outlay, unless EVERYONE cancels their Unlimited Access, Disney will continue to provide mediocre (AT BEST) service and updates.

:p


Kriss

I just noticed this was happening/happened a few months ago. :piratetongueor4: Can anyone tell me if this situation has improved? I might re-boot my membership if those hackers kids have stopped running amok.


Not to be off topic, but if everyone canceled their memberships, Di$ney would just look at it as......Well as everyone cancelling and their memberships. They would then probably shut down the game faster then you can say "ARRGH!".

I am 99% sure there are no more hackers. The hackers have gotten bored of the lack of players, so it's safe to come online now. I have decided to return with Unlimted for this month. It is very lonely. I suggest we try to get in a habbit to come on more.