MMORPG Civilization Online is Only Being Released in Korea

Civilization Online Korea

Civilization Online Korea

It is very exciting to read about Civilization Online from 2K games, which is an online MMORPG version from the Sid Meier franchise. It is currently being created for the PC, running on the CryEngine 3. Company XL will launch Civilization Online in Korea.

Will Civilization Online Come to North America?

Perhaps in the future, but most likely not in 2013.

This beautiful looking game has no planned North America launch at this time. It only has a planned launch in Korea, and perhaps in other Asian countries after that.

Jake Song, CEO of XL games shares that players are units within their civilization, and take part collectively to take their civilization to a to certain goal. There will be four starting civilizations to choose from, and there will be six eras to play through, including: Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and Modern.

The game play is continuous in real-time until the victory condition is achieved by a civilization, which includes taking out other civilizations. Once a player gets the needed materials, he or she can build it right away, not having to wait in a turn-based system.

Civilization Online is Better Than World of Warcraft

Differing from World of Warcraft, classes will not be used. Instead, Jake Song explains that career choices are more appropriate, and career paths can be changed at any time, without penalty. All of the structures will be built by the players, as well as clothing, vehicles, and gear. Gear will not be set to "bind" on any player, allowing the free exchange between players, or the option to sell it back to the store.

Other Fresh Features in Civilization Online:

• Civilization Online will have auction houses and player-ran stores.
• Civilization Online will have resources distributed equally and randomly throughout the world.
• Resources can be traded through alliances, or taken by force through PVP conquest
• Every world in Civilization Online is considered one session and the game continues until the victory conditions have been achieved.

You can watch the Civilization Online Debut Trailer below:

My Battle With Blizzard: The Frequency of Phishing is Intensifying

Battle.net Logo

I am being hacked, cracked, spammed, spooled [sending too much to the printer], & phished by "Blizzard Entertainment". That's what the sender line says anyway.  But I don't believe it is really Blizzard Entertainment. I think its some nefarious guy waiting behind a computer monitor attempting to phish in my pond. 

You see, I played World of Warcraft for a short period of time back in 2005.  That is where the connection to Battle.net comes in.  Somehow they got my email.  But they didn't get the memo.

I didn't play long enough to update over to the Battle.net account, which all World of Warcraft players have to get to play nowadays.  Since I never converted, I don't have Battle.net credentials.  But the scammers don't know that.  They are saying my Battle.net account has been compromised, and want to check it out for me.  Wow, those are really friendly guys.  Always on the lookout for me.  Not!

In the past month, the tactics of the email have escalated.  The threat level is now orange [which is right below red].  Below is one of their new emails, which is screaming: "We're getting really desperate...so please give us your info.!"

Phishing email from fake Battle.net Account Team



One thing I noticed, is that when I hover over the first link above that is supposed to take me to http://us.battle.net/verifyconfirm.html the actual redirect link is: http://worldofwarcraft.account-management-info.net/verifyconfirm.html

Hmmm. Something isn't right here.  And on top of that, the most recent email was sent as 'High Priority' (an exclamation point next to it, meaning very urgent).

The IP address from the most recent email was: 124.2.40.168, originating in Korea. The one before that was: 112.65.246.26, originating in China.

It looks like they are starting to get out the big guns, bringing China into this. That only means one thing: I'm am going to have to get out my secret weapon in this cyber-war: invincibility...because I've got tiger blood & Adonis DNA. Winning!

Tracking [You] in the Virtual World Just Makes Cents

Xbox 360 and PS3 side by side

Did you know that you are being watched when you play video games online?

Ok, maybe not literally as in "on video camera," but you are definitely being tracked as you move your avatar (or digital self) around in virtual worlds, and various websites place tracking cookies on your computer.  And they are watching who you interact with, and what you buy, and what you do.  That is a fact.

Do you mind if a company places a tracking cookie on your computer? I do.

A company called GameSpy Technology is paid to track your virtual behavior.  Does that name sound familiar?  It might if you have ever visited IGN.com to read about upcoming games, or to try to play one of your favorite video games online.  They have a partnership. Essentially, Gamespy.com is powered by IGN.

Red Dead Redemption Cover Art (for PS3)

Within the first two weeks of release, the game Red Dead Redemption tracked 13,250,237 virtual U.S. soldiers were killed in-game.  131,904,068 total counts of in-game murder took place, and not to mention the 55,813,649 virtual wolves were killed.

Mafia 2 poster

Such tracking takes place in other games as well.  Mafia 2, for example, tracks how long players spend in-game staring at Playboy centerfolds.

Even the popular World of Warcraft, which has over 12 million subscribers, hires experts for their business "intellience" unit for analyzing strategies to make more money off of its subscribers.

Yes, that even includes everyone's favorite time-wasting game, FarmVille.  How long until the harvest?  Oh, just 2 more hours until the pumpkin is ripe.  I guess we'll be seeing you in 2 more hours, then.

And this is just the beginning of what is called "natural experiments" on people in virtual worlds to modify behavior.  And we used to think that experiments on humans were inhumane!  Now, it is a way of life.  Not to mention we are paying the subscription fees for researchers to see how they can better sell to us.  Win-win for them.  Sounds like a paradox if you ask me.


Source:  Hsu, Jeremy.  Virtual Behavior Labs Discover What Gamers Want. Yahoo! News.

Should I Accept the Website Tracking Cookie?

How do cookies track you online?

The most common way that websites track you is with cookies. The website server places a cookie on your computer, and this cookie acts like a real-life identification chip. When you return to a website, your browser passes the cookie back to the server, and they can track everywhere you have been (what websites you have been browsing). Tracking cookies alone are not malicious in the sense that they will harm your computer. They will not harm or damage your computer like a virus will, but they do track you online.

Search engines (i.e. Google) collect data on your browsing and internet searches. If you do not like being tracked and your browsing history data saved, then a good alternative browser is DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that prioritizes the user by making their search data private and does not provide ads in the form of personalized search results (i.e. Google). DuckDuckGo does not profile its users and gives every user the same exact results.

Editor's note: This blog is not affiliated with DuckDuckGo in any way, and is not compensated by DuckDuckGo.

My Battle with Blizzard.com: Email Hackers from South Korea and Phisher-men from Singapore

Blizzard Phishing Scam

Potential computer hackers

I received a phishing scam email from "Blizzard Entertainment" but the email seemed like it was not legitimate.

First of all, what do they want from me?  

The answer is my account information.

Since I didn't win the Nigerian lottery, they didn't think to ask for my bank account and social security number.  But they want my login credentials.  FYI:  These credentials are gone and exist no more.  But I think the principle here is: no one likes to be scammed, hacked, phished, or swished - head down in the toilet - by bullies.

If you notice in the photo above, I have been receiving quite a few emails from Blizzard and Battle.net. But as you can see in my inbox, only 2 of these emails actually have the certified shield that verify the authenticity of the sender.  Those 2 emails were follow-up automated messages that want me to rate how helpful the Blizzard reps were that contacted me.  All of the rest of the emails without the authentic green shields are phishing emails from hackers.

They are going about this by pretending to send me an official automated message from Blizzard.  Then, they provide a direct link to the login screen (how convenient, by the way). This is actually a "phony baloney" login, but appears to be a perfect clone of the real site.

I was able to track the sender of an email, after a quick Google search on How to locate an IP address in Hotmail. Then I took the code in Hotmail and input this into an IP detection extraction script, found here.  They also provide at that site a handy way to pinpoint the host IP country, and where to file your email complaints of fraud.  So I found out that the true individual(s) involved in this wicked scheme originate from South Korea (Seoul) and Singapore.  And I thought the kind people from South Korea were supposed to be our friends!  I sent an email to the Singapore host and we'll see if they reply back.

Note:  I do want to point out that not everyone from S. Korea and/or Singapore is a hacker.  It just happened in this case that this is where the spam emails originated from.

I attempted to contact the real Blizzard during this process but they were unfriendly and unwilling to help me aside from telling me that I need to filter these emails to a spam folder.  I was hoping to get some real results.

P.S. If you would like to read the history on how I overcame my addiction to playing World of Warcraft years ago, my story can be found here.