A Look At GameGuard

[Skynightz]

52 minutes ago, nestharus said:

 

Sadly, from my interaction with players, a lot of people don't care about GameGuard being on their system, even with this information at their disposal. Others are treating this thread as those concerned being would-be hackers trying to make the game vulnerable again. Based on the live twitch stream, most people care about costumes. There were a couple of us there trying to ask about GameGuard, but our questions were duly ignored.

 

This just isn't something players care about. Perhaps if we can raise more awareness about this, we can get more people onboard and maybe put a spotlight on this in next week's live twitch stream, but I am not optimistic.

 

It's a sad state of affairs when people don't see anything wrong with their OS being hijacked. Most players are not facing any problems with this, and if they aren't facing any problems, they don't care what GameGuard does. I'm personally not facing any problems and have never had any problems with GameGuard, but I am still not ok with what GameGuard does nor do I want to risk it since my system is in a much more fragile state than it has been in years past. Although the state of my system is my fault : P. Hard folder links all over the place to try and free up space on the main SSD >.>. Definitely do need to remove those and put everything back on the SSD one of these days so that I can replace it with a bigger one :|.

 

 

So I guess if you do see players asking about problems relating to GameGuard, point them to this thread to let them know what it does. If you do start the game, raise awareness about GameGuard =). This just isn't an issue with the community right now, only a very small part of it ; (.

 

 

fyi, the other issues I champion are premium benefits (need daily stipend to offset costs of cash shop), dragon pouch prices (without daily stipend, they are way too expensive), and weapon skins : )

I wouldn't say that they don't care, I would say that they do NOT know.

[Cress]

sent a ticket asked me for dx diag ....first min requ passed, latest drivers, passed asked me for another dx diag dxdiag...evrything seems fine, ok the solution is..get a new pc and try again, no matter how good or bad is your pc is, if you cant handle gameguard you're fked up

[LilithDragonFlower]

Hello there,

 

I've forwarded the files along to our QA Teams for further investigation. Unfortunately I don't have any kind of ETA for when we can find a fix for this issue, though I greatly appreciate the information that you've provided to us as it will be very useful in investigating this issue.  I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. For updates regarding GameGuard, please visit our forum page:

https://forums.bladeandsoul.com/forum/421-general-discussion/

Should you have any additional questions please don't hesitate to let us know.

 

Honestly just remove Game-Guard already please so I can play Makes 3 days of lost subscription now.

[Blackstar555]

34 minutes ago, LilithDragonFlower said:

Hello there,

 

I've forwarded the files along to our QA Teams for further investigation. Unfortunately I don't have any kind of ETA for when we can find a fix for this issue, though I greatly appreciate the information that you've provided to us as it will be very useful in investigating this issue.  I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. For updates regarding GameGuard, please visit our forum page:

https://forums.bladeandsoul.com/forum/421-general-discussion/

Should you have any additional questions please don't hesitate to let us know.

That's the exact same answer that Technical Support gave me, I think we just gotta wait until they switch their security system to something different from gameguard... *sigh*

[Karrynka]

I'm wondering if NCSoft went with GameGuard only because it was the least expensive "solution" they could pay for? It's usually a question of money (pretty much everything is). So between GameGuard and other anti-cheat measures, they probably looked at the cheapest one they could get their hands on. I'm just assuming here, could be entirely wrong. I mean if it's not a question of money, then why did they go with GameGuard? They must have looked at a bunch of options, no?

 

Anyway, now that they have GameGuard, now what I also wonder is are they obliged to use it for a certain amount of time? Is that a contract? Or can they just say "screw that" and move to another anti-cheat next week if they wanted to?

[Zel]

1 minute ago, Karrynka said:

I'm wondering if NCSoft went with GameGuard only because it was the least expensive "solution" they could pay for? It's usually a question of money (pretty much everything is). So between GameGuard and other anti-cheat measures, they probably looked at the cheapest one they could get their hands on. I'm just assuming here, could be entirely wrong. I mean if it's not a question of money, then why did they go with GameGuard? They must have looked at a bunch of options, no?

 

Anyway, now that they have GameGuard, now what I also wonder is are they obliged to use it for a certain amount of time? Is that a contract? Or can they just say "screw that" and move to another anti-cheat next week if they wanted to?

 

NCsoft is notorious for taking the cheapest and/or least amount of development time possible approach to solving a problem. I highly doubt there's a contract though. GameGuard was added to Aion in the closed Beta stage, after severe public outcry and issues causes by the program it was stripped before launch and never re-introduced.

[Karrynka]

20 minutes ago, Zel said:

 

NCsoft is notorious for taking the cheapest and/or least amount of development time possible approach to solving a problem. I highly doubt there's a contract though. GameGuard was added to Aion in the closed Beta stage, after severe public outcry and issues causes by the program it was stripped before launch and never re-introduced.

 

Ah I see.

 

And with Aion's case, what was GameGuard replaced with? (Curious, since I've never played that game).

 

On a side note I'm still rather new to B&S, and I don't think I've played another game before that was "protected" by GameGuard. What I do know, however, is that the game I used to play before moving to B&S, namely TERA, doesn't have GameGuard and has no issues with hacking (not that I know of anyway), blatant cheating, and has no bots problems that I can think of right now. I DO remember that many months ago (perhaps years ago) TERA DID have some botting issues. However, those bots were mostly (if not only) used to automatically gather resources in open world (they'd camp at a specific spot and stay there to interact with minerals, wait until it respawns, and repeat the process). Still, the issue was fixed at some point (honestly I don't remember those bots being there for a very long time). At least that's what I can recall (there might have been other botting activities but it's been too long). As of now TERA is almost entirely free of cheaters. There ARE some "gold sellers" but they don't spam chat with bots, if they do try to sell their "services" they are actual real people trying to do it with as much subtlety as they can in "trade chat" (and that's very risky since they can be reported as soon as anyone else feels the slightest amount of ill will on their part).

 

Anyway, maybe it's completely irrelevant to mention any of this, or to compare B&S to other MMORPGs. I'm no game designer or engineer so maybe I'm just not aware of something in B&S that "requires" the game to be protected by GameGuard (or another similar anti-cheat method). As a player though I AM concerned about GameGuard due to how it operates in my OS. As of now though I should probably mention that I haven't had any issues in my system (since I installed B&S that is). The only thing I've noticed (if anything) is that my Kaspersky (the "PURE" version, all in one package, Firewall, Anti Virus, etc) asks me if B&S is a Trusted program on a daily basis, even when I manually make sure to add the game in the list of trusted objects, it still asks me pretty much everyday (sometimes after a reboot, sometimes just out of the big blue). But frankly, other than that I haven't experienced any erratic OS / system (or other games) behavior, BSODs, random reboots, crashes, slow downs or anything "wrong". But it's not because I haven't experienced problems with or from GameGuard yet that it means I actually like how it works. However, since I'm not educated about anti-cheat programs the only thing I can do on my part is to hope that NCSoft know what they're doing, or know what they're up against if shit hits the fan later on.

 

Nonetheless, I think that we can all agree to one thing here: we need to find a viable method to fight the actual cheaters (and bots), while making sure the legitimate players don't pay for it too.

[Zel]

14 minutes ago, Karrynka said:

 

Ah I see.

 

And with Aion's case, what was GameGuard replaced with? (Curious, since I've never played that game).

 

On a side note I'm still rather new to B&S, and I don't think I've played another game before that was "protected" by GameGuard. What I do know, however, is that the game I used to play before moving to B&S, namely TERA, doesn't have GameGuard and has no issues with hacking (not that I know of anyway), blatant cheating, and has no bots problems that I can think of right now. I DO remember that many months ago (perhaps years ago) TERA DID have some botting issues. However, those bots were mostly (if not only) used to automatically gather resources in open world (they'd camp at a specific spot and stay there to interact with minerals, wait until it respawns, and repeat the process). Still, the issue was fixed at some point (honestly I don't remember those bots being there for a very long time). At least that's what I can recall (there might have been other botting activities but it's been too long). As of now TERA is almost entirely free of cheaters. There ARE some "gold sellers" but they don't spam chat with bots, if they do try to sell their "services" they are actual real people trying to do it with as much subtlety as they can in "trade chat" (and that's very risky since they can be reported as soon as anyone else feels the slightest amount of ill will on their part).

 

Anyway, maybe it's completely irrelevant to mention any of this, or to compare B&S to other MMORPGs. I'm no game designer or engineer so maybe I'm just not aware of something in B&S that "requires" the game to be protected by GameGuard (or another similar anti-cheat method). As a player though I AM concerned about GameGuard due to how it operates in my OS. As of now though I should probably mention that I haven't had any issues in my system (since I installed B&S that is). The only thing I've noticed (if anything) is that my Kaspersky (the "PURE" version, all in one package, Firewall, Anti Virus, etc) asks me if B&S is a Trusted program on a daily basis, even when I manually make sure to add the game in the list of trusted objects, it still asks me pretty much everyday (sometimes after a reboot, sometimes just out of the big blue). But frankly, other than that I haven't experienced any erratic OS / system (or other games) behavior, BSODs, random reboots, crashes, slow downs or anything "wrong". But it's not because I haven't experienced problems with or from GameGuard yet that it means I actually like how it works. However, since I'm not educated about anti-cheat programs the only thing I can do on my part is to hope that NCSoft know what they're doing, or know what they're up against if shit hits the fan later on.

 

Nonetheless, I think that we can all agree to one thing here: we need to find a viable method to fight the actual cheaters, while making sure the legitimate players don't pay for it too.

 

Nothing. Never had anti-cheat stuff, but it didn't need it. Almost every interaction in Aion was handled partially on the server side so actual hacking was basically non-existant. The worst was a SLIGHT run speed increase (if it exceeded a certain value the server would flag it) and glide hacking which served no real purpose except getting places you shouldn't normally be able to get to to place Res kisks and sometimes run away. By extension bots were super simplistic, they ran 1 path, they hit the same skills in order, they didn't know how to interact with things besides what they were told to interact with, but I'll get to that. EVERYONE in PvP ran Fraps in Aion, it was a cultural thing. So if you were cheating in public places, you got mass captured and reported with video evidence and got banned VERY quickly.

 

Aion had a gold spam problem at launch as well, but no botting issues. Part of this was because it took 2-3 months for a dedicated players (6+ hours a day) to reach level cap, and the economy wasn't something that you could bot your way into (I know this sounds weird but resources and price points were unique). Botting only really became a visible thing post 2.5 when grindable nodes and areas became profitable, but this was TWO YEARS into the games lifespan. The economy was already shaped, their impact was negligible to actually helpful because they gathered and farmed the things nobody else would (Aether gem bots were the best people on the server). Did they get banned? Yes they did. Did it take a long time? You bet. Did they implement the same gold based auto ban system in Aion that they introduced here a few days ago and by extension got a lot of people falsely flagged? Yes and Yes. Took them two months to fix it but nobody ever got false flagged after that. Eventually though the game started falling off, post 4.0. NCsoft got SUPER cash grabby with their items and shop and events and as more people left they got lax on actually administrating the game. It was dying. 

[Lurkios]

It, clearly, doesn't stop bots. The troves of destroyer bots both in and out of arena show us this.

It, clearly, doesn't stop "hackers". We've all seen the auto-cancel scripts.

 

It does, however, stop my pump controller from reading system temperatures.

GOOD JOB, NC. I'd send you the repair bill, but considering you wrote it into the ToS that I may not I'll just assume you knew GameGuard was crap from the start.

 

And how many times have we seen it disabled now for breaking some required process on a mass scale? Banning users for no reason at all?

Get rid of this shit.

[877567_1452550445]

15 hours ago, Fenimore said:

 

I see that you've already been corrected, but if you've been paying attention at all, you'd already be aware that one of the complaints versus GG is that many antivirus *do* have problems with it. A lot of people are (naively) pausing their security programs in order to play the game, because GG acts in such a way that many reputable antivirus programs like Kaspersky and AVG will flag.

 

So, yes, these multi million dollar software companies are acting against GG in that they protect their users from it unless the user is naive enough to disable protection so that GG can have free run :)

 

 

Sorry for my silly username, it is bugged from having an Aion account under the same email. I understand your point however a lot of security suites/avs have a "Gaming mode" where a lot of the protection features are disabled anyway. I'm assuming Gameguard needs to be hidden for it to stand any chance at doing it's job. Unless Gameguard is malicious (which it isn't) I don't see any problem with it having that kind of access.

 

21 hours ago, nestharus said:

Here is one from May : )

 

https://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?/topic/168401-solved-conflict-with-nprotect-gameguard-game-engine/

 

Here's something else

 

 

 

 

It's not that the AV aren't flagging it, it's that the people doing GameGuard are actively working to circumvent these programs.

 

Yes, like any other piece of malware, GameGuard is fighting with AV Software to hide itself.

 

If you read the full thread you linked Malwarebytes ended up excluding Gameguard from it's detection engine so that doesn't really help your case much. It seems their developers believe it is safe enough to pass their protection.

 

Quote

Posted 14 May 2015 - 07:49 PM

Yes MBAE 1.07 will include an exclusion for GameGuard.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Zel said:

 

Nothing. Never had anti-cheat stuff, but it didn't need it. Almost every interaction in Aion was handled partially on the server side so actual hacking was basically non-existant. The worst was a SLIGHT run speed increase (if it exceeded a certain value the server would flag it) and glide hacking which served no real purpose except getting places you shouldn't normally be able to get to to place Res kisks and sometimes run away. By extension bots were super simplistic, they ran 1 path, they hit the same skills in order, they didn't know how to interact with things besides what they were told to interact with, but I'll get to that. EVERYONE in PvP ran Fraps in Aion, it was a cultural thing. So if you were cheating in public places, you got mass captured and reported with video evidence and got banned VERY quickly.

 

Aion had a gold spam problem at launch as well, but no botting issues. Part of this was because it took 2-3 months for a dedicated players (6+ hours a day) to reach level cap, and the economy wasn't something that you could bot your way into (I know this sounds weird but resources and price points were unique). Botting only really became a visible thing post 2.5 when grindable nodes and areas became profitable, but this was TWO YEARS into the games lifespan. The economy was already shaped, their impact was negligible to actually helpful because they gathered and farmed the things nobody else would (Aether gem bots were the best people on the server). Did they get banned? Yes they did. Did it take a long time? You bet. Did they implement the same gold based auto ban system in Aion that they introduced here a few days ago and by extension got a lot of people falsely flagged? Yes and Yes. Took them two months to fix it but nobody ever got false flagged after that. Eventually though the game started falling off, post 4.0. NCsoft got SUPER cash grabby with their items and shop and events and as more people left they got lax on actually administrating the game. It was dying. 

 

Sorry but Aion has always been full of hackers. A lot of the original players left blame it on the removal of Gameguard and never implementing another anti-cheat system. If you don't believe me a simple google/youtube search will show the sad state of that game.

[LilithDragonFlower]

10 minutes ago, 877567_1452550445 said:

 

Sorry for my silly username, it is bugged from having an Aion account under the same email. I understand your point however a lot of security suites/avs have a "Gaming mode" where a lot of the protection features are disabled anyway. I'm assuming Gameguard needs to be hidden for it to stand any chance at doing it's job. Unless Gameguard is malicious (which it isn't) I don't see any problem with it having that kind of access.

 

 

If you read the full thread you linked Malwarebytes ended up excluding Gameguard from it's detection engine so that doesn't really help your case much. It seems their developers believe it is safe enough to pass their protection.

 

 

They likely got paid off by the company to do this, or get paid a percentage to do it.

 

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=36224812

 

I also do not believe its safe to pass detection if its installed on the system, and not providing a uninstaller it should be flagged as a "PUP" at least.

[877567_1452550445]

3 minutes ago, LilithDragonFlower said:

They likely got paid off by the company to do this, or get paid a percentage to do it.

 

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=36224812

 

Well that actually brings up another discussion. Rootkits aren't by nature bad. Most people here are assuming Rootkits are malicious which has never been the case.

 

Quote

#2: Why use a rootkit?

Rootkits have two primary functions: remote command/control (back door) and software eavesdropping. Rootkits allow someone, legitimate or otherwise, to administratively control a computer. This means executing files, accessing logs, monitoring user activity, and even changing the computer's configuration. Therefore, in the strictest sense, even versions of VNC are rootkits. This surprises most people, as they consider rootkits to be solely malware, but in of themselves they aren't malicious at all.

 

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-plus-things-you-should-know-about-rootkits/

[nestharus]

10 minutes ago, 877567_1452550445 said:

 

Well that actually brings up another discussion. Rootkits aren't by nature bad. Most people here are assuming Rootkits are malicious which has never been the case.

 

 

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-plus-things-you-should-know-about-rootkits/

 

 

My problem isn't necessarily that it's a rootkit, it's what it is doing. Do I want my entire Operating System to be hijacked by a program that has been known to corrupt Operating Systems? No.

 

 

Here's another thing. GameGuard puts the players in the line of fire. The players must make the sacrifice and pay the price, not NC Soft. It also doesn't even really work. This is like NC Soft telling us to pile our machines on to a giant mound and set it on fire all for the sake of of the snake god Windhuluhulu smiting hackers.

[VRock]

i really hope they remove game guard because it does nothing to block cheaters. But after ncsoft remove this from the game, can they create a guide to completely uninstall this rootkit? 

[877567_1452550445]

41 minutes ago, nestharus said:

 

 

My problem isn't necessarily that it's a rootkit, it's what it is doing. Do I want my entire Operating System to be hijacked by a program that has been known to corrupt Operating Systems? No.

 

 

Here's another thing. GameGuard puts the players in the line of fire. The players must make the sacrifice and pay the price, not NC Soft. It also doesn't even really work. This is like NC Soft telling us to pile our machines on to a giant mound and set it on fire all for the sake of of the snake god Windhuluhulu smiting hackers.

 

Do you have any sources verifying that it has corrupted people's OS installs? Most of what I've read leans towards the likelihood their systems are/were already bad. I have a fairly new i5 build and can't tell a difference with it running. I always have skype and chrome open and can even record my games with Nvidia Shadowplay.

45 minutes ago, VRock said:

i really hope they remove game guard because it does nothing to block cheaters. But after ncsoft remove this from the game, can they create a guide to completely uninstall this rootkit? 

 

It does block some which is much better than none.

[ManIQ]

After gameguard took somewhat of a break from plaguing my game time, coincidentally BnS ran better. I had higher more stable FPS and just an overall better experience. After it was reactivated my FPS has dropped significantly and sometimes takes wild dips only to climb back up. Granted I dont play on the most high end system but the fact of the matter is while GG was "gone" the game ran surprisingly well for me. I stopped playing the game about 4 days ago out of sheer principle as the bot infestation and what I'd deem as utter incompitence on NCSofts part. Now this information regarding GG; I'm uninstalling when I get home.

 

Frankly, I feel that the player base, at least those experiencing problems caused or most likely caused by GG should protest here on the forums by creating a petition or by simply uninstalling the game. The NA player base is a cash cow for BnS and it should be noted mmo's come a dime a dozen and if they cant get that through their heads? *cricket*'em.

[LilithDragonFlower]

36 minutes ago, 877567_1452550445 said:

 

Do you have any sources verifying that it has corrupted people's OS installs? Most of what I've read leans towards the likelihood their systems are/were already bad. I have a fairly new i5 build and can't tell a difference with it running. I always have skype and chrome open and can even record my games with Nvidia Shadowplay.

 

It does block some which is much better than none.

Well since the "Support Tickets" told me that (Game Guard) was not required to run) when they turned it off and made me think it was going to stay off, then they should just "Delete my character" and all Data on my account, and refund the $100-$200 I put into the game since I can't play it unless they are going to fix it.

 

Hello there,

We are sorry but as of now we do not have a definite date on when the game would independently operate without the GameGuard application. 

All we know for now is that the game requires some files from it to run but does not require GameGuard to be a running process.

As long as you can play the game without any problems, it should be fine.

I hope I have made everything clear to you. Please contact us again if ever you have any more questions.

*CENSORED*

[Ninfu]

I cant understand why they're so damn fixated using GG when it does not prevent anything nor help anyone only thing it does is causes harm to legit players

[877567_1452550445]

13 minutes ago, Ninfu said:

I cant understand why they're so damn fixated using GG when it does not prevent anything nor help anyone only thing it does is causes harm to legit players

 

Well do the international versions use it? If they want to keep everything the same that would be one reason. The post above you makes it sound like the client is somewhat dependent on the Gameguard files to run. If all the future updates come with GG already integrated it would be a lot of work to remove it every time a patch is released.

[nestharus]

fyi, for those that were thinking about trying out Black Desert Online, that also has an intrusive anti-cheat called XingCode3. That sucker starts as soon as your computer starts up and will log every file/folder that you've opened within the last 48 hours + monitor all of your chat everywhere and send it off to who knows where.

 

You're best off sticking with B&S because with B&S, there is a chance NC Soft will disable GameGuard in the future as they've done it plenty of times in the past. For Black Desert Online, there is pretty much no chance that XingCode3 will ever get disabled.

 

Black Desert Online has a slew of other problems, including no trade : |.

 

 

 

So I just want to say this again. The players could easily take matters into their own hands and kill GameGuard with just a few minutes of effort. It's not all that difficult. We're taking the high road here and not going the route of the hackers and botters. I hope NC Soft understands this. I'm sure that some legitimate players may get fed up enough to kill GameGuard so that they can play the game in peace, not for the purposes of cheating. We've already seen one instance of something close to that on this thread and the post was thankfully edited to remove the content : ). Our premium subs are ticking away while we wait for GameGuard to go away. One person lost their computer because GameGuard interfered with their pump reading the correct CPU temps. Another person just recently had to format their entire drive because GameGuard corrupted the operating system. People are discussing mouse buttons not responding, dropped packets, and stuttering. GameGuard is sometimes consuming 50% of CPU resources by itself. GameGuard essentially only punishes the legitimate players while the hackers and botters continue to have a smooth game experience since they kill it. This is just... really messed up. I don't get to play Warlock, I don't get to enjoy the game, I don't get to use my prem sub... I just get to sit here and wait. I've put enough into this game to get to Rank 10 Premium because, while GameGuard wasn't active, I saw a great game, given that the bot situation could be brought under control. Now I'm essentially locked out unless I either want to kill GameGuard, which I'm sure is against the TOS, or compromise my PC. Plus I get to miss out on the level-up event for Warlock. I'm just getting really bitter and depressed about this : (. I'm starting to think that it would be wise to avoid all NC Soft games in the future if I'm just going to get betrayed like this and locked out of the game. I'm sure a lot of other people are in the same situation, although I'm sure that they haven't put nearly as much into this game as I have : \.

 

 

Then at every corner we have players stating that none of these issues are the result of GameGuard, people that have no idea what GameGuard actually does and refuse to listen to any evidence or reason. This is almost equivalent to climate change denial and is just very depressing.

 

 

If I were an unethical player, I wouldn't be here right now. I would have bypassed GameGuard the day it was activated and would be otherwise playing the game legitimately. I would be able to participate in the Warlock level up event, use my premium sub, and enjoy the game without risking my computer. Why is NC Soft doing this to us? Why am I, the ethical player, the one that's getting punished? Why do botters get it easy with little risk for being banned other than player reports?

 

 

I hope someone with a heart reads this and can tell me why NC Soft is targeting me, and other ethical players, and locking us out of the game, while allowing unethical players have free reign. It should be the opposite /cries. And yes, I am on the verge of tears because I feel like NC Soft is trying to do everything in their power to get me banned and destroy my computer. That and they've taken ~$1500 so that I have no choice but to plead for mercy : (.

 

 

I guess NC Soft just doesn't want players like me : (. They don't want my money and they don't want me in their game. I'm too helpful to other players, I give far too much advice, and I am too willing to give aid whenever people ask me for it. That and I also spend way too much money to help support the game : (. I'm never going to be heard and nobody cares. If it's not about costumes, NC Soft doesn't want to hear it : (. I guess I'm forced to just cut my losses and be kicked out since I'm one of the unwanted ones.

 

 

I hope that everyone else does better : (.

[LilithDragonFlower]

I Don't think they are understanding me in my support ticket when I have said like 3 times ( I don't want Game Guard installed on my system) and I was told by support staff that (Game Guard) was not required to run the game which it wasn't at the time, and their solution is to infect my computer with this malicious software.

 

They shouldn't mislead consumers like this and need to remove this from the game so its playable.

 

My friends were telling me to play Black Desert, I told them the same thing that the game looks great, but I can't play it because of XingCode3, does the same shit but worse than Game Guard does.

[877567_1452550445]

3 hours ago, nestharus said:

 

 

 

 

So I just want to say this again. The players could easily take matters into their own hands and kill GameGuard with just a few minutes of effort. It's not all that difficult. We're taking the high road here and not going the route of the hackers and botters. I hope NC Soft understands this. I'm sure that some legitimate players may get fed up enough to kill GameGuard so that they can play the game in peace, not for the purposes of cheating. We've already seen one instance of something close to that on this thread and the post was thankfully edited to remove the content : ). Our premium subs are ticking away while we wait for GameGuard to go away. One person lost their computer because GameGuard interfered with their pump reading the correct CPU temps. Another person just recently had to format their entire drive because GameGuard corrupted the operating system. People are discussing mouse buttons not responding, dropped packets, and stuttering. GameGuard is sometimes consuming 50% of CPU resources by itself. GameGuard essentially only punishes the legitimate players while the hackers and botters continue to have a smooth game experience since they kill it. This is just... really messed up. I don't get to play Warlock, I don't get to enjoy the game, I don't get to use my prem sub... I just get to sit here and wait. I've put enough into this game to get to Rank 10 Premium because, while GameGuard wasn't active, I saw a great game, given that the bot situation could be brought under control. Now I'm essentially locked out unless I either want to kill GameGuard, which I'm sure is against the TOS, or compromise my PC. Plus I get to miss out on the level-up event for Warlock. I'm just getting really bitter and depressed about this : (. I'm starting to think that it would be wise to avoid all NC Soft games in the future if I'm just going to get betrayed like this and locked out of the game. I'm sure a lot of other people are in the same situation, although I'm sure that they haven't put nearly as much into this game as I have : \.

 

Please provide some proof to the underlined section of your post. You are entitled to your opinion but that claim is just silly. There seems to be a trend in blaming anything that goes wrong with someone's computer on Gameguard. I run several hardware monitors while I play and my cpu usage hits about 50% total with BnS and several other programs running. Also if someone is really dumb enough to rely on software to control their cpu cooling that in itself is problematic. That is what the system bios is for, any good cooler will support hardware control. Software control always has been a flaky gimmick just like software overclocking.

[nestharus]

6 minutes ago, 877567_1452550445 said:

 

Please provide some proof to the underlined portion of your post. You are entitled to your opinion but that portion is just a silly. There seems to be a trend in blaming anything that goes wrong with someone's computer on Gameguard. I run several hardware monitors while I play and my cpu usage hits about 50% total with BnS and several other programs running. Also if someone is really dumb enough to rely software to control their cpu cooling that in itself is problematic. That is what the system bios is for, any good cooler will support hardware control. Software control always has been a flaky gimmick just like software overclocking.

 

Read through the thread. The 50% bit was from elsewhere.

 

Nobody ever said that the cooler was software controlled. GameGuard messes with hardware too... it redirects and rewrites memory at a system level, which means that it is indeed messing with your drivers and playing with your hardware directly.

[877567_1452550445]

6 minutes ago, nestharus said:

 

Read through the thread. The 50% bit was from elsewhere.

 

The people making those claims never post any screenshots though which is the first thing I would do if I were having issues. Look at it this way. What do players who defend Gameguard have to gain? Nothing. What do players who want it removed have to gain? Possibly an easier way to exploit. Also if the problems were widespread the forums would be overloaded with posts about it just like they were when the game first launched and people couldn't get on because of the server ques. Usually it is the same 15-20 people in these threads posting multiple times. BTW my previous post had 500 typos so I edited it a bit. My eyes are shot this late at night.

[nestharus]

27 minutes ago, 877567_1452550445 said:

 

The people making those claims never post any screenshots though which is the first thing I would do if I were having issues. Look at it this way. What do players who defend Gameguard have to gain? Nothing. What do players who want it removed have to gain? Possibly an easier way to exploit. Also if the problems were widespread the forums would be overloaded with posts about it just like they were when the game first launched and people couldn't get on because of the server ques. Usually it is the same 15-20 people in these threads posting multiple times.

 

 

The people wanting it removed gain system stability and game stability. The presence of GameGuard or lack thereof neither hurts nor benefits hackers in any way. They can bypass it with just a few minutes of effort. The only ones who'd ever be working to get it removed are ethical players that aren't trying to bypass it. Believe me, some people on this thread have lost their patience and have already bypassed it. They are now playing the game again.

 

 

I have never had any problems with GameGuard. I don't want it running on my system because of how it operates. If it were just monitoring/reading, I'd be ok with it. It doesn't do that though.

 

 

Please stop trying to treat the ethical players, the people that are working to better the game and protect everyone, as criminals. If I was selfish, didn't care about anyone else, and wasn't ethical, I would have bypassed GameGuard on day 1 of its activation and I would not have bothered posting any of this. I would be in-game right now. I do know how to use Google and have already seen all of that stuff while doing research for my "A War on Cheaters" thread. I could have easily downloaded the bypass by itself so that I could play the game in peace. Here I am, a result of not downloading the bypass.

 

 

You're trying to wage war on the people that are working to protect you and themselves... you get absolutely nothing out of attacking the good guys.

 

 

NC Soft has already made it pretty clear that they don't care about us when they ignored those of us asking about GameGuard on the live twitch stream. There were atleast 3 of us there. The question I put in was skipped. So congratulations, you've already won and get to keep using the software that does nothing to protect the game and does everything it can to invade your system. Hope your game never crashes, because if it does, that's when you're going to see the OS corruption and BSODs.

 

If you think I'm lying, I dare you to try forcefully crashing the game to see what GameGuard does. Sometimes, you'll only need to reboot your system if you want to get back into the game because GameGuard will not have shut down. Other times, it can wreak havoc with its write redirects, causing a BSOD. It can even go so far as to corrupt portions of your operating system. Feel free to gamble with your system. Just know that whatever happens, you'll be the one paying for it, not NC Soft. It's not so funny when you have killed your machine and have to format your drive and possibly replace hardware.

 

 

Feel free to continue attacking the people that are trying to make sure that this never happens to you.