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OK, my dear friends, I hate to bring bad news. I am really sorry, as after reading this post you will probably taste quite some bitterness in your mouth. But after discussing the problem with Jack on the chat, we decided to let the team know first. We should discuss what happened and decide about further actions to be taken.
I strongly urge you to keep the following information to yourself! Do not disclose it to ANYBODY. Consider it TOP SECRET for the time being. Sigh.
The sad fact is that we have been spied upon before even playing our first turn. At least one other person (maybe one other team) most probably knows how our starting location looks like, where it is, and what password we use for our PBEM game.
Here is the story.
Those of you present on the hectic Sunday night will remember that we had troubles setting up our private chatroom. Sharpe tried first, but failed to protect the room (called Legoland) with a password. All of us gathered there anyway, as it was easier to chat there than in the crowded main Apolyton room.
Later I did some mIRC research and succeeded in setting up a truly private chatroom (LegoChannel), protected with the password of "Tiberius". I went back to the "public" Legoland channel and told everybody to move to the new room, revealing the Tiberius password online. After a while, I noticed an outsider present in the "public" Legoland channel. I realized that anybody could have noticed our password to the password-protected room, rendering the whole password protection ineffective.
I immediately told everybody about the problem, had Sharpe destroy the old, "public" Legoland chatroom and set myself up a new, password protected Legoland room, using the password of "HisBrickness". I then posted the password in a special thread in our team forum and told everybody waiting in the LegoChannel room to grab it there.
People successfully moved over to the safe room. All of them... but one. A guy using the nickname of "nimitz". He appeared to have troubles changing rooms, so I offered him help, suggesting where to grab the new password. He apologized, saying he was an IRC newbie, and told me he was unable to get the password from the forum, since "...his Opera was broken and kept loading some cached pages, preventing him from learning the new password". I sent him the password via PM then... it did not help either, as "...his Opera got totally useless, loading just crap." Getting a bit helpess, I succeeded in opening a private IRC channel between me and this guy, telling him the HisBrickness password there. He then joined us in the private Legoland room. As far as I can remember, he did not contribute to the discussion... at least, nothing I would be able to recall.
Three days later, I received a PM from Nimitz. He was asking me "where the chat was at". I thought he'd read the chatroom/password thread and did not realize it was referring to the Sunday night chat. I responded telling him the chat was not on anymore. I mentioned that the chatroom was not requiring the password any more... Nimitz got back telling me the chatroom would reset itself after the last member left it and offered to fix the problem. I asked him what the problem was and learned about the need to "register" the channel to prevent it from resetting.
I noticed several members greeting Nimitz back after he fixed his computer that had crashed before. The fool I am, I was still blind to what was obvious. It's been only earlier today that I realized the problem. The nimitz from the Sunday night could not have been our Nimitz. The true Nimitz had his computer broken on Sunday and was skilled with mIRC (Nimitz later confirmed he was not online on Sunday night and was definitely not "an irc newbie").
Well. Someone played a dirty trick on me and I foolishly let him get into our room. He had the chance to see our starting spot, our location (from the minimap) and probably learned our PBEM password.
Sigh. What a fool I am. A naive idiot.
But that's what happened.
Now, I do suspect one person. Unfortunately, my suspicion is not backed with evidence very well. I do remember the nickname of the outsider I noticed in the first, "public" Legoland room just a couple of minutes after I posted the Tiberius password. But I can't be sure there was only him. There might have been someone else I did not notice.
I guess having our location known to someone else is perhaps not a big deal. If there was someone out there determined to cheat, looking at our position, he could do it by simply loading the PBEM game using the known load bug (I do not know the exact details myself, but I know it's a public secret that the PBEM savegame is just vulnerable). It is basically a matter of honesty and integrity of the players not to use the cheap trick.
But what happened is unfortunately a pretty strong evidence that there will be cheating in the PtW demogame. At least one dishonest person, maybe even a whole team, plays unfair.
What do we do now?
I will email MarkG and ask him about a copy of the Sunday chat log, should there be one available. Even though I doubt it, it may give us a better clue as to who the cheater was. We (me and Jack, whom I told all this in a private chat earlier today) will appreciate any idea that might help catching and publicly exposing the cheater.
Once again, I urge you to consider this information strictly CLASSIFIED.
I strongly urge you to keep the following information to yourself! Do not disclose it to ANYBODY. Consider it TOP SECRET for the time being. Sigh.
The sad fact is that we have been spied upon before even playing our first turn. At least one other person (maybe one other team) most probably knows how our starting location looks like, where it is, and what password we use for our PBEM game.
Here is the story.
Those of you present on the hectic Sunday night will remember that we had troubles setting up our private chatroom. Sharpe tried first, but failed to protect the room (called Legoland) with a password. All of us gathered there anyway, as it was easier to chat there than in the crowded main Apolyton room.
Later I did some mIRC research and succeeded in setting up a truly private chatroom (LegoChannel), protected with the password of "Tiberius". I went back to the "public" Legoland channel and told everybody to move to the new room, revealing the Tiberius password online. After a while, I noticed an outsider present in the "public" Legoland channel. I realized that anybody could have noticed our password to the password-protected room, rendering the whole password protection ineffective.
I immediately told everybody about the problem, had Sharpe destroy the old, "public" Legoland chatroom and set myself up a new, password protected Legoland room, using the password of "HisBrickness". I then posted the password in a special thread in our team forum and told everybody waiting in the LegoChannel room to grab it there.
People successfully moved over to the safe room. All of them... but one. A guy using the nickname of "nimitz". He appeared to have troubles changing rooms, so I offered him help, suggesting where to grab the new password. He apologized, saying he was an IRC newbie, and told me he was unable to get the password from the forum, since "...his Opera was broken and kept loading some cached pages, preventing him from learning the new password". I sent him the password via PM then... it did not help either, as "...his Opera got totally useless, loading just crap." Getting a bit helpess, I succeeded in opening a private IRC channel between me and this guy, telling him the HisBrickness password there. He then joined us in the private Legoland room. As far as I can remember, he did not contribute to the discussion... at least, nothing I would be able to recall.
Three days later, I received a PM from Nimitz. He was asking me "where the chat was at". I thought he'd read the chatroom/password thread and did not realize it was referring to the Sunday night chat. I responded telling him the chat was not on anymore. I mentioned that the chatroom was not requiring the password any more... Nimitz got back telling me the chatroom would reset itself after the last member left it and offered to fix the problem. I asked him what the problem was and learned about the need to "register" the channel to prevent it from resetting.
I noticed several members greeting Nimitz back after he fixed his computer that had crashed before. The fool I am, I was still blind to what was obvious. It's been only earlier today that I realized the problem. The nimitz from the Sunday night could not have been our Nimitz. The true Nimitz had his computer broken on Sunday and was skilled with mIRC (Nimitz later confirmed he was not online on Sunday night and was definitely not "an irc newbie").
Well. Someone played a dirty trick on me and I foolishly let him get into our room. He had the chance to see our starting spot, our location (from the minimap) and probably learned our PBEM password.
Sigh. What a fool I am. A naive idiot.
But that's what happened.
Now, I do suspect one person. Unfortunately, my suspicion is not backed with evidence very well. I do remember the nickname of the outsider I noticed in the first, "public" Legoland room just a couple of minutes after I posted the Tiberius password. But I can't be sure there was only him. There might have been someone else I did not notice.
I guess having our location known to someone else is perhaps not a big deal. If there was someone out there determined to cheat, looking at our position, he could do it by simply loading the PBEM game using the known load bug (I do not know the exact details myself, but I know it's a public secret that the PBEM savegame is just vulnerable). It is basically a matter of honesty and integrity of the players not to use the cheap trick.
But what happened is unfortunately a pretty strong evidence that there will be cheating in the PtW demogame. At least one dishonest person, maybe even a whole team, plays unfair.
What do we do now?
I will email MarkG and ask him about a copy of the Sunday chat log, should there be one available. Even though I doubt it, it may give us a better clue as to who the cheater was. We (me and Jack, whom I told all this in a private chat earlier today) will appreciate any idea that might help catching and publicly exposing the cheater.
Once again, I urge you to consider this information strictly CLASSIFIED.
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