Mithril Web Guild

The message boards found here are used for communication and information for the Aion chapter of Mithril Web, courtesy and civility are expected in the public and private areas here as well as the Aion boards or in the game itself. This post outlines our policies for this game.


Mithril Web- Aion Guild Policies

Who we are and how we conduct ourselves:

Mithril Web strives to provide a pleasant gaming environment for the members and the servers of the games in which MW has a presence. Across many games for many people, MW is “home”. Our message boards for this game can be found at http://www.mithrilweb.com in the Aion section, and Aion members are expected to check there periodically. Mithril Web has a long, proud history from early EverQuest through games such as Dark Age of Camelot and World of WarCraft and others, along with EverQuest II where we still have an active presence, and we of MW-Aion endeavor to uphold that legacy of friendship and sacrifice, a place for friendly conversation and where inquiries are met with sincerity and helpfulness: good people, good times. We are a family of a variety of playstyles and timezones who agree to treat others with respect, communicate in a civil and PG to PG=13 manner, and behave with honor in a way that reflects well upon the guild/legion. Anyone that wears this tag is expected to abide by all rules of the game being played, including those one agrees to during login as well as those posted in official websites, for Aion that would be the User Agreement and Rules of Conduct, see the end of this document*.


Groups/Raids/Alliances/PvP:

In terms of loot, MW is need before greed, with patience and understanding. To roll on something the character present should be of a class and level to use it, unless a free for all, wider range, or rolling for alts situation has been agreed upon by all those present or established by the coordinator of the alliance. Attention should be paid to items that are not transferable to other characters, do not roll unless you can use unless no one involved can use. Remember that items are transient, people matter more, there should not be any disputes and any complaints that arise should be brought directly to leadership and discussed with minimal drama.
For strategic efforts, legionmates and needed classes of the appropriate level range have priority of invitation to open slots over random strangers. When participating in alliances in PvP areas it is expected that members will try to pay attention to move calls and be aware of other relevant information given in alliance and region channels to help the Elyos cause. When working with others, communication is key; if a quest update or item is desired, one should express that, and competitive situations should be handled with diplomacy. Patience is a virtue.
In the PvP aspect of the game, our members are expected not to intentionally participate in gank squads in the newbie zones of the other side bottomfeeding on characters half their level; obviously during rifting and spy quests and such some killing of ?? lowbies might occur but do not intend to make a habit of drastically unfair fights (that skull on the map in a side’s low area should not be you). If an MW character is killed in PvP that person should let the legion know if they want others to avenge them and/or a person may switch characters to put down the predator.


Alts and accounts:

If a player is asked to attend a group or an alliance on an alternate character from the main they would rather play, that person may choose which character to roll on items for at the start of that event and indicate such. Beyond that, mains have preference over alts of the same level range.
As characters of an account are not linked in the Aion database and people may have a desire to try playing both racial factions or to take advantage of the additional bankspace cheaply enabled by creating an alt legion or to simply sample different aspects of the game, at this time it is permissible for members of Mithril Web to have alts in other legions, however it is expected that anything a person says or does in connection with the Mithril Web name should reflect well on MW. Items and money may not be passed from the MW legion bank to characters in other legions, and no character associated with MW should participate in or benefit from anything in violation of MW or Aion policies, such as real money transaction services, including kinah buying, or powerleveling, or bots.
Historically many people in MW have played these games with family members or housemates, including spouses, parents and children. It is understood that at times in these situations some individuals may have the account information of others. Ideally, non-MW people should have minimal access to MW characters. Anyone playing as an MW character is expected to abide by MW and game policies and no person should misrepresent themselves or claim to be something they are not. Honesty and integrity are important. Obviously account selling/buying is not tolerated and any transference of accounts in either direction between a member and a non-member should be brought to the attention of the legion. If a member intends to transfer their account to a non-member they should de-guild their characters before doing so.


Bank, permissions, excess items, crafting:

Banked items are there for member use. The funds in the bank are there to help people starting out, and may also be used to level the legion. At this time, as all people of the MW tag are members of long standing through many chapters and many years, all are promoted to the rank of Centurion for bank access. As the legion grows and if the game expands to allow more delineated options, these ranks may change. At this time the game only has 3 ranks for type of legion member, and that includes the leadership rank which may only be held by one person, and the lowest rank does not have many options… that low rank of Legionary is currently being used for recruits and inactive alts. When space permits, members may use the legion bank to transfer items from one MW character to another, but they should declare what they are doing such that another person does not remove the item for use in the meantime. Items from legion-only groups or alliances that were not needed by anyone present may be placed in the legion bank for members who were not present, or sold for legion funds at the discretion of leadership. When possible, rare recipes and components such as fluxes should be kept in legion rather than sold. It is not practical for people to save every flux and duplicate recipe from drops, quests, and work orders, but some effort should be made to offer up these types of items to the legion (as free donation or for reasonable compensation) or place them in the legion bank before dumping them on the open market or destroying them. Space in this game is a huge issue, so obviously there isn't an expectation that every little thing be saved as that's not possible, and things that can be cheaply acquired through the broker may not make sense to consume the space. People are encouraged to be aware of the classes and crafts we have in-guild and if you come across things you don't need that others might be able to use (especially if you're in a guild group) to send those items to someone directly, legion bank or keep the resources for your own or someone else's future use to benefit the legion. Clearly nobody is expected to hold on to every little elemental stone or to give up all that they gather or bankrupt themselves by never selling a drop, but please think about what to retain/share and please use the bank if there's something there you need or wish to donate, in terms of items, materials, or kinah. In the members area there will be a list of especially wanted items for the bank.
Legion tradeskillers should be willing to help do combines for legion members that provide materials, however no one should abuse the generosity of crafters, expect them to drop everything to do a combine or ask them to take a huge loss. The time, effort, and financial investment it takes to raise extraction and craft skills in this game should be respected. Those seeking a crafted item should research what it entails. Also, those members who do extractions and trades should not take advantage of members who do not, in terms of not price gouging on quest materials or finished products. Those who complete Expert tests in various crafts should indicate such on our boards so that others may congratulate them and so that combines may be done in-house when possible.

Every few months the legion’s bank and roster will be gone through by the leadership, and if they are near the cap, things that have been collecting dust for months that no one speaks up for when mentioned may be culled.


Joining/leaving Mithril Web-Aion:

Mithril Web does not take membership lightly, which is part of how we have endured. We look to the person not just the player, at character not just the character, and we have high standards. We are open to those who wish to raid and those who do not, those who engage in PvP and those who shun it, those who are very active or social and those who are more casual or reclusive, as long as they behave with honor and abide by the rules of the game and the policies established herein. Mithril Web does not openly recruit, we meet people through interacting in games. Any person interested in becoming a member of Mithril Web should first be made familiar with MW history and policies, and agree to play by them as well as the rules of the game and to represent the tag well in any and all formats (including game channels, groups, raids, forums, voice chat or text). Anyone trying to become a recruit will be expected to articulate our sentiments. Due to the limited size of MW-Aion at this time only one sponsor is needed for a recruit. The sponsor and recruit should have spent some time getting to know each other and discussing the essence of Mithril Web before the recruit is introduced to the rest of the guild. The individual should group with and chat with members, and members should keep an eye on the person and their behavior good and bad. When the interested person has formally expressed their desire to join and submitted a bio statement describing themselves and their gaming background, to be posted on our forums for member perusal, the person may be admitted to the legion at the lowest rank for a probationary period. Once the sponsor and that individual feel they have met everyone and that they and Mithril Web are a good fit (this process should take at least a few weeks and should not take more than 3 months barring special circumstances), the sponsor may call for a membership vote. The vote must remain up on our forums for at least one week with the options of Yes, No, and Abstain, and the individual must have at least 2/3 Yes votes with 0 No votes at the end of the voting period to be made a full member. Those who have been Mithril Web members in other games may not have to go through this process provided that MW members here can vouch for them and that if they left the guild at some point they did so on good terms. Membership in MW-Aion may not guarantee membership in other chapters of this guild, that would be something to take up with the leadership of the specific chapter. If one does move on from a game or a chapter of Mithril Web it is recommended that one do so politely- write a goodbye post that gives some indication of where you are going and why, and try to minimize any sore feelings that might occur. If a person burns their bridges when the leave by harsh behavior or violation of guild policies or game rules, they will bruise the friendships they have made here and will likely not be welcomed back to this or possibly any chapter of MW. A member that left under mysterious circumstances who wishes to return will need unanimous leadership approval to try to do so, and depending on the situation and number of guildmates that remember them, may need to go through the regular sponsorship process.

As this chapter is currently still small and made up of “old timers” and the game is still growing with new and exciting things on the horizon which may affect our policies, this document is not complete and will certainly be revised (especially if there is a relationship between legions and housing, more ranks are introduced, etc. we’ll see what the Aion Vision brings).


* The following rules govern basic interaction within the Aion game and the Aion website (including message boards). Please be aware that failure to comply with these rules of conduct may result in the termination of your Aion game account according to the Aion User Agreement. : http://us.ncsoft.com/en/legal/user-agre ... ement.html
In addition to these rules of conduct, explicit rules affecting your account may be found in the Aion User Agreement.
1. While playing Aion, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players.
2. You may not post or communicate any player's real world information (name, address, account name, etc.) through the Aion game or on the official Aion website.
3. You may not use sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive language.
4. You may not post or link to any sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive imagery or content.
5. When communicating in Aion using Global Chat (server wide chat), you may not spam, flood, or make duplicate posts. For more information, please see the User Agreement.
6. You may not impersonate any employee of NC Interactive, Inc., NCsoft Corporation or their affiliates.
7. You may not violate any local, state, national, or international laws or regulations.
8. You may not market, promote, advertise, or solicit within the Aion game or on the official Aion website.
9. You may not modify any part of the Aion Client, Server, or any part of the official Aion website.
10. You may not advertise the intent to or commit the act of buying, selling, trading, sharing, or transferring access to any Aion account.
11. You may not advertise the intent to or commit the act of buying or selling items for cash or trading items from one server to another.
12. You may not arrange for the exchange or transfer of any pirated or illegal software while using the Aion game or website.
13. You will follow the instructions of authorized personnel while in Aion or on the Official Website.
14. You may not organize nor be a member of any pledges or groups within Aion that are based on or espouse any racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethnic, anti-gay, or other hate mongering philosophies.
15. You may not provide false information or intentionally hide any information when registering for your Aion account.
16. You may not upload or transmit on Aion or the official Aion website any copyrighted or trademarked content that you do not own all rights to without the express written permission of the author or copyright or trademark holder.
17. You will not attempt to interfere with, hack into, or decipher any transmissions to or from the servers running Aion.
18. You will not exploit any bug in Aion and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Aion. Bugs should be promptly reported via 'Ask A Question' at http://help.ncsoft.com.
19. You will not attempt to play Aion on any server that is not controlled or authorized by NC Interactive or its designees.
20. You will not create, use, or provide any server emulator or other site where Aion may be played, and you will not post or distribute any utilities, emulators or other software tools related to Aion without the express written permission of NC Interactive.
21. You may not use any third-party program (such as a "bot") in order to automate gameplay functions, including playing, chatting, interacting or gathering items within Aion. You may not assist, relay or store items for other players who are using these processes.


January 2010 first posting

Yustiel Server
Elyos faction

Addional Aion account security guidelines from NCSoft (http://na.aiononline.com/board/notices/ ... =197&page=) :


Greetings, all. I’m Scott Jennings, otherwise known as GM Luminary, working with NCsoft’s Game Surveillance Unit (GSU). I’ve been asked to take some time to speak for a bit on the fallout from the war that we’ve been fighting in our games against real money trading (RMT) companies and others trying to violate your account security, and how you can help in the fight.

Make no mistake—it is a war. One that you, our players, see the effects of whenever you play our games or visit forums related to our games. Many of you have noticed the decrease in bots, farmers, and gold spammers as a result of our efforts.

In the game industry, we have also seen an increase in attacks by third parties in an attempt to steal your account information by any means necessary, including phishing, obtaining passwords from third party sites/systems, and using account information provided by those engaged in power-leveling services and other prohibited activities. Recently, the number of these attacks has risen dramatically.

As a result, our game support queues have drastically increased, with thousands of support tickets from players who have lost access to their game accounts and are suffering extended wait times for help. Our game servers, account databases, and support sites are under constant attack and being probed for any vulnerability. It’s a war that by no means is over.

Our enemies are playing for high stakes—the estimated $2 billion dollars that RMT companies earn off the back of game developers and players like you. And we are playing for high stakes as well—the right that we believe we have as a company, and you as players, to play games that are free from the corruption of in-game currency sales and all that results from that.

It’s a war that we’re committed to winning, but one that we’ll need your help with to achieve a real victory. I’ll describe first our responsibility to you to provide a safe and secure gaming environment, and then what you can do in return to protect yourself.

Our job: Provide a secure environment for your game.

With the increase in account compromises that we've been seeing in this past month, I think it’s worth taking a moment to review how seriously we here at NCsoft take your account security.

The news from Google regarding a serious, high-level attack by hackers on the most secure technology companies in the world is sobering. We continue to refine our systems to counter the various attacks that these RMT companies employ. We have a team of security professionals with years of experience in massively multiplayer games and online security in Seoul, Seattle, Austin, and Brighton that is striving to make our servers as secure as they can be. Any vulnerability that is discovered is addressed and fixed.

For example, a thread on a third-party Guild Wars forum this New Year’s attracted a good deal of attention. It detailed a list of security vulnerabilities that supposedly had been discovered on our account website, ending with the alarmist note that “the only responsible thing NCsoft can do is to shut off their website, as soon as possible.”

Despite the fact that this report occurred over the holidays, when the majority of NCsoft employees were home with their families, our security team responded immediately with a point-by-point testing and analysis of the erroneous concerns that were raised. As a result of the point-by-point testing and analysis, our security team concluded no critical vulnerabilities had been demonstrated or identified, but our security team continues to research, to monitor closely, and to implement security improvements to address any potential weaknesses raised.

We’ll continue to audit our systems, and you will see some dramatic changes in the next few months. NCsoft views account security as a very important matter.

Your task: Help protect yourself.

So how you can protect yourself from the sort of constant attacks that we’ve been seeing?

Many of you reading this letter are experienced online game players. You’ve heard the “don’t do this” and “don’t click that” and “don’t run that thing” warnings over and again, you’re not dumb, you’d never get your account stolen simply because you know better.

You’re wrong. I know this because I know many people who thought they knew better—people who work in the gaming industry, and have done so for years, and still tried to log in one day and found their password changed and someone else logged into their account cleaning out their inventory.

(If you’re not an experienced online gamer and want the basics in account security, there’s no shame in that. We have a complete guide online.)

The following brief guide in self-protection is going to be a bit different than what you may be used to. It’s going to assume that you know the basic rules of how to protect your account, and it will detail how we’ve seen accounts stolen anyway. Think of it as an advanced class in account security. And don’t think that these guidelines apply to other people who don’t pay attention. If you do any of these, your account is at risk of being stolen.

Don’t share your password with anyone. Don’t let your friends log in to your game account. There are two simple reasons for this. The first, and one you may not want to particularly acknowledge, is that your guildmate or childhood friend or relative may do things on your account that can get you banned, such as using bots. Another is that once you share your account, your security is as vulnerable as theirs—and any mistake that they may make that allows for an account intrusion will compromise your account as well.

Don’t use bots. Ever. If you use “third party applications that control your game play”—which is the literal definition of “bots”—you will lose your account, and nothing you say will get it back. We can detect bots. We have multiple ways of detecting bots. We have banned thousands of accounts and will continue to ban such accounts due to bot usage. Bot usage is one of the key ways that RMT companies use to fund their operations, and removing bots from the game is one of our best attacks against them. The GSU “banhammers” against bot usage will not stop, and if you use a bot, you will be caught. You may not be caught immediately, but it will happen.

Don’t buy in-game money. Aside from the fact that you are funding the very people who are at war with our games—and thus at war with you—many RMT companies use web browser vulnerabilities to attempt to load Trojans onto your system. In some cases, they ask you to create website logins for their system and then check to see if that information is the same user name and password you use to log in to the game with. A few companies simply ask you for your user name and password. In any event, these are not companies that can be trusted. Because your accounts can be compromised as a result of RMT, we specifically prohibit this type of activity in our User Agreements.

Don’t use power-leveling services. Again, these services are run by the same people who are attacking our game, and by using their services, you are funding their attacks (and the money that they earn while power leveling goes to fund in-game currency sales). The same potential attacks that exist with in-game money sellers apply here as well (especially since, obviously, you have to supply your account information for them to log in to your account to level it), but with one important addition: Power-leveling services level your character quickly using bots. We can detect this. It will cause your account to be banned, quickly.

Don’t run programs designed by third parties for use with our games. Aside from the small matter of NCsoft banning you if you use a bot, using third party applications is asking for trouble. You are allowing code someone else wrote to run on your computer. Do you implicitly trust the creator of that program not to add a virus or Trojan horse that is used to steal your account?

Beware of phishing. One of the recent plagues that it is hard to miss of late is that of the “phish,” or the attempt by RMT companies to get you to simply hand over your account information through crafting a copy of our website and placing it on a web server with an address that is similar, but not identical, to ours. Many of these phishing attempts are laughably obvious because they are created by people who are not fluent in English. However, there are others that are not so obvious. Regardless, NCsoft will never ask you, for any reason, for your password in game, to go to a website to reset your password, to add you to a beta, or to give you a free holiday gift. If we need your password reset, we can do so without asking you to go to a website. If there is a new beta, there will be instructions for how to enter on our official websites and forums. When entering your user name and password, you should always check the address bar of your web browser to ensure you are at https://secure.ncsoft.com/. And if you get an odd error message after logging in to what you think is an official NCsoft site, change your password at the correct NCsoft site immediately. Please carefully check the spelling of the address in your browser. Any misspelling may lead you to a phishing site.

Beware of keylogger links on forums. This is akin to the previous point on phishing. Keylogger links are created as forum spam to get you to go to a website loaded with attacks on your computer through web browser security holes. Some of them are very obvious, such as the recent “Wii sex toy” ads posted everywhere. Some of them appear very innocent, such as links to view a screenshot of someone’s character. Avoid the obvious ones. Protect your browser from the less obvious ones by ensuring that you are using the latest version of your web browser and that it is set to automatically update itself when new security holes are found.

Adobe Flash, a tool used for website animations that comes with every web browser, has historically been an attack vector for loading malware (hostile programs) on your computer. At minimum, be absolutely sure that your version of Flash is up to date by visiting http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/. If you run a browser that supports extensions such as Mozilla Firefox, consider running an add-on such as Flashblock, which only loads Flash movies if you click on them.

Protect your system. There are many viruses and Trojan horses, such as the recent “Aion2010.dll,” that target your account information for our games specifically. Hackers constantly strive to find new ways to load software on your system without your consent or knowledge. It is critical that you run virus protection software and a firewall to protect yourself from these attacks.

Free, effective virus protection software is available. Here are links to some of the more popular solutions. Note that we cannot endorse or recommend any specific program, but we recommend you run something and ensure that it remains updated.

Avast!: Avast! Home Edition
AVG: AVG Free Anti-Virus
Microsoft: Security Essentials

Having a firewall, or system which protects your computer from unauthorized access, is also important. If you have a router that provides broadband Internet access for your home, it’s likely that a firewall system is included with that. Every version of Windows also ships with a software solution, Windows Firewall. Ensure that one of these is active and protecting your home network.

Don’t use the same password for your game account that you use on Internet forums. There have been instances of forums that have had their security compromised and the user names and passwords from their system were then used to try to gain access to game accounts. To prevent the possibility of this happening, ensure that you use different passwords for each forum that you frequent. This can be managed easily through password managers, such as Lastpass or RoboForm.

This letter has been quite long, and I thank you for your attention, especially during the parts I’m sure you’ve heard many times before. Our fight for the security of the games that you play is neither an easy one, nor a short one. But it is one that we are committed to seeing through, and it is one that we very much appreciate your help with. Your continued patronage as a customer, and the enjoyment of the games that we provide, is what makes this all worthwhile.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another gold farmer cartel to ban.