Ragnarok Travels

[Daletos]

You sound like a cultist going on a rant rather than giving a review of the server.

Okay now I see what you mean, these people are a little out there and fanatic like.

Wow. Conspiracy theories and paranoia.
The custom anti-cheat software I can kind of see as requiring trust to run, but only until it passes an anti-virus scanner. Plus there are hundreds of people using it already.

The other stuff though? What the hell?
Lord J doesn't keep the phone numbers on record by the way. Just like user passwords, they are converted into encrypted hashes, but even if he DID keep my phone number, what the hell do I care?
Oh no he might phone me or email me. How awful! My life is RUINED.

Multi-clienting is disabled because that is how a large amount of the population wants to play their MMOs. Just look at any private WoW server out there. They mostly disable multi-clienting.
SolaceRO? Disabled multi-clienting.
retRO? Disabled multi-clienting.

It's not for some tricky advantage only Lord J benefits from. You're paranoid, bro.

I love your logic "but everyone else is doing it, so it must be okay". Still doesn't change the fact that it isn't necessary. There are plenty of other options that don't require that, let alone potentially exposing your player base. At the end of the day it is a risk for a player to take, and anyone has the right to express their concern over it. I agree with Bue that I wouldn't feel comfortable with it either. It isn't specifically about whether Lord J is a good guy or not (hopefully he is), it's about HOW he chose to go about it.

Again missing the point. Why would a server require one's personal number to make an account? In the 15 years I've been playing this game in and out of the Pserver community, I have never seen this or see why one would need to. What purpose does this serve other than again to potentially collect people's private information and put it at risk? Why the hell should I trust some random Pserver with my personal number? All of these are valid points and concerns. I made an account using a fake SMS receiver online, because I didn't feel comfortable sharing that. Wonderful if you don't give a s***, but some of us do.

On top of that, there isn't even a need to do this. If multi-clienting is already restricted, why does this need to be done? Everytime you enter your personal information online there always is a risk. In most cases the only thing compromised is an email address which people can have plenty of (throwaways etc.), and are not always a big deal indeed. If people are entering their personal numbers, I shouldn't have to explain how that is a breach of privacy for many people in an online game that doesn't require it...

Again, what does collecting phone numbers have to do with blocking multi-clienting? If that's what you guys like fine, no issues there. That isn't the problem here.

Playing ANY RO server potentially exposes any data you give out, this server is not special just because you say so. If you don't follow safe password practices online and instead reuse passwords its your fault if you get hacked, not some RO server you gave your info to.

Yes that's true, but they never required your phone number which is a lot more personal. Anyone should follow basic username/password safety. Again that isn't the point Bue is making. You're deflecting responsibility to the player, when in actuality Bue is pointing out how the server's administration is harmful and unsafe. Players shouldn't be put in that position to begin with. This could have been designed a lot better without doing this is his point.

If you guys are fine it then go ahead, but people have a right to know and make their decision. Disregarding that and bullying people for telling truth does make you look a bit cult like. If you're trying to convince people to join, you're doing a terrible job.

[skyeang3l]

a lot

I'm sorry, but how is anyone bullying Bue when he's the one calling a GM who made an out of pocket, passion project server a "Warlord" and the person mindlessly reviewing it a "cultist"? Bit of an unfair comparison.... 

[distilled1]

Spoiler

Okay now I see what you mean, these people are a little out there and fanatic like.

I love your logic "but everyone else is doing it, so it must be okay". Still doesn't change the fact that it isn't necessary. There are plenty of other options that don't require that, let alone potentially exposing your player base. At the end of the day it is a risk for a player to take, and anyone has the right to express their concern over it. I agree with Bue that I wouldn't feel comfortable with it either. It isn't specifically about whether Lord J is a good guy or not (hopefully he is), it's about HOW he chose to go about it.

Again missing the point. Why would a server require one's personal number to make an account? In the 15 years I've been playing this game in and out of the Pserver community, I have never seen this or see why one would need to. What purpose does this serve other than again to potentially collect people's private information and put it at risk? Why the hell should I trust some random Pserver with my personal number? All of these are valid points and concerns. I made an account using a fake SMS receiver online, because I didn't feel comfortable sharing that. Wonderful if you don't give a s***, but some of us do.

On top of that, there isn't even a need to do this. If multi-clienting is already restricted, why does this need to be done? Everytime you enter your personal information online there always is a risk. In most cases the only thing compromised is an email address which people can have plenty of (throwaways etc.), and are not always a big deal indeed. If people are entering their personal numbers, I shouldn't have to explain how that is a breach of privacy for many people in an online game that doesn't require it...

Again, what does collecting phone numbers have to do with blocking multi-clienting? If that's what you guys like fine, no issues there. That isn't the problem here.

Yes that's true, but they never required your phone number which is a lot more personal. Anyone should follow basic username/password safety. Again that isn't the point Bue is making. You're deflecting responsibility to the player, when in actuality Bue is pointing out how the server's administration is harmful and unsafe. Players shouldn't be put in that position to begin with. This could have been designed a lot better without doing this is his point.

If you guys are fine it then go ahead, but people have a right to know and make their decision. Disregarding that and bullying people for telling truth does make you look a bit cult like. If you're trying to convince people to join, you're doing a terrible job.

[close]

First of all, you're mixing up multiple servers doing multi-clienting with the phone registration thing. Not every server that prevents multi-clienting does the phone registration thing.
Travels does and for a good reason. I agree that people shouldn't give out their numbers for NO REASON. It's for a good reason that has benefits of preventing multi-clienting.
I understand if people like you or Bue here are afraid of "risking" giving your phone number to a single admin of a private server who isn't even collecting the numbers themselves, but encrypted hashes associated with those numbers, and that's fine.
You are entitled to be afraid of doing so, but I'm just saying, in my opinion, that is on the paranoid side, and you don't have to play on Travels if it's that big of an issue for you.

If you don't understand how the phone registration thing prevents multi-clienting, I will attempt to explain it to you.

Without the phone registration, people could use virtual private networks to gain multiple IP addresses, and use virtual machines, or multiple devices along with multiple IPs to create many different accounts and easily bypass the multi-clienting restrictions.
This likely happens a lot on servers that do not use additional measure to prevent multi-clienting, no offense to retRO or SolaceRO, but RO players are notorious for trying anything to gain an unfair advantage over others or to cheat in any way shape or form.

WITH the phone registration system, people can only create one account per phone number, and since each phone number costs a decent amount of money, those who would attempt to multi-client would be unable to without spending a lot of money.

You can argue that you "made an account using a fake SMS receiver online", but as Lord J has told me, all VOIP numbers are blocked.
This includes those receivers and also stuff like TextNow, TextFree, Google Voice, and so on.
There have been brief moments where he has allowed accounts to made that way, but they'll have to be verified during an audit to ensure one account per person.
Occasionally he will make exceptions for the privacy conscious and/or to test if the system is too strict, but every account registered from one is marked as such so it isn't anything that could ever become a problem.

So yes there are benefits to having the phone registration system, and if you view it as too strict, that's fine. Maybe this server is not for you, or maybe you're salty that you can't multi-client or cheat on this server. Who knows, but the point is that there is a clear benefit to having the system the way it is, and I for one think it's brilliant, and appreciate knowing that I'm playing on an even playing field with everyone else.
Many others also agree.

EDIT:
Also implying I'm a bully because I called out paranoia when I saw it? That's quite the overreaction and over-sensitivity you have there, Daletos.

I can only imagine what it's like when you order take out food over the phone.
Clerk: "Okay can I just get your name?"
Daletos: "hmm.... Dale..mc...person..bob"
Clerk: "uh.. okay, and your number, DaleMcPersonBob?"
Daletos: "Why do you need all this?! So you can collect all my private information and put it at RISK!? WHY THE HELL SHOULD I TRUST SOME RANDOM PERSON AT A RESTAURANT WITH MY PERSONAL NUMBER!?"

[Bue]

If your phone number is listed with your personal information in some directory service, then you can get doxxed. Here is an article talking about how a guy targeted streamers on twitch.

Someone can SIM swap your phone number and get your information and go after your accounts. It happen to h3h3 and he made a video explaining how it all went down.

And the only reason these people were targeted was because someone wanted to hurt them. And the attackers did it through collecting personal information and working their way up from there.

So you are being very disingenuous. And in your own words, you are merely putting up a pay wall and you would still need to use heuristics to ban the players that get over that pay wall. You guys are even putting in the effort to audit accounts, make exemptions, and block VOIP numbers and specific services.

This level of policing is exactly why I question your anti-cheat software.

The PATCHER requires admin to PATCH because it needs directory write access to PATCH YOUR GAME. The anti-cheat does not require admin in any way. You can play the server just fine after removing the admin privilege of the patch client once its finished updating, so what you read was wrong.

You don't need admin privileges to update your game. Its sounds like the user permissions on your game installation was setup improperly.

I don't think you have a kernel mode signing certificate, so your anti-cheat software probably isn't running on system level. According to your website, it sounds like you are just adding a layer of encryption to the network traffic to prevent bots or other custom clients. But you can push a new update for the anti-cheat software through the patcher at anytime.

The whole vibe I am getting from distill1 and the way the server's website is written and what I think your developer might be capable of is totally sus.

[distilled1]

you would still need to use heuristics to ban the players that get over that pay wall

This level of policing is exactly why I question your anti-cheat software.

So... your logic is that a high level of policing in order to remove potential cheaters is bad and why you question Lord J's anti-cheat software?
I don't get it. You think because he is strict about enforcing single-client, he made his anti-cheat software to spy on people or something?
You could say the same paranoid thing about Gepard shield and being suspicious of them spying on you. Only difference is that this is Lord J's custom anti-cheat, and Gepard shield is an anti-cheat more thoroughly studied by hackers and cheaters and therefor easier to bypass by hackers and cheaters. Either one you have to trust that they're not spying on you (not really because anti-virus is a thing). But if you're that paranoid, I get it. Don't play any server then.
Some people don't want to play with cheaters who will use every method they can to gain unfair advantages.

Yes Lord J would still have to, in certain cases, manually address cheaters who went over a paywall to cheat, just as any other admin/GM in any other server would have to if there were cheaters who got around things.

I'm not saying it's literally impossible to multi-client in this server, just that it's much more difficult to multi-client by having that extra layer of protection.

Know what vibe I get from you? Paranoid and suspicious for opposing extra anti-multi-clienting measures.

[neethree]

"If you don't like giving your phone number out to a literal random guy online then you're probably just wanting to cheat anyway".

This is the same server claiming it was, and I quote, impossible to bot/multiclient, lol? It's a terribly insecure system that's a deterrent to innocent folk at best, and clearly not working with the amount of people I see J saying have been banned for multiclienting. This isn't some regulated company that has to follow GDPR or anything like that. It's just a regular guy at his PC that decided to start a server, and man, given the history of some owners here on RMS, if you're happy to give over your real phone number in combination with your email then good for you lol, but don't act like people are insane for being concerned about that.  Everyone expects cheaters to get past anticheats, and it's down to the admins to actually monitor their players, not put up a cardboard wall and gloat they're impenetrable.

[distilled1]

"If you don't like giving your phone number out to a literal random guy online then you're probably just wanting to cheat anyway".

This is the same server claiming it was, and I quote, impossible to bot/multiclient, lol? It's a terribly insecure system that's a deterrent to innocent folk at best, and clearly not working with the amount of people I see J saying have been banned for multiclienting. This isn't some regulated company that has to follow GDPR or anything like that. It's just a regular guy at his PC that decided to start a server, and man, given the history of some owners here on RMS, if you're happy to give over your real phone number in combination with your email then good for you lol, but don't act like people are insane for being concerned about that.  Everyone expects cheaters to get past anticheats, and it's down to the admins to actually monitor their players, not put up a cardboard wall and gloat they're impenetrable.

It's actually a pretty good system and a solid defence against multi-clienters as I explained in a previous post. You can downplay its significance all you want but it helps keep multi-clienters at bay really well.
Yes with enough money to buy multiple IPs, and multiple phone numbers, someone could potentially multi-client, but the cost of doing so makes it very unlikely.
The rare few who would try something like that would likely get caught eventually by a GM or eventually reported by other players.
It would take a lot less effort and a lot less money to multi-client on the server if that phone number system was not in place. It's a good deterrent for potential multi-clienters.

You're simply ignoring it's significance in keeping multi-clienters away when you say stupid things like "clearly not working". It is working as a deterrent. People who don't even bother to attempt multi-clienting, because they realize how difficult it would be, are obviously not going to get banned for it, because they didn't try in the first place.
Most the people banned so far for multi-clienting are likely just those who attempted to multi-client in obvious ways such as using the same IP, same device, fake SMS receivers, etc and were caught.
I seriously doubt many or any people banned for multi-clienting so far were people buying up multiple phone numbers and multiple IP addresses because that's a very expensive thing to try to do for such little benefit.

We can agree to disagree about how "risky" it is to give your phone number to a private server administrator. I think that's the only somewhat reasonable argument against Travels. I personally don't think it's risky, but I can understand why someone would. For those people, I would suggest using a new/throwaway email address in combination with your phone number, and don't use any of your other real personal information.
I think if someone wanted to steal my identity, they wouldn't do so by making a freaking Ragnarok private server. But that's me, and you're you.

Those articles linked by Bue are things that happened to popular streamers or other famous people by the way. Such a stupid comparison. People with that much fame always have a target on their back.
If you're that afraid of getting your identity stolen, I don't know what to say to you people at this point. Maybe you think you're more important than you actually are.

[Bue]

You are being disingenuous again.

You only hear about these stories from popular streamers because they have a platform to share their story. If you are nobody, then it is even worse because you can't fight back. You can file a police report and they won't do anything since nothing happened. And the attacker could be covering his tracks to further deter the police.

With just a phone number, you can psychologically torture someone by making them feel vulnerable. It is as simple as receiving a text message saying someone is outside waiting for you and then getting phone calls throughout the night.

Also, anti-virus software doesn't protect you from everything. They rely on signatures to detect existing threats and then they rely on heuristics to detect new threats. You can write malware to avoid the heuristics and obfuscate to avoid the signatures. And since it will only be running on a few hundred computers, where users are willing to give you administrator privileges and whitelist your client to play the game, then you can easily get away with it.

And based on your responses, you don't care about the players, you only care about enforcing your ban on multi-clienting. Players need to be informed so they don't exposed themselves. And your strict policing and attitudes towards it is concerning.

[Ara]

How's the other 2 mentioned no-multiclient servers enforcing their no multiclient rule? Don't think I've heard about the other 2 needing any type of phone verification for theirs, or is all like that?

[distilled1]

How's the other 2 mentioned no-multiclient servers enforcing their no multiclient rule? Don't think I've heard about the other 2 needing any type of phone verification for theirs, or is all like that?

I haven't tried signing up for them, but I doubt they use a phone verification system since people are so surprised by Travels taking this extra measure.
I imagine all it takes to multi-client there is a VPN and the knowledge to use virtual machines. Or a VPN and multiple laptops.

EDIT:
Again, no offense to retRO or SolaceRO. I think they're great servers simply for disallowing multi-clienting through Gepard Shield. That alone will stop a decent amount of people who can't use virtual machines or who don't have multiple devices to multi-client. Bringing about a more social RO with people partying. Much respect.

[Eiponpon]

Ragnarok Travels is also the most fun I've had on a RO server in years, though I'm not as great as writing reviews as you so I'll just attach myself onto this thread.

I agree with this. Ragnarok Travels is the best low rate around currently. Solid review

[Bullet]

interesting point on phone number privacy. i regret signing up for RO Travels now considering the risks and compromise of privacy.
Especially now knowing how unreasonable the administration style is.

Yes Lord J would still have to, in certain cases, manually address cheaters who went over a paywall to cheat, just as any other admin/GM in any other server would have to if there were cheaters who got around things.

I'm lazy re-writing my entire episode how Lord of the Joke "professionally" & "manually" handled my case.


Do not reveal your phone number or real email to any gaming private server. Different story if using for established & reliable provider like Steam etc.

especially to application that has admin privileges, it wouldn't be long and difficult to track your online banking activities and with your phone number in hand - matter of time bypass TAC and verification to compromise your security.

[distilled1]

interesting point on phone number privacy. i regret signing up for RO Travels now considering the risks and compromise of privacy.

Know what else you regret? Literally trying to multi-client in Travels and therefor trying to cheat in order to gain an unfair advantage against everyone else, and then subsequently being banned for it.
Not surprised you're in every Ragnarok Travels thread trying to imply that playing on Travels is a mistake for whatever stupid reason you can pull out of your behind.
This is what a salty, banned cheater looks like.

There is no "risk" involved with giving someone your phone number, unless you're incapable of handling a potential phone call or text message. Not that you're even giving the admin of Travels your phone number. Just receiving a text to it while the number is registered via an encrypted hash.

Especially now knowing how unreasonable the administration style is.

Yes... banning people for knowingly breaking the well-known rules. How unreasonable. Continue crying a river, Bullet.

Do not reveal your phone number or real email to any gaming private server. Different story if using for established & reliable provider like Steam etc.

Or what? The same unlikely situations of being "harassed" that Bue pointed out? Okay, bud.

especially to application that has admin privileges, it wouldn't be long and difficult to track your online banking activities and with your phone number in hand - matter of time bypass TAC and verification to compromise your security.

With that logic, no one should play on any private server that has to install anything to your PC. Okay, bud.
Just like Bue, thanks for your unnecessary contribution of negativity to this thread.

[Eiponpon]

especially to application that has admin privileges, it wouldn't be long and difficult to track your online banking activities and with your phone number in hand - matter of time bypass TAC and verification to compromise your security.

fake news. the patcher needs admin to write files, which is the same as every server.  the security software doesnt. you just sound upset that you got banned.

[Buralabo]

The amount of stockholm syndrome in one singular server is amazing. Bue was right; it IS like a cult at times.

you just sound upset that you got banned.

Is this the excuse every Travels player makes when someone disagrees with them? I've seen this "you got banned LMAO" response more than 10 times when it comes to Ragnarok Travels in the Discord, the RMS forums, the RMS reviews, etc. It just comes off as you gaslighting people. Some people, like myself and others who tried Travels during release, disapprove of Travel's software and practices with security invasions like phone numbers. And sure, yeah, official e-mails and repeating passwords are a good way to leak your information. But you can make up spam e-mails and random password generators to bypass this so-called "problem". With phone numbers the most you can do is use a burner and hope for the best that it works. And if you need the phone number for your password to get reset, good luck explaining that to the admin.