No personal experience, here, but I'm just going to lay a little logic and some maths on everyone.

First off:
*No, SSG is not logging every single trade in the game
*No, SSG is not logging every single time an otto's box is opened.

They just do not have the SPACE for that. Storage at the data center-level is very expensive, on the order of thousands of dollars per terabyte. I know what you're thinking "well, I can buy a 2tb hard drive on amazon for $45!" yes and we're all very proud of you. That's a consumer grade drive, datacenter-grade hard drives are a lot more expensive, AND they can't just buy any old drive and shove it all up in the system. Secondly, with Storage Area Networks(SANs) you only get a fraction of the raw capacity. This is to balance availability, speed, and redundancy, but basically if you have a drawer full of 6tb hard disks, your actual usable capacity is anywhere from 1/3rd to 1/4th of # of HDs x capacity of each HD.

So no, the idea that they've been logging every trade or ever box use and can just parse the logs and find the cheaters? Its ridiculous. They can't give us more BtC storage because their SAN doesn't have enough room, they definitely haven't got space to store months worth of logs.

Second:
*No, SSG cannot see your public IP here on the Vault
*No, SSG cannot see your public IP on FaceBook
*No, SSG cannot see your public IP on Discord.
*YES, SSG CAN ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY SEE YOUR PUBLIC IP IF YOU POST AN LFM

The big disconnect that keeps us safe, here, is SSG cannot differentiate the duped boxes from the real ones. So even if someone has 100 of them in their inventory, they have no way to determine that those boxes were not obtained legitimately.

However.

If someone were dumb enough to post an LFM advertising that they were selling boxes, then SSG could very easily put a flag on that IP address and start logging all activity from it. That means every account, and, yes, logging every trade. So if you bought from a guy who posted an LFM, you have a much better chance of being hunted down and banned.



tl;dr: its next to impossible to get caught if you don't do anything obvious in game, but very easy once you start pointing a giant arrow.

Just consider this a PSA courtesy of a guy who knows a thing or two about data centers, storage, and servers.

noamineo wrote on Sep 29^th, 2020 at 7:57pm:


I've never seen so many contradictions in one post...

They can crosscheck IP addresses, yes, I noticed that today as they banned 6 accounts of mine at the same time and then banned my IP in general. No one in this house can Log in game and open the ddo forums. We have a dynamic IP, so whatever.
After that i went to warn all my customers (over 50 of them) and they told me they're fine. I highly doubt they can check interactions between players- besides chat logs.

noamineo wrote on Sep 29^th, 2020 at 7:57pm:


Yep.

The thing is I'd expect SSG to have a special game client that can simply attach to every active instance and monitor what the engine is doing, based on criteria selection of course.  So, the client flags to receive all in-game trade data, for example.  The client is just a desktop sitting in the office, of course.

Nerds would understand if I said it's just like running tcpdump with some select criteria, for example.

But but but, would such a facility have been coded into the engine from day one I wonder.

Probably.  Fucking.  Not.

I'll tell you this slowly too

You're giving them
more credit
than they
deserve.

Cause you're paranoid.

Halfmaniac wrote on Sep 29^th, 2020 at 10:18pm:


They guy who got banned calling me paranoid... cute.

Yeah we're pretty much saying the same thing. No point in quibbling over semantics*unless you're in to that).

Exploit early and exploit often,

It no longer feels "early" to me.

While we're at it

They added another security layer.

Either crosschecks through Store payments or some kind of logging through Transfers.

- Bought points to transfer (with a card linked to the accounts that got banned)
- Transferred
- logged in and got the message at loading screen.


Gotta give it to them this time, they're getting smarter 

Dragonborn wrote on Sep 30^th, 2020 at 10:25am:


I saw a guy get banned right in the middle of the quest btw.
It is 100% related to server transfer dupe. Be warned.

didntgetme wrote on Sep 30^th, 2020 at 11:48am:


Only problem here: if the boxes were acquired in a trade they have no way to tell they weren't acquired legitimately. Yes it looks very fishy if someone has 100 boxes, but it IS entirely possible to get that many through legitimate means. There ARE in fact people who bought 100 boxes with points they paid for.

The exception, of course, is if you acquired them through a trade from a player SSG is explicitly watching because they posted an LFM or otherwise painted a giant target on their back.

Dragonborn wrote on Sep 30^th, 2020 at 10:25am:


It's not stupid if everything is according to plan, dumbfuck.
Why are you so mad tho? Did i happen to steal some of your customers?
Not getting enough testicals and reviews??
I'm so sorry to hear that pal.

It is all going to be over soon 

Oh some pretty serious datacenter debunking performed by noa.

noamineo wrote on Sep 29^th, 2020 at 7:57pm:


There's no real difference between consumer grade and datacenter grade drives nowadays when it comes to capacity. The differences are the Interface ( SAS instead of SATA ) and the Drive Rotational Speed ( 15K instead of 7200rpm ). And you pay each RPM a huge premium as it means a lower seek time. ( parse : faster to write or read ). Just to clarify since Noa used the S acronym... a SAN is not a NAS ( well it can be, but it usually is not, there's a dedicated server to which it's attached specially designed to have a huge throughput between the mass storage ( the SAN ) and the network. )
Now he barely mentionned that a given SAN capacity was not equal to the sum of the capacity of all it's disks. It's a tiny bit more complex than that and there's some fringe configurations where it's the case. ( when data preservation in case of failure is not important ) But most of the time SANs are not configured as JBODs ( Just a Bunch Of Disk ) but are in RAID. ( Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks )
The most used one are RAID 10 ( or RAID 0+1 ) and RAID 5. With RAID 10 you basically end up with half the capacity of the disks ( you make two identical piles of disks [ that's the 0 ( Stripping ) ] and you copy the data on each pile [ That's the 1 ( Mirroring ) ] and poor pereformances since the controller has to issue the commands twice. Obviously if a disk fail you still have the mirror so your data are safe.
Then there's RAID5, which reserves a part of the disk for something called Redundancy Code. This part of the disk allows the RAID controller to rebuild the lost data when a disk fails and usually takes up to 1/3rd of a disk... on each and every disk in the SAN. ( because we want to be able to recover in case of multiple disk failures ) 

AAH wrote on Sep 29^th, 2020 at 9:43pm:


Personally I think that it's the same client... As can be seen in a client log that is not generated anymore :

The last played world is Ghallanda                                                                   23/12/2011 18:20:31
Highres Dat is up to date.                                                                           23/12/2011 18:20:33
...PatchComplete events finished                                                                     23/12/2011 18:20:33
15: "Ghallanda" @ 74.201.106.64:9004;74.201.106.64:9003 is UP and NOT FULL
queueNames: 4EEB3460-6B99-48E9-A335-712EFC218F9C;0BEBEF2C-5736-4E1A-B01C-ADF49576A98A
queueURLs: http://10.67.112.64:7082/LoginQueue;http://10.67.112.64:7081/LoginQueue
lastServed: 2490  nowServing: 2490  waitHint: 8,316
allowAdminRoles: Server,CustomerService,Observer,SeniorCustomerService,LeadCustomerService,Test
allowBillingRoles: TurbineEmployee,TurbineVIP,StormreachLimited,StormreachStandard,StormreachGuest,StormreachEUPre 23/12/2011 18:21:02
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:02
gls url: https://gls-auth.ddo.com/GLS.AuthServer/Service.asmx                                        23/12/2011 18:21:02
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:03
Username "Flavilandile" authenticated successfully                                                   23/12/2011 18:21:03
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:03
DDO Subscriptions:                                                                                   23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Game: ................ "DDO"                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Description: ......... "Flavilandile"                                                            23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Name: ................ "TOTO"                                                                    23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Status: .............. "Active"                                                                  23/12/2011 18:21:03
    ProductTokens: ....... "eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_3,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_2,FULL,TREATED_AS_SUBSCRIBER,DDOPreview,StormreachGuest,F2PDDOUp,eStore_Feature_FavoredSoul,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_2,eStore_Feature_CharSlot,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_4,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_7,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_6,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_9,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_3,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_8,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_5,eStore_Feature_Artificer,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_2" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
    CustomerServiceTokens: ""                                                                        23/12/2011 18:21:03
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:03
Existing user object.                                                                                23/12/2011 18:21:03
Selected Subscription:                                                                               23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Game: ................ "DDO"                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Description: ......... "Flavilandile"                                                            23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Name: ................ "TATA"                                                                    23/12/2011 18:21:03
    Status: .............. "Active"                                                                  23/12/2011 18:21:03
    ProductTokens: ....... "eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_3,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_2,FULL,TREATED_AS_SUBSCRIBER,DDOPreview,StormreachGuest,F2PDDOUp,eStore_Feature_FavoredSoul,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_2,eStore_Feature_CharSlot,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_4,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_7,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_6,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_9,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_3,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_8,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_5,eStore_Feature_Artificer,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_2" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
    CustomerServiceTokens: ""                                                                        23/12/2011 18:21:03
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:03
Launcher.authenticator.Authenticated                                                                 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Transition to phase: WorldSelectControl                                                              23/12/2011 18:21:04
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:05
World status update initiated                                                                        23/12/2011 18:21:05
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:05
Using the batched world status update & DatacenterServer.GetDatacenterStatus SOAP method             23/12/2011 18:21:05
                                                                                                     23/12/2011 18:21:05
World status update complete                                                                         23/12/2011 18:21:05
 

   

Look at the nice lines : allowAdminRoles and AllowBillingRoles and then look at the ProductTokens one.

I haven't looked at the executables, but there's a fair level of chances that the client contains everything needed, and a special client is not needed.

op is greatly underestimating the ease of generating logs on literally everything ever, especially when theres only like 2000 players a day on this game. they will separate different types of information into different means of storage with different retention parameters with the most irrelevant info probably being held for a few weeks and then purged automatically, and the most important data compressed and exported to cordovans basement pc network for free indefinitely. random brazilians run private video game servers for games that serve 10,000s of people per day and handle astronomical amounts of high speed data and have no issue retaining ass loads of it for a long time. nothing in ddo is high speed, as seen when the game must process DPS. you will never get a 360 no scope headshot in ddo because no 2 players or server state are ever truly synced. ddo server is just lines of text moving as fast as the hardware lets it, and lines of text are easy to log.

i do not agree with your assessment that they do not have detailed logs of many aspects of the game that span a long period of time (upto and including forever)

beyond that, while i recommend u ignore his textwall- i do agree with flav that it is the same client with elevated permissions to access additional commands