PSO2β: Technical Information

[BIG OLAF]

Result of the lottery will be strict, has been elected as a participant closed β test.
Congratulations!
Please join us in this opportunity, I would appreciate your valuable opinions!"

Hooray! Home Nuts got into the Beta. Someone else for me to party with.

Good....good.

[Home Dog]

Yep! Your In, just go download it, BIG RED BUTTON when you log in, can't miss it.

Thank you!

[Clessy]

Would be great is someone hexed the launcher so I knew what the graphical settings say.

Like on the one page with 1 - 5 5 looks the best
but then there is a page with 2 boxes and 3 options in each thats gotta do with graphics also.

[Omega-z]

Here go Clessy this may help you it's closer to the bottom of the page and also does the Morphing part of the CC too.
http://bumped.org/psublog/category/p...star-online-2/

[JamesM]

Downloading at 350bkps. Meeeh, its gonna take a while.

[Xenobia]

Already been said, PSO2 uses Gameguard, which is something usualy poor Asia developers like to use, because its an cheap method in order to "reduce" the risk of cheater. Its a rootkit and its not foolproof, thats why that kit have to be constanly updated in order to reduce the risk of being fooled. It surely can cause issues for many users, especially users of WIN 7 64 bit, as there could be some lack of compatibility. Gameguard and PSO2 are Win 32 based, and are actually some archaeological remains from the past.

The expensive method is a advanced server side solution which is used on WoW and as good as any MMORPG of higher class. I hope Sega will someday reach a higher level and dont need to use stuff such as Gameguard. We have to compare PSO2 with one of those because its online only and so its a game exactly in the same boat regarding its security and its possibilitys.

Its the main reason i will soon create a Gamer only PC because i dont like to have stuff like that on my master system. Steam, Gameguard and all that stuff...it should be excluded on a PC containing sensitive files because it can violate privacy, slowing down PC and could open a new hole for security threats. Unfortunately i am waiting for the IB to arrive in order to build gamer system, and then i will remove all the stuff from the master system which will make me sleep better... at least 1 clean system. May even reinstall the whole mastersystem as soon as i got ride of all the games and theyr protection mechanisms. Else i will have many background leechers which constanly can slow down the system from the leftovers. There is no secure full range gamer PC, thats why it have to be separated.

[Zio23]

Thanks for virtual full screen set up, was looking for this.

[kyuuketsuki]

Gameguard and PSO2 are Win 32 based, and are actually some archaeological remains from the past.

Eh? Game clients are almost always 32-bit as far as I'm aware, and 32-bit Windows programs run just fine on Win 64, with a few exceptions (generally anti-virus programs).

[Misto]

Already been said, PSO2 uses Gameguard, which is something usualy poor Asia developers like to use, because its an cheap method in order to "reduce" the risk of cheater. Its a rootkit and its not foolproof, thats why that kit have to be constanly updated in order to reduce the risk of being fooled. It surely can cause issues for many users, especially users of WIN 7 64 bit, as there could be some lack of compatibility. Gameguard and PSO2 are Win 32 based, and are actually some archaeological remains from the past.

I haven't experienced this issue and GameGuard's alleged issues seem grossly exaggerated. I deal with rootkits/malware all day at my job and GameGuard's setup does not strike me as any kind of actual rootkit. I don't understand why people keep calling it that. If you look through Window's Services or the drivers it loads from system32, it's not like it hides itself. Real rootkits generally take the extra step to protect itself and a bad uninstall hardly qualifies it as such.

Also, that link gives a rather dangerous way to remove the service from the registry (I say dangerous cause the average user is dumb about these things) when a simple command in the command prompt will remove it:

sc delete npggsvc

You could do the same for any drivers that gets left behind by a bad uninstaller.

[Xenobia]

A warning, in case people don't already know: Installing the beta client may delete all files from the Documents/PHANTASYSTARONLINE2 folder, erasing all your pictures and character files from the character creation demo and Alpha2 test.

That just happened to me, but luckily I still had a restore point from earlier today...

Well the character creator is named like:
PHANTASYSTARONLINE2_CHARACTERCREATOR

The Beta folder is named:
PHANTASYSTARONLINE2

The main folders do not conflict with each others, although the documents folder is named "SEGA: PHANTASYSTARONLINE2". Installing the beta itself doesnt seem to delete it but there can be a issue when 2 folder are named the same and when the Game is trying to create a new folder. However, usualy a game does detect that there is a file already created and wont create another folder. In term is a issue, Sega screwed up big time, which is rather unlikely the case.



@Misto: I actually think that Gameguard is one of the "light" rootkits. The kind of kit which is still in some term acceptable (thats why Kaspersky wont even send me a alarm message), else i would never have installed PSO2 beta at all. Because to much sensitive data on my (main) PC i do care about... so i wont accept any kind of risk coming from that stuff. So im aware that it isnt a truck of a rootkit but it still can be classified as one of them. Because of the fact that it does protect itself from being removed, and its trying to take over certain (task related) controls using admin rights. Some people say, unlike you, that it does hide itself... but im not able to verify that (first time i ever use GG). Another aspect i dont enjoy is the fact that im not sure what that kit actually does to my system, i know it does protect from cheating and does not allow suspicious tasks in the background, but i dont know its detailed behaviour... its always a bit a weird feeling. I feel safe to use for a while, but in long term i rather enjoy to use a different PC for.. then i can consider my main system fully clean to use for any data other than games.

Spoiler!

The typical "hard" rootkit, as far as my knowledge goes, does root itself at many hidden locations, and is trying to be invisible in order to be invulnerable. Additionally as soon as someone is trying to delete it, it does replicate itself.. and its basically impossible to remove. They can do that because they have administrator access to the system, so the system is basically "compromised" and not fully secure anymore. A truly evil rootkit could delete the entire PC if they wish, the harm they are able to create would be close to endless... when admin access is executed. A virus is like... a baby, compared to it.

A hard rootkit type is for example SecuRom... that one i wont tolerate to enter my system in any known or unknown way. It already caused harm to another system, for example my DVD drive keept disappearing because of it, and some games was running with 30% lower FPS (it caused so much stress to the system that the games resulted into 30% lower performance)... and much more issues like that. So i find it fully valid when a virus scanner is alarming us.