America's Army i TWL 'No.4'

fas est et ab hoste doceri -
wolno się uczyć nawet od wroga. Owidiusz

TWL - TeamWarfare
Jedna z najbardziej prestiżowych lig europejskich. Profesjonalizm, jak i bardzo duży wybór gier (na dzień dzisiejszy 40), czynią tę ligę bardzo poważaną w środowisku graczy. Duża część polskich klanów rozpoczęła swoją przygodę w lidze TWL, czego efekty widać już dziś, kilka klanów w krótkim czasie pojawiło się w czołówce niektórych ladderów, promując z dumą tę flagę w Europie. Więcej o lidze TWL:

Lista gier w lidze TWL:

• America's Army
• Battlefield 1942
• Battlefield: Vietnam
• Call of Duty
  
• Call of Duty: United Offensive
• Counter Strike:Source
• CounterStrike
  
• Delta Force:Black Hawk Down
• Enemy Territory
• Frag Ops
• Ghost Recon
• Halo
• Joint Operations: Escalation
• Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising
• LOTR - Battle for Middle-Earth
• Madden 2005
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
• Medal of Honor: Breakthrough
• Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
• Medal of Honor: SpearHead
• News
• PS2: Tribes Aerial Assault
  
• Quake 3 Excessive
• Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword
• Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• Rome:Total War
• Soldier of Fortune 2
• Starwars: Battlefront
• Swat 4
• Tribes
• Tribes 2
• Tribes: Vengeance
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Unreal Tournament 99
• Urban Terror
• Warcraft 3
• Xbox: Halo 2
• Xbox: Rainbow Six 3
• Zap

Laddery gry America's Army są bardzo popularne wśród klanów z całego świata. Gracze do dyspozycji mają 36 drabinek, podzielonych na przynależność kontynentalną, wielkość teamu, rodzaj broni lub mapę.
Lista wszystkich ladderów AA:

• AA 4v4 Intermediate League
  
• AA 4v4 Invitational League
• AA 4v4 Open League
• AA 6 v 6 Open League
• AA 6v6 Intermediate League
• AA 6v6 Invitational League
  
• AA Euro 4v4 Invitational League
• AA Euro 4v4 Open League
• AA Euro 6v6 Invitational League
• AA Euro 6v6 Open League
• America's Army Combat 1v1 Ladder
• America's Army Europe Objective 1v1 Ladder
  
• America's Army Objective 1v1 Ladder
• America's Army 2v2 Combat Ladder
• America's Army CQB 6v6 Ladder
• America's Army Europe Combat 2v2 Ladder
• America's Army Europe CQB 6v6 Ladder
• America's Army Europe Objective 2v2 Ladder
• America's Army Europe Objective 4v4 Ladder
• America's Army Europe Objective 6v6 Ladder
• America's Army Europe SF 4v4 Ladder
• America's Army Europe SF 6v6 Ladder
• America's Army Objective 2v2 Ladder
• America's Army Objective 4v4 Ladder
• America's Army Objective 6v6 Ladder
• America's Army Objective 8v8 Ladder
• America's Army Oceanic Objective 2v2 Ladder
  
• America's Army Oceanic Objective 4v4 Ladder
• America's Army Oceanic Objective 6v6 Ladder
• America's Army Old School 6v6 Objective Ladder
• America's Army Special Forces Objective 4v4 Ladder
  
• America's Army Special Forces Objective 6v6 Ladder
• America's Army 4v4 Power Ladder
• America's Army 6v6 Power Ladder
• America's Army Europe 4v4 Power Ladder
• America's Army Oceanic Power Ladder

Co tydzień, redAAkcja będzie przygotowywać dla was relacje z placu boju polskich klanów. Będziemy bacznie przyglądać się polskim ekipom, ich kondycji oraz wynikom. Mamy zamiar promować wschodzące 'gwiazdy' na naszej scenie, pomagając im w zależności od ich potrzeb. Skupimy się na europejskich ladderach, gdyż to właśnie w nich toczą się wojny naszych rodzimych klanów.
Europejskie laddery:

• America's Army Europe 4v4 Open League
  
• America's Army Europe 4v4 Invitat.League
  
• America's Army Europe 4v4 Open League
  
• America's Army Europe Objective 6v6 Ladder
  
• America's Army Europe Objective 4v4 Ladder
  
• America's Army Europe Objective 2v2 Ladder
  
• America's Army Europe Combat 2v2 Ladder
  
• America's Army Europe 4v4 Power Ladder
  
• America's Army Europe SF 6v6 Ladder
  
• America's Army Europe SF 4v4 Ladder
  
• America's Army Europe CQB 6v6 Ladder

• area.51 i !n$!d4Z - giganci sceny AA
  Dwa klany, europejskie potęgi America's Army, co je łączy? Żadne inne klany nie mogą poszczycić się takimi sukcesami jak area.51 oraz !n$!d4Z?. więcej...
  
  
  area.51, zdobywca kilkunastu złotych pucharów, gigant AA - przestaje istnieć w lidze TWL. Kilka tygodni temu Clan Leader - Don_creep wypisał swój klan z większości ladderów, mając na koncie 251 wygranych meczów i 32 porażki.
  
  Klan Insidez może poszczycić się bilansem 162/21, zajmując pierwsze miejsca w prawie wszystkich ladderach. Ale to dopiero początek. Kilku graczy z teamu area.51 zostało dopisanych do squadu Insidez w lidze TWL. Czyżby zapowiadał się team nie do pokonania?
  
  area.51 awards:

  • TWL Euro 6vs6 Invitational League
    
  • TWL 2on2 Euro Objective
  • TWL 6on6 Euro CQB
    
  • ESL Objective 6on6
  • ESL Objective 8vs8
  • ESL 6on6 Autumn Cup
  • ESL 6on6 Springtime Cup
  • [HB] & [GodsFav] Funtunier
  • DWD Geburtstags Turnier
  • [-13th-] 7en Days Cup
  • [-14th-] 7en Days Cup
  • Clanbase
  • GoArmy

  
  
  !n$!d4Z awards:

  • TWL 4vs4 Open League
  • TWL 2vs2 Combat
  • TWL 2vs2 Objective
  • TWL 4vs4 SF
    
  • TWL 6vs6 Objective
  
  
  
• 5 000 000 kont w grze America's Army
  Jedni cieszą się, że tyle kont zostało zarejestrowanych, a dociekliwi pytają ilu tak naprawdę jest graczy? 3 mln użytkowników przeszło podstawowy kurs w AA, zapewne duża część to martwe konta, niektórzy gracze mają kilka kont. Tak czy owak liczba jest okrągła, więc jest czego gratulować :) więcej...
  
  
• Nowe ligi, nowe laddery
  Zainteresowanie grą wzrasta, więc pojawiają się nowe miejsca do rogrywania pojedynków. więcej...
  
  
• Punkbuster zaciera ręce, mniej cziterów w nowej wersji AA
  Częste updaty, lepsze zabezpieczenia - wszystko po to by gracze AA mogli w spokoju pozabijać przeciwników na serwerach, nie martwiąc się o to, że przeciwnik okaże się tylko skutecznym programem. Poniżej wywiad z Tony Ray - President of Evenbalance więcej...
  
  
  Double-T:
  First of all I would like to ask you how things are going at Even Balance. You have a hard job keeping all the hackers out of the game and not all community members are happy with PunkBuster. How big is the influence from the community to you and the rest of the staff?
  
  Tony Ray:
  Things are going fine. We believe AA is as cheat free on PB enabled servers today as it ever has been. I understand that there is some unhappiness about sometimes having to wait for PB to update before joining a team when connecting to a newly updated server with the latest AA version, but in order to reduce the types of hacks being employed in the game, that change was warranted. The community has always been very important to us since we first started, we do our best to minimize the impact of using PB for honest players in every way possible. Also, you have to remember that many of the “unhappy” members in the community are cheaters who are posing as honest players. The cheating community continually tries to spread misinformation on game forums where regular players and admins hang out.
  
  Double-T:
  PunkBuster is changed since the release of 2.3. It’s updating more then ever, sometimes several updates on a single day! Can you explain the changes and why we have all these updates?
  
  Tony Ray:
  The change I mentioned above about waiting to update before joining a team is the chief noticeable change that is related to v2.3 of AA as the new code is built into the game itself at the server level. However, we have recently introduced some new features that we have been working on for some time, it is just a coincidence that these appeared around the same time that AA v2.3 was released. In response to hackers writing ring 0 privileged code and widely distributing that code to avoid our hardware banning techniques in AA, we were forced to develop our own ring 0 code to combat the escalation. Most of the recent updates in PB for AA are released to continue developing this code in response to new hacks from the punks. We expect this “frequent update” activity to die down eventually, but we fully intend to update often and frequently as necessary to combat publicly available hacks that hinder PB’s ability to keep punks off of PB servers.
  
  Double-T:
  Many players complain about the time PunkBuster takes to update these days. Can you tell us why the updates can take up to 6 minutes, even with a fast connection? And maybe more important, can we expect a faster connection in the future, or another way to download the updates?
  
  Tony Ray:
  PunkBuster has always throttled update download speed to 2K/sec maximum bandwidth usage. The reason is to avoid overall lag as much as possible while a server is updating several players who join with old PB versions and need the update. Some players may have high bandwidth connections, but servers often do not have the luxury of being able to blast files out to several players at once without exceeding their own bandwidth limitations. The average update time is more like 3 minutes, but sometimes with heavy traffic, that can go up. We are considering ways to address this issue for AA. However, we believe this problem is likely to resolve itself over the next few days and weeks as our need to frequently update diminishes.
  
  Double-T:
  Every day when we play we see PunkBuster doing a good job, kicking and banning hackers from the game. Can you give us some numbers about the amount of players being kicked / banned daily? Roughly how many players have been banned since PunkBuster made its debut into the game?
  
  Tony Ray:
  We don’t talk about these types of numbers. For one thing, we don’t get info about bans made by local admins and so anything we provided in the way of information on this topic would be incomplete anyway.
  
  Double-T:
  Sometimes we come across players who hack, but are not kicked by PunkBuster. What is the best thing for us to do to make sure they would get kicked? What exactly does Even Balance do with the information passed on by the community?
  
  Tony Ray:
  Anything passed to us that is subjective, we must completely ignore. For example, we will not ban players based on “info” passed to us from other players or even admins. We only ban when PB has detected a hack that interferes with PB’s own operation. We leave the rest to the community to use PunkBuster and its tools as they see fit. However, sometimes players come across private hacks/cheats that are not generally available in the public space. When the actual private or custom hacks are sent to our research team, that allows us to develop new ways to catch the punks who are using these private hacks. For the most part, PunkBuster has always focused on detecting public hacks and cheats. We do develop methods of catching generic hacking methods, but punks who write their own cheats are often going to slip through the cracks - it’s the same as with traffic officers who can’t catch every driver breaking the speed limit laws. We encourage those in the community who have the desire and ability to penetrate the hacker ‘insider’ circles to pass to us the specific private information they come across. But as for “testing” hacks and cheats goes, no one should be doing that unless wearing a player name including the text “testingPB” and testing always on a single relatively empty private server. We actually prefer that players do not “test” cheats as often the cheats are hard to remove and the “tester” gets caught later with them when he/she thought they had been removed.
  
  Double-T:
  How closely does the staff work with the developers of America’s Army to make sure PunkBuster is implemented correctly into the game making sure people can play the game without hackers and cheaters?
  
  Tony Ray:
  We work as closely as possible with the devs of all games we support. That being said, the AA devs have shown exceptional interest in the area of attacking the cheating problem. AA is free and it is based on the Unreal engine which was designed from the ground up to be very user modifiable. This combination has caused AA to become the target of more hacking and cheating activity than any other game I’m aware of. We are very happy to be associated with America’s Army and I can’t say enough good things about the whole AA dev team and everyone associated with the project.
  
  Double-T:
  On 1st March this year the website of Even Balance got hacked. What was your reaction to this? Do you have any idea who these hackers are and more important, are they caught yet? Also I would like to know if the security of the website is improved after this happened.
  
  Tony Ray:
  Our website splash page was defaced, as happens eventually to just about every serious target on the Internet, so we’re in good company there. In this case, a contracted webmaster had installed a web stats package that had a weakness of which he was unaware. We definitely have removed that stats package. From an overall standpoint, we directly manage over 100 servers and that number grows with each new game we support. It is unfortunate that our website splash page was defaced, but honestly, it is the least important part of our system from a security standpoint. There were a few hours in the middle of the night where our users were unable to enter or check on trouble tickets using our web system, but that’s about all the damage done. We have now set up a distributed website using a DNS based round robin approach so that if one of our website boxes goes down for any reason, our users won’t be completely unable to access the website.
  
  Double-T:
  When a player is banned from a server, will he be able to play again on a PunkBuster enabled server in any way? Also how do you make sure people can’t join again after they have been kicked or banned?
  
  Tony Ray:
  Most bans are employed by server admins. These are local bans based on the PB GUID (globally unique identifier) in effect at the time of the violation. When a player is unable to play on one or more servers due to this type of PB GUID ban, he/she is still able to play on other PB Servers that have not banned his/her PB GUID. We ourselves also ban globally for hacking or interfering with PunkBuster from all PB Servers connected to the Internet. These bans are also based on the PB GUID and sometimes also on the hardware identifiers of the computer on which the hack violation was raised. In AA, the PB GUID is based on the AA account so unfortunately a player is usually able to come back after a PB GUID-based ban just by using a different account.
  
  Double-T:
  Version 2.4 of America’s Army will run on another Unreal Engine. Does this effect the implementation and use of PunkBuster in any way and what other features can we expect in the future?
  
  Tony Ray:
  PunkBuster is integrated at a very low level into the games we support. The code in the new Unreal Engine where PB is integrated is virtually identical to the code in the current version. I would expect very little (if any) difference in the implementation and no changes to the use of PunkBuster from a user’s perspective. From a new feature standpoint, we’re always working to improve PunkBuster for our users for all games we support.
  
  Double-T:
  Tony Ray, I want to thank you for filling out this interview. I think I speak for the whole community when I say: Keep up the good work at Even Balance, and good luck with everything you will be doing. Do you have anything to add to this interview?
  
  Tony Ray:
  I just want to say what a pleasure it is for us to work with the AA dev team. I want the users to know how serious they are about fighting the cheating problem in AA. In each case where we have suggested improvements to the game codebase to address exploits that have plagued prior releases, they have been more than willing to implement the suggestions. We’re looking forward to continuing the relationship and being a part of the AA community.
  
  Double-T:
  I want to thank Tony Ray for his time, and wish him a good time at Even Balance. I also want to thank Simon Speller (stts) for his help, and the aaotracker team for their support!
  
  
  
• Lan4Fun już wkrótce!
  Wielkimi krokami nadchodzi Lan4Fun, impreza dla maniaków gier multiplayer, mająca miejsce w tym roku w Warszawie w dniach 9 i 10 kwietnia. Jeszcze niedawno martwiliśmy się, że osób biorących udział będzie bardzo mało, lecz już w tej chwili wiadomo, że impreza szykuje się naprawdę niezła. W poprzedniej edycji Lan4Fun naszą scenę reprezentowały klany 1st.PB i KsH, w tym roku moblizacja pokazała efekty. więcej...
  
  Lista klanów biorących udział w nadchodzącej imprezie:

  • OSZ - Osiedle Zachód
  • DD - Deadly Ducks
  • .error. clan
  • Majestic
  • 1st.PB
  • KsH

  
  Zaplanowane 80 miejsc typu BYOC - Bring Your Own Computer już zostało zapełnione. Ci, którzy nie zdążyli - niech żałują :)