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RF Online in the Philippines recently had serious issues with dupe hacks, prompting an unannounced rollback of the servers. PlayNoEvil writes that the operator of RF Online for the Philippines, Level Up Games, discovered a dupe exploit and tried to purge it from the servers as well as those who used it. However due to time constraints with unraveling the intricacies of the exploit, the company decided to roll back the game to a point before the exploit was used.

Level Up Games issued a statement on the problem: Based on DB evidence, numbers as well as feedback from the community, the GMs, the Vanguards and also from our field agents, there was an oversupply of in-game currency and gold - as high as 500 %. GMTristan of RF Online Philippines clarified the situation further on his blog:

A couple weeks ago we introduced Steve Williams' notion of mudflation, its causes, and a general framework for its eradication. On Friday, he posted part two of his three part economic plan, suggesting that the best way to remove currency from the player economy was to replace large money sinks like item repairs with frequent, small, invisible tolls for things like entering a city, using reagents, and changing zones. By making these sorts of things invisible instead of up-front, you can stem the devaluing of your currency without pissing off the players, or so the argument goes.

This blogger is far more fond of having money sinks that yield tangible results. Things like player housing (and the subsequent decorating that goes along with it), guild cities or hang-outs (CoX's Supergroup Base system works quite well), or more types of crafting always seemed to yield better results. Even though the concept of an invisible toll system is really in the players' best interest , we can't imagine the response being anything other than vitriolic. In any case, we're looking forward to act three of Williams' economic treatise to see how he wraps it up.

A sixteen-year old boy allegedly hacked the website of Nexon Japan, and made off with about $325k worth of game points for Mabinogi, a free-to-play MMO that's inspired by Celtic mythology (and on its way to North America soon). He reportedly was able to obtain the password of a former Nexon employee, and then used that info to log on to the game servers and load himself up with virtual cash.

Some of which apparently then turned into real cash, as he was able to sell it (as least that's what it seems like) for "web money," which he used to buy books and other software. The bottom line here seems to be not that the kid is a genius, but that the company and/or its employee made a dumb mistake, allowing the password to get nabbed by simple hacking software.

No word on what punishment, if any, the kid faces, but Nexon claims they've "re-evaluated" their security software, and created a "24-hour monitoring system." Well that's good -- when they get hacked again, at least they'll be able to monitor it.

The MetaPlace developer blog was updated with a description of Areae's plans for "MetaBucks." Unsurprisingly, MetaBucks will be the currency of MetaPlace. They will be exchangeable both ways for real-world currency, and will be used to buy tools and assets with which to build worlds. Also, MetaBucks will provide a system for creators of virtual worlds made in MetaPlace to charge subscription fees.

If you're thinking, "gee, that sounds very Second Life-esque," you're not the only one! MetaPlace seeks to bridge the gap between gamers and virtual world residents by providing tools (like MetaBucks) that will be useful to both. For a browser-based title, MetaPlace is unusually ambitious in terms of scope.

If you're curious how all this fits into Areae's business plan as a whole, check out the business plan FAQ. Basically, MetaPlace is free until the world you create crosses a certain traffic threshold. After that, it costs money to continue hosting your world there, but you can use MetaBucks to charge players or take donations, and use that income to cover the costs.

Andy Kyte, vice president of Gartner, Inc., told Gartner Symposium attendees last week that virtual worlds such as Second Life are "contributing to the drive to use electronic currencies." This comes from a ZDNet report on Kyte's talk about the potential of electronic currencies to reduce overhead costs for pretty much every one. He said Singapore has already introduced an electronic currency and that the rest of the world is watching what happens there.

He also said, though, that online currencies like Second Life's Linden Dollar carry with them security issues that create "phenomenal opportunities for money laundering and tax evasion." Those issues would have to be resolved before online currencies similar to the L$ or EVE Online's ISK can be used with confidence in the real world.

[Via Worlds in Motion]