Imagine my surprise when I received emails from various players asking for my help. While I am fairly prolific I don't see myself as a gaming savior. However with that said, those emails gave me that icky feeling you get when you see something that doesn't make sense. Silkroad Online is one of the most popular free to play games in existence. What is the deal?

The following isn't the best grammar or writing, but you can see the desperation this player is exhibiting:

Hello I saw on the news about silkroadonline game Maybe visit SRO (silkroadonline) forums to see what problems have this game http://www.silkroadonline.net visit forums on General Discussion I was playing this game about 3 years and i pay for this game more much 3000 € I was hacked but joymax didnt helped me Now i cant play this game because all the time have problems Look at their forums and u will understand Now i was hacked again 1 week ago again Joymax dont want to help me. We need help We need every person who can helping us Please visit their forums look all about problems and please speak again with joymax

Thanks Best regard

George Sepkas

Since Joymax took over the hosting and customer support for Silkroad Online, players have had problems with hacking resulting in stolen accounts, stolen items and losses of thousands of real world dollars by players such as the following:

Posted by Madchemist on the Joymax Forums

There have been several issues with the new JoyMax.com/portal web site since the opening.

#1 Account Security, due to the new site there was no protection for ones account and only required a login name and email. None of this information is encrypted and left an open door for hackers to redirect that information to them. -Some accounts were striped clean of every item. -Some accounts had there info changed such as emial, name, secret answer and password.

Joymax's Reply -

Hello. This is Silkroad Online.

Recently there are a growing number of users who get stolen their account. To prevent the loss of accounts, we strongly recommend that you should keep the list below in your mind. -Do not purchase Silk through the use of Paypal accounts or credit cards that you DO NOT OWN. -Do not have someone else purchase silk in your place. -Never reveal your account login information to anyone else. -Change your password at least once a month. -Install and undate an anti virus program.

In addition, some of our users think got hacked in this case but it was stolen their account. Please keep your personal information and checking it every time."

JoyMax posted this notice - Regarding Password Changing Issue. 10/24/2007

Hello. This is Silkroad Online. Now JOYMAX.COM is temporary unavailable to change password. We will update our password changing system to help our users prevent the loss of account. It is scheduled to end at 10/30/2007. However it is not a basic solution to ensure your accounts security. So please keep your personal information and checking it every time. Thank you. End date of inability for chaging password : 10/30/2007 Silkroad Online Standard Time"

And again from Mad Chemist -

I have followed these rules and am very security conscious and I have never given my account information out. While I'm in the game I go to login on the silkroadonline.net web site to purches silk and I am unable to login due to worng password. I proceeded to http://www.joymax.com/portal/ to see why my password had changed. I press on the "Forgot your ID and password?" Then went to Change password and entered my ID and email, then pressed change password.

It asked me to create a nickname which I did and proceeded to login. While I was at the web site of http://www.joymax.com/portal/ I went to Use Email Verification service. I go to relog on the web site and my password changed again! My old password and the new password did not work. Mean while the game crashed. I proceed to restart the game and login into the game and passowrd failed. I own 2 computers and my staller character was logged on and is also in my main characters Acedemy. Out of the corner of my eye I see my main character log in! I opened up the map to see my character go from where I was trianing at and go to Hotan where it stoped for a few seconds. Then my character disapeared from Hotan and telaported to Smarakand and telaported again to Constantinople where it stayed for a few seconds and teleported back to Smarakand. My character was then disconneced. I kept trying to log into the game and password failed 3 times which blocked any one from trying to log into my account. I went back to http://www.joymax.com/portal/ I press on the "Forgot your ID and password?" to change my password again and immediately press the "Use Email Verification service" and type in my Account ID and Account password. That was the 2nd time I changed my password on http://www.joymax.com/portal/!  Everything worked this time and went to check my email to see if it worked which it did. Now my account was secure so now if I need to change any of my info it sends me a code to use to change my info. I was amazed at the fact how JoyMax could change the policy like that and leave some ones account open for hackers to come in and take advantage of peoples accounts. If I had not been online at that time the hackers could have changed my info blocking me out of my own account. I had to battle with the hackers on the web site and try to keep them blocked from logging into the game again on my account until I was able to complete the Email Verification service. When that was all settled with the Email Verification service thing and having witnessing someone else on my account I was very nervous about my items on that account. I log on to the game and everything I was wearing was gone and my gold was gone too! I spent 4 months fixing my items and getting all the blues to 100% and every item above +4. I also had an sosun blade +6 lvl 64 which I spent over $500 on silk for the astral and immortal to try and get above +6. Sosun blade only went to +6 3 times and considering the amount of money I spent on the blade I left it at +6. I also had sosun hands. Very frusterating to have my account stripped of those items which have cost me money for silk to enhance my items and spending over 4 months working on them. I have spent a lot of money buying silk itemes and I've played this game for about 2 years and this was the second character I created which has taken me a little over a year so far to build and still have not finished building this character.

Since the opening of http://www.joymax.com/portal/ there have been over 160 accounts stripped of there items and there sp was donated to the guild or spent on skills they don't use. Somewhere Guild Masters and Union Masters and have had their guild members banned from guild and Unions were Seceded. Some had silk on there accounts of over 500 silk and all of it spent not by them but by the hacker who was on the account buying things such as astral and immortal for the items they have stolen from other accounts. Which most of these items have now been sold for gold. I'm sure the gold dealers that sell gold online have made a good profit from buying and selling gold online due to this flaw in JoyMax. 130 accounts that have had there info changed such as email and password blocking the original owner from logging on to their account. I'm only aware of these numbers because I have played the game with these people.

Every day I see numorus globals of people asking the gm's why is my account stripped clean of items and gold or I see new names posting globals about why can't I log on to my my account and it says worng password. I have been writing the names down I see and talking to those who have had problems. Most of which I speak to on Teamspeak. The amount of damge done is by far the worst I have ever seen. A large number of people have quit the game and want nothing to do with SilkRoadOnline/JoyMax. Most are saying SilkRoadOnline is a hackers paradise and gold botter game. I beleive this mainly due to JoyMax not hiring GMs to monitor "in game play" on a regular basis and talking with customers. Since I started on another server a year ago I have only seen 1 GM come into the server when it opened. When I first started GM's used to come into the game frequently and tour the game checking for bots and talking with people. I don't know where the SilkRoadOnline Staff went. They must have left when they blocked the Koreans from iSRO. If JoyMax did a roll back from the time they implemented the http://www.joymax.com/portal/ to recover the loss of accounts and/or items there will be other players who will suffer from the roll back.

Unless they take the time to do each individual accounts data that has had there account stripped or account stolen. I remember when they did the roll back when the hackers were duplicating gold. JoyMax showed a big concern when that happened. But it seems they are not intrested in helping the players recover there items or gold from the lack of security with http://www.joymax.com/portal/.

I went to GNGWC main round at Internet PC Cafe in Gardena California to watch the SilkRoadOnline participants and was able to talk to morningdew and gargamel. Gargamel wanted nothing to do with the conversation about the problem of accounts being hacked and morningdew stated; "If you submit a bug report saying your account was hacked they would ban that account. According to JoyMax policy." Morningdew also used the excuse that it is a free game which is not true for those of us who purches silk with real money it is a great loss to the person who created the account. I don't think banning some ones account would be a good idea. Would you want to lose your account after spending over $2,500 over time and spending over a year just to build your character. Customer support should be able to roll back the persons account if there was any problems with the account so there is no loss to the customer. JoyMax needs to take lessons form Blizzard on customer support. One thing to think about, do we still put our time and money into JoyMax when there is no customer support and no in game GM's to monitor game play.

Thank You for your time.

It says in the Terms of service the following -

4. Policy against Account Theft (Hacking)

4.1 Account theft/hacking is defined as illegal appropriation or destruction of computerizes data sent or received. The hacking/account theft usually occurs by negligent management by the user of his own account information.

4.2 The Operations Team will not offer services regarding account theft/hacking for the time being for the purpose of providing better service in the future.

So all of these problems are occurring and no customer service is being issued. Shame on the developers of Silkroad Online and Joymax for their complacency. This does not bode well for their entry into the North American market. It also gives other free to play games a bad name. Let's hope we see some improvement on this front. Hopefully with these issues coming to light and the regular gaming populace, these two companies will change the policies and help the people that are putting their time and money into these games.

For more information on Silkroad Online visit - http://www.silkroadonline.net.