You might notice quite a bit of changes, should you find any bugs feel free to let me know.
- Kev
Some avatars no longer appear.
The monster avatars were created by Gravatar, which has been removed from this release of the forum software.
Those avatars were only there for users that did not have an avatar uploaded.
Right now, I can't bring it back, but I might look into this in the future.
The text is no longered colored in GW Gear Stats for staves, i.e. blue, purple, gold
Could you give an example of this?
The editor used has been changed, so this could be the cause - previous styling might not show up, new one should show up.
check if it's again that we have to reactivate them or if they officialy gone pls kev ?
Unfortunately, they have been removed from the forum software itself.... I can't bring them back, I fear 
Glad to hear that you approve, Hate Core
No worries, Kev.
Was a 10 hour marathon negotiation with the gwlegacy-supervisory board but in the end I convinced them that it would be in best interest of all shareholders to perform this critical maintenance update.
We might increase your bonus for this year, thanks for your commitment!
Glad to have you, Hate Core! I'm curious for the bonus 
Second thing is not having lines in main page to separate subjects / threads SUCKSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Hmm, I'm going to improve the look over the next few weeks, I'll probably add in some line.
Some smaller things are still running in the background, but we are back!
You might notice quite a bit of changes, should you find any bugs feel free to let me know.
- Kev
okay, approved
Glad to hear that you approve, Hate Core
Hello everybody,
Just a small notice that Legacy will be offline for up to 30 minutes during this period for some maintenance.
This is (from the moment of this post) in about 2 hours.
- Kevin
To keep it short, I've been thinking often of creating my own game - something which I did in the past as a teenager as well - and it would no doubt be heavily inspired by Guild Wars, but I simply don't have the funds or people to do such a venture with.
It would be fun to make an MMORPG for the community that I love, without having to be the biggest game around.
Please if a gofundme for this ever happens post it here so we can all support the continuation of this wonderful game
Very late reply here, but building a game and certainly an MMORPG is a massive undertaking and a gofundme won't cut it. However, I have an idea for a smaller RPG that I hopefully will someday find the time and energy for.
The idea would be: the last day before the searing, but from the eyes of someone else.
Note Iaerah I originally wanted to create a separate topic for the 3023 code, but i posted here on this bots topic. There is no reference topic on legacy for code 3023. Can you remove the messages since my intervention and create a new thread (named: code 3023) with messages, so as not to pollute this topic right here?
Done.
So, let me get it straight, you are complaining for getting banned for sending a known RMT trading site to another player?
To say the least, that ain't smart to do that, as you can expect some action for that... they'll probably reverse the ban if the chat log indeed confirms that it was meant in a non-serious way, but it ain't a good idea anyway.
Hello everybody,
Since the 30th of May 2024, the procedure to change your nickname has been changed. You can now change your nickname yourself, but there are some requirements for this:
You can change your nickname on this page: https://guildwarslegacy.com/account-management/
If - for some reason - you do not have the Trusted rank and can't use this form, feel free to contact me. A paid subscription is NOT required to change your nickname!
Should you have any further questions, feel free to let me know.
- Kevin
Marty is indeed correct, Woltlab has decided to retire them. Our current version of Woltlab still supports it, and I have re-enabled it, so they're back for now.
In due time they'll be removed from the software alltogether I fear... so it's a temp return I fear.
Hey there,
We just completed a server move to our new server, which is proudly powered by an Asura-magitech revolution. As such, it is only fitting that we name this server in honor of one of the best asura-masterminds in the game, Vekk!
For the record, Guild Wars Legacy is now running on an ARM-powered server - a move I took mainly for the reduced energy consumption of the server, combined with great performance.
If you encounter any issues, feel free to let me know.
- Kevin
I haven't gotten a single complaint so far, so good news!
The mail server has been taken into custody by Dhuum, may it rest in peace.
I've you got an existing machine, I'd look into Parsec.
This is free for gaming, not for other uses.
Is there some kind of regulation that's got you by the balls preventing you from taking action?
This can get quite technical really fast and I'm not an expert in the matter either, so I'll try and explain my reasoning here. If it's unclear, feel free to let me know.
First of all, Guild Wars Legacy (as well as I) are located in Europe, more specifically I'm located in Belgium. Our servers are located in Germany.
That means that we need to follow the European laws, and in essence I need to follow both the Belgian and German laws here. Since I'm located in Belgium, those laws are prioritized. You might know the GDPR by name, but that is the general name of the law that each country has had to adapt into their own laws. In Belgium, the Dutch version of that law is also known as AVG (Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming). The other law I need to follow is the anti-discriminatory laws of Belgium.
Belgium is quite strict in terms of laws. You might know that we're practically the only country in the world that banned lootboxes, for example.
Privacy and anti-discrimination is very important in Belgium, so at Legacy, I try to uphold these rules as well as I can.
The AVG is extremely expansive and difficult to comprehend and explain, it differs on some accounts on the general GDPR rules. So, quite a while back, I consulted with a lawyer into what this means to me/us.
The reason why I take this so serious, is that a few years ago, I've started my own company (GuildLab), under which Guild Wars Legacy technically falls these days. That also means that the laws that are applying to me/Legacy are suddenly a lot stricter.
What came out of the conversation with my lawyer was (and what I still remember, there is more).
And that last one is where it becomes difficult: upon a re-evaluation, we are required to provide the proof as well. It's just like back in the day when ArenaNet banned users depending on what processes ran on their computers; due to a GDPR request, ArenaNet had to give the proof upon which basis the users were banned. And this makes it difficult.
TL;DR: laws suck. Being in a country with a strict law is hard.
I absolutely still care, but the same points still apply and are very hard to tackle for us, unfortunately.
How can we know that something is botted and how can we know that something is not botted? How can we be certain?
The issue lies that if we are going to police this, we would need to have solid evidence of it, which is hard to collect for us since we do not have the in game logs or information. In GW2, you'd be able to walk around and see the bots, but in this game it's impossible to do so.
ArenaNet is in fact the one that should be policing this, not us. They aren't, and that forces us in an uncomfortable position: how can we be certain if something is gained from botting or not? What proof/evidence do we have?
If someone bots on Twitch and we see those identically same items listed for sale here, that is indeed solid proof. But if someone that we ban as a cheater comes to me and requests me the proof on which grounds the ban has been given, I need to be able to provide that.
It's like instead of calling the police and deal with issues, taking justice in our own hands. And that just never ends well.
Even though the case here is a bit different as the police is just never coming... it's though.
You know I think it must've occurred to all the old timers to develop a spiritual successor to GW1, except we don't have the skills or know-how to do it. I did my fair share of research back in the day to find out whether it was possible to learn to develop a game like GW1 but I found out that I had waaaays to go. Learning code, learning 2d 3d design and modeling, learning to work with a game engine, and then building a game...
We keep playing the old game at the end of the day.. =/ Tho I'd support a kickstarter campaign to the best of my ability if one were to start.
Game development is hard and the reality is that only a few people on this planet are able to build a game from scratch on their own. Chris Sawyer, for example, who programmed RollerCoaster Tycoon on his own in the hardest possible language, Assembly. That's like trying to build a house having only a hammer.
So, realistically, you'd need a team of people and that's always hard to accomplish, since that makes it quite expensive to do so. Artists, programmers, sound designers and so on. The original Guild Wars was made with 50 people, but Guild Wars 2 was made by (at launch) about 350 people.
New games are incredibly complex, yet the cost of entry is almost entirely the same. Want to get into GW2, it'll cost you less to do so than it does to get into GW1. Monetization has changed so much in games, where as before gameplay was the key, monetization is now a factor as well.
That's why you see so many games add in mechanics with lootboxes or pay-to-skip or pay-for-convience: making games is so much more expensive than it was all those years ago, developers had to find a way to finance it all.
So, a successor for Guild Wars would - in my eyes - be an instant success, but monetization would make it a different game, I fear. Cosmetics would land in a shop, for example. Things that GW1 simply doesn't have or barely has right now.
To keep it short, I've been thinking often of creating my own game - something which I did in the past as a teenager as well - and it would no doubt be heavily inspired by Guild Wars, but I simply don't have the funds or people to do such a venture with.
It would be fun to make an MMORPG for the community that I love, without having to be the biggest game around.
Hello there,
Over the past few years, we've gotten quite a few moments where e-mail has been an issue. E-mail is generally speaking a pain, due to how it works and the monopoly that Gmail and Microsoft have over this sphere (the both of them have a 90%+ market share).
How we have been handling e-mail over the years was by using a software program called Postal and ran it on one of our own servers, which allowed us to send quite a lot of mails easily, but from time to time the mailserver froze/refused to accept new mails or providers blocked our mails for some reason.
The last few years, I've noticed more and more problems going on with Postal - not only did the installation method change a few times, but also the monitoring became a pain. Over the longer while, the server that I used to run Postal on also became quite costly - whenever I would do a bigger mailing, the RAM-memory of the server needed to be big enough or it would just fail.
That, paired with the issues we were having with mails not being received that were generally unresolveable by me (this is a real pain to deal with: you can't really get yourself whitelisted at most providers or un-blacklisted, it's a struggle and mostly ends up being though luck).
Due to this, I've decided to look into alternatives. Legacy sends out quite a bit of mail each day - notifications, registrations, password resets and all of that. We however do not have the volume that makes some of the commercial solutions viable, even though I did look into a lot of them. Quite often these fell quite out of our budget, or had limitations that just didn't fit.
Legacy is paid out of my own pocket (in fact, the last donation was years ago) and I don't mind doing that, but I didn't want to overpay for mail and hopefully save some money with this.
So after a while, I decided to go for Amazon SES, the Simple Email Service from Amazon.
This is now live, and I will be keeping an eye on this over the next few weeks.
If you experience worse mail delivery, feel free to let me know so I can look into this.
- Kev
You could indeed use Shadow PC for this, you could also probably use Parsec to stream from your own PC or something like Steam Link.
You could perhaps try something like Contabo, but that probably will have less than ideal results because it doesn't have a graphics card.
For the rest, I fear finding a cheap option will be harder. The biggest issue is mainly finding a Windows server, those are expensive due to the licensing costs.
If I had to pick one, I'd probably go with ShadowPC (it's 30 euro per month) and beefy enough to run GW1 and GW2.
Hi ppl, i am gw1 noob, playing 2-3 months, maybe 4 xD, be patient with me
Everybody started out as a noob, so you're more than welcome!
I hope you enjoy the game as much as I did when I started with it. 5k hours in, and not a single regret.
Another update about maintenance, this time by the webhost. The archive will be unavailable Tuesday, 22 of November 2022, at 2:40 p.m. UTC+1.
So, the archive is back up again!
If you wondered why this maintenance (which took way too long), was needed: it was mainly that the old server was running on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - which is supported until April 2023, which is slowly coming closer.
It was also not running in the current stack that I prefer using (which contains Caddy), so it was high time to bring this server up to scratch with my other servers.
It's still not running 100%, but it can now be properly used again (with some layout faults, though, in same folders).
It now provides a search bar as well and should be a bit snappier than before.
Just a status update, still working on this. Extracting an archive with this much files takes a LONG WHILE.
Should be fixed today 
- Kev
The server is now down until further notice
Fun fact: the reason why the archive is such a hassle to host, it that it's about 1,013,509 files big.
On it's own, it's about 100GB big, but the main issue is the big amount of small files - a Linux server has an amount of files it can handle, and each file uses a "inode".
Since a server can only have so many indoes, it means that cheaper hosts are often out since we have too many files - if a webhost promotes unlimited disk space, they often have a limit on inodes.
Anyhows, this is just an insight I wanted to share while working on the server.
The Guru Archive server is in urgent need of some TLC, so it will be ocassionally down for the next few hours.
For urgent access, you can download the ZIP files of the archive from my STACK.
- Kevin
I tried to get back into it but everyone seems to be only doing speed runs of the harder content. It isn't something I'm interested in.
Hey there Robert, welcome back to the game! Lots of people are still around and not doing speed runs - I'm one of them. I have been playing mostly as a solo player, enjoying the company of my heroes, but I think I want to play a bit more social now and again.
So if you want to play a bit in game, be sure to let me know and feel free to hit me up in game.
It's a bit double: GW2 is an entirely different game that has different monetization. You get "some" free stuff, while all stuff in GW1, with the exception of costumes, is free.
There are multiple ways in going with a game: either you earn income through box sales (like GW1 did), you earn income through a monthly subscription (like World of Warcraft does) or you earn income through a F2P cash shop.
Each of these has it's own drawbacks: for Guild Wars 1, it meant that they always would need to work on the next big thing and come out with bigger and better features, more classes and skills, which increased the difficulty of both the game as well as keeping the balance. Since they only earn money when they actually sell a expansion/campaign, they are forced to expand the world, spreading the players more and more. This however, had one benefit back in the day, in that all rewards were included in the game and microtransactions only landed later in Guild Wars 1 with mainly customes as well as account upgrades.
If you go with a monthly subscription, your main goal is not to make a fun game, but to keep players playing: so you introduce grind, or artificial limits. You create new systems every expansion so that players will need to work hard to finish them, only to abandon them in the next expansion and introduce other systems and so on. Since you want your players to stay subscribed, you introduce FOMO and you can't really afford not to play, since you will get behind very quickly and this will, in turn, make it a lot harder for you to catch up.
Because you have a subscription fee, however, you already have a steady stream of income and you can give away nice loot for free, give away really nice skins. Some of the monthly subscription games (actually, almost all of them) nowadays have a cash shop as well, but you can actually earn a lot of nice rewards in the game itself.
Finally, the F2P cash shop model that Guild Wars 2 has is quite fair, but it has many drawbacks: it actually forces the best skins and rewards to the cash shop. They don't need you to play, so they can just focus on making the gameplay fun. However, their main income (and probably only income, except for the expansion packs) comes from mainly cosmetics. That means that those cosmetics need to be above the ones that you can get for free in game, since you do want to earn money. So, you limit a range of cosmetics to only be available in the cash shop (in GW2, that means that mount skins and glider skins are virtually only available in the cash shop, with some exceptions. Skiffs and fishing poles follow the same example).
Since every skin is potential revenue, the best looking skins will land in the cash shop. This has led to a lot of flashy, particle-heavy skins being introduced in GW2.
So having said all that, in order to make Guild Wars 1 free to play, the entire game would need to change business model and get a rework to be suitable for a cash shop: because, let's be honest, there is barely anything that you can buy that most players will want to buy.
In essence that would mean that if new content were to drop, chances are that good looking skins would only be available from the cash shop - since Guild Wars 1 lacks transmutation, that would likely mean that a transmutation system would be coming. This will likely destroy the economy which is currently based around the rarity of drops and combination of stats/skins. That would mean that you'd only need 1 great item drop and you could make it look like whatever.
Next to that, new ways to monetize would be required: that could be DLC, imagine content drops like the War in Kryta or Winds of Change locked behind a purchase.
It would likely mean that a lootbox system would be added as well, since that generates quite a lot of profit - however, what kind of things would work in a lootbox? Rare weapon drops, rare armor pieces, rare dyes, new runes and insignia's?
In order to make GW1 a free to play game, the game would need a huge overhaul in order to make it financially sound and I don't think that is what we as players would want to see happen. While I would love a transmutation system to be added, it would be a disaster for the economy. I'd love more dyes to be added in the game, but those would likely be a cash shop item. An achievement overhaul would be really fun too as an addition to the quest system. More replayable content would be fun.
There are many positive things that can be added to the game, but with a change of business model, a change of what content lands and what it needs to be changes.
That is mainly why I don't see Guild Wars 1 turning to a free to play model, and is mainly why the game is so expensive to get into these days: the game was simply made to contain a lot and is barely monetized. Imagine buying a complete game for 40 euros in 2022, that contains many hundreds hours of gameplay with no monetization at all (or barely any). Getting into GW2 itself has a base price of 30 euro's for either one or a pack with 2 expansions, but more realistically you'd be in 100 euros for all living story content at minimum.
So, would it be healthy for Guild Wars 1 to turn into a free to play game? I highly doubt it would, since our expectations of what the game needs to be would be very out of sync with what ArenaNet would need it to be.
For the future of the game, should they ever decide to come back at it, I'd hope they would introduce new things but keep the boxed entry price and add in new, fair ways of monetization:
- I'd love an achievement overhaul and achievement rewards like in Guild Wars 2.
- I would love to have Legendary Weapons in Guild Wars 1 as well, but in a Guild Wars 1 way - that means, you should not be required to pump a ton of materials in, but gain it by doing the games content and earn it (by completing, for example, collections or achievements). Legendary weapons should also be grounded in visual style to match the rest of the game, but how cool would it be to wield a Balthazar inspired greatsword that you could gain for Fissure of Woe (I'm aware of the Balthazar set :P) or a Grenth-based staff or scythe from Fissure of Woe (again, I am aware of the Scythe of Dhuum - but it should be something in terms of that).
- I'd love a quest menu overhaul just to make it a bit easier to browse, as well as making it easier to track which quests you haven't completed yet.
- In the same spirit, I would introduce a new dailies interface in the quest menu.
- I'd love for new content and DLC to land in the game, that wouldn't need to be huge at all - a new dungeon, for example, with unique rewards. Or story content like the Winds of Change (I'd easily pay 10-15 euro for that content personally), again, with unique rewards.
- Since the economy hasn't got enough sinks and there are tons of materials in the game, new materials would need to be introduced (probably timegated) for new rewards and new sinks for older materials would need to be introduced (again, probably best to timegate these).
- A meta shakeup would be nice with new balance and some profession overhauls, but these are more work to do.
- New festival quests and new rewards.
- It would destroy the current economy, but a transmutation system would be really cool so you would be able to more easily mix and match armor and weapon skins. Transmutation charges should be earnable in game or buyable in shop.
- That would mean introducing a wardrobe like Guild Wars 2 has, where you can unlock skins and unlock rewards when you, for example, unlock all of the skins of one set.
- New hard mode quests would be appreciated.
- Newly added content should always have replayability, like for example the War in Kryta finale should be a "regular" mission with a hard mode and map marker, and should be replayable.
- Replaying missions should reward a mission token for exclusive rewards for that mission or region - for example, the Ascalonian region could reward Charrslayer weapons. Kryta could give you White Mantle rewards. The Maguuma Jungle could give you some Druid-inspired weaponry, the Ring of Fire could give you the Magma-weapons (but more extended), perhaps with some visual changes or a special look.
- You should be able to earn all of the weapons of the end-game weapon sets (for completing Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North etc). Perhaps with mission tokens, or by playing the Glint quests for Prophecies (and for example, when clearing afflicted from areas in Factions).
- Overhaul the title book system, keep them in the game, but perhaps a completed book can be used to get special rewards if you have maxed a title - for example, a special Kurzick rune, a new Kurzick weapon set (perhaps just a reskinned one), minipets, tonics...
There would be plenty of things that can be added and changed, and I truly think this game still has potential (in fact, I think it could have been going strong if the development continued alongside GW2) and it could still flourish. I know that many of my ideas are simply impossible as it stands right now, and I am still glad that I can still play the game that had such a profound impact on my life and enjoy it. I hesitate to complete some goals, even, to keep having a reason to play (I haven't completed the Kurzick title track or the Luxon one, for that example).
Guild Wars has been a part of my life through the best and worst moments of my life and it has always been there for me - there were years that the only thing I could talk about, was Guild Wars (I think I had to be 15 or 16 back in the day and it honestly was the only thing I spoke about).
I realize that I was quite a bad player back then and just mashed together skills (still proud of the Sever Artery, Gash, Sun and Moon Slash, Dragon Slash combination I thought of back in the day), before we had things like PvX or Metabattle. I remember being stuck at Zen Daijun for literally months, ragequit at Gyala Hatchery and then just decided to go Kurzick (best choice of my life - but I still hate the Eternal Grove ;)).
I love this game with every little fiber of my being and I'm really thankful that I can still play it - I'm a noble unknown in the community and when Guild Wars Legacy launched, I simply used my real name as nickname here. Why did I do that? Was it because I was ashamed of how bad a player I was, or because I'm just humble (I highly doubt that), or was it because I was afraid I wasn't good enough and thought I wouldn't be able to get the support behind me that I needed? I think it's mainly the last one and I just want to end my enormous post here as a big thank you for all of you who made Legacy the success it has become (for me, but also for the community). My heart is in this game and the great community, and I'll forever be here for anyone who loves the game and I'll do anything I can do to make the game even better (once, I dreamed of moving to America and trying to get a job at ArenaNet, only to not believe in my skills and pursue the easiest road ahead of me - something I still regret, but I am thankful of all the chances I have gotten so far.
So, thank you all for being here, for being the most amazing community I have ever been a part of. Thank you ArenaNet for creating the game that formed me into who I am, that gave me the stories and characters that I hold so very dear to my heart. Thank you Jeremy Soule for creating the sound track of my youth (even though he really isn't the best person around). Thank you Gaile Gray for believing in me and Legacy when we just started and for letting me attend 2 Gamescom parties in the Haxenhaus in Germany (the last time I went there, was extra magical and important to me. I brought a friend of mine with me, who could speak/translate German, and by the end of the evening she was my girlfriend (and still is!), so even for that I have to thank Guild Wars!). Finally, thank you, Stephen Clarke-Willson, for keeping the lights on for the Guild Wars servers as the Guild Wars 1 Game Director.
You are all amazing (and this has gone on way too long, so I'll stop here). I can't thank all of you enough.
- A strangely emotional Kevin
Kevin; fixer of problems before most people even notice them. 👍
In this case, I got 6 messages/pokes/notifications about it, so I have to say that most people here notice things quickly ;D
Edit: for now, the homepage issue should be solved. If you get the same issues on any other page, feel free to let me know.
- Kev
Hello there,
I have been made aware of issues with the login on Legacy - it looks like you are logged out, while in reality you are logged in. This only occurs on the homepage, when you click any link, you will be logged in.
If you are not logged in, you will get a warning about an invalid XSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) token:
This is due to some changes that are being made to Legacy in terms of (possibly) ads as well as improved caching. This however has brought up an issue on the homepage, where you always get a cached version served up, which is not the intention.
This cached version is a non-logged in page and will have an (expired) XSRF token, which causes these issues.
We are currently working on fixing this, I'll let you know as soon as this is fixed.
I think the moderators must have forgotten a rule on the forum about signatures.
Signatures are only ment to be signatures, they should not contain actual post content.
Mis-use will lead to a temp or permanent ban.
Hello everybody - this is the full procedure to delete your account. Please follow this procedure completely as written.
The deletion process is a manual process, so it can take a few days before your account gets deleted.
To streamline the account deletion process, we have created a special form that ensures that all of the data gets sent along. This form can be found here: Request account deletion.
This is a special forum and you can only see your own post, but our moderators and team can see your request.
Please fill this form and proceed to step 2. Only filling in the form itself will not get your account deleted.
We'll then need you to send an e-mail to [email protected] from the same e-mail-address that your account uses so we can verify that you own the account mail (since this is a permanent request, this is the verification we need).
Once we receive the e-mail, we'll try to delete your account within 72 hours.
If we do not receive the e-mail, we will be unable to process your deletion request, so please send it asap. Please mention the URL to your deletion form, that makes it easier for us.
Keep in mind that this is a hobby project and due to this reactions can take a few days.
Should there be any questions, feel free to ask them.
Kevin
Thank you!
You can use this tool : https://guildwarslegacy.com/tools-and-downloads/
It will automatically download the latest version from our server and is regulary updated (mainly by bears01).
You should place that file in your Guild Wars directory, it will download the latest version and then launch Gw.exe (or Gw.lnk if it's present, so you can pre-fill your login info).
Looney, if you want, our list is hosted at https://github.com/kevinpetit/leg…/ChatFilter.ini - you are welcome to add in any additions, to make the list even better.
Maintenance should be concluded
Hey there,
A major maintenance for the mail server is required - this is going to take place now.
During this period, mails will not be sent out from Guild Wars Legacy.
This should only last a few hours.
- Kevin
Hey all,
I know you are all burning with desire to use the new archive, and since it has been a while since I last posted about it, I wanted to give you an update.
I've been dealing with some health issues the last few months, that haven't been doing any good to my time that I usually would program in.
I'll be undergoing surgery soon, so hopefully that will resolve all issues. In any case, I'm still working on it, but real-life issues are a bit in the way but should be resolved soon.
- Kev
Thanks for this, I installed it and it seems to work. Really nice to hear the 3D spatial audio in Guild Wars, it's a nice way to refresh the feeling of the game a little bit!
So, this will be the final write-up I hope about the malware.
The malware itself presents itself as a 92 MB file, but in reality it's about 10 MB big. The reason why this file is so large, is because it contains a video (containing a trailer for GW) which is 82.7 MB big.
It also contains a few images, which you can see when the tool runs, and some that aren't used.
With my analyzing of the malware, I can verify that it doesn't contain anything else like a private server or does anything even close like it reports to.
This has been written with the single purpose of collecting login information about Guild Wars accounts.
I went ahead and unpacked the malware, which is in reality just a AutoPlay Media Studio application which is used to build interactive CD-menus (when that was still relevant).
This is the file unpacked:
The video file that I mentioned is here:
There are some image files included, including Pyre Fierceshot renamed as "Kyle":
At this point, we don't see anything special - however, with my unpacking, I was able to go through the code of the application. Being built in AMS, it's far from real programming. In fact, it uses a plugin to handle the mail sending, which I suppose is the reason why this tool was chosen in the first place.
When you run the application, it initially doesn't do anything until you get to the login-page. Going through the code, I can confirm that the only thing it does, is to send an e-mail (more on that later). If the e-mail is send succesfully, it will display that the server was installed succesfully:
It will then display a page with a button, which just gives an error when clicked upon.
So, in reality, all it does is send an e-mail using Gmail. That opens up more information and more perspective: you can't send mails using Gmail without authentication, so the person who wrote this, uses a Gmail account that is linked to this. I hope for this person that he uses a special Gmail account for this that can't be linked to his real account, since these credentials are up for grabs in the malware and with a hex-editor you can find them quite easily.
Since I do not have any respect for hackers, and since this information can be found in the malware itself, I am going to (partially) share this information:
Using Gmail has been beyond stupid on the behalf of the makers of this malware. Both Gmail abuse has been informed of this and I have filed a report with the police.
I can provide the malware sources to anyone who asks (politely) for them.
With this, I mainly want to send out the signal that we at Legacy do not tolerate hackers, malware and any attemps made to do so on Legacy will be met with the fiercest resistance that I can bolster.
I'll protect this community with all the powers that I have.
- Iaerah
