Help, tech question

[z_man93]

Looking for some help here. I'd like to know if there will be any way for me to play Arcanity from work. Our network is very large with a proxy server, firewall, and all that good stuff. As you can tell I'm not very knowledgable about networks. Just wondering if there is any way of bypassing that stuff without being too obvious. I want to play Arcanity as much as possible but getting fired might not be the right answer.
Anyways, just wondering if it is possible, Thanks

[Kintoun]

That depends on the firewall. But I doubt you'll be able to play a Internet game at all. Firewalls filter incoming info from the internet to give your work protection from hackers, and slackers (slackers at your work who want to play games :D heh j/k). All internet games send info back to the client side (you), if the firewall sees that as something unallowable then you won;t be able to play online. But if you have a light firewall (which I doubt) you should be ok. Ask the network admin at your work, if he says you can't play games... Ask him if he can give you the password to disable the firewall, heh heh ya right.

[Saint Faucet]

To expound upon what Kintoun has said, you need the network admin to open specific ports in the firewall before you can play. If the ports aren't open, then you're out of luck. Most network admins (that I know anyway) won't open any unnecessary ports due to the threat of hackers.

Uh... and umm... Necessary legal jargon: Brickhouse Trading Company shall not be held liable for loss or damage of any kind resulting from the use of Arcanity, including, but not limited to, work stoppage.

[Kintoun]

hahahaha work stoppage, heh heh ;)

[BelDragos]

Sounds painful

[z_man93]

Taking Network Admin out for beers tonight, let ya know tommorrow.

[Rolfe]

Rich knows a lot more about networking than I do, but I'm pretty sure that the firewall can't tell the difference from one packet to another. It CAN tell where a packet is coming from and where it's supposed to go, but that's not what I mean. I believe a firewall would be a single computer for a software firewall and a hardware router of some sort with firewall capabilities built in for a hardware firewall. That single computer or router (depending on the case) is the only device with an IP address on the network. Whenever a computer behind the firewall (attached to the network) sends a packet of information out into the internet, it has to send that packet first to the firewall device since the firewall device is the only thing with a valid Internet IP address. The packet that it sends to the firewall device has a LOCAL address attached to it that tells which computer it CAME from, and it has an actual IP address attached to it that tells which computer ON THE INTERNET that the packet is supposed to GO TO. The firewall device gets that packet and replaces the local address with its own IP address, and then sends it out to the Internet to wherever it needs to go to.

The network admin can also have the firewall do some simple filtering too. Like it can filter out certain sites by not accepting packets from certain IP addresses. I'm sure they can do other stuff too that I don't know about because I only know about fairly small and unsophistocated firewalls. My explanation above might not hold true with larger, more expensive and more complicated firewalls. But from what I know about firewalls (which is pretty much that paragraph above) the firewall won't know if the packets it's sending are going to the Arcanity world server or to the Yahoo mail server. It's just a bunch of numbers to the firewall UNLESS the admin knows about Arcanity and tells the firewall not to send or receive packets to the Arcanity world server IP address. If that happens, let us know and we'll see about changing the IP. he he. Just kidding (I think. Let's wait and see. ha ha.)

My girlfriend is nagging me to tell you that you "probably won't even be able to INSTALL Arcanity on your work computer." I guess only you know that one for sure. Are you able to freely install software on your work computer? Good luck.

[synergy]

Am NOT nagging!

Some food for thought. If you were some System Admin. in charge of protecting a whole bunch of proxy servers and firewalls, would you allow every Tom, Dick or z_man (heh, sorry, couldn't resist) to install whatever program they wanted without your prior knowledge and approval? What kind of security control would that be?

However...if you DO manage to play Arcanity at work in the future, I'll give you 50 bucks to tell me where you work and who your Sys. Admin. is.

[Kintoun]

Ya in some Network environments it's even common to have no floppy drive or CDROM drive, as well as a powerful firewall. Thats one sure way to protect from virii and the person who made a user error but swears they didn't do anything ( sure bud, sure ).

[z_man93]

Synergy, c'mon....give me one good reason why they shouldn't let me play Arcanity.

I can't think of any

[Morte]

When you have a job, don't you have to, like, work or something? Isn't that the whole point of hiring you. Or am I totally of the mark here? Damn, now I'm confused. Hmmm. No. Lost it now.

[synergy]

z_man, call me biased, but as far as I can see, there IS no good reason why you shouldn't be able to play Arcanity at work. EVERYONE should be able to play Arcanity as they pleased. I'm counting on you to help support my (future) shoe shopping habit. Hehe.

Maybe we should take a survey of all employers who see MMORPGs as a good way for their employees to blow off some steam. If pool tables and foosball at work are considered fringe benefits, why not a monthly subscription to Arcanity? Maybe they'll like it better if they got group rates. 5 subscriptions for the price of 4.

[z_man93]

Synergy, that's a great idea. If Rolfe is letting you take care of marketing for BHT, I think you'll end-up having more shoe's than you'll know what to do with. Maybe with a product diffrent from Arcanity. This is really for the individual that loves role playing.
Just a guess, but I have a feeling that you'll find a lot of PK'ers among the corporate community.There is a lot of potential for that idea. Maybe with a product not as refined as Arcanity. You would need something simple. Your clients would only have at best an hour lunch to log on, find a couple co-workers, and then hunt and kill their boss, or the idiot from marketing, or whoever, you're getting the idea. This would be a very marketable product. There is no way even the best motivational speaker could boost morale more than having the ability to go online and just kill whoever from your company you want. If ever BHT decides to develop something like this, please let me know, I am sure that the company I work for would be intrested.

[z_man93]

And to answer Morte. I really do work, no for real, I'm not kidding I do, I was hired in hope that I would bring-in new business and increase revenue for my company,(obviously since I am in sales, and there is no other use for a sales person other than maybe doorstop, paper weight, or my favorite - testing the concept of MMORPGs as stress relievers in a corporate environment. hehe) which I do very well. So I hope that helps....actually after rereading your post and mine, I am guessing you're still confused because I don't even understand what we're talking about, but it's late and I'm tired, so this will have to do for now.

[synergy]

z_man, I got a better idea... why don't you just send me a black check? It'll take the pressure of Rolfe to develop a game. Hehe.