OHB announces the “Hood of Illusions” and the “Fun House” Neighborhoods

Following up on the previously reported February 4^th announcements from the DRC’s Dr. Watson and RAWA, OHB and a group from the Guild of Writers took to the stage at the February 5^th All Guilds Meeting to announce the introduction of two new neighborhoods which will be available as public links in the nexus.

Explorer Branan explained that the first is called the Hood of Illusions, “which will have scheduled [hacking] demonstrations.” The second, called the “Fun House,” is a location where hacking can occur randomly at any time. Branan said he plans “to move some of my tool development and testing to the Fun House” and that people will be able to visit it anytime “and there’s a chance someone will be there playing around.”

According to OHB, the introduction of these neighborhoods stem from discussions between RAWA and a group of hackers now known as the “Grey Hats”. At the meeting, Narameh asked where the term “Grey Hats” came from. Branan responded by saying:

It’s a general hacking term for “people who aren’t doing bad things but aren’t really authorized”. Now that we’re sort of authorized we’re moving towards being “white hats”... I used the term when I contacted RAWA about the concept, and it stuck.

The five members of the “Grey Hats” are: Branan, Hoikas, Lontahv, OHB, and Zrax. All were in attendance at the All Guilds Meeting to answer questions from the audience about the new neighborhoods.

These neighborhoods were proposed by RAWA, according to OHB, “so hackers could have some fun in-cavern in a Cyan-sanctioned way.” They “will be a place for the Grey Hats to be more open with the sorts of hacks that we know how to do.”  OHB indicated that the group was hopeful that this would lead to a more open, less isolated situation for the Guild of Writers in relation to the balance of the URU community.

Per RAWA’s announcement, “approved hoods' instances are also considered as part of those hoods, (e.g. demonstrations can happen in The Hood of Illusions' instance of Kadish, or have skydiving in The Fun House's instance of the City.) “ According to OHB, “part of RAWA’s stipulation is that the Illusions/hax remain confined to the ages that belong to the Illusions and Fun House avatars.”

In response to questions, OHB stressed that “we’re only modifying existing things…not adding new ones…We can only play with existing things.” He stated that “no fan created ages are part of this effort.”

OHB also stressed the point that the Grey Hats will “not distribute any source code or give step by step instructions” on how the hacks are done. He did say that “the code that makes all of these hacks possible has been freely available on the internet for quite some time” and he invited any interested members to “check out the GuildofWriters.com website” for additional information.

Per RAWA in his announcement:

Creating these specific 'hoods serves several purposes: 1) It provides an authorized location for those who want to see / experience the changes that can be made, while keeping the other instances of the Cavern unaltered for those who do not. 2) If any of those changes cause unintended, unforeseen problems, it's more desirable to reset a private instance than to have to reset the main, public instances.

A thread entitled “The Hood of Illusions” has been established in the “General Myst Online: Uru Live Discussion” section of the MOUL forums where current status and ongoing discussions are posted for both the Hood of Illusions and the Fun House.