No Offline-Mode Feature Please!

Why should servers have an oppurtunity to be cracked? The rest of us have paid $30 for Minecraft, while they spend $0. I would assume that offline-mode servers are illegal, as Notch has recently taken down minecraftforfree.com.
What use is there to offline-mode servers? They aren't safe, and I would assume they are illegal (as stated above).

 

One major use for the offline mode is when you can't connect to minecraft.net. Sure it's not safe, but if you can't connect, you can't connect. Plus it's useful as a developer, as you can use a few fake clients to test plugins.

 

I guess that's true, but other than that...

mbaxter
If Bukkit doesn't support the use of offline-mode: false, why is it still there?
Of course, there are some pros that evilmidget38 , but other than that, it isn't a great feature to use.
Notch spent a ton of his life coding Minecraft, and some people on the interwebs have chosen to not repay him, and get cracked versions of servers, and clients.

EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.

 

I would even say not allow it just so we don't have to deal with the "help my server was hacked"

 

ShootToMaim
It is a Minecraft feature, so it remains a CraftBukkit feature.

Offline-mode servers are not evil. They can be a great tool for debugging or development. Support for them does not exist on these forums, and we will remove them if posted as an advertised server available to the public. Public offline mode servers are there solely to support piracy.

I do not bother to turn my server offline when the authentication servers go down anymore. They are often back up very quickly, and I prefer to not to open myself up to the risk of running in offline mode.

If you are debugging in an offline mode server, and run into an bug, it should be no challenge to turn that online and confirm the bug, so there is no reason to provide support.

mindless728 - If the server is offline and they get attacked, they can turn online and avoid the attack. That is no reason to remove the feature that does have legitimate uses for debugging or testing.

 

I do a lot of my plugin testing on an offline test server. It's extremely useful.

 

TnT yes I agree it is very useful for developers to have access to it, I just think that it gets abused a lot so people can play for free, keep in mind it only takes one incident before someone running an offline server knows not to say they are

I myself use it to develop code as I don't need to log in or anything or can use the default Player name and have two accounts to test it on

Just a little annoying that people are abusing this tool to play for free (or allow others to play for free)

 

I use offline mode when im with my mates.
We have all brought the game but because i am at a boarding school and they blocked lan. So i made a Ad-Hoc network. THANK NOTCH FOR OFFLINE!!!!

 

I don't understand why you people go apeshit over offline-mode. It's vanilla behavior and Notch doesn't care if you pirate the game, as long as you tell people about it.

A lot of my friends have no way of paying for the game due to not having a debit card/PayPal, and strict parents. Is Notch going to flat out say no? No, he isn't. He's even told people on Twitter that it's ok to "pirate" the game. There's a post on his Tumblr explaining how he loses nothing from "pirated copies".

minecraftforfree was taken down because it self-hosted the Minecraft JAR and allowed people to play it within the browser away from minecraft.net, not because it was all "pirated/cracked".

 

If it is built into the game "offline mode" it is not hacked or cracked, it is a feature.
Unless you want another genius game like diablo 3?

When they decide to stop the support for that game hopefully many years into the future (no more authentication server) what then?

A game no matter how much protection it has will be cracked so why negatively affect the people who did pay for it?
I still remember why 2 of my cd-rom drives failed to the awesome DRM back in the day.

People who do hack or use cracked games have either already bought the game, can't or wouldn't at all so does it really affect the game sales?

Personally I use several different clients, official, modded and cracked since I run my own server which is in offline mode due to the nature it is on a wireless network separate from internet access.
And in doing so have gotten another dozen people interested who have also bought the game.

Notch had some foresight not to restrict his game and in doing so it was one of the key elements the game become a success.

-------read this again-------
RESTRICTING A GAME WILL ONLY NEGATIVELY AFFECT IT.

 

I use offline mode for debugging as I have an offline mode username changer built into my client, this allows me to check if my plugin runs correctly with 2 players and that all the correct messages are sent to the player.

 

I use it all the time for debugging plugins. I only have one payed account, you know

 

Can you get me a link to that? That would be SO useful to me.

 

No posting of offline mode clients would be allowed here.
I use an offline client in conjunction with my legitimate one to test plugins that require more than one player. It's also useful when recording fly footage of the game, since you can use it as a camera. However, it may be better to replace the offline mode option with a "multiple logins" option to allow one account to log in multiple times. Yes, this could have problems, such as login spamming, but it would allow plugin testing and recording to occur without threat of cracked clients entering. There are issues with that idea, but it's beside the point.

 

Just for a local test server & part of the testing would be to see how it reacts to different username (omes with default permissions) but i guess i'll look for it myself.

 

I can't redistribute that sorry.

 

I started playing minecraft in 1.3 beta, and I bought it at 1.5 beta. If I didn't have access to the cracked version back then, I would have never bought minecraft, and I would not be here right now. Can you just imagine bukkit without JOPHESTUS? it'd be hell for a great deal of members.

tl:dr I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me using cracked minecraft at the start
BTW: I only played singleplayer when I used cracked.
BTW2: I don't support cracked servers at all. I am just saying how cracked clients can be useful in advertising the game (sorta?)

 

Many of us, including some staff, would rather that situation, believe it or not.

 

You may think that now, but I'm sure you'd be in tears within a week.

 

I actually had my server running in offline mode for a day by accident. I was graced with visits from such characters as Notch and Player (Steve). Someone logged in as me but they couldn't figure out how to op themselves so they left. LOL. I have a cryptic CommandHelper command alias to enable all the op-ish features. Not in case this happened, but because I play legit unless I have to spy on a possible hacker.

Besides my own stupidity, I think offline mode is a good way to test stuff. I'm not a dev but I am an owner and I use minecraft.net downtime to test out new plugins. Yes, I'm addicted to Minecraft and Bukkit.

 

Well, the hacked client I use to test hack detection on my server had an offline mode feature, hehe I tested my default permissions with Notch.