In March 2024, the “Phantom Knight” gaming anti-bot and anti-macro system appeared in the Korean version of the MMORPG Throne and Liberty. According to the developers, he was supposed to appear near suspicious characters and attack them. A living player could easily avoid an unwanted fight with him, since he cannot be killed. But characters controlled by macros and third-party programs would not be able to appreciate the scale of the problem and would die. In the early days, the system amused the players with its behavior, and also quite effectively fought against dishonest players.
However, after scheduled maintenance on April 11, 2024, reports appeared that the “Phantom Knight” began to behave incorrectly – attacking and excessively pursuing honest players. According to eyewitnesses, the “knights” began to appear and attack in various places. After that, they follow the character everywhere and immediately attack him if the player hesitates for a moment. You can only take refuge in cities, but as soon as you go out into the open world, you are again faced with this problem.
Initially, the community believed that with these messages the violators wanted to discredit the work of the Phantom Knight, but over time it became clear that the problem really existed. Already on the afternoon of April 12, a discussion of this situation could be found on the official forum and various social networks. Someone even joked that in this way NCSOFT compensates for the lack of PvP in the open world for some players.
The developers have not yet commented on the current situation, and the support service responds to users with routine responses. The head of the Russian-speaking guild EndGame received this answer to his question about the correct operation of the “Phantom Knights”:
In short, the developers don’t see any significant problems at the moment, but they need time to analyze the situation.
Meanwhile, the players discuss what can be done other than standing in the city to get rid of the annoying “knights”. Someone reported that they are lagging behind in PvP events and are no longer a pain. Someone suggests farming cooperative dungeons and waiting for the developers to fix this problem. And some even suggest deleting the game.
I express my gratitude to the users Russian speaking discord by Throne and Liberty and vk communitiesfor sharing their stories related to this problem.
