Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail helped players block stalkers, but the problem might get much worse with a backend exploit some mods are already taking advantage of

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail introduced a range of new blacklist features aimed at addressing complaints that the MMO did not offer enough tools to help people escape stalking and harassment from other players. Unfortunately, it seems the implementation of these changes has introduced a backend exploit that could make it easier than ever for bad actors to harass, and mods are starting to emerge that take advantage of it.

With the introduction of the new blacklist features in Dawntrail, blacklisting an individual character would now block all characters tied to that player's account. As PC Gamer notes, players soon discovered that, alongside this feature, each player now had a unique "account ID" that would be broadcast to the game client whenever you entered the same area as one of that player's characters.

With the right mod, somebody could, in theory, start matching characters to account IDs and build a database that makes public any given individual's full roster of alts. It doesn't take much imagination to see how such a feature might be used for harassment. While your best defense against a genuine stalker in FF14 might once have been to create a new character, if somebody could track down your alts you'd have to make a whole new account - something Square Enix's notoriously labyrinthine account system would not make easy, to say nothing of the progress setbacks.

This week, the community discovered that just such a mod was already in development. Called PlayerScope, it promises to track pretty much all character information tied to a given account, from alts to retainer assistants, and future updates promise to add in Free Company and PvP team info, too. The mod has not been made publicly available yet, but its developer is currently whitelisting players for use of the plugin.

To say that the overall response from the community has been negative would be an understatement. The consensus is that the only purpose of such a tool would be to harass other players, and nobody's happy with the dev's suggestion that you should join the PlayerScope Discord if you want to opt out from being tracked.

The Discord for PlayerScope is currently quite small, but the community has some hope that making noise about it early will draw Square Enix's attention to shut the whole thing down - or, ideally, to correct the account ID issue that makes it all possible in the first place.

Final Fantasy 14 is one of the best MMORPGs around, but you can't host a massive online community without some of its members trying to spoil things for everybody.