MSN Messenger downtime…and more

Yesterday (November 13th 2003), MSN Messenger servers were supposedly having “problems”. These problems weren’t reported by the MSN Messenger’s services status page. Given that MSN Messenger servers usually go through routine downtimes where maintenance is performed, these problems went unquestioned by the MSN Messenger “experts” at Mess.be, Messenger Plus!’s forums, MSNFanatic and their forums. However, it has recently been discovered that the MSN Messenger Server Protocol has been silently modified/updated to prevent Messenger Plus! control codes from working, not to mention several other characters that are used in MSN Messenger nicknames known as “nickname tricks”. Although, despite what other sites are reporting, multi-line nicknames do work — several people have tested this theory and it has proved false, the recent protocol update does NOT prevent users from having multi-line nicknames. It does however prevent users from using Messenger Plus! colour codes, bold codes, underline codes, strikeout codes (formatting tags/codes) in their nicknames (which Patchou has already stated that he’ll find a way to work around it). As this is a server-side issue all you can do is wait for Patchou to discover an ample work-around for this problem. Moreover, the formatting tags and whatnot will still work in your nickname until you try and change it.

The lingering question is now: What is Microsoft up to? First they block certain words from being in your nickname, then they remove it. Next they remove the block on those certain words and now add a block for certain characters, notably Messenger Plus! formatting code characters.

What is Microsoft up to?

Everyone who uses colours in their Messenger Display names were probably quite dissapointed that Microsoft blocked them from being used as well as any other Messenger Plus! formatting code.

According to my sources, the reason that Microsoft stopped the Messenger Plus! colour codes from working was because the characters used were interfering with XML logs. However, Patchou has found a work-around (as always) and has fixed the problem of no nickname formatting now. He uses totally new characters for formatting in names. The old characters will still work, but only if you use /nick to convert them to the new characters. If you want to be able to use colours in your display name, then you better download this new version of Plus!

For those of you who wish to hide the “says:” in your nickname, you’ll have to use /nick2 which is an unsupported command by Patchou. He has added it to prevent people from trying to find ridiculous hacks/cracks work-arounds to hide the “says:” in their nickname.

Custom Emoticons are now able to be displayed in the Messenger Plus! Quick Emote panel (accessed by typing a ‘(‘ and waiting a second).

The sponsor agreement has now been redesigned to keep people who don’t want it from accidentally installing it.

For a complete list of fixes/features in this version, goto http://www.msgplus.net/index.php?view=version.

Thanks again Patchou!

Current Version: Messenger Plus! 2.52.0071
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Source: Plus!Lite.com

Although this is old…like I said in the beginning, this may raise some questions and may create some curiousness among the BigBlueBall members.