Allstar sign-up

Allstar is a portal I meant to cover before, but I seem to have forgotten to write about it. I found some old sign-up photos stored away in my blog photo directory but they're out of date now. Allstar has changed their sign-up page a little since I took those screen captures. However, signing up for this site is pretty straight forward and easy. Head over to the site and have your i-Pin ID ready.

Start by clicking "회원가입" underneath the red login button. Ignore the impulse to use the foreigner sign-up form. If you do this, your account takes time to be verified. They expect you to fax or attach a scan of your passport for verification. Using the i-Pin you can pass on your details to the site through the normal registration process. So choose the left-most option. Then click the i-Pin tab on the next page and launch the i-Pin interface. Sign-in and it will pass on your details to the website. Fill out the rest of the form and away you go. The form has all the standard questions. I can't recall right now if the ID and nickname can be the same or not. Their captcha has changed. You don't write what you see, you might have to do a math question. So basically put in the value of what you would get. For example the current captcha on the foreigner registration page that I can see says "8+4+5" so I'd enter 17, not "8+4+5".

The reason I bring up this portal is of course a first person shooter by the name of "Another Day". I played this game last year during one of the beta tests, but it didn't run that well. I tried it briefly a few months ago again and it was much better. Now with the new machine I'm going to give it a proper go and write it up.

Windyzone registration

Windyzone is the first site we'll sign-up for that requires our I-PIN. It is a mostly mundane portal, however they have somehow snagged Company of Heroes. Yes the fantastic RTS from Relic. It also isn't just the multi-player component. You can play the campaign through as well. So we'll head over and click on the familiar 회원가입 button located under the login panel on the right.

They've conveniently labeled the I-PIN option for us in English. Go ahead and click that. When you do the name fields will be removed and the buttons below will become a single big blue button. Push it. This will initiate your I-PIN login.

Here is how this works. First enter your I-PIN ID. Don't bother with the password now. Hit the big blue button to the right of it and the pop-up will reload and probably center itself. You'll also notice that the service provider will change to 공공, or another company if you don't have your I-PIN from them. At this point you can go ahead and enter your password and click the login button. I've already signed-up for this particular site. I rushed through before checking a bunch of sites in my I-PIN research, but what follows is the standard registration page like the ones we saw with Pmang or any other site. Enter all your info, confirm your user ID, etc. When you're done, hit the big 확인 button and you should be good to go. This site doesn't suffer from the long name problem as far as I know and at 19 characters my English name was taken just fine.

Beyond Company of Heroes, what can Windyzone offer us? As can be expected, there are some RPG games, flash games and a few casual and action games. Really not much. Most are overly cute like you'd find at several other portals. Company of Heroes is a really odd fit for this site. I would have expected it to end up somewhere like Pmang, Hangame or Hanbiton.

I-PIN

What is the I-PIN? The I-Pin is a kind of alternative to using your ARC on every website. This is extremely useful for foreigners as many Korean websites don't feature specific sign-up pages for foreigners. The process is fairly simple first you'll make an I-PIN using your ARC but then on subsequent websites you can use the I-PIN to sign-up. It is the same sign-up page that the regular Koreans use. There are actually several companies that provide I-PINs. As a foreigner there is one we should use.

To make your I-PIN head over to 공공I-PIN. They're a foreigner friendly I-PIN company. The other companies require additional verification, a cell phone, bank certificate, etc. The English sign-up for this requires nothing beyond your ARC. The page is entirely in English. So I don't need to walk you through this. To get you started though look towards the bottom for "Getting public I-PIN". Enter your info and within a short time you'll have yourself an I-PIN. There is some enjoyable konglish on the page, but it is still pretty straightforward.

Now, when you want to go sign-up for a site that doesn't have a foreigner sign-up page, look for the I-PIN option. Here is where your mileage will vary. On some sites this works perfectly fine, like Windyzone, but other sites will kick back a name error. Nexon and Netmarble currently do this for me. However, I spoke to another foreigner who was able to sign-up successfully for Netmarble. I've got e-mails going to them to figure out what the problem is. I've sent an e-mail to Nexon asking them about it, but they haven't gotten back to me yet. I've also asked 공공I-PIN about letting foreigners set a "Korean" name that could be passed to the site as verified so that it wouldn't break their forms. Also no answer on that one yet.

The I-PIN has a lot of use just beyond games. It will also help you sign-up for other sites. I just used it to sign-up for the E-mart website. They do have a foreign sign-up but the I-PIN worked just as snazzy. If you have issues on individual pages you might try finding their customer service center and attempting to contact them. Some of them respond quite well to English e-mails. Look for their 고객센터. Usually upper right. Once there you might dig around for an option that looks like "1:1". This is what they use to refer to e-mail help. Most sites let you access this logged out but something, like Nexon, don't. Don't ask me how you're supposed to get help if you can't register. Netmarble will not respond to English e-mails.

While this is useful for convenience on some sites, it is a necessity on other sites. Windyzone is one of those sites and so is Netmarble. If you try to sign-up for Netmarble, let me know if it works or not. Also let me know how many letters your English name is.