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Role Playing (Games) The Almighty Buck

MMORPG Cheating For Profit 31

Posted by Zonk from the making-a-nanofast-buck dept.
1up has a piece on cheating for profit in Massively Multiplayer games. From the article, entitled MMOsploitation: "A universe is a great big tricky thing to make. Designers usually have more than seven days to put one together, but there are still a lot of cracks left in the world that they don't even know about until some player stumbles across them. When you have millions of people romping through your creation they're going to do all kinds of crazy, unanticipated things, many of which can allow them to become tiny gods if left unchecked."
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MMORPG Cheating For Profit More

MMORPG Cheating For Profit

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  • Time Bandits (Score:5, Funny)

    by sesshomaru ( 173381 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:33PM (#14466594) Journal
    Randall: You see, to be quite frank, Kevin, the fabric of the universe is far from perfect. It was a bit of botched job, you see. We only had seven days to make it. And that's where this comes in. This is the only map of all the holes. Well, why repair them? Why not use them to get stinking rich? -- Time Bandits

  • Real World (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RetepMc ( 814214 )
    I don't see how this deffers from the real world in which we live in. People will undoubtably exploit whatever there is for them to exploit.
  • TFA is not about cheating for profit, per se. It is about abusive behavior in MMOs for whatever reason.

    To sum up:

    There are lots of reasons people don't play by the rules in MMOs. Here's some examples of what people did in the past. Oh, there are a few major categories -- Duping, Pathfinding, Powerleveling, Griefing, Scripting/AFK, Hacking. And sometimes, some of these activities may even be condoned by a game.

  • Dull and boring mmos (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fiz Ocelot ( 642698 ) <baelzharon&gmail,com> on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:45PM (#14466689)
    "MMOs can be pretty famously tedious"

    That's pretty much why a lot of exploits go on. People want the highest levels but getting there is often times no fun at all. Instead of 100hrs of filler content why not try making the journey more fun? Of course then there's the people doing it for profit and that's another issue all together.

    • Because that doesn't work either. Take WoW: a whole world of interesting content that people still want to rush through, because all that matters to a large fraction of gamers is the achievement (being level 60, or having the coolest loot), not the journey.
    • I've always thought it would be cool if MMO makers deliberately put in some "secrets", and then guilds could try and abuse the system as much as possible, while trying to not let their secrets get out. It would be much more cloak-and-dagger (and fun).

  • and on the 137th day . . . (Score:4, Funny)

    by rev_sanchez ( 691443 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:50PM (#14466735)
    God made a minor revision to the inventory control system that accidentally allowed for duping certain large swords when the player equipped them and dropped them at the same time. This will be patched in Earth version 1.0.25

    Yep, just like God.

  • I'm sure... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @04:05PM (#14466865)
    "When you have millions of people romping through your creation they're going to do all kinds of crazy, unanticipated things, many of which can allow them to become tiny gods if left unchecked."

    I'm sure god has contemplated the same thing when man split the atom at the Trinity site.
    • Cliffy B said something like this, but more to the effect that users will go out of their way to destroy the experience you so beautifully crafted for them.

  • Urban Legend (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mr_Blank ( 172031 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @04:38PM (#14467220) Journal
    I had heard rumors of this Lord British stuff. But now that I read it on the internet I know this funny story must be true! From TFA
    Probably the most infamous griefing ever happened to Ultima creator Richard Garrott, when his character, Lord British, was murdered while addressing the people of his kingdom near the end of the Ultima Online beta. Rainz, a thief, pinched a fire field scroll from another player in attendance, then roasted LB on the spot. It's something that shouldn't have been possible, but either through negligence or a glitch Garrott's character wasn't flagged as invincible. In the chaos that followed demons were summoned in retaliation, which then over zealously killed a whole mess of innocent bystanders. In the end LB was resurrected and Rainz was killed before being banned from every Origin game forever and ever, Amen. In later statements Origin and Garrott himself claimed that the player was only banned from the UO beta, and wasn't actually banned for killing Lord British, but instead got the boot for previously exploiting and failing to report bugs. "We had actually been looking for him in order to ban him before this," they said, which to be nice, sounds a little disingenuous. To be less nice, it reeks of bullshit. Of course, all this happened nearly a decade ago, which is like, three centuries in Internet years. The only part that really matters is that Ultima's creator got killed in his own game, while in the middle of bragging about his invincibility, and it was freaking awesome.
    I would play more MMOs if I could watch griefers have deamons trained on them by GMs. That sounds like good entertainment compared to real life crime fighting.
    • That would be quite entertaining. Have griefers griefed by GMs. Then they can corpse-camp them and kill them again. Have the gold farmers have bot-GMs follow them around and steal all of their mobs. Have GMs turn up the speed on the mobs for trainers. I think a little (or a lot) of that would be enough to have a lot of them stop what they're doing for a while.

      • I've been an admin of a mud for well over a decade now, and I can tell you that no method of discipline will backfire faster or harder than this.

        "Griefers" are mostly people who've gotten bored by the real game, and are trying to make their own game to entertain themselves. Usually that's trying to make themselves as annoying as possible, and creating as much misery and unhappiness as they can.

        But note that this new game isn't about winning, or accomplishing anything in the context of the original game. Lik

    • Re:Urban Legend (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MoeDrippins ( 769977 )
      The old (then Verant based) Everquest "live events" were pretty much exactly this; except the part where you could kill them. The GM's killing hordes and hordes of players, and generally in a petty vengeance-filled manner though, oh yes, that happened at almost every opportunity. Then the zones would crash.
      • I remember when they opened a new continent and had an invasion of dark elves. First they attacked leading up to Highpass Hold in the nearby zone. This was level 30's and they dropped tainted weaponry.

        After that phase was done, level 50 dark elves invaded Highpass Hold itself a few minutes later. I had just died at the entrance in the forest, and was running invised by Highpass Hold when this happened. The dark elves proceeded to kill every player character (except me), but the HP guards just stood ther
    • Not only is it true, but for UO's 7th Anniversary, the Dev. team released an item to commemorate each year, and the first one was "Royal Leggings of Embers" to commemorate this event.

      Sadly, the item is way overpowered, especially on certain harsher ruleset servers, and nearly everyone on those servers (Siege Perilous and Mugen) are forced to wear these ugly orange platemail leggings merely to keep up.
  • but the article seems to never get to that point. Perhaps a better title would be "Cheating for advancement". Pretty common in MMORPGs. The big problem with some cheats is what isn't a cheat today could be one tomorrow. That occurs fairly often in the early days of a new MMORPG. Players find something that works wonders only to get slapped down when a GM/Developer/Whatnot decide its wrong.

    As for making a profit from cheating. Asheron's Call has had combat macroing for years and it was condoned in writ
  • Why does the author talk about power leveling when he himself says that power leveling is not cheating. Nor is it hacking. Nor is it griefing. Power leveling is nothing more than leveling as quickly as possible. This can be done by playing non-stop, acquiring the best equipment possible, knowing the best spots to hunt, receiving help from other players.

    The methods people employ to powerlevel CAN include things that are against the rules, but these fall under macroing, botting, and hacking, which the author
    • I'm not disputing your point.

      But I am suggesting that you may possibly be a biased party.
    • > Why does the author talk about power leveling when he himself says that power leveling is not cheating.

      Wondering that myself. Power Leveling / Turboing / Rushing is not cheating. It's just being very efficient at playing the game. It _may_ involve exploiting rules, but that is not a necessary condition, only sufficient.

      --
      MMORPG gamer: "Check out this phat loot of this mob!"
      Translation: There is nothing wrong with virtual dolls/dressup for boys!
      • In the case he cited in City of Heroes, it's just the natural result of the sidekicking system. You only need be nearby to a battle to get xp credit for it, and the lower you are, the more of an xp bonus you get (under the quite reasonable assumption that friends are adventuring together, so you accelerate the bottom so it catches up in level to the top.)

        Unfortunately, being nearby doesn't mean you have to help in the fight. And in this particular case, the people doing the fighting were level 50, the max

    • I actually had a discussion on this topic very recently.

      There's a difference between power gaming and power levelling. The former is playing a game intensely with the intention of quickly getting to a high level. The latter implies that you're doing something to get ahead without earning your status.

      In City of Heroes, for example, if you just stand in a mission entrance and let other people do the work for you, you're power levelling (a bad thing). If your contribution to the team is totally inconseq

  • They mention a mentoring system in the article that does not exist in World of Warcraft. They were thinking of EverQuestII.
  • I don't think taking advantage of pathfinding bugs should be considered cheating. Sounds like creative play to me.

  • The bottom line is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by garylian ( 870843 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:09PM (#14472266)
    If a player CAN do something, they will. Whether it is against the rules or not, if an exploit is detected, folks will run through it like mad for as long as they can.

    Game companies hate this, because those players that actually want to play the game as it was intended, freak out. Of course, those same players are happy to "twink" they new characters to the maximum the ruleset will allow, instead of really playing it from scratch, too.

    My father did programming for several major government projects just as computers came into use, inclulding programming on the oringal AWACs. The other programmers would write code, and then when someone broke it, would freak out.

    "Well, this is just BS. The instructions clearly show that the user is to press ENTER to continue. They pressed the letter K, instead, and it caused the program to crash! What a bunch of idiot users!"

    The problem is that, you have to attempt to anticipate EVERY single possible action the user COULD do, not is supposed to do. And therein lies the problem. In a simple user interface and application, this can be done. MMOs are so complicated, between their terrain layouts, to their handing out of rewards/experience/money, to their mob AI, that things will slip through the cracks.

    Players will find the dead zones in a mob's AI, or use the terrain to their advantage with a dead zone. They will go to places the developers didn't intend for players to get to yet or ever? Can you said Gnomish airport in WoW? And those bans for players accessing parts of the world that weren't finished yet at release? When they fixed the gnomish airport, several mages had camped out there the day before the patch, so they could port people to it. Dunno if it worked. I stopped playing WoW months ago.

    Look at all the hacks that were done early in WoW. Teleport hacks that allowed folks to teleport RIGHT to a chest, loot it, then move to the next one. They had patterns down. Folks also had bots to fish, and even fight, with detailed instructions of where it worked best.

    In EQ, there was showEQ, which gave you a detailed terrain map and mob placements, levels, and even some equipment if they were using it and it would drop as loot. It was such a pain to Sony/Verant that in the Plane of Hate, there were some invisible and non-attacking mobs that had names of "ShowEQ Users Suck". Only someone who either used it or knew someone that used it, was familiar with it. Sony changed it's encryption from 8-bit to 64-bit or 128-bit (I forget which) that changed with each patch, and it was hacked in LESS THAN 24 HOURS! For a glorified freakin map!

    In the DDO beta, there was a quest that players could use invisibility potions/spells on, and bypass all of the tough mobs, and then loot something at the end for easy and big XP. There was another dungeon with massive loot for almost no risk; having to beat only one boss mob (that was just buffed up bigtime) and a few easier mobs. It's a freaking beta, and this was only reported by a handful of players, but exploited by hundreds. For characters that get wiped in a month and a half. Turbine had to close one of them, it was being abused so much.

    And then there is the fun that griefers have with exploits to kill other players. Summonings that killed everyone in the bazaar in WoW. Summonings in the DDO beta, where the greater elementals would be summoned in the newbie inn, and when the summoner leaves, the elementals kill everyone in there, as they are too powerful for the toons in the inn to touch. Anyone remember the legacy of Fansy the Bard from EQ? (Wholesale rules changed for bards in PvP due to his exploits, which were hilarious.)

    What MMO players will do when they think they aren't being observed is scary. EQ GMs and WoW GMs would sometimes hide invis and WATCH the exploit in process, then ban everyone involved. And the player base would rally to the cheaters as being unfairly persecuted. "But, Player Bob just happend to be going through the zone! And you

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