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MMORPG Cheating For Profit
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."
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.
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
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).
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 there and didn't defend anybody. Height of lameness. Way to go, immersion designers in that asinine game.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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