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The State of Security in MMORPGs
Anonymous writes "Security researchers Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw poked around in World of Warcraft and other online games, finding vulnerabilities and exploiting the system using online bots and rootkit-like techniques to evade detection. Their adventures in online game security became fodder for the book,
Exploiting Online Games. McGraw
discussed with securityfocus the state of security in modern video games, cheating and anti-cheating systems, how the market for cheats, exploits, and digital objects is growing, what we could learn from the design of these huge systems, and how game developers react to submissions of security vulnerabilities."
For me it is a surprise that the book was published by the mainstream publisher Addison-Wesley. Do they release expect many sales of what initially seems like a shady book?
When in a MMO game you can exploit rules and get an easy way in life of your caracter (evolving) its like some people exploiting laws for profit to get an easy way of life.
When in a MMO that person gets banned its like people who get caught in real life.
The more tight the rules/law the harder to exploit them. But making a full proof rule/law system? We dont even have that in real life!!
Lame article.
The market for cheats and exploits is so large primarily because of the "make it a grind!" trap that most MMORPGs fall into. If you're into a MMORPG, and you "need" cash for a certain item, or to recoup your costs for the last big raid, or what have you, you seem to get one of two choices. You can grind away whatever playtime you have in order to get the cash legitimately, you can buy it from someone that is grinding away (or perhaps using exploits), or you can turn to exploits/hacks/whatever yourself.
I understand that some percentage of the playing population is going to cheat, hack, or use an exploit simply because they can. But if game design didn't make it so attractive to so many people to reap the rewards that go along with it, it would be a pretty minor problem. In my opinion, as soon as you're killing the 3,000th slightly different textured mob for his toe...or running a dungeon you could do in your sleep just to make sure a fellow guild members armor is a little bit different color so you have a shot at the next dungeon, MMORPGs start losing some of their fun. I don't know of too many people that really enjoy running things that are on "farm" status, but there's a necessity to grind it out built into the games.
I know it keeps people hooked longer, but it also keeps the temptation to play...creatively...in people's mind.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Some people actually write malware to install keyloggers by hacking into game-related sites. There was an article in the Firehose that was rejected about how Final Fantasy XI's website was hacked and a keylogger was created that would install through browser exploits. It would then steal gamers passwords (which were apparently stored clear-text in the game settings?) and then the accounts would be used to steal gold from them. Apparently Sony's response was to completely ignore complaints and refuse to restore deleted accounts.
So not only does the game client have to be secure, the entire computer has to be secure - apparently MMORPGs are big enough business to warrant malware explicitly targeting players.
Just ask regular players about the security of the MMORPG's that they play.
Most are regular hack fests.
Ultima Online: Scripting in the number one player complaint, but EA doesn't give a rats ass, they never ban, despide their TOS saying otherwise. Other cheats include ways to make players drop items, and using bots to monitor certain parts of the game for the sole purpose of knowing exactly when to raid, and then there is all the speed hacking (EG movement hacks) that goes on.
Lineage II: I played for 6 months, and never met another player, just about 4000 different bots.
LOTRO: Besides the game missing something, it had its share of bots.
WoW: I get spammed with cheat site URL's every time I login, regardless of realm.
Of all the above WoW seems to have it the most under control, but that doesn't mean they don't have room to improve.
Cheating is so rampant in Ultima Online anymore, that the fricken game isn't worth logging into.
I'm curious if "rootkit-like techniques to evade detection" is anything but BS market speak.
Finally, strategies for stealing Cloudsongs!
They don't care if their games are rotten with farmers and trading of game assets/currency.
All they will do is buy external software like GameGard, whose primary function is to hob resources of the customer's PC and make it less stable.
Thus, the low-end PHB will be able to claim to his boss he is actively fighting the problem, with GameGard's monthly invoice in hand for proof.
Meanwhile the players will lament about the enormous parasitic-like farmer population, detrimental to the game itself, and in plain view of anyone who actually logs in the game.
Well after reading the article, following links, and such its obvious the biggest thing they exploited with WOW during the course of writing and selling their book is the name. In other words, unless they had referenced WOW their book would be relegated to the dust bins of book sellers.
These two seem hell bent on FUD with Blizzard in regards to Warden. I haven't connected the dots but it appears these are either the same people who flew off the handle when Warden changed or are in the same group. Basically take something and use choice wording and catch phrases to imply sinister behaviour where none really exists. IOW - 911 conspiracy hacks read from the same play book. These guys just seem to be on some damn fool crusade against Warden that it borders on silly. The very same people probably don't blink when it comes to handing over their CC/Debit card to someone behind the counter freak out over a company that actually has to take steps to protect the data the players voluntarily entered when subscribing!
As for WOW itself, location hacks exist as the client and server are not always in synch for these actions. The biggest impact "cheaters" have on WOW is on the non-cheating players. Money transfers between accounts take an hour to complete, sales via the auction house are no longer immediate but instead take an hour, and trial accounts are so restricted that teaching someone to play with one is an exercise in frustration.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The only way that online games are going to have a chance at getting away from these issues is with the implementation of skill-based advancement instead of advancement based on accumulated experience/gold. As it stands, a high-level player in many online games doesn't need to have learned any particular skill themselves, but a simple accumulation of wealth via goldsellers to buy high-quality equipment and mindless hack-n-slash, combined with good macros, and they can usually come out on top.
Contrast this approach with what's seen in something like Jumpgate, where players have to actually develop their skill as a pilot in order to be successful in combat. I'd expect that gold-buying in that game is significantly lower per-capita than in your standard grind games like WoW or LotRO.
When we pray for the end of goldselling, what we're really hoping for is the beginning of an era where non-transferable capital (the skill you develop from playing the game) becomes the dominant factor in advancement.
The OP's source article seems to be a prime example of astroturfing. The guy talks in generalities about computer security and gives absolutely no examples. He's just selling his book and the article really says nothing. He also used the phrase "paradigm shift" so you knew there wasn't any real content ahead. Plus, most security people will attest to the fact that any "computer security expert" who has a PhD is laughable. That guy probably couldn't get his parking validated at H.O.P.E.
The problem is a game on the net is exposed statistically to millions of people at any given time, it's no surprise that game companies can't deal with "Zerging effect" (i.e. a term from starcraft where one masses units and over-runs the enemy).
Game companies neither have: 1) The talent or 2) The resources, to deal with this number of people effectively. Not to mention that, it only takes a few geniuses to post or sell their cheats online for them to spread to everyone else who's interested in them.
Vendor Guards Bank, seems easy enough.
Online games (and any game in which you accumulate posessions) are just variations on a Skinner box. Put a gamer in a box, have him peck away at moving about the world, and give him possessions randomly. It's the same sort of thing that makes people sit in front of slot machines for hours. If they *did* make a hackproof game, only a few people would play it and it would fail financially.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Massively just did an interview with John Smedley and touched upon the issue of farmers/plat sellers and how they are using social hacking to bring in profits and hurt the company.
Part 1: http://www.massively.com/2008/01/14/a-ces-interview-with-soe-ceo-john-smedley-pt-1/
Part 2: http://www.massively.com/2008/01/14/a-ces-interview-with-soe-ceo-john-smedley-pt-2/
SOE owns and operates Everquest, Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, and other MMOs.
I think the issue of farming is higher on the radar now than it ever has been. The behinds the scenes things are really frustration. A lot of these farmers are essentially stealing from us. What they do is they charge us back all the time. They use a credit card -sometimes stolen, sometimes not - to buy an account key. They use the account for a month, and then they call the credit card company and charge it back. We have suffered nearly a million dollars just in fines over the past six months; it's getting extremely expensive for us. What's happening is that when they do this all the time, the credit card companies come back to us and say "You have a higher than normal chargeback rate, therefore we'll charge you fines on top of that."
Yes.
That Islamic virtual reality game youve invented inside your head sounds great. Sign me up.
I was a GM in Everquest for several years. I could chime in on my experience, which mostly related to scouting out in-game cheating. We were trained to look for signs of more elaborate types of cheats and report them higher up in the chain.
In most of these games, the main thing wasn't really "cheating" as much as it was "exploiting" flaws of characteristics of the game's design. On some maps it was possible to "fall through the world" and people could effectively position themselves so they could attack monsters but the monsters could not attack them. This was also accomplished by using creative means to get on top of structures in the game geometry that the designers had never intended to be accessible. There were places for example, where we'd often find PCs on roofs in hostile towns attacking high-level NPCs and due to the pathing, were able to not be counter-attacked. There was a constant cat-and-mouse game trying to find out how they were pulling these things off. It was more interesting than annoying usually. I was always impressed by some of the creative ways people would try to give themselves an advantage.
Midway into EQ's popularity a number of software programs started to appear. These really blew the lid off the game's integrity. I forget the name of this one utility, but it was a utility that managed to decrypt the game stream, and due to the way the game was designed, when you entered a zone, this program could identify the coordinates of and nature of every NPC and PC in a certain range. SOE's game design, which often sent more info to the client than the client needed to make available to the user, created a situation where once someone decrypted the data, they had access to what was going on. Suddenly rare NPCs were being killed within minutes of appearing, and when a GM appeared in a zone to investigate, the perps knew instantly we were there and would logoff. Again, a cat-and-mouse game erupted where the developers started routinely changing the game's encryption and eventually they curtailed much of this behavior and made it too difficult to use the software. But at its heyday, the cheats were quite impressed. You'd have your main game client, and then you'd have a second computer sniffing the traffic, decoding it and displaying a real-time map of all PCs and NPCs in the zone. Very high-tech. Also very difficult to catch. Since the cheat program wasn't even on the same PC, programs like WoW's "Warden" wouldn't help. The only way you could identify someone cheating was to watch their in-game behavior. When you'd see PCs make a beeline for a rare NPC within seconds of it spawning, you knew something was up.
Last but not least, in these games, the servers log just about everything. If they want to catch a cheater, the behavior is quite easy to spot. I think the biggest issue with security in MMORPGS isn't being able to catch people cheating, it's trying to figure out how to keep the proper balance between game integrity and profitability. Probably 90% of people playing MMORPGs have broke rules and most of this behavior is on file. The companies cannot afford to take too hard a stance unless the transgressions are creating big problems.
One of the things that needs to be remembered here about all of this concern about game hacks, bot players, gold sellers, and other nefarious aspects of the MMORPG universe is that a considerable amount of what happens here is just sheer intellectual curiosity.
Face it, network packets are for many software developers hardly a mystery, and trying to reverse engineer the communications protocols between a game server and a client is hardly the most challenging task in computer science. If the game publisher decides to encrypt the communication in some way, that encryption is easy to reverse engineer as well... especially if you have the software for the client on your own machine. It may crack up the skill level a little bit if the "hacker" has to decompile the client in order to find the encryption mechanism, but that just makes it all that more of a prize to win and find out.
For several of the on-line games that I play, I'll admit that I've been tempted to try this myself just to see how it was done. And there are major communities who love to do this stuff. For example, the game Runescape has a fairly good group of people who have tried to reverse engineer the communications protocols, and have gone so far as to recreate the server software itself and re-implement a client using the same protocol. One excellent example is Moparscape (Warning: click on this link at your own risk... these are real hackers here!) This is not the only server like this, I should add.
That real-world cash is also injected into the need/demand for these sort of reverse engineering efforts is really just icing on the cake for many of these individuals who get into this activity.
How you can get rid of this "game about a game" effort in terms of an arms race between the software publisher and the hacker community trying to reverse engineer the communications protocol may be something worth investigating. I'm certain that, as usual, the game industry is probably far more secure in its communication protocols than most other "real-world" activities like bank transactions and electronic voting, perhaps even military communications. This would be as a result of the vested interested of those young enough to have the patience and determination in order to hack this communications system.
I'm also certain that even the software developers who write these games have a fun time trying to come up with strategies in order to thwart the hacker community. For them, it is a fun intellectual exercise as well, especially when you are going up against people brighter than you are. So in this sense, it is a sort of chess game with slightly higher stakes on the line. And once a "hacker" has obtained all of this arcane knowledge... what are they supposed to do with that hard-won knowledge? (besides give themselves the best equipment in the game.)
That, I think, is my biggest complaint. Properly designed economies would go a long way to reduce the incentive to cheat. But WOWs economy, especially lately, is spectacularly broken. Most raw materials are worth more than anything you can craft out of them. Low-level items are either useless and impossible to sell, or--if useful--people with high level alts have priced them at a range no new-user can ever afford. I would suggest MMORPG designers spend less time on the technical aspect of the cheats, more time on the internal game economics that motivate them. And no, it's not really the grinding. Just the economy. Raw materials + labor should always have greater value than the raw materials alone, for example.
For a well-written novel on this exact topic, check out Halting State by Charles Stross.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Sometimes the quotes at the bottom of the page are so amazingly appropriate: "If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything."
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Currently i'm playing a new game, it just hit open beta about a month ago. Shaiya online. It's a great game for a free to play MMO. Already some hacks have been spotted, but for the most part the hacks are out of view..
My gripe as with most MMOs is the rate of development. Players always will out pace the game development.. and i would rather have the developers focusing on the game, and not fixing flaws. -as weird as that sounds. Most studios do not have the man power to address issues quickly. -blizzard and the like is a while different story
This brings up the reason why companies use software such as Gameguard, or even Steam...
-and i think that unfortunately.. this is the future of online gaming, outside entitys trying to secure the game.
Back to the EQ GM comment. -Active GMs have been the only way to properly address issues in game. Once EQ was picked up by Sony the GM count dropped, and in game quality did also.
my 2 cents.
Kill your TV
Secondly, Puzzle Pirates is a skill-based MMOG and there are still plenty of cheats and scams.
First they ban your account and then they fix if and when they get around to it.
I find security in MMORPGs to be as bad as you can possibly imagine. I get killed all the time, and there's never any police around to report the crime to. Don't get me started.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Just wait until you get sex WITHOUT paying for it. It's even better!
don't write exploitable code.
it doesn't happen.
everyone knows this.
next topic; move along.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Also, the authors of Exploiting Online Games have a sample chapter available, and Usenix has a video of one of Gary McGraw's presentations on their web site.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
to purchase a little Temporary Security in MMORPGS, deserve neither Liberty nor Security
I normally see the grind, time or challenge based explanations for MMORPG cheating but what about the folks who do it because, like in life, they seek to get as much as possible for as little investment as is necessary? The above three reasons are certainly valid and although I've never seen someone quantify it I'd imagine it'd be a reflection of real life, no? Therefore it wouldn't be a crazy assumption to believe most do it out of that difficult to characterize in one word combination of greed, laziness and perceived online omnipotence.
Also and much like rubber-necking, that "good" feeling a lot of folks get when cheating or in any way "getting over on someone" cannot be understated. Perhaps simply that they played on the dark side and lived to tell?
The funny thing about it all is that the knowledge, scripts, etc. are created by the comparatively few that are technically capable of the work and often just doing it for the challenge. They then foolishly disseminate it to the public eventually making it prevalent enough to be caught on radars. It's like when high school nerds show jocks how to cheat on an exam to win cool points and end up screwing themselves.
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
I got a copy of their book as part of our multimedia research group. The first half is a reasonably approachable treatment of networked application type security issues, sure it's constantly making reference to games and gambling but in an era where most of our students in Comp Sci have played, or do play online games it makes for an understandable example. I would say we pulled a bunch of stuff out of that for our web apps course and some of it for our general software engineering courses. The latter half, with a rather extensive focus on world of warcraft, and it's security from warden (which now transmits encrypted so an 'out of the box' view of the book and their software governor won't do you much good) is insightful, if somewhat traumatic to try and read. Unless you're really inclined to go disassembling your online game much of the benefits of this book can be found elsewhere, but for any game developer it's probably worth reading over a couple of hours to get an appreciation for the sort of attacks you'll face and someone elses take on the same problem in case there's something you've missed.
The MMORPG "Runescape" attempts to thwart automated player clients by imposing itself at random intervals to put real human intelligence to the test. You could see a lot of hacks and anti-hacks this way: considerable time is spent designing something on computers and (inevitably to a great extent) for computers as well; but for some strange reason they are marketed toward human players, many of whom (understandably) would be just as interested in having their computer playing in their stead; so the creators try to come back and slightly increase the demand for normal human involvement, without the aid of computers. Which is ultimately self-defeating considering this is the stance they take as the logical end of what they set out to do which was completely the opposite. Strangely enough, you don't end up with so many problems in games that really stimulate the imagination and intellect, the kind that appeals to all ages and strikes people as "addictive". Frankly, that the biggest problems of the self-contradictory sort are to be found in MMORPG's isn't all that surprising. Role-playing is based on depersonalizing and dehumanizing the player to begin with, sticking them with formulaically limited means of solving problems that are yet supposed to somehow reflect their "selves" in "reality"; "robots will be robots".
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
MMO's strike at the heart of the American lifestyle - the struggle to be #1. This isn't Mario where at best you beat the game in 20 minutes and put a video on youtube. You build up a character to become supreme then show it off.
Problem is the path to superiority in MMO's isn't done through skill, but rather time invested. Bots are not good players, but are good at investing time.
When MMO's hit mainstream that reward skill before time, then the bots will dissapear.
"Do the security features in Windows Vista -- such as limits on HD playback and signed drivers -- help in fighting cheaters?".
I'm glad I'll be able to use my modded character over an HDMI cable, and I can install a 3rd party device without a signed driver to get around this.
Who thinks up these questions?
don't disagree with each other
no wars.
everyone knows this.
next topic; get real.
That's exactly the same reason I went to Guild Wars too. If I step away for a while, or do some grinding, I don't feel like I'm wasting my money. Not only that, but I think GW is a much more fun game than WoW too (I know, I'll burn in Hell for such blasphemy). I like the fact that it has an underlying epic storyline, I love the graphics (WoW is a little too cartoony for me), the henchies are nice if you're just soloing, the ability to easily move between servers makes it easier to trade and play with friends, and the general atmosphere in the cities seems a lot friendlier than WoW.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Playing chess requires no skill? Since the gameplay mechanics are so simple -- in fact far simpler than WoW?
Knowledge is an aspect of skill -- they are not opposites. If you disagree please direct your comments to the people who write dictionaries.
No security? Are you kidding, for the right amount of GP's, there's always someone to guard you from death. Or PvP slayers.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
The game in many ways is even worse then WoW, yes at the beginning progress is rapid and you can quest all the way. No problem.
And then you hit 45 and it all changes, your new class quest is a nightmare, a whole list of items to collect that drop just from 1 critter for 1 person in the group and for instance Slime of Helegrod is needed by all the classes. Yes, it is RAID time with loot rotation.
Then there is your armour, level 47 critical items from single use recipes that can't use a critical item so you have about a 1/3-4 change of actually getting a critical. Do the math on the number of materials needed and you quickly come to realise that Lotro POST level 45 is again a grind.
The reason? Well this is turbine, they don't do original, but mostly, what choice do they really have?
Content costs money, there is a rather ambitious slideshow available somewhere that shows the expansions they once had planned, you are talking a couple of years worth to map all the way to mount doom, but what the hell kind of level will you be by that time?
The grind is way to keep the game 'alive'. Without the grind, well what is there to do once you reached max level? Lotro hurts from this even more then WoW precisly because the early levels are so easy. I got 3 alts at or close to 50 and two rapidly going through their 30's. And then what? Getting them there was fun, but I think that unless the expansion really turns the game around, when I get my last to 45 I will quit for the next MMO.
Make no mistake, Lotro falls into the same WoW style grind later on. Crafters will know this. Jewellers can refine gem, for 4 tiers 1 raw gem makes 1 polished gem. The last tier suddenly requires 2 raw gems to make one polished. You glue themtogether or something? There is no logic in it, it is just to extend the grind even longer. Same reason why platinum ingots suddenly require 4 ore when previous tiers had 2 ores for 1 ingot. Or why Misty Mountain Silver is so rare and drops less from a node then earlier resources.
If I am nice I think that turbine wanted to make a nice game but was faced at later levels with the problem that during testing people finished too quickly and with no time to add extra content they just stretched it out.
If I am nasty I think that turbine wanted to get you hooked with the early rapid progress and then hit you with the grind instead of content so they could milk your subscription money until they ruin this game like they did their earlier title. Lets not forget, Turbine is the MMO company that actually managed to kill of their previous title, even SOE hasn't done that yet. SOE just leaves them lingering in agony.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Download the free trial for Lotro, create a character and head to Bree. There is a quest there that starts at night, from a ghost near the southern gate, he asks you to find a ring that was lost at some baracks. Yet you don't recall any baracks even being at bree. It is suggested you ask around.
Want to guess how many people INSTANTLY upon receiving that quest ask where to find this ring? 10%? 20%? I once just parked myself for an hour at night time near that ghost, just to see how many people that came near him would next ask the question. 8 people. 6 asked in public chat, the others might very well have done the quest before or asked in private chat.
People don't want to explore.
SWG had a little exploration and most people never bothered with it until the path to Jedi required it.
On the way back from Dol Dinen to Esteldin you come across a wounded ranger, if you approach he warns of a trap and you are ambushed by 3 earthkins, fairly though critters. It isn't a quest, just a bit of color for the game. Again a bit of social experimentiation quickly showed me that most players had NEVER heard of this, quests are shown with a ring, there was no ring so people didn't explore to see what it was all about because no XP means a wast of time.
It is depressing, but I sadly think that the market has spoken and the market has said, we want more WoW, please don't make us think or give us choices. Lead us by the hand and give us our XP and levels.
And to be fair, I am not sure I entirely disagree. There is a fine line between an open-ended free form quest and sending a player out there without a clue. I remember a east european game, SS (not sure about the name, tactical turnbased squadgame in 3D enviroment that was totally destructable), it had quests/missions where on higher difficulties you weren't told what to do. You just appeared on a map and good luck finding out what your objectives were. A challenge or wasting my time?
Like many a MMO player I have thought long and hard about how you could make a better game, but I keep hitting the same old problem, can the user handle it and sadly the answer is no. If you wants millions of subscribers you got to accept that you are developing for an average IQ well below 100. Retards. Lazy retards. Lazy dyslexic retards.
Go on, come with an idea for a quest or game mechanism and then ask yourselve, how will a user who refuses to read or look at his interface deal with it. One of the biggest challenges in the endgame of MMO's comes not from the game itself, but in finding a group of people that after months of play actually managed to get a clue. It sounds amazing but as a raid leader you would be suprised how many times you get a newbie who must be playing on someones elses account because with their skill they should have died at the loading screen.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
From that chapter offered free it sounds like they only recently discovered MMOs. Many of these tricks date back to 1997 with UO. The same dudes who were rippin that olf Origin system then still do the same to the beta of the new games. Reusable code... indeed.
My friends told me I just sucked. I knew it was the other fuckers cheating. I got a good 15 minutes of "I told you so" coming.
Many many cheaters in fps' that "just want to win".
There is a large section of the gaming community that determines their self worth on just being better than other players...legitimately or not. All they care about is that they pwn you.
PlanetSide (PS) is a Sci-Fi MMOFPS by SOE. There is no grinding, no twinking, no arbitrary quests, is 100% PVP, and relies on teamwork and strategy. There is no n00b stomping beyond, a guy with a tank will usually kill you with two shot, but that makes a kind of sense.
You COULD by a high level character, but you wouldn't gain much for your trouble. AFAIK there is no market for characters, and absolutely no market for items. PS works on a certification system that allows you to load and unload certs to use different equipment. After playing one night of play you can access just about anything a player of 4 years can. High ranked characters will have access to a wider variety of items and vehicles. But the equipment is the same from player to player. My AMP does as much damage as your AMP. But i as a more experienced player would also have a Lasher and could fly a Reaver. You could unload your sniper cert to gain the Reaver cert. In PS, you play to play. It's all fun. Sure, you want the next rank, but anything you could buy with it you could have anyway if you gave up something else. If you have a life, the players who don't will not have a significant advantage over you, only more flexibility in what roles they can play. Plus since the equipment levels the field, skill and knowledge usually prevail. If you get stomped repeatedly, it's probably your fault, rather than just a matter of your opponent having an instagib spell.
The closest thing there is to farming would be a base battle where the enemy has you surrounded or vice versa. Such situations are VERY intense and one side eventually wins.
Speaking of which, there is a sense of gain or loss with each battle. In BF2142 if your team wins you get some points, but that map will reload and it's like you were never there. The battle for Auraxis is persistent 24/7. Bases, towers and continents change hands. Any thing your empire claims is still yours, until the enemy tries to take it back.
Teamwork, tactics and strategy are the keys to winning. Blind zerg rushing will get you nowhere against an organized foe. Skilled players can fend off several unskilled players. Organized groups can fend off larger groups. TeamSpeak or Ventrilo are a must.
My role is that of saboteur. i'm in yr base, droppin' yr generators. In my infiltration suit, i sneak into the enemy's base and blow up their gens. Tis good times.
i'm in one of the top outfits (guilds) on the east coast, i'll direct folks to more info if they send me a PM.
And yes, your comparison of WoW to GW is right on. i left WoW for about the same reasons, it felt like a job. GW is also the most visually beautiful games out there (imho).
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I'm sorry, but you guys who think that people cheat because of the grind are mistaken. People cheat in all games, even games without grinds. Cheats have been part of many games, secret codes or button combinations used to unlock cheat features. Well MMO's and online games in general dont have those. People cheat in online shooters because they want to win, people do the same thing in MMOs. They want to win, and they want to win quick. They dont want to work to achieve something, they want to be with the top players, right away. Either through getting leveled, buying credits to purchase items or using god hacks to be unstoppable. The problems with hacks in multiplayer games, is that they affect everyone. Where as in single player games, it's only the person playing. They will never be stopped entirely, but making cheaters easier to detect and then dealing them a costly blow by banning their account, and hitting them where it hurts. The wallet.