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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."
That's not quite true. Take WoW for example. One could go from 1-70 on nothing but quests (though few do it is an option).
Most of these quests ignore the fact that other people have done them as well. YOU get to help a night elf learn that owlbears are protectors from the god Elune. YOU get to recover the lost treasure for a dwarf. That isn't even taking into account instances where the *zone* is just you and your group.
Now, there's no end. But then, traditional D&D didn't have an end either. You were were character just waiting for the next adventure. Death was the end (though some didn't age characters or have perma-death, so it's not really any different).
EQ your point was spot on. The game was the grind until you got to the end game then the game was gems since you were doing nothing most of the time except waiting in raid groups.
WoW changed the game back to more how it should be. It did it by ignoring "realness" and making the game more personal. Many of the quests are actually very interesting and unveil the backstory of the world and make you the one.