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*Disclaimer: The following article is based on my own personal research and is not reflective of any official position of ANY gaming company, local or foreign. This is NOT a manual on how to cheat. Rather, this is a study on why cheating is wrong and what individuals and organizations can do to eradicate it.
Since man invented games and created rules, there were always cheaters. Video games and, to a huge extent, online games and MMORPGs are no exception. In the early 80s and 90s, cheats came in the form of “codes”. I mean, who can forget the Dpad combination for Contra (up-up-down-down-left-left-etc-etc) for 99 lives? Today, with broadband and information readily available on the web, cheating has gone high tech.
Greed is the mother of all motives for cheating. In the online gaming industry, it’s a damn cat and mouse game between developers, 3rd party exploiters and individual cheaters.
Here are some methods on how cheats are done in online games:
1. Exploits – exploits are usually done via bugs in the game. Sometimes, players try to bypass the firewall and do nasty shiat to the database. This often causes items to be illegally duplicated. Called “duping” in MMO slang, this is frowned upon by players since it displaces the valuable balance of supply and demand in a gaming economy. Shag the economy and the value of the game characters and items go down… this causes all the whining in the boards and upsets a LOT of players. Exploits in the form of bugs come in terms of illegally getting the edge over others. Examples could be a monster that gives MILLIONS OF EXP or an NPC that gives characters items or rewards over and over again.
2. EXTERNAL SOFTWARE – mention this to the Pinoy gamer and the first thing that comes to mind are bots. Bots are programs that automate the actions of your character while you can go to Starbucks and sip a latte (or sleep) while you level up and farm. But there are other external software designed to cheat. Some 3rd party programs like aimbot, speedhack, stat editors, currency generators, no cooldown skills, etc are all designed to tamper with the packet data – pockets of information exchanged between the server and client. Publishers and developers are always in the lookout for these 3rd party applications. But if there are “terrorists” there are “counter-terrorists” to combat the threat. These come in the form of anti-hack programs such as hackshield and gameguard. Still, they are not a 100% guarantee against external threats.
In a related article at about.com, it reads; “Subscription games like Ultima Online and EverQuest have even more at risk because a loss of players is directly linked to a loss of income. They’ve had to make catching cheaters a priority right from the start, but they also have the advantage of controlling the servers the game is played on. When a problem is discovered, it’s relatively easy to make changes and/or ban the culprits. Today’s MMORPGs operate under the watchful eye of large contingents of game masters, and it’s still impossible to ensure that there are no shenanigans going on. The most one can hope for is that the shenanigams will be discovered and correctly quickly.”
3. Disconnecting – disconnections by choice are also cheats. In some versus games (like BattleNet), “leavers” are often banned for being such sore losers. You rarely get to have the satisfaction of finishing the game when playing with leavers. Also some MMO players inadvertantly try to DC their opponents in the hope to either slay the boss monster on win in PVP. Some try to bombard the servers with so much information in the hope that it crashes. Often, boss monsters respawn – giving more chances to the cheaters to get valuable loot. Whatever the case, these kinds of players SUCK big time!
4. Feeding – feeding is trying to either give undue advatage to your team mate(s) by giving them items or spending for them. In peer-to-peer games competition games, you can also “feed” a friend by making characters that will be there to just LOSE, thereby giving massive exp, gold, etc to the cheating team or character. Pathetic!
5. Sharing or Piloting – although this isn’t exactly cheating, this borders on it. Players are often divided on the way they see the practice of “piloting” – hiring someone to play your character while you’re away (mostly if you’re at school or work). Some practitioners defend themselves and tell the naysayers that it is better than running illegal 3rd party programs. For me, one of the risks here is exposing your account and hence, all your items and riches, to a complete stranger and risking theft or hack.
6. Social Engineering – Wow! A cool term for scamming. Social engineering can happen in a myriad of ways, from someone joining your guild, gaining your trust, “borrowing” rare stuff and then disappearing like a bubble. One of the old methods of social engineering were players trying to impersonate a GM and get usernames and passwords from gullible players (I get reports that GM T is impersonated a lot… wapak!). There are also lame attempts at fake e-mails, fake websites, YM scams and ingame deal/business scams. Caveat Emptor – buyer beware! Stay away from these kinds of players like the plague and report suspicious activities to the authorities.
about.com’s article about MMORPG cheating has a good conclusion on the subject:
“The good news is that cheating has become significantly more difficult in recent years. Not only have game developers found better ways to secure their products, third-party software has also made large advances in sniffing out and banning cheaters.”
“At the end of the day, it’s a lot more satisfying to win while following the rules than it is to win using some cheap hack or exploit, so if you’re here looking for ways to cheat in online games, I hope I’ve given you some reasons to reconsider.”
So, it IS better to play fair and follow the rules. Crime (and cheating) does NOT pay!
Peace!
GM T
computers are very useful nowadays people from every walk of life use computers in which laptop computers and notepad is very common because they can also use it in cars by listening car cd mp3 players.other computers are also very useful like desktop computer these computers are normally use in the homes.
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