Cheaters!

Warning: This is not Ferrel. This is Scarybooster. I volunteered to come to Ferrel’s Epic home and “watch” it while he was gone on vacation to Disney World. Don’t worry, I’m not allowed to touch anything, only post this Epic masterpiece. Man, I am going to love using the word “Epic” in this whole post (unless Ferrel Epicly disapproves this post). Anyway, I’m here checking out the place and sitting in his velvet throne. He has this place decked out with shag carpet and poshy paintings. I like the feel of this place. I might have to send him $5 to stay one more day. He has a great magazine collection, too: Wired, PC Gamer, PC Mag, Playb…, and Oprah. I guess your not reading this to find out about Ferrel’s Epicness. Your here for the Epic MMOness.

As you can see in the title, I’m going to talk about cheaters. I’m not talking about the ones that bring the milk on Sunday while your out at church with the kids and your wife is sick with the “H1N1″ flu. The only thing she is sick of is you and the kids. I’m talking about a guild of people that exploit games to “beat” it or be the first to do something. Don’t worry they will be caught. Cheaters never prosper, unless your the milkman looking for jugs.

Any game you play is going to have some low life cheater in it. Game cheaters date back to the days of Pong. My sister used to kick me when ever she started losing. Today, cheaters band together and form guilds to be reconized or make money on illegal leveling/gold selling websites. Not all cheaters band together but, just like the mob, cheaters get more stuff whacked out in a group. I don’t mean group “whacking”, dirty minded readers. So, what do these cheaters do?

Terrain exploits are a big part of cheating. I remember when I was playing Dark Age of Camlot (DAoC) and a friend of mine told me I could stand on a ledge in a cave as a Spiritmaster and AoE all the monsters in the cave without being hit. All I had to do was send my pet out all around the cave and when he died, the monsters would come for me. I just had to stand on the ledge and AoE. I must have gotten 5 levels out of doing that until a Game Master pushed my character off the ledge and warned that he would ban me. I was so scared, I didn’t enter that cave ever again. That was my first brush with terrain exploits and I felt horrible for doing it. That was an example of a newb solo player using exploits, but there are guilds out there that hunt for these type of things. They sometimes say they accidently discovered the exploit or didn’t know. Does it make it right to continue exploiting the terrain if you accidently trip on it? What about guilds that come later and know about the exploit, should they get more strict punishments for their cheating? Should there be a standard game punishment or leave it to the developers? Just like the milkman says, ” I was delivering the milk, tripped, and fell on your wife. I figured I was there, so I took off my clothes and poured some milk.”

One of the most common games for exploits is… Drum roll… Guild Wars. You thought I was going to say WoW, didn’t you? Don’t worry WoW is a close second. I don’t play GW, but I have read lots of horror stories. Is it because of the odd layout of the terrain in GW or the free to play aspect? WoW has it’s fair share of exploits because it is so huge. Most guilds exploit boss fights to get world firsts now. Back before the achievement system, it was mainly exploited for gold services or PvP points. Most of the time the guilds/people are banned and the world first title removed. Sometimes their accounts are closed for good. The exploits are soon patched from WoW, but in GW it could take months to be fixed. I guess you get what you pay for? There are many other games exploited out there, but I wanted to give two examples of 2 different kinds of MMOs.

While I’m finishing up some of Ferrel’s Epic turkey and Koolaid he left me in the fridge, I would like to hear what you think about cheaters. Why do they do it? What does cheating accomplish, it is just a game? Do they get paid to cheat? Is banning enough or should they be fined from the companies? How would they fine them, anyways? Do you drink milk? What punishment would you give them? Oh crap, I spilt red Koolaid on Ferrel’s Epic white bearskin rug. Don’t tell him I was naked on his rug drinking juice. I got to clean up this mess before he gets back from D-World. Thanks for reading!