Great Moments in Customer Service Pt. XCIII: Please Stop Hacking Our Game

Massively has the story of an Anarchy Online player event. If, that is, by “player event” you mean “player gets a GM account and starts killing people a lot”.

Please also keep in mind that a great many of these activities are illegal (regardless of whatever “experts” tell you on the “internet”)…and while it isn’t easy to motivate anyone in law enforcement to actually do something about it…eventually we’ll speak with someone responsible and you are going to feel very stupid explaining to real criminal that you gave up your freedom and greatly impacted your future to “Hack a video game”. Given the opportunity I will throw the entire book at any of you I get a reasonable chance at.

To be clear here…this whole thing doesn’t make me angry.

Well. I’d hate to see what he’d advocate if he got angry.

These kind of attacks are generally going on ALL the time…if anyone is reading this who is responsible for these attacks GIVE US A BREAK. All we are trying to do here is trying to continue to develop a game we all enjoy. If you are mad about your accounts being banned…or something like that…please try to grow up and accept the fact that you very likely deserved it.

That seems likely!

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com/ geldonyetich

    If I learned anything from running bulletin board systems back in the day of 14.4k baud modems, it’s that when you open an online service to the public, you also opened it to the part of the public that figures burning down your online service for their own amusement is cool.

  • http://Website Freakazoid

    Nobody should miss the parts in the article that says this has happened before and that they let volunteers have GM accounts. Truly astounding.

  • http://Website moxcamel

    Wait. Just a goddamned moment. The player “ran amok for over two hours in the game”?!?!?! In the common parlance of these things, “bwahahaha.”

    Allow player to make with the GM powers: stupid beyond belief, somebody’s got some serious ‘splainin to do.

    Allow player to run “amok” for 2 hours with GM powers: please to unplug your internet now because you are too fucking stupid to make games kkbai.

  • http://Website nb

    Eh, at least he’d be there for a real crime with real victims and genuine economic damage done. The poor jerk next to him might be there for smoking a joint.

  • http://Website Vetarnias

    “So Mr. Kyanka, which of your boarders is responsible for this?”

  • http://Website Watcher

    Well, they did call the game ‘Anarchy Online’ didn’t they?

  • http://Website Tethyss

    I think we encountered this in EQ and some other games too…c’mon, show us something new! /yawn

  • http://Website Boanerges

    In AO this is called an “unplanned but exciting event!”

    In EQ they called this “being able to play the role of the victim” (such as a level 55 dragon was spawned by a GM in a level 20 zone). And nobody got fired over the EQ “events”.