The Man Who Hacked Video Games For A Living 

#godwinslaw

It's funny that he was hired as a security analyst. What will happen when he gets bored of the job too?

@@SoulGuitarMetal That's the exact point of hiring him as an analyst, since he already can do harm. By hiring him as one you remove him from the dark market

@@ethzero Dang, beat me to it

@@misham6547 yes....untill he gets bored. That was the joke

Equating video game hacks to being a hitman? Really? I can see the point you're trying to make, but at least use an appropriate comparison...

Welcome to the human experience broski, enjoy your stay betwixt these shades of grey.

yeah some people will pay thousands for digital products and id beat someone to death for thousands of dollars different aspects of life lmao

@@ganjatheninja It's all about perspective ay! Motivation shaped by our surroundings.

@@ganjatheninja for thousands? people gonna kill you for noodle soup don't overprices services

just sad ..... very very sad

@@VirtuelleWeltenMitKhan i did eventually go back, never got into it nearly as obsessively (the way i generally play mmos) but my dad had a similar hoard, and my brother had an even bigger hoard than either of us, so i could have kept playing, it was just so utterly deflating and demoralizing, especially thinking it was just a stupid bug on Origin's side. If i had known it was most likely a hack, i'm not sure if that would have made it better or worse. Thinking about it now, I do remember that reporting it, and having a GM show up, did absolutely nothing. Never heard back from CS, never got anything reimbursed. That's probably what ultimately led to me leaving completely.

Oh wow, that was my next question "Did you report it?" That they did nothing about it makes it even more sad. Well...I think it was the beginning of MMOs and they were very inexperienced. The GM was not even able to recover your house and stuff most likely. It's still very sad for you as a player and your experience with the game. That a hacker did that to you makes it so much worse. The game means nothing to him. He spent some time hacking and making money. He was not attached to the game you loved. I am very amazed that he publicly admits to hack. I would be ashamed.

@@VirtuelleWeltenMitKhan Yeah the house they SHOULD have been able to verify that i had just paid my upkeep a day or so before it poofed, but the contents of a house, as you said, it was early days of MMOs, and even Everquest had years before they had the back end tracking of stuff like trades, dupes, etc (and this happened a year or two before EQ even launched) I still have many fond memories of Ultima Online, just seeing this video and finding out about that hack really made me relive it a little, and made me consider just how much of an asshole this guy was, even if he said "i wasnt doing the really bad stuff" he still affected people in a massively negative way.

@@Furblesnert thats really messed up that happened to you

Tokens or hands?

He shouldn't just own up to it, he should own it. How many people can claim they destroyed multiple MMO economies, made tons of money from it, and got away with it?

@@65firered Its why he should do both, he should own up to it AND own it. He did it because he could & didnt face any repercussions so why wouldnt he do it? It's kind badass in a way, but he should also at least own that he kind of messed these games economies up, & made people who actually spent dedicated time working hard on the game end up getting owned by rich kids

@@frankmarano1118 Exactly

The biggest reason why he wasn't more malicious is because "you don't shit where you eat". He would have destroyed his own source of income. He proved that he was malicious from the get-go, when playing Ultima Online and ruining the accounts of his rivals for no other reason than "fuck you". This guy is 100% an asshole and there's nothing right about what he's done.

That's on the devs. If they weren't lazy idiots who banned people who try to help, this wouldn't happen.

@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD He wasn't trying to help, he was destroying the games economy.

@@commoguru that's helpful

There are several ways you can avoid people like this and still play online games but the methods of avoidance might not suit you. 1: Play less well known indie games. The game won't be targeted by hackers if they haven't heard of it. Also, since it's a less popular game, the playerbase will skew older. The sort of people who use aimbots, fly hacks, and the like are frequently trolling for a reaction. If there are no children and they can't get an overreaction from grown men and women they won't stick around. 2: Avoid mmo's or anything with in-game purchases and pay-to-win. Also avoid competitive shooters like Valorant, Rust, or whatever they're playing now. The hacking situation is so bad on these games that the games now come with "anti-cheat" software which is basically spyware. Look it up. 3:Play games that let you run your own server. Then whitelist it and only invite people you trust. Setting up a game server is usually easy. It can be done on your own machine if it's up to specs, or you can rent a cheap vps and have your friends pitch in. More difficult than actually setting up the server is having enough friends and "internet friends" with the same tastes in games.

​@@robertdeckard2136so basically "don't play online games"

well maybe you can still do it on classic wow

same

@@jonnym4670 unlikely, classic isn't running identical code, it's a chimera of fixes & older stuff rather than the original version. still, only 'unlikely' it's only probable that the version they're running is the fixed ver.

you can at least prove damages i guess in court if you have a price tag to the gold value?

If you can't beat em, join em

You pretty much described how and why drug legislation works.

The guy startted pay to win microtransactions before they were official! Really shows that the problem aren't the companies, but the players. The company just wants in on the deal.

@@alexanderwalkendorff7733 And you can tax it, while when it is illegal only the bootlegers get to keep the money. It's crazy how much cheaper rubbing alcohol is, when Vodka is actually pure alcohol.

My pleasure mate :)

Definitely. Found his groove.

Id agree if we weren't discussing duplicating items and selling them to impatient gamers. He sold duplicated items, vs scamming people out of accounts, stealing info, etc, etc that actual problematic hackers or scammers get into.

@@Remixersoloman Are you going to make an excuse for organ harvesters too? Because there are people willing to buy the organs. What a stupid excuse.

@@Remixersoloman I know what you are trying to say, but no: He single handedly crashed the game economy and even deleted the houses of other players, therefor lowering (and even ruining) the fun of thousands of players. Thats the whole point, yes there are worse scammers, but that in no way makes what he did "ok".

@@Pryide fair enough on that one but that's the only.time it got that bad, and no matter what it doesn't make the extreme hyperbole in the comments any less laughable. No matter how many gamers he made marginally angry for an extremely.small portion of their lives, it is not comparable.to fucking ORGAN FARMING.

@@Remixersoloman 8:00 in, dude worked for a chinese vendor directly.

Repent and follow Jesus! Repenting doesn't mean confessing your sins to others, but to stop doing them altogether. Belief in Messiah alone is not enough to get you into heaven - Matthew 7:21-23, John 3:3, John 3:36 (ESV is the best translation for John 3:36). Contemplate how the Roman empire fulfilled the role of the beast from the sea in Revelation 13. Revelation 17 confirms that it is in fact Rome. From this we can conclude that A) Jesus is the Son of God and can predict the future or make it happen, B) The world leaders/nations/governments etc have been conspiring together for the last 3000+ years to accomplish the religion of the Israelites C) History as we know it is fake. You don't really need to speculate though because you can start a relationship with God and have proof. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life. - Revelation 3:20 Revelation has been unfolding since Jesus died. The Popes have claimed to be equal to God and set themselves in Jesus' place (antichrist(s)). Vatican City (Which is its own nation BTW) have risen up to fulfill the role of the false prophet Regarding the man of lawlessness or antichrist, 2 Thessalonians 2:4 says “Who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The restrainer that the Apostle Paul was referring to in 2 Thessalonians was the Western Roman Emperor, who held back the Popes from taking power. Once the last Western Roman Emperor was removed from power in 476 AD, the Pope was given civil and ecclesiastic authority over Rome; healing the deadly head wound of the beast in Revelation 13, as they took the Emperors title of Pontifex Maximus, leader of the church and state. “We may according to the fullness of our power, dispose of the law and dispense above the law. Those whom the Pope of Rome doth separate, it is not a man that separates them but God. For the Pope holdeth place on earth, not simply of a man but of the true God.” (Source: “Decretals of Gregory IX,” Book 1, chapter 3.) Pope Pius V blasphemed, “The Pope and God are the same, so he has all power in Heaven and earth.” (Source: Pope Pius V, quoted in Barclay, Cities Petrus Bertanous Chapter XXVII: 218.) Pope Leo XIII declared, “We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.” (Source: Pope Leo XIII Encyclical Letter, June 20, 1894) The antichrist sea beast of Revelation points to the office of the papacy, the Popes of Rome, who controlled the Roman beast for 1,260 years, from 538-1798 AD. Daniel 7:25 says “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” The Popes of Rome spoke against Elohim and proclaimed to be God. They reigned for 1,260 years, from 538-1798 AD. during which they caused tens of millions of saints to be killed. The Pope’s title is Vicar of Christ, which in Latin is ‘Vicarius Filii Dei’, and equates numerically to the number 666

You just destroyed 99% of all political debate on both sides.

it is fucked but can't lie dude is pretty smart

This guy & gamers like him are heroes. The gamers who defend these online economies in games are pure simps & it's thanks to them that microtransactions & the general increase in in-game monetization coupled with a MASSIVE decrease in game quality has been plaguing video games so severely for well over a decade now. Video games shouldn't be allowed to have in-game purchases anyway unless they're very strictly only sold to adults as video games inherently target children & in-game monetization reinforces obsessive & destructive behaviors. If guys like this make you mad then learn to do what they're doing. Stop wasting your time & your money like a genuine loser farming imaginary crap that was a sloppy tacked on manipulative system that's not needed in any core gameplay component. I modded the GTA games beginning when I was 12 with GTAIII and I modded & exploited their systems on GTAV Online. Never got banned, never paid for a "Shark Card" & I never had to pay for anyone else to "hack" stuff for me. Get good & stop simping for these soulless, greedy companies.

yeah, in more ways than one. People don't understand how much getting easy money or gear affects games. It could lead to terrible experiences since the players don't have the required experience to match their load out, it could destroy the in-game market, it could lead to a housing shortage due to how easily they can be bought up, any PVP that uses equipped gear for stats would be totally broken, stat and gear cheats can ruin any race for world firsts, just lots of stuff he affects even if he's no longer destroying homes.

@@OrphanHart the games ruined themselves making 2 weeks' worth of content into a 6-month grind all so a year they could all be worthless

@@jonnym4670 no

@@jonnym4670 don't forget getting time-gated out of content ... Here is a new patch, now come back every week for next 6 months only to do 30 minutes worth of work,

@@yawnthedinosaur9566 the rep system was the worst I am starting to get into guild wars 2 I like the fact even though they create expansions they keep the old stuff relevant at the same time it still rewards for new content and it shows there will be just as many people playing there meta events from 8 years ago as thier stuff that was released last Feb

Haha so true, I'd love a government bank account where you can just type in the amount you want.

Yeah you would think someone would have told them.

@@crystllclr3743 we did. We voted for trump. 🔥

@@mr_indie_fan trump is a wealthy business man who manipulates fake Monopoly money and with collateral and investments as well as any market manipulation just like any rich person in America. I’m not politically involved but idolizing any politician is doing the world a disservice and people who are tasked with making the world a better place should always face criticism before fame

yea sweet irony right? online robin hood xD let me steal money from you after 20 years you going to love lmao

Well you gotta give him some rep for not using these exploits maliciously. Not spoofing ips, installing trojans etc. But as M Nowak said: "online robin hood XD".

It's fascinating regardless. I mean it could be worse, he could be damaging something that actually matters instead of video games, most of which are dead now

I get why it's annoying and irritating to people who take those games seriously, I'm not begrudging you for that... But comments like this in regards to THIS story seem a bit melodramatic. He didn't actually commit crimes, he didn't take any real money from anyone, nobody was physically hurt or attacked, nobody was infected with malware or blackmailed. Unethical? Yeah... it sucks that people's experience in game was ruined. But in the grand scheme of things, it's impossible for me to be too made at this guy. I mean, come on.

@@timthetoolmantaylor9048 so if I break into your home and take the fridge but I leave you a TV and tell fix that because I could take TV too it's fine? he is not better than people who hack your account and take your all items etc. he is a selfish individual who made profits multimillion profits from someone. he is the same as other black hats hackers doesn't matter he is lighter black lmao

and the "movie hacker screen" with GUIs and shit when in reality it would look way more boring for average viewer seeing just a simple command line :D

fu ck you light mode is the best

CE and x64dbg didn't have dark themes for a long time...

I personally prefer light mode.

@@Truesilverful who hurt you?

seems like it's that way for WoW cause the dude couldn't hack WoW gold.

Oh they definitely exist especially for wow

Dude , when you can literally no life and learn python for free. Hell any programming for free ... That's a lot easier than sweating playing video games. If you're smart enough you can outsmart the other programmers. That's what he did. It's always bad when people who could of done more good with programming end up using it for bad purposes.

@@frankcoley1537 If they fired someone when i try to bugbounty for them for Conversing with me, i would do the same. if i had the knowledge i'd burn them to the ground

Bug bounties are not good with games. I tried reporting some and the game banned me. Bug bounties are worth it for websites and such.

Lol, the horrible person who sold digital content to rich people. Much more evil than current companies trying to sell gambling to children. Or governments collecting taxes off the hopes of people playing the lottery. Or game companies with toxic work environments overworking and sexually harassing their employees.

this one dident fuck up saving the world though

​@@warlordnipple you mistake that dude with someone who gives a damn and deserves a damn

deluded moment

'I could have done worse, so it wasn't bad' is one hell of a weak justification. 'I robbed 40 houses but I didn't kill any of the people sleeping upstairs' level.

We're all the hero in our own story.

it's cause he's not.

he has a german name, im not surprised.

Repent and follow Jesus! Repenting doesn't mean confessing your sins to others, but to stop doing them altogether. Belief in Messiah alone is not enough to get you into heaven - Matthew 7:21-23, John 3:3, John 3:36 (ESV is the best translation for John 3:36). Contemplate how the Roman empire fulfilled the role of the beast from the sea in Revelation 13. Revelation 17 confirms that it is in fact Rome. From this we can conclude that A) Jesus is the Son of God and can predict the future or make it happen, B) The world leaders/nations/governments etc have been conspiring together for the last 3000+ years to accomplish the religion of the Israelites C) History as we know it is fake. You don't really need to speculate though because you can start a relationship with God and have proof. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life. - Revelation 3:20 Revelation has been unfolding since Jesus died. The Popes have claimed to be equal to God and set themselves in Jesus' place (antichrist(s)). Vatican City (Which is its own nation BTW) have risen up to fulfill the role of the false prophet Regarding the man of lawlessness or antichrist, 2 Thessalonians 2:4 says “Who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The restrainer that the Apostle Paul was referring to in 2 Thessalonians was the Western Roman Emperor, who held back the Popes from taking power. Once the last Western Roman Emperor was removed from power in 476 AD, the Pope was given civil and ecclesiastic authority over Rome; healing the deadly head wound of the beast in Revelation 13, as they took the Emperors title of Pontifex Maximus, leader of the church and state. “We may according to the fullness of our power, dispose of the law and dispense above the law. Those whom the Pope of Rome doth separate, it is not a man that separates them but God. For the Pope holdeth place on earth, not simply of a man but of the true God.” (Source: “Decretals of Gregory IX,” Book 1, chapter 3.) Pope Pius V blasphemed, “The Pope and God are the same, so he has all power in Heaven and earth.” (Source: Pope Pius V, quoted in Barclay, Cities Petrus Bertanous Chapter XXVII: 218.) Pope Leo XIII declared, “We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.” (Source: Pope Leo XIII Encyclical Letter, June 20, 1894) The antichrist sea beast of Revelation points to the office of the papacy, the Popes of Rome, who controlled the Roman beast for 1,260 years, from 538-1798 AD. Daniel 7:25 says “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” The Popes of Rome spoke against Elohim and proclaimed to be God. They reigned for 1,260 years, from 538-1798 AD. during which they caused tens of millions of saints to be killed. The Pope’s title is Vicar of Christ, which in Latin is ‘Vicarius Filii Dei’, and equates numerically to the number 666

It's like in the real world, he's blaming the small time criminal who is doing dirty work which affects few people directly while he himself in this story acts more like a corrupt bank or government that kills millions of people/the game game itself slowly and in a less obvious way

*sips yea approvingly*

@Bitten Apple well thats the exact reason I never play MMOs. Its reliant on everyone being there to have a good time. The moment someone decides to mess with something as baseline as the game economy for the lulz, it messes with everything else. You can't tell me just because I wasn't personally affected I can't think the guy was a teenage asshole.

@Bitten Apple LMFAOO nah you are terminally online ☠ go outside bro

@@yeahitsmesofkinwhat so the Joker is serious about his take on the IRS lmao

@@yeahitsmesofkinwhat LOllers

@@yeahitsmesofkinwhat but it's true just pay taxes, nobody cares if you chest in a game.

Just pay taxes. Government is biggest thief, you pay taxes everyday in store and yet they steal taxes from your salary. Be a sheep and pay taxes

iirc, that was how they were able to get Al Capone for tax evasion. You can't say 'well, there wasn't a place to put crime-gotten gains, so I thought I didn't have to declare uwu'. It's pretty clever, tbh.

the strong eating the weak

Rich people be like *smug*

It was NFTs back in the day...

who cares, games are a waste of your time. Atleast he did something productive in his life and becoming finicially independent. Also he is a 'good' guy, lots of hackers do way worse shit to people who play those MMOs. Malware and keylogging are much easier then what he was doing and are profitable in you can sell the accounts. He could have done that if he wanted and he didnt.

@@RuskiVodkaaaa So because some people do worse things his actions are okay? Because there's serial killers it's okay to just kill 1 person because others kill more? Games are a waste of time? So then anything that is a waste of time in your books is okay to be destroyed? Even when people just enjoy something? TV is a waste of time, and because some hackers install malware it is now by your own words okay to destroy television?

@@RuskiVodkaaaa "games are a waste of your time" says the one watching video about games

They're video games good on him for getting the bag who cares

@@RuskiVodkaaaa 🤡

Yeah, he's full of shit. Indirectly hurting the community by destroying the economy is still hurting the community. He wants you to think that because he's not directly harming them his hands are clean.

Most of these kinds of things are covered by laws from the 80’s or prior, so unless they charged him with wire fraud, no one gives a shit.

@@TuriGamer Certainly not illegal, definitely unethical depending on circumstances and surely just a total buzzkill and why so many are so hands off when it comes to playing mmorpgs.

Definitely not illegal, the game publishers will jump through hoops to establish that nothing in their games have value, to the extent of denying that easily accessible secondary markets that sell in-game currency exist. If everything in-game has no value, how can it be stealing?

@@TuriGamer Hacking it in order to make money is very much illegal.

He paid his taxes and was transparent about his income the government won't care about the source. It is only when things are out of the normal range of operations that get flagged for investigation.

Except people in politics don't actually get anything done... so he is massively overqualified.

Exactly. He's a douche that screws everyone else while pretending to be a good guy

Except no one voted this person permission to do what he did.

Your written skills are beautiful :)

I played Final fantasy 11... I finally got a Kraken club it gets stolen... I bought it for 50-60milish when I wanted to buy a new one it was around 120mil... I quit the game... Everything I worked hard for.. I still want one to this day on private server but seems im never gonna get it.. :(

Right? I was so gutted when it lost popularity and shut down. It had so much potential.

Well, it's no skin of his nose now is it, he already made his money off it.

Every bandit becomes a good person after a successful robbery or after being caught.

Who says he cleaned up his act, him?

lol, this last bank robbery will be my last since I have so much money already. See, I'm a good guy now.

He would have been sued to bankruptcy once the pay to win economy started, the developers would have enough lawyers to bankrupt him.

I remember when I was young playing an MMORPG (don't remember the name), I coded a mining bot with visual basic. Basically, the bot was scanning the screen for the ore color and was clicking on it for mining. It was incredibly simple and I was leaving my character mining there for hours, then I was using the ore to craft weapons and armors and selling them in my shop. After a few weeks I was a millionaire, with the in-game gold... I was so proud of my little bot! lol But after a while I got bored and left the game. The thing is I was expecting to get ban very fast for doing this, it's pretty obvious when you see a character mining ores for 8 hours straight that it's not a legit player but apparently the admins didn't care about this.

I am a software engineer who used to own a large CSGO cheat which I sold online as my job for almost 3 years. Although all of the necessary information is available online, you are correct about it being difficult to find. That was several years ago now (I was in my late teens) and my morals have developed quite a bit to the point that I'm not really willing to compromise the experience of other users for the sake of profit anymore. Now I just work as a typical software engineer at a mid size start up, but it's a super interesting topic regardless and I look back on those days of my life with great nostalgia.

@@Justin-fq8dt most white-hats were black-hats once. congrats on your reform ^^ also: f-u for breaking cs-go. really though. f. u.

guided hacking objectively cancerous, could you elaborate?

'Most hacks aren't "glamorous" ' and 'tricking the server into not removing an item from your inventory when you sell it' are contradicting. This was literally infinite wealth hack something that Manfred would do.

@@uHasioorr true. The game I found the infinite money on was firefall I think. A third person shooter by red5 studios. In game cash was unimportant and I was thinking about that when I wrote it.

I almost thought I stumbled on a game breaking bug on that when I found I could override the chr health thus becoming invincible. Turned out they had a safety check built in and I got banned. I was invulnerable for about 30 seconds.

@@Falney That explains why it wasn't "glamorous" :D

@@Falney you make hacks for ROBLOX?

it's worth remembering that the people who make laws are basically completely ignorant of *every* issue in the digital domain. hell they generally struggle to keep up with biological & economic issues which have been resolved for centuries... the worst assumption one can make of the world is that those in power are qualified to hold it, imo.

Manfred could see the value of time in your life and hated to see it being wasted grinding in a game so wanted to help by speeding up that process

@@davet5223 lol, yeah, sure. Was nothing about getting rich at others expense or anything.

@@RCShufty 😆

Oh well, it's a video game. It doesn't actually hurt anybodies well being at the very least.

I think his point is that he didn't mess with anything other than the games themselves so his actions weren't something that could be prosecuted. Yes, he ruined economies, but the games are the ones allowing people to inject data.

@@sweetfry yeah I mean there's something to be said for in game purchases being fairly exploitative all around, but in the scheme of things there's people doing much worse for sure

@@DrakyrusGunther he isn't the real problem but games. If nobody would buy gold or items this market wouldn't exist. only people give mad values to those virtual items. I would never pay 10 k for virtual hammer that has no real value in real life after game is gone

@@sweetfry Depends what you're on about.. if someone hacks ur account and makes u lose all ur shit thats pretty fucked up video game or not considering hours and money invested into a game. Theres crazy people that dump 1000s into some shitty games

Statue of limitations

Are you saying that programming is just a bunch of 1s and 0s? Ifs and while loops /is/ programming lol

@@bottlewisp Nope. I am saying the stock footage is not quite what I would call the programming of a "top coder" and I found it amusing.

'Ethical blackhat hacker' is already a contradiction, the whole point of the blackhat definition is crime/not ethical... It's like saying you're drying your hands in a bowl of water.

@@someguy4915 Or saying the water is not wet. To become a white hat hacker, you require written permission to investigate an exploit and then write a report about it. You are not allowed to decimate a production server. Fun fact, hacking or completely destroying your own gear or business is not illegal, because you gave yourself permission to destroy your own equipment or business.

'not doing as much as eh could have'? (nb. not 'of') like every driver who doesn't turn their car into pedestrians? do they deserve praise? really? all of us could have done *much* worse. all of us. your argument is inane.

"No good deed goes unpunished."

The true pros are the account boosters we've met along the way. The true scrubs are the account buyers we demolished along the way.

I mean, yeah, the companies (especially MMO devs the last dozen years) deserve worse. It's still good to remember that he screwed up a lot of players and just straight up lied and tried to play neutral. Otherwise you might be seeing way too many dumbasses romanticise the edgy teenage ideal of "hackerman" fucking up shit.

Nice. Glad you got it recovered fine. Authenticator(s) are nice for protecting. Don't have as interesting a story, was playing invis in Shadowlands, clicking the dumb souls at that pit spot in the maw on my necrolord mog alt at night before reset, dc'ed, ended up changing password, think an ex got on it somehow despite my not sharing password. It wasn't doing anything harmful, perhaps mission tables were ran for me, idk, they were on in the Shadowlands (was freaking out pretty sure in my mind it was him specifically on, not a random person). Sometimes I had more gold or weird items in my menu bars but w/e, weird things on the menubars been a bit off since late Legion. I just try to change pw if anything weird or be visible most times now. Have 2 bnets on authenticators, at least it's more secure than not having them.

i remember my old account got hacked and sold back in wotlk or cata forgot which one. then later when mop hits i Email blizzard with my card details and account info. And boom got my acount back, now with the swift spectral tiger and both the fire and ice mog helmet you could get at some point... good times thanks hacker i appreciate the mount very much!

and he still thinks he's not so bad

So you're saying he did you a favor

That's epic af

why? he did nothing wrong.

@@Sound_Spark It is illegal. Sanctions include civil and criminal penalties if caught hacking. All software issued by the makers of any publicly released game such as COD etc is copyrighted. Hacking violates that copyright which is a federal offense. It does not matter if the game was purchased. When you make a company lose millions of dollars, you're more than likely in some shit, whether its now or later

I have many memories of ultima online, some good some bad, but the biggest problem with the game was that they changed development teams so quickly and ownership switched hands quite a few times. As the first to break into mmo gaming they were bound to have issues, they even figured that out early in the game, but constant additions on top of already flawed coding really compounded the problem. And as certain developers would get up to speed on an issue and start to fix it they would be shuffled off to something else and a new group would star over. I can’t recall where I heard it but basically for a significant period of time all the new developers worked on ultima online before they moved to other projects. That was the statement made by some of the people that worked on it. Then when EA took over they slashed the development team to bare bones and here we are today. Another issue with uo, but also a brilliant idea, was a player run economy. Had the dev team plugged the dupe bug early the player run economy would likely have worked and not ran players off. But the dupe bug wasn’t the only mis step they made, every time they expanded to add more housing was a major disaster. I remember the first expansion where they added trammel literally crashed the servers for several hours. I recall being on ice isle in my chosen spot and the lag was so horrible and suddenly several different houses stacked on top of each other and my client crashed. Next day I log in and it was literally a war zone, more pk’ers then I’d ever seen. So not only did I not get a house I got stuck on ice isle dead as a door nail for a few days. Never tried to set a house again after that though I heard from other guild mates that Malas and Tokuno were just as bad. And to a certain extent the macro guys caused a huge issue. Not that creating macros to make potions or chop wood were neccicarrily bad since the game mechanics almost forced you to figure out ways to streamline resource gathering or production, it was the scripts some of the east uo guys made that literally automated everything. Years after I quit uo I joined easy uo’s free shard and eventually became friends with some of the guys that made scripts. Holy crap these guys had scripts that allowed multiple clients with 4 or 5 characters fully automated and just walked around and owned everything. Or had scripts that automated themselves so well they literally could solo nearly everything. One guy I asked how is this fun playing the game this way and he said and I quote “I don’t have fun playing the game, my fun is figuring out what and how to script every aspect of the game. It’s not the game for me that makes me happy, it’s making the game do what my script tells it to and it works” To be fair at this point of the games history, and given I was on a free shard, I kinda didn’t care anymore the damage was done. And while I mostly played straight hanging out with those guys and doing stuff with them allowed me to do things I never could have done on the live servers. I always had a sense of remorse for not completing the things I wanted to do, because I didn’t have the skill and didn’t know about easy uo while paying to play the game. So while I had paid thousands of dollars to play uo I ultimately quit because I was never going to be able to experience certain aspects of the game. The only way I did was to quit, let several years go by, and join the free shard by the guys who had a part in forcing developers to make harder and harder content. And while those that wrote and used scripts have portion of the blame the developers are equally it not mostly to blame. I think ultima online is still around, in a free but pay to win form, and I’m pretty sure easy uo is now officially gone. I know most of the original development guys have long moved on. Was interesting to have seen both sides of the curtain on that one.

Great post man