Some thoughts about cheating on P1999

[Vohl]

I'll start by saying that I've thought about the various cheats and hacks for EQ both to see what they're like and to see how they work. As anyone who runs into me online knows, I ultimately chose not to do this.

The notion of getting caught wasn't a deterrent for me earlier (although it certainly is now). The allure of hacks and cheats for me was not making the game easier so much as revealing more about how it works. I have no doubt that hacks and packet sniffers have been instrumental in reverse-engineering EQ Emu and similar projects. Ultimately, I decided that hacking would spoil the challenge of the game, and chose not to do it.

I enjoy EverQuest, and appreciate a wide range of design decisions that went into it. I find myself occasionally fascinated by little details, such as the way that mana ticks up, then back down by one a few seconds later, then up again. Setting up my own server at some point in the future may be necessary in order to answer obscure questions such as these. Should I ever do this, I'll likely be using client hacks as diagnostic tools. I'd certainly best do this on a separate machine than what I currently use, however.

Knowledge is amoral, and is also good to have. Seeing the fallout of the temporary bannings is also kind of neat for me - there's a lot of human nature in both sides of this drama.