Comments on: What is cheating?

By: WorldIV.com » The Joy of Cheating

WorldIV.com » The Joy of Cheating — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:17:04 +0000

[...] Raph Koster has defined cheating for us. He has a beard, so really, who are we to argue. Cheating is, in the end, violating the spirit of the rules. [...]

By: What is cheating? - Guild Wars Forums - GW Guru

What is cheating? - Guild Wars Forums - GW Guru — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 13:28:30 +0000

[...] is cheating? Just thought I’d share this article: http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/12/18/what-is-cheating/ [...]

By: Gaenjin

Gaenjin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:51:59 +0000

I don’t mind RMT. I don’t mind spoiler sites. I think that every player should be allowed to play in the manner and style that they prefer and have fun with. I do not think that a player’s fun should be limited or crippled. Personally, I enjoy walking through quests using spoilers. Lazyness has little to do with it, its just fun for me to “reverse engineer” a quest. I don’t like puzzles or riddles. Now for people that do, they have the choice to not read spoilers and enjoy the sense of “discovery”. If they advance slower, then that is their choice that they chose in order to enjoy their style of gaming. Any pressure that they may feel to advance quickly is a product of their own perception. However, the disparity is felt a lot stronger in MMOGs that require 3+ players to progress, rather than on MMOGs where the solo player can advance at his own pace without pressure to “keep up” with friends.

After all, we have a much larger base of players today, than we did back in the days of MUDdom, (to which I believe that 75% of current MMOG players think MUD is something you get mixing dirt with water) and you have to expect that each player has their own idea of “fun” and different methods of getting enjoyment out of a game. I have to agree that the lines of “cheating” is becoming more and more blurred with each new generation of MMO gaming. But I do feel that a company has to be set in what regulations and rules of conduct they wish to set forth to their players, and firmly enforce them.

Now something that I find unacceptable, is the advertisement of RMT inside of these games, via Chat channel or /tell spamming. How long will it be before we see non-gaming sites, like say a direct reseller site like Buy.com, Amazon.com, or even porno sites, advertising their URLs in chat spam. There is a serious market available in the large MMOGs.

If there are legal regulations against non-RMT companies advertising in an MMOG , then the same expectation of rules and consequence should be applied to RMT sites. If not, then its the responsibility of these MMOG hosting companies to work together to set some international standards, maybe even laws. Something as simple as pressuring the server host/ISP provider to shut down the offending RMT sites would be a great start.

So to sum up my point: These are multi-player games. As the multiple player base grows with each new year, the perception of expected, and accepted, social morality needs to flex and accept that everyone is different in what they consider “enjoyment” of their games. I strongly agree that all “cheating” is, is just a violation of the spirit of the rules. Rules and laws are not set in stone, as a matter of fact, the foundation of democracy allows for flexiblity, challenge and re-examination of laws by anyone in the society. That goes for what is expected of “acceptable social behavior”. Change is inevitable, and what we once considered taboo, is now considered acceptable, often normal.

By: Premium services and Real Money Trading « A ding world

Premium services and Real Money Trading « A ding world — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:41:50 +0000

[...] of the gaming experience. Raph Koster had some blog entries on a similar topic a while ago discussing what was considered cheating. Part of what was discussed as cheating was the usage of various strategy guides and walkthroughs – [...]

By: d2jsp Forums -> Lod Hc = Easy / Cl Hc = Ownage

d2jsp Forums -> Lod Hc = Easy / Cl Hc = Ownage — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:12:16 +0000

[...] evolve MMORPG discussion. The blog of Raph Koster. Quote (M[o)nkey[115] [...]

By: Uberjannie

Uberjannie — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:14:58 +0000

And how come you dont define RMT?
How am I supposed to know what that means? Thats just ridicilous.
When you write something you write it without any un-official acronyms you see fit.
Cheers

By: Friends

Friends — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 08:28:59 +0000

[...] So, there’s an interesting side note to the post I made a while back on cheating, and the discussion surrounding RMT. A whole lot of people seem to think that the sort of info in [...]

By: Anticorium

Anticorium — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:40:01 +0000

For someone who seems determined to know that the inevitable result of sanctioned RMT will be mandatory cash layouts, you don’t seem to have any real-world examples from the two real-world games I mentioned.

One of them has a few million subscribers, by the way.

By: someforumguy

someforumguy — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:16:36 +0000

@Anticorium
Some examples :
Make a game with default inventory space that is way to small. Sell inventory expansions in the gameshop. Sell speedbuffs (game has default slow travelling speed).
Let a player with normal lvling through quests end up with about 20silver at lvl10. At lvl10 they can purchase a horse for 200silver. They can either chose to grind the money or of course buy it in the shop.
XP buffs, same idea. As long as you make an interesting feature that is only available to high lvl players you can build in real chores to get there. So you can sell items in the gameshop to make those chores more bearable.

By: Ramblings of a Rogue » Cheating: The Never Ending Debate

Ramblings of a Rogue » Cheating: The Never Ending Debate — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:16:13 +0000

[...] Many, many, many and even more people will obviously have their own opinion/view on what cheating is or is not. I also obviously do as well or I would not be writing this. Anyhow, this all started as a RMT blog post that Raph put a little while back. The question of is RMT cheating has spawned quite a few rounds of debate and has gone from just RMT on to things like Prima strategy guides, to game information websites like Allakhazam or Game Pressure. [...]