Part of it, I'll wager the most important part, is that whenever they make some big move against cheating of any stripe, they get slammed for it on these boards. Suddenly people come out of the woodwork saying they were banned unjustly, etc. And people for some reason believe these people who've curiously never been seen before.
If you mean why they can't stop duping in the sense of plugging the holes and stopping it before it happens? That's an easy one. All games seem to have duping in one form or another.
I'm not clicking on any of the links....But just from a Google search and scanning the small previews of sites that Google gives you, I can tell you that World of Warcraft has duping from something called a "rollback." I've discovered something called the "Eve Online Item Dupe Hack," and I've discovered manufacturer statements about duping in that game. I've discovered a site that teaches you how to dupe, and do other cheats, in Lord of the Rings Online of all games (or at least that's what the site says it does)....Yes, not even Tolken is immune to cheating. I discovered a YouTube video teaching you how to dupe in Warhammer Online.
And that took under 5 minutes.
They can't stop duping. No MMO, it seems, gets rid of it entirely. Let alone one that's 11+ years old.
However, we as players can't simultaneously get mad at every anti-cheating measure EA takes and get mad at them for not taking anti-cheating measures.
To believe someone you know personally or someone who is known on the boards for being honest who claims they were banned unjustly is one thing. But to believe someone who comes out of the woodwork and makes that claim, which is something we as board citizens have done, is just......Weird.
In retrospect we should have let them implement Punkbuster. It wouldn't have stopped duping because that doesn't use 3rd party programs I don't think (Hell, for all I know I could be years behind-the-times on this stuff...last dupe I knew how to actually do involved Ice Dungeon and even then by the time I knew about it, it had already been fixed), but it would have done something about scripting, which is another major cheat in UO.
Oh....And to those who say that duping doesn't harm the game or doesn't effect anyone? I fail to see how this argument can be supported with reality. First of all, if there's supposed to be 1 or 2 of an item, and now there's 5,000 of them, and you got the 1 or 2 of them legitimately, your item's going to be way under-valued. Secondly, some of the over-powered EM items, their very rarity was supposed to be the check on how over-powered they were. Later on, we got item property caps, and then there was an additional check. Third, and most importantly, this is a game, and when you sign on to play a game, you sign on to play that game by the rules, or else why play at all?
Having said that, I'm suspecting more and more that the impact of cheating of all types, while substantial and worthy of attention, is exaggerated.
-Galen's player
:redx:
