Final Fantasy Online Banning

Glitching and exploiting bug is permanently bannable in many games/servers, you got lucky this time.

as a former wow player, i can understand the desire to get some easy advancement (whether it be money, skills, xp, or whatever)... but... not really sure why anyone would assume they wouldn't be punished for knowingly exploiting the game. for the amount of time and money people invest in their characters, it just doesn't make sense to take a risk on something that may destroy all that work...

I played FFXI for over three years and currently play Warhammer/WoW. I've played other MMOs as well, but FFXI was my big one.

They do not take cheating lightly, although it is sometimes hard to catch. It may be the programmer's fault for letting that bug get into the game, but the people who took advantage of something they -knew- was wrong are just as guilty. They saw a bug that could dupe items, which is plain out against the rules in ANY game. Their fault and they deserve the consequences if they were found guilty of duping an item.

FFXI isn't always the best run when it comes to customer service and stupid bannings, but I see nothing wrong with this. Bugs happen in games. Usually it's the people who find them out and report them and if they're major, they normally get fixed rather soon after. Mistakes happen, everyone is human.

I first heard about this on BG(BlueGartr, a FFXI end game linkshell on the Bahamut server) forums.

I could have given you some much better screenshots to use from back when I played. XP

I play FFXI, it was really cutting into my life so I cut it back to two times a week for only 4 hours....rather than every day for 4~12 hours....

retired ffxi player here. expect nonetheless from a game that just takes a while for you to find what u want like items and lvl 75 (applicable to someone like me >.>). ppl these days just get impatient. can't blame em.

There are plenty of warnings and agreements when you sign-up for FFXI that state they don't tolerate cheating. Getting banned was the players' faults.

I really hate it when people exploit glitches, especially in MMORPGs. It ruins the fun for everyone else. But you can never stop them...well atleast for now hehe >_>

Wow... that's some good banning there. When I was playing on Nexon America and ijji(not other regions), the bug-exploiters never got banned. One of the largest bug-exploits that I've seen was in Gunster: Rain of Bullets... the game got discarded later, too.

Has anyone else noticed that many Corean MMORPGS that come into the U.S. market is full of bugs and exploits?

Tbh they shouldn't be banned unless Sony released a statement about the bug. They should have then just removed it accepted their own mistake and move on. I would hate being banned from a game that I brought...for all some people know it was just an element of the game.

I currently play Mabinogi and have also played Ragnarok Online and other MMOs for many years. This is a recurring theme that I see in MMOs.

It may partially be the programmers' fault for creating it and the GMs and testers for letting it pass by unnoticed, but people who take advantage of it are knowingly breaking the Terms of Service. It is not surprising to see many players break their moral code (if they had one, as there are many immature players, both age-wise and socially) and risk punishment in return for levels, equipments, bragging rights, etc. If there is a glitch or bug in the game, some players will find it and take advantage of it. This may partially be because just like in real life, status is an important thing and some people don't want to work for it.

I am glad to see that at least one MMO has taken action against this. However, most MMOs and their GMs will either not be able to find and be certain of who abused bugs and glitches, or do not take action against them. This in turn sends a message that it's fine to do such things in game since it's highly unlikely that you'll be caught for it anyway. It's sad, but true.

I would say it's ok to ban cheaters, but FFXI is a paid game, so, if Sony found users cheating, they should fix it ASAP and cut them the joke, no ban them.
I would be really pissed of if I got banned from something I pay for. But, if it's specified in the ToS, well, screw up...

Ah, Final Fantasy XI... Best MMORPG I've played so far. WoW coming second.

I think the ban's a good idea but I'm sure the damage has been done. I doubt they discovered it quick enough before that otherwise they wouldn't have had to ban that many people.

They should spend some time trying to sort out the virtual money farmers too. Say put them all on a dedicated server to farm items and sell. A small commission goes to the developers themselves.

Any I've played, whether the companies fault (normally questionable) result in IP bans, not just account banning.

I remember many cases of such duplicating bugs.

Cheater never win. I am surprised that the test have not fixed it sooner.

Most MMOs have bugs but they also have rules saying not to abuse 'em.
Don't think sony was wrong banning these players. They should know the rules. .-.

What about those players who were oblivious to the fact that it was a bug and just thought it was apart of the game? Like some sort of strange bonus...

I just feel sorry for that group of players

i play guild wars and the only banning i read/hear about is people using real money to buy in game gold

i nvr play tis but..
if the bug is sony's fault.. it's kinda unfair to ban players thou..
unless.. the players' using those cheating programs, bots and stuffs..
Duh~ it's like money dropping from the sky and u aspect people not to pick them? =_____=""

Oh Em Gee... that's not really fair what Sony did D= it's their own fault. They should only ban if there was a warning of using that bug or something like that and they should have fixed as soon as possible.

I say serves them right.
And even more, I think Sony is great for putting Terms of Agreement above their greed for money... after all, they are loosing subscription money with this.

It's very hard to make MMOs 100% secure and free of bugs these days.
I dare someone to do an MMO totaly free of bugs and completely secure from hacks and exploits.

That's why Terms of Agreement are made.
So that all players can have a balanced and fair play, so no one gets unfair advantages using exploits and cheats.

I don't really play MMOs, but I know how bad things can get with cheaters in FPSs and some other types of games, so I think what Sony did was right.

People who cheat and use exploits have no consideration on how unfair that is to other players, and how that steals the fun of other people, so I have absolutely no pity for them.

O_O they deserve the ban im planing on playing FF11 again : any one in remora server XD i dont want to play all alone T_T

The problem with online games is that the network protocol and client software is available for reverse engineering and manipulation. Whether a bug is abused and widely known, or exploited subtly by very few individuals, doesn't really matter.

Sony or whatever company runs the game, has to save face when people get to see there's real cheating going on their virtual paradise of sorts...

Then you have a business out of selling in-game credits, items, etc. That's already a good reason for cheating to exist.

The only solution will be restraining the customer from messing with the client software, but as long as you run your network and your computer, it's a game over for them, and a cat n' mouse game for cheaters. Until Palladium or whatever DRM-style technology spreads among computer and software vendors... which will be a game over for everyone else (your computer won't be your computer anymore).

I think it's fair to cancel accounts of users abusing bugs, but they should be more aggressive against subtle abusers as well, not just messing up everyone when the shit hits the fan!

When Sony Online had Everquest 1 back in 1999 to 2000 it was full of all type of bugs. One was die while zoning where your corpse appeared in the next zone. One could die and zone like that and have a pile of corpses all with full gear I think it was. So in the end you could load up on bags and keep selling the gear which was mostly rusty and junk at the time to make some money in game. I had like +450 lag in the game all the time so never really got to play much till 2002 so its the best one I remember. I know there was a patch to fix it don't know if any one was suspended. I did it like 3x by accident because I never could get to my corpse alive as it was since I was so low level at the time so it wasn't intentional by me. Everquest 1 was loaded with bugs and glitches to the max prior to 2004.

Why would Sony have a hand in banning players? I would think it would be SquareEnix taking matters into their own hands. I'm pretty sure you meant to say Square instead of Sony lol.

and I agree with XSport above. ToA are there to warn people against activities that are not allowed in the game (not that I read any ToA in any game I play lol). Knowingly manipulating an exploit to give yourself an unfair advantage over other players is most likely one of those activities, just as RMT farming and such is.

I played FFXI for 3 or so years, and the only thing I used was Windower, and that was harmless...unless browsing the internet or chatting on im is somehow unfair to other players lol.

Eck.
That's pretty dumb.
I also believe it's their fault for not noticing the bug..

I'm not into MMO's because I don't find it fun. I almost always stop before reaching level 20.

Justice! Finally!

I find it quite incredulous there are people who think Sony put a duplicating bug in the game as some kind of strange bonus. Sony has to act and fast, since duplicated stuff destroys the work honest players put in. I only question why Sony did not ban them all, since the mechanic to duplication is specific and not something "innocent" people stumble into.

Consider this: someone may be careless and leave the car running to make a quick errand. Someone else sees the opportunity and takes the car for a ride. Is a crime being committed here? Of course, the carelessness of the driver does not absolve the other person of any wrong-doing.

Good game companies will take immediate steps to stop such game-breaking exploits. Lousy game companies will sit on their thumb and, when they finally get off their lazy bums, give a few light slaps on the wrist on a few offenders. That's why I keep away from Korean free-to-play MMoRPG, they are easy to exploit and the company is more interested in making a quick buck from the cash shop than managing the game.

Cheaters deserve what they get. I don't feel sorry for them, they should have known better, even if it was a glitch, you should know better.

Game companies that run MMOs have to take cheating seriously. If they don't, they disenfranchise the majority of players that play legitimately. One of the appeals of playing MMOs is that it's harder to hack the code (though not impossible) and cheat your way through the game.

I also cut Sony / Square Enix a lot of slack for not discovering this bug. You have a small but significant minority that will try to cheat just about every time. Some of the cheaters are very sophisticated and will run packet sniffers and traces to exploit communications between the client and main servers. Some of them will custom make bots that will automate the mundane harvesting that allows a character to accumulate in game currency. What's at stake is not only ego (real and virtual) but also sometimes real money in terms of using these tactics to farm gold and sell it for real cash.

This in turn can have devastating consequences for the game since the availability of farmed gold not only ruins the economy for legitimate players but also scales up character gear (which is bought by farmed gold) to an extent that in game encounters are trivialized. This has a cascading effect of having the developers react by making the game harder, almost forcing legitimate players to buy farmed gold in order to compete. No game benefits from such a vicious cycle.

The sad reality however is that banning seems to be a very poor deterrent to cheating since sophisticated cheaters have multiple accounts, use hacked accounts or have the means to restore their in game status very quickly.

PRESENT!
Currently, RF Online is experiencing DUPE item bugs and all sorts but the game distributor here in my country, LEVEL-UP-GAMES is not doing any crap to those kind of players.

I don't really mind cheating but then again I haven't played an MMORPG that you need to pay for. In free MMORPGs there seems to be alot of people hacking - well in Maple Story at least XD

No sympathy for the banned. Everyone who takes part in it knows that you can get banned for cheating. And really 550 users is hardly anything. For such a small number, you can bet that those users were involved in a heck of a lot more then just duping.

Didn't even know there was a FFO ... I'm late e.e; I like what they've done however. I've played several MMOs that don't take things like that seriously. Merely warning or "who cares, everyone's doing it". Of course, many of them will probably go back because they probably have several accounts and have their ways, but it serves them right. I've played far too many MMOs where abusing bugs/glitches and using hacks have been given the slip.

One reason to play casually on online games.

i think cheaters usually have their way or get let off really easily in most cases as its in the interest of the game master/makers to maintain their audience and users. just requires alot of cleanup work

Its your fault if you get caught cheating, All I can say

Usually before you join these things they have a TOS (Terms of Service)

and I bet it says that they are not allowed to take advantages of bugs like that.

I don't have much experience with MMOs but I have been to Gaia Online, an RPG community with games and stuff. They also have that kind of rule. There are some glitches that can't be avoided (Getting too much gold from posting) but they are strict with stuff like using the gold with the MarketPlace..or something.

It's really the player's fault if they purposely used the double item glitch to their advantage.

We had something similar happen in EVE-Online not to long ago.
70+ accounts where perma-banned, 178 starbases where destroyed and all offending corporations(guilds/clans) where shut down.
Anyone who play or have played EVE will know that 178 starbases is a serious amout of isk, sucks to get them all destroyed, but I guess its just fair since they where exploiting bugs.

Btw, if anyone here plays eve my ingame name is Akaahn :)

I remember in Diablo 2, you would get a CD-key ban for duping items, by taking advantage of lag, and of course, using other means such as a third-party software. But doing so affects many people in many areas, such as the fall of economy (perfect runewords such as Enigma were sold for a price of a cake) as well as imba characters with all-perfect items >__>

Basically, even if there is a bug, one shouldn't take advantage of it. If your server had security flaws, and people were hacking into your server just because 'you didn't do a good enough job covering up the flaw', then I'm sure you'd rage too.

Lol... ah glitching... the "l337" players way of being "pro".

Never call yourself a gamer if you use glitches/cheats in order to succeed in a game. A game is supposed to be challenging... period.

I remember a while back there was a bug with the T6 vender where people can get T6 Shaman sets for free or something. I think Blizz just removed all the T6 Shaman sets without banning the people who took advantage of it. But I think they did ban those extremists who bought tons for nothing and sold them back to vendors for money. Correct me if I'm wrong, it happened more than half a year ago.

I think that they should have addressed the glitch sooner if so many people knew about it already, however the people exploiting it way before hand should have reported it instead of abusing it.

I play FFXI since NA release and apparently I gave up on this game since Dec 2007 as it took too much of my time. SE actually made a boss "Absolute Virtue" which was unkillable legally for like 2 years and they never fix it. During press conference, the game developer just said that the boss is working correctly and it's up to the players to find out.

It was Aug 2008 when SE introduce a new boss "Pandemonium Warden" into the new expansion. The linkshell I was in "BeyondtheLimitation" took 18 hours to fight the boss until the final form. Apparently, there are 19 different forms and each took them 1 hr to kill provided nothing went wrong. More info on the fight itself can be read from the livejournal link below.

http://rukenshin.livejournal.com/17133.html
http://rukenshin.livejournal.com/17366.html

This sparked an outrage by the FFXI players criticizing on how SE make their MMO. To the players, having a challenging boss is great but needing 18 hours to defeat a boss?! Within a week after the 18 hours long fight, a maintenance was carried out to fix both Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden so that they can be killed within 2 hours.

As for those who got banned for duplicating items in game, I congrats them for having their life back. The droprate for the item is totally crap, I've went for like 100 over Salvage run and had not seen a 35 body dropped before. Not surprisingly players actually resorted to abusing a bug in the game.

FFXI has been struggling against a long, hard battle of RMTs (real money traders), it's one of the reasons I don't want to play anymore.

serves 'em right. you are pretty much Sony's b*tch the moment you sign up and agree to their Terms and conditions. It's also pretty much the same situation to every MMO out there. Ignorance of the laws of the game is no excuse.

At my early age I have been playing online for long hours. Damn! I hope I can regain those hours back of playing online game. It's really a waste of my time since I realize it. Yea!~ It's bannable if you were found cheating or hacking into the game to gain something.

That's why patience is a virtue. For those who wait shall get supah ultra rare, even has more worth than dupli bugs

I thought that was great. CabalSEA fallen cause of incompetent GM not banning money selling hackers. Grr.

Most online games have a rule that if you exploit a bug, you get banned. My friend got a week ban for exploiting a bug in WoW.

I clean my hand of MMORPG for good, take up too much time and commitment. Back to console gaming for me. *ex-player of WoW,RO,MAbinogi,Perfect World,SWG,FlyFF* Such soul sucking game MMO have been...

I have been playing MMO's since Ultima Online back when I first went to college about 8-9 years ago.

I was occasionally involved in some shenanigans back than.

As far as the bugs go, it's not the fault of the company. They want to establish a fair play system, and there are many bugs and exploits that are not found, until moments like this.

When you are dealing with games as massive as these, it's easy to miss areas, especially when they are because of some very unusual situations.

And to clarify one thing, innocent people are innocent and not banned. But when you have a situation like this, it is VERY obvious they were taking advantage of something, they know not to do. Even if they don't know, they are still techically and legally responsible, as these games cover these areas in their EULA. When you click that OK, you are now bound by a contract that holds you responsible for such. If you come across such an oddity such as a potential bug/exploit, you are expected to report it, rather than abuse it.

TO give an example of innocence, years ago in the game "Star Wars Galaxies" there was a MAJOR credit dupe, where massive amounts of in game money (credits) were duped by a number of players. These players than began handing it out like candy. Now everyone who had the duped credits in their possession were put under investigation. The people who were found to not have taken part in the actual duping, were not banned.

People can cry all they want, and point fingers at the developers, but fact of the matter it's really nobodies fault. You can't always account for bizzare situations. If these bugs occurred without rhyme or reason on the most basic of situations, that might be put up to human error. But I don't think anybody anticipated Joe A to open trade while Joe B was in combat with Tuskan Raider X put in 10 trillion credits, walk forward 5 paces, jump 3 times, strafe left 3 steps while emoting /dance 4 and click cancel. (Ok, so that's not really the bug, but the situation is just as random as lot of the actual tricks)

As an FFXI player, cheaters deserve to be banned. SE( Square Enix) does not take cheaters lightly nor those gil sellers. Any suspicious characters that involves in cheating or selling gil for $$$ which is more well-known as RMT (real money trades) will be banned after thorough investigation.

Some list of players that got banned can be found at the following link: http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/ffxi-advanced-player-discussion/68852-r-i-p-players.html

In case anyone wondering, the screenshot is a Chain of Promathia (one of FFXI expansion pack) Mission 7-5 agains Tenzen

Remember stuff like that happening back in the days when I played Ragnarok Online.
There were plenty of bots(automated programs that would train your character) around. Though not all of them will get banned by the GMs since people would have to report them in since it would take ages to find every single on of them.

Sounds harsh. Then again, I don't play MMORPGs, so I wouldn't know. Wouldn't it have been better if Sony stripped those players of all their items and fixed the bug? Maybe force their game character to wear a chicken suit as punishment, perhaps?

Wow that's really insane. Been playing FFXI online for 3 years, and THAT...is just really insane...

I play FFXI myself and honestly the people who got banned honestly had it coming. They most likely knew the glitch and exploited it. This can lead to easy item obtainment and if the item isn't rare/ex can lead to price jacking which leads to mass inflation.
I don't cheat and will never. I I'm at 9k carp out of 10k carp for the 2nd best fishing rod in the game.

Honestly don't see why people are making a big deal this time around as each month they do a huge set of banings. Nothing new from previous months. FFXI is the only MMO I can really remember playing that has a 0 tolerance to cheats and exploits.

i play FF11 so does my mom, o_o cheating is wrong but if they do it they should be ready to take the punishment, i have a 75 PLD on the Caitsith server, my mom has a 70 BLM on the Caitsith server, since the game is so hard i get frustrated at cheaters, i work hard camping an NM to get a special Rare/exe item like Bounding boots then someone who bought gil online buys boots exactly the same as the bounding boots and suddenly my hard work means nothing.

square enix is always banning people in ffxi.

Actually, this particular 'bug' was known by SE for over 3 months and they didn't fix or put out a notice that it was indeed a bug. You can say that the particular sequence of actions to do something didn't make sense, but it only happened in very particular areas (replicating the actions elsewhere would not duplicate the drops), so it would seem closer to being a feature than a bug. On top of it, you only need to have 2 people in an alliance of 18 that actually knows about the bug, but you would still be banned just by being in that run with that alliance without ever benefiting from the drop or being aware it was a bug. The line between being banned permanently and being temporarily banned also seemed to be arbitrarily decided. For you WoW players, imagine being in an instance where your party leader does something out of your control and you don't even get the item drop, and yet you got permanently banned while the person who got the item drop gets temporarily banned. That's kind of how it is and why people are making such a big deal out of it.

One of the more memorable MMO hack and punishment I remember from World of Warcraft was an exploit that lets you kill a boss that only appear once a week, but they were able to exploit it so they can fight the same boss over and over. When Blizzard found out, they took away all their equipments that they acquired from that dungeon. Kinda let'em off easy there, but fair enough punishment, I think.

My experience was quite fun. In world of Warcraft, you are allowed to roll a dice from 1-100. What i did was announce that u can bid 1-10gold and if u roll above 65 you get twice the money back. If you roll below 65, i get to keep the gold. Anyways i did this for about lets say 1 hour, made 350 gold ;p

Bad thing was i got 48 hours banned for exploiting the community.

Still was fun though

Been playing MMORPGs for over 10 years now and as far i can tell cheaters were always scolded in some way.
It's just not fair and thus that it does serve em right.
Tho i think a suspension would have been enough for those who weren't catched with other missbehaviours before. o.-

Exploiting a bug is a serious offense and exploiters deserves the ban.

The players who found out about the bug should have reported to the developer for it to be patched immediately.

Exploiting a bug is a form of cheating

Well to utlize a bug in the game is wrong, but it too harsh to direct ban and delete their character. Maybe a penalty is more appropriate, or a purge of some items and stuff or something.

I read this news as well earlier, and there is a very high profile palyer that got deleted as well, and he has like tonnes of rare items collected and so.

Pity that guy, must have spent years on his account.

That one high profile guy is Minidragon from Bismarck server and he has too many rare items like Ares/Marduk/Usukane/Skadi/D.Ring/Amano/Kikoku/Aegis/Apocalypse/Ghorn/Mandau/Mars's Ring/Ninurta Sash.

The cost to get those items can easily exceed 1,000,000,000 gil ^^;. The guy took it as a sign to quit from his linkshell website: http://nineinchninjas.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=9090

Can't blame them..it was too tempting not to use the bug...

Hmm, not so sure this was the right thing to do. Maybe they should have just fixed the bug and made the stuff created using this bug disappear.

Yeah... I experienced a ban lately but it was not my fault :(. Even though it was a very painfull blow to me. Some of the readers may be familiar with the online golf game called Pangya or Albatross18 in USA. I started to play this game on American server but I found that the Japanese version was much more advanced (Season3 instead of outdated Season2 in USA) and less crowded with rude and cheating Brazilians.

Unfortunately my happiness didn't last long because closing of Brazilian server ended with a flood of those Brazilians messing the whole game up. Then Gamespot (Japanese distributor of Pangya) applied the global ban for all non-Japanese IP's. I couldn't play anymore so I've lost my intrest in Pangya for more than 1,5 year.

Then suddenly in the middle of the last year I got an email from Gamespot with the announcement that they started a Season4. I was excited and wanted to try again but the ban was still on. I managed to get past through it using VPN server and my love for this game came in full power. I got a decent level, a new characters and even a nice equipment, that I couldn't even dream of getting on Albatross18. I also found a bunc of new friends to play with.

My luck run out in the beginning of this year, when another closed server (this time in Taiwan) induced another flood of foreign players thet used the same method that I was using. The second IP ban closed the last remaining way to play on Pangya Japan and I was back to square one. I tried to get back on Albatross18 but it was a lousy experience, the rude people and cheaters were still there spoiling all the fun.

I'm so pissed off that Gamespot treated all gaijin players equally, instead of blocking specific IP, but I guess that they find it too bothersome and decided to go in "isolation mode" like in the old times. Too bad that it hit all earnest and good players who don't have the chance to live in Japan...

Ahh, I used to play that game all the time :/ There was an interesting glitch where you could run out of the boundaries of the Dunes (forgot the official name) and run PAST the sea. Quite interesting when parties where using it to pull the monsters away from other players.

I'm not sure how I feel about some of the people who might have used that glitch on accident (if there were any) but the cheaters certainly deserve at least a bit of punishment.

2 words.

Silkroad Online.

so even in final fantasy online has this dupe item problem

it is also happening in rf online philippines

that's harsh squeenix, harsh~

that's harsh squeenix, harsh~

I stop playing FFXI NA servers, when the game economies were too much for me handle. Then World of Warcraft appear, my love for MMORPG came back and I never turn back since.

But for the matters above to ban players due to SQEx mistake, is too harsh. Just quit FFXI and play WoW. That will show SQEx who's the boss. =P

d@@b

There was a lot of discussion on this, but I think what SE did was somewhat correct. Punishment needed to be handed out, but some did not deserve perma bans. The way they handled it was pretty random from what I read, so some of the more "innocent" (yea not technically innocent, but they were there helping; although they didn't obtain any items) players got banned, while others were not.

However, there were actually 2 duping bugs. People have a case on one of them because the gear you can get is not able to be sold or traded, so all SE had to do was possibly delete their gear that they obtained through the exploit. It also takes a long time to get the pieces of the gear and the drop rates were pretty awful. So I see why players did some of this, although of course it isn't right.

However, there was another dupe that allowed you to obtain multiple items that are one of the most expensive items in the game. People were selling them that could affect the economy, and people were getting mad rich. Those are the people who should have been perma banned.

But SE doesn't exactly have the best customer service and they really

I used to play FFXI. I played for a couple of years, struggling to get a level from a decent group. I had a Level 46 RDM, 30 BLM, 25 WHM, and 20 SMN. I quit it for World of Warcraft. WoW is so much better than FFXI, but there are times when I would like to play again, especially with the new Level Sync...

...The only gripe I have about Square-Enix's Customer Service is their billing: If you reactivate your account at the end of the month, you will get charged for 2 months at once, unlike WoW. You would have to reactivate your account well into the month if you don't want to get charged twice up front. :/

if only I can understand & break all the codings inside the installation package~~~~~

I might get flaked for this but i don't think it's the fault of gamers who exploit bugs. The bug was already there and not created by them, they only got lucky in the sense they discover it. =/
As usual you have whiners who are venomously against anyone who can get an edge over them whether it's perceived to be fair/unfair to them. Suck it up peeps.
Now if only i can get an exploit for the real world... =)

I wonder how come users still play this dead game. I stopped in 2007 and it was too good so far, I'll probably never come back. SE's support SUCKS big time, so the company too.