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Tim Cotten Reflects on Early Ultima Online Duping, and Burning Players' Houses Down to Catch Exploit

SystemSystem Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
edited October 2022 in News & Features Discussion

imageTim Cotten Reflects on Early Ultima Online Duping, and Burning Players' Houses Down to Catch Exploiters | MMORPG.com

A fun story from developer Tim Cotten, who tells about the early duping bugs in Ultima Online, and how when he joined the team, he planned a way to catch dupers by surprise, and turned it into an event.

Read the full story here


Comments

  • TillerTiller Member LegendaryPosts: 11,449
    Lots of games have had dupe issues. I remember the great credit dupe scandal in SWG back in 2004.

    A few hundred players were removed from the game as well as 550 billion credits. A ton of players were caught up in it and had their accounts banned as well due to frivolous /tipping by the exploiters; which if you ever played GTA online is similar to money bag droping where people were tipping duped credits to unsuspecting players and trial account users to get them tagged with the money.
    SWG Bloodfin vet
    Elder Jedi/Elder Bounty Hunter
     
  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,851
    Thanks for the story. 
    I remember that, and I and many other players were very happy to see the burning houses as a symbol of the fight against cheating. 

    Maybe players should receive receipts for high ticket items, for "cash back" upon deletion of a duped item of value. 

    Once upon a time....

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,851
    Amaranthar said:
    Thanks for the story. 
    I remember that, and I and many other players were very happy to see the burning houses as a symbol of the fight against cheating. 

    Maybe players should receive receipts for high ticket items, for "cash back" upon deletion of a duped item of value. 
    I'll take back that comment on receipts. lol
    I can see how that would have been abused by the cheaters. 

    Once upon a time....

  • foxgirlfoxgirl Member RarePosts: 485
    Tom will not cotton the existence of exploiters!
  • MacAllenMacAllen Member UncommonPosts: 72
    My favorite Ultima bug was "Grandmaster Hour". It was like 2 AM, I was online, working on skills. Picked up a weapon I'd not used, had no skill in, hit something once...ding, grand master. Umm...OK? Tried it again with a different skill...ding, grand master. Quickly woke up my guild, and for an hour every single thing you did made you a grand master in it. This was very early after launch. We quickly hit the skill cap and focused on specializing, then abused our status like crazy until the GM's descended upon us.

    We were very proud of ourselves, sitting in the banishment box for a week :)
    eoloeAmaranthar
  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,851
    MacAllen said:
    My favorite Ultima bug was "Grandmaster Hour". It was like 2 AM, I was online, working on skills. Picked up a weapon I'd not used, had no skill in, hit something once...ding, grand master. Umm...OK? Tried it again with a different skill...ding, grand master. Quickly woke up my guild, and for an hour every single thing you did made you a grand master in it. This was very early after launch. We quickly hit the skill cap and focused on specializing, then abused our status like crazy until the GM's descended upon us.

    We were very proud of ourselves, sitting in the banishment box for a week :)
    UO was the wild, wild west of gaming. And they certainly had some interesting ways of handling things. 

    Once upon a time....

  • AntariousAntarious Member UncommonPosts: 2,843
    edited October 2022
    Even though things become harder to remember as I get older... Ultima Online is one of those games where so many things happened. Well no other experience was really like those early days.

    Personal memories ranging from reading about duping, to uo extreme users, my 150+ person guild becoming a guild of 3 because our tower was looted. Then once I was over on the Interest team hearing about GM Darwin... whom I had worked with when I was doing customer service. That was the GM who was using GM tools to place structures on tiles players couldn't and then selling them on Ebay...

    One of my favorite memories was the server wars at the crossroads once they had a set morning down time.

    Least favorite was trying to go 7x GM prior to skill locks... I would almost saying trying to get the last .3 for taming, but I enjoyed running around ice island for an hour (I guess). That's kind of out of context as it was mutiple days doing trips around the island taming wolves not just an hour.

    Actual favorite memories are all after I stopped playing (still paid for an account) and was on the Interest Team. Mostly I liked watching the commentary while people were doing content I planned out and set up. Or the larger events that involved most of the team.

    Then you could probably move least favorite memory to when one night everyone got teleported to jail 10 without warning... got to watch their "robe" get stripped by a script and "disconnected" pop up on screen. That was the result of the volunteer lawsuit and all the programs being shut down. I guess I'll stop there... as it still irritates me to this day.
    obiiAmaranthar
  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,851
    edited October 2022
    Antarious said:
    Even though things become harder to remember as I get older... Ultima Online is one of those games where so many things happened. Well no other experience was really like those early days.

    Personal memories ranging from reading about duping, to uo extreme users, my 150+ person guild becoming a guild of 3 because our tower was looted. Then once I was over on the Interest team hearing about GM Darwin... whom I had worked with when I was doing customer service. That was the GM who was using GM tools to place structures on tiles players couldn't and then selling them on Ebay...

    One of my favorite memories was the server wars at the crossroads once they had a set morning down time.

    Least favorite was trying to go 7x GM prior to skill locks... I would almost saying trying to get the last .3 for taming, but I enjoyed running around ice island for an hour (I guess). That's kind of out of context as it was mutiple days doing trips around the island taming wolves not just an hour.

    Actual favorite memories are all after I stopped playing (still paid for an account) and was on the Interest Team. Mostly I liked watching the commentary while people were doing content I planned out and set up. Or the larger events that involved most of the team.

    Then you could probably move least favorite memory to when one night everyone got teleported to jail 10 without warning... got to watch their "robe" get stripped by a script and "disconnected" pop up on screen. That was the result of the volunteer lawsuit and all the programs being shut down. I guess I'll stop there... as it still irritates me to this day.
    You might enjoy this. The GM involved (GM Toad) was very secretive about the plot and even Raph Koster told me he didn't know about it. 
    https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/487824/the-greatest-quest-artifact-to-ever-exist-in-mmorpgs 

    I still consider UO the greatest game ever made. 
    UO had a lot of problems to deal with not only because it was the first major MMORPG, but also exactly because it was the greatest game ever made. 
    strawhat0981

    Once upon a time....

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