Pondering GW - does this game suffer from hacks?

So I'm a long time WoW player who has very recently quit the game. Currently, I'm waiting for Hellgate: London, and am looking for something fresh to keep me busy.

My one worry about GW are hacks. Does this game suffer from widespread hacking? Thanks guys ^_^

there were a couple of exploits/hacks that were recently released (duping and post searing items in pre searing).

once anet was notified about these, they closed off the holes fairly quickly.

besides those 2, I can't recall any major hack. anet's done a fairly decent job on keeping hacks out of the game.

There's really only been like 3-4 "Hacks" in the game's history..

One was a couple years ago when the Traders "reset" and everything was super-cheap..

Another where the same thing happened, about A year ago.

And Enko covered the others...

There have never been any known hacks. There have been a few exploits that once known about were quickly closed off.

When most people talk about hacks, they just mean exploits. While it's possible to make textures on your screen appear different, it doesn't change it for other people. The same goes for supposed gold "hacks," which just make it appear like you have some amount of gold that you don't; you can't actually use any of it.

If you want more reading, here's an old article on how GW prevents hacking from affecting others.

There is/was rumours of some underground stuff but it's defintely not widespread.

ouble post, stupid 56k: see below

No wide spread hacking that affects game play (don't worry, you won't be getting instant killed because somebody hacks, though you can die pretty fast sometimes in this game legitamately).

No hacking, all the important data is serverside. You can change textures and other unimportant data your side (only you see the difference to everyone else its all the same).

There have been a few exploits, compared to most games though the number is very low. They have also been fixed very quickly and rollbacks or bans applied when possible/required.

Now this is really strange. I am positive I read this entire thread a few weeks back, and I hunted it down when the item duping fiasco began, but could not find it!

I read the entire article mentioned above the first time I read this thread, and it mentions in detail item duplication (and almost tells you how to do it!). I found it very strange and rather ironic that a week or so later item duping had hit Guild Wars!

The trader reset was not an hack or any kind of exploit. Anet screwed up, the lucky people who realized this got rich.

There were two known exploits, an item dupe recently, and a travel exploit which allowed characters to use end-game items in noob island.

The rest is benign.

Various texture mods, bots, economy foobars or similar are not hacks or exploits. They are just (some of them) undesirable elements that are present in every online game, but, despite some pretty dramatic claims, have no detrimental effect on gameplay.

as it was sad before it doesnt affect Gameplay much and dupes affected those related to exploiting ad purchasing items kniwingly or so dont worry 99% of people wasnt affected at all

Most important is: they care. So if something happens they will act. Compare this to other games and decide...

It's not like some korean mmo's that are hackfests.

The netcode in Korean mmos gives me nightmares... That and the complete lack of client-side prediction. A hint for game developers everywhere: if a player rearranging inventory items has to wait for the message to reach the server saying that item X has moved to a new inventory space, and then a message has to come back to update their inventory display, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. Send the message, but update the inventory display client-side immediately.

Also, any time you need to have some sort of 3rd-party product running along side your game preventing people from alt-tabbing or running hacks, it is a good sign that your server<->client relationship needs to be re-architectured.

/endrant

none of those were hacks ... they were bugs =)

Sadly.... no.

I personally found that Phantasy Star Online back in the day was considerably more fun with hacking in effect. It gave robin-hood folks like me an actual enemy to fight against (The PK-clans) and an actual cause to uphold (the protection of non-hackers).

Guild Wars is fun enough, but sometimes I think it would be more fun if hackers got loose in it. Nothing of the sort though. Guild Wars is clean and clear as glass.

Well, since a "hack" starts most often from a bug (very rarely an unexpected use of particular features), it's pretty close. And there are ALWAYS bugs in software, but they do not all lead to exploits (which is the second part of a hack).

And Anet is apparently producing very good code (to say the least), knowing that the software architecture makes sure the critical playing content (ennemies, missions/quests information, account and character information) is on the server side, thus not easily attackable. The client you run on your computer only has the GW world "naked" and static.

Bots are inevitable in such soft, they're simply programs sending the same commands as the GW client is doing (which was obtained by reverse engineering). But my understanding is that they check for this kind of repetitive sequences of commands (though randomness makes it more difficult, but not at all impossible, to detect) in order to detect, and ban, bots.

Security-wise all is good in GWland