In my work as a GM, I saw many amazing things. I saw guild members contact support staff because they were worried about another player's real-life wellbeing. I saw incredibly complex scams across multiple players and accounts that, while infuriating and exceptionally against the rules, were astonishing in their genius. And of course, I saw lots and lots of cybering.
What a GM sees
There is a common misconception in the world of online gaming that game masters are regular players and that they float around playing whatever game you're talking about until the time comes for them to help someone else. This may have been true in the olden days when many GMs were scarcely more than volunteers or trusted community members, but the modern reality is much different. An MMO studio cannot afford to put that much power into the hands of people who do not directly depend on the studio for a paycheck.
"Think of it this way: You see The Matrix, but GMs see the code." |
Think of it this way: You see The Matrix, but GMs see the code.
What a GM knows
For the most part, players are a respectable bunch of folks who don't bother customer support unless they have a specific problem. The great majority of a GM's work consists of very simple tasks like restoring items deleted by accident or redistributing loot from raids or dungeons and pretending to believe whatever excuse the player provided. You would be astounded at how many times cats have deleted characters by walking across a keyboard and clicking "Totally" in a confirmation window.
Here's an example that has to stay pretty vague so I don't end up getting my face sued off:
Player A runs an endgame dungeon. He slays the final boss and acquires an incredibly rare dagger. Unfortunately, Player A's class is unable to use daggers. His best friend, Player B, plays a class that relies on daggers as its primary weapon. But Player B was offline at the time of the dungeon raid, and the item isn't tradeable. So Player A and Player B come up with a brilliant plan: tell a GM that Player A looted the item by mistake and ask the GM to place it in Player B's inventory.
If you're an honest and smart gamer, you are probably thinking, "That is a stupid plan." And you are right.
For starters, game masters have access to a little thing we'll call "encounter logs." These logs list everything that happened in any given encounter. In the case of the raid above, the GM can simply look up the encounter log for the final boss, see that Player B wasn't involved in the encounter, and discover the ruse. Alternatively, the GM can look at Player B's login history and see that Player B was offline at the time of the boss kill. Or most hilariously, the GM can simply pull up chat logs of the two players working out this genius scheme because for some reason they always do it via in-game chat.
"You are not smarter than the GM you're talking to because you can't be." |
You are not smarter than the GM you're talking to because you can't be. He or she has far more information about you, your character, and your actions than you would ever guess. To paraphrase a holiday classic, "He knows when you are sneaking; he knows when you betray." So treat your GMs with respect; they're there to help. And don't be surprised if you can't pull off that incredible scam you've come up with -- odds are good whoever you're talking to has seen it a dozen times before.
Oh, and those "secret" sites you visit with all the cool hacks, scams, and other cheaty-type stuff? Your GM knows about those, too.