I think it was impatience that drove me to cheat. I wasn’t angry, nor was I frustrated, I think it was the MMO drive to play with the big boys. I had friends that would be amazed at the stories I could tell and the equipment I could display. I would tell them, “I have been to the depths of the Outlands; I have defeated the monstrosities that call it their home!” I had no intention of going as deep as I did.
Finding a venue to act out my fantasy was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Hundreds of private servers begged me to join with descriptors like “Fun Server” and “Blizzlike”, I didn’t realize what I had gotten into. It turns out Blizzlike servers are similar to the official Blizzard ones as the name implies, meaning the rate of gaining levels was only slightly tweaked up. Fun Servers were the opposite, everything that had a multiplier was ratcheted up as far as possible. I saw values like 300 times the speed of Blizzard’s servers and higher. Some of them even had entirely custom content, the one I remember in particular took the largest dungeon in the game and shoved in a long line of enemies that you could slaughter from the beginning (level 1) to the end (level 70), it brought a new meaning to “streamlined”.
Most of the servers were completely unreliable. Plagued with atrocious server lag and bugs, they were nothing like the curated experience Blizzard offered. Hacking was much easier without Blizzard’s built in security system, it wasn’t surprising to see players flying around or walking by with giant-like proportions. Sometimes I’d log on with items missing, ability bars rearranged, even characters gone. It was a disaster, but somehow the times where everything went smoothly outweighed the chaos surrounding it.
It wasn’t long after my glorious discovery that I quit officially playing World of Warcraft. Private servers held all the excitement I desired to occupy my time with. Not only did I get to witness what it was like at max level, but I had the ability to see things I never eventually did after years of playing WoW officially. I mean look at that, a phoenix mount!
I fell down the private server hold every now and then during my WoW campaign. One time I found one I liked so much I applied for the role of a Game Master. My job was to police the bedlam I mentioned earlier, but that story is fit for a completely separate Remembering Warcraft addition.
Years later my Battle.net account was hacked because of my trips into the back alleys of private servers. Everything was returned with an added bonus (the hacker’s 15,000 gold from gold selling was mailed to me along with a few leftover extremely valuable items). I haven’t touched one since.
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