That Time We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online
<p><em>Ultima Online is celebrating its 25th anniversary! You know what that means, right? </em><strong><em>Story time!</em></strong></p>
<p><em>In the spirit of #gamedev and inspired by the classic </em><a href="https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024930/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Ultima-Online" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank"><em>UO postmortem video by Raph Koster, et al</em></a><em>, I thought it’d be fun to share a few stories from the middle years of Ultima Online between my time at EA Redwood Shores and Mythic Fairfax.</em></p>
<p><em>Today’s tale: </em><strong><em>a technical teardown of burning down cheaters’ houses after finding a “criminal” ring of illegal item dupers.</em></strong></p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*A4ceavp9FCDSql6meIhrTw.jpeg" style="height:439px; width:700px" /></p>
<p><a href="https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/167056/houses-burning-players-banned" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">A Cheater’s House Burnt to the Ground in Luna, Ultima Online</a> (2008)</p>
<h1>Duping: UO’s Zero-Day Exploit</h1>
<p>When Ultima Online first launched we, the players, found some bugs.</p>
<p>By some, I mean, <em>a lot</em>.</p>
<p>And the most valuable, diabolical, worth-building-a-secret-web-forum-to-trade-them sort of bug was: <strong><em>duping</em></strong>.</p>
<p>Being able to duplicate an item, or better, <em>a bag full of items</em>, was the most advantageous exploit possible in the game. Better than speed-hacking, better than direct damage passthrough — even better than pre-lockdown home invasions.</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.cotten.io/that-time-we-burned-down-players-houses-in-ultima-online-7e556618c8f0"><strong>Click Here</strong></a></p>