Ragnarok Online’s anime-inspired art and earworm-inducing soundtrack took the Philippines by storm when it was introduced in 2003. Everything about it screamed adorable and happy. From the populous business center of Prontera all the way to the farthest reaches of this virtual world, it was one big, fun adventure — its wonders and secrets waiting to be experienced by a generation of gamers. With costumes ranging from badass to silly, you fight monsters of both the huggable and hateable category. The experience was a kind of joy only a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) could deliver.

However, it’s not all Mr. Smiles and Santa Poring Caps in Midgard.

Zeny Swiper (Illustrated by: Bea Bisuña)

Underneath the sugary aesthetics of the game lies something darker. Something sinister. A world where the naive are preyed upon. Where men pretend to be lovely idols. Where a player may just be bits of code running to the tune of an automated program. Where your entire game existence could be swept from right under you in an instant.

These are the stories of people who lived a life of virtual misdemeanor in the land of Midgard. Some got away with it, others received their due.  These are the fascinating tales of deception and trickery from the country’s first true MMORPG.

This is RO Underground.

(Aliases were made to protect the players’ identity and safety)

Traps for Dummies

Girl Priest (c) Gravity

Bridget started playing around 2004 to 2005. Like many, she was a clueless newbie walking across maps. After whacking around some monsters with a fellow player, a Knight, she came across a seemingly normal Priest.

“He logged on his priest, warped off to the Pyramids and buffed himself up,” Bridget recalled. “But then he started whacking everything that moved. He’s a killing machine. I had to sit down for minutes at a time to recover my SP so I could do the same damage he did.”

It was that moment when she decided to become a Battle Priest, a variation of the Priest build that focused on offense instead of healing other players..

However, Bridget had one small problem: “I thought the male priest sprite looked really stupid, swinging his mace like a golf club,” she shared. “I wasn’t having that.“

“G.I.R.L.” Guy in Real Life (Illustrated by: Bea Bisuña)

Thus, with a few clicks and a new account, Bridget began her new life as a G.I.R.L. or Guy In Real Life.

Expression via gender choice is a popular option for video games.. Whether it is a way of identifying yourself or appreciating the character’s looks, Ragnarok Online was one of the first games to offer that level of expression, but at the same time allow players to interact with other people in the virtual space. It was a chance to mask ourselves with something we could be more comfortable as.

However, as video gaming is still a male-dominated industry, finding a female sprite in-game served as one of the first few times that a socially-awkward boy could interact with the opposite sex.

But with how easy it was to change sexes and gender in-game, some more nefarious players use this to exploit the gullible. Asking for in-game items and (sometimes in real life) currency soon became a common modus operandi.

Bridget however claimed to have no ulterior motives.

“I didn’t set out to make a female character to trick anyone, honest,” she shared. “That’s something I learned I could profitably do later on. I didn’t get as much as I could have, though. I’d like to say I’m nice like that.”

In fact, he would even reveal his true identity through a series of accidents, which made him realize the power of a female avatar.

“Now, people would be incredibly chatty. I’d be chatty back because hey, why not? The party’s doing great. We’re not dying left and right. Even if my INT sucked, I could still heal and buff,” Bridget said. “Night goes on and they’d ask for my Friendster (that’s right, kids). Of course, being naive and all, I gave it. They stopped speaking to me the next day. Gee, I wonder why?”

As Bridget leveled up and got promoted to Priest, he hid his identity more and more, just to see if he could keep up the act. He even had a taste of fame.

“I actually had something of a fan club. See, battle priests were a rare sight back in my day. High level battle priests, even more so. High level female battle priests? I think I might have been the only one at the time. I remember sticking to this semi-popular area for levels 70-90. I became a bit of a mainstay in that region. People would follow me and watch me wreck the map all day long. I started to recognize some of them too.”

Eventually though, he got tired of the act and the game. He moved on with his life, but not before learning from his fellow G.I.R.L.s about the dangers of the deception.

“One friend of mine in particular  just couldn’t leave the game. People would look for him outside the game, on Friendster and Yahoo! Messenger. He had to constantly craft elaborate tales just to evade his admirers,” Bridget continued. “He’s decidedly not willing to share his story to the public, so you’re stuck with mine.”

 

The Valorous Botter

Farming 24/7 – Bot’s Tale (Illustrated by: Bea Bisuña)

Siegfried was a leader of a well-known guild in the Philippines. He commanded his troops to battle in the War of Emperium (WoE). He sported some of the strongest gear and upgrades. Getting to that level is no mean feat. For the average player, maxing out a character is already an impressive time investment. Siegfried not only had a maxed out character with top-of-the-line gears, he also had a stable of other characters on a similar level.

For the leader of WoE guild, having access to the best gears and the strongest classes is a requirement.

Most hardcore players also have more than one character at max level.  Repeating the entire process of leveling up and acquiring gear will certainly take its toll upon the user.

This is where bots come in.

OpenKore Botting Program for Ragnarok Online

“I started botting when I found it hard to level-up my character alone. My friend quit a few months after he invited me to Ragnarok. So unless I find other people to party with, I usually end up playing alone,” Siegfried said. “So, I set up a bot to party with my character. I played manually, while the bot supported me.”

Without going into confusing code-speak, a bot is a program that communicates with the game, sending it commands just like a player would. However, unlike the spontaneity and adaptability of a human, it can only do a set of commands at any given time.

Siegfried used a bot to a help him level up in places where going at it solo would be dangerous. “I bot primarily to level-up. Rarely do I bot to farm,” he emphasized this fact a lot. Botters as a community tend to be divided as to what is moral and ethical in terms of bot use. Siegfried is of the camp that thinks that using bots for farming should be stopped.

“I am not like the others who farm in excess to sell to market. They are the professional botters who earn a living from the game. A bot is like money. An instrument. By itself, it is not evil. It is the intention of the user which makes it good or bad,” he explained.

However, he also believes that it is not as harmful as the general community claims it to be, proving his point with basic economics.

“It doesn’t affect the game as much as other things if you would think about all the factors,” Siegfried shared. If they overfarm, the law of supply and demand would make their loots rather worthless in the long run. Even zeny (in-game currency) becomes worthless if you have too much.”

Other than the economic and experience advantage of bots, another important topic was its use on the battlefield, particularly during WoE sieges.

“Bot warpers and buffers play a major role in WoE. The more bots you have, the more advantageous your guild will be in terms of the ability to retaliate faster,“ Siegfried stated. He also pointed out that since bots are usually programmed for dealing with monsters and not players, he had to reprogram the bots themselves to suit their needs.

As bots slowly grew in number across RO, many players were turned off by the fact that there are people who won’t even make the effort to make their characters stronger by themselves. They killed the very principle of an MMORPG being a social game by leaving the program up while they do something else.

Siegfried, however, had a different take on it.

“I enjoy the game even while botting. While non-botters enjoy using the original client to play, socialize and stay on front of the PC overnight, I do the same but with the bot in front of me. It’s like Television vs. Radio or a book. I still enjoy the game without the visuals of the game client. Imagination does the trick.”

We chat using bots instead of the real client. A ‘goodbye’ would go like ‘sige, mumu mode muna.’”

Now You See It…

Now you see it, now you don’t (Illustrated by: Bea Bisuña)

Kuro was just an ordinary player. He went to dungeons to hunt for items, fought with his guild during sieges and even used bots from time to time when he was busy with real life.

One day, at a run-of-the-mill computer shop…

“We found a bot program in a computer shop. It wasn’t the usual open kore command box (a popular choice), but one that has an easy-to-use Graphic User Interface (GUI),” Kuro shared. “We copied it, intending to use it ourselves, but our dorm mate knew how to add a keylogger inside programs so we placed one and distributed it among other players via a new novice account.”

(c) NProtect Gameguard

For those not in the know, a keylogger is a program — usually hidden inside another one — that allows the owner to gain access to the account details (username, password, email) of the person using the cover program. In this case, the botting program.

“After a week or so, we checked the accounts that we keylogged via email. There were a few small fries at first and some that had a decent amount of stuff,” Kuro said. “But then, we hit the jackpot: three accounts coming from the same person, loaded with level 99s and a boatload of high-end equipment, ranging from +8s to +9s (upgrade limit then was +10).”

“After scoping out the account, we decided to raid all three.”

Reports on hacked accounts are commonplace in the online gaming community. RO was no exception. Philippines’ gaming culture built its foundations around computer shops (LAN centers in the West or PC Bangs in Korea), since owning a PC was considered a luxury back then. In one day, it was the norm for one PC station to have five or more accounts logged throughout its use. With the botting program being passed around from shop to shop, the chances of catching a high-roller slowly increased, until Kuro hit it big.

If this were a movie, the next thing that would happen was that Kuro would receive divine retribution. A payment for his crimes.

That was not the case.

“As I was transferring the items, the account owner logged in. We were wrestling for control at first, but I changed his passwords since I had his email address. After that, he created a novice and asked why his account was getting raided. I told him that he was caught botting and that I was confiscating his items. He then starting pleading at me to return his items.”

“Funnier still, he reported what happened to Level-Up… by admitting that he used bots for his characters except for his Merchant. LU then banned his two accounts, but by that time, I already transferred all of his stuff by sending it to a chain of newly-created novices (they were deleted afterwards to remove the trail).”

Kuro got away scot-free. He eventually did receive some sort of karmic punishment — his account was also raided by other hackers — but he had already sold his in-game items and zeny for real life pesos.

And just to add salt to the wound,

“After a few months, I won a Level-Up event, and got a 300 million zeny reward.“

The Bad Guys Sometimes Win

Life is never fair. Whether in the real world or a made-up one, morality has always been a fickle mistress. This is especially true in the latter case, where identities are hidden behind a veil of anonymity. With no real-life repercussions for most cases, being a rogue can be exhilarating as one gets to lie, cheat and steal their way to success.

Here, you only live once. But online, you have infinity.

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