How I Became a World of Warcraft Duper

[Corvo223]

How I became a duper in World of Warcraft

I. Introduction:
II. Curiosity of cheating
III. Becoming an Exploiter
IIV. Working with a Team
IV. Cons and Pros of Working Solo
V. Finding A dupe
VI. Finding a Second Dupe
VII. Then comes the problems
VIII. Finding a Third Dupe Method



I. Introduction:

For the last seven years I have been playing World of Warcraft, a game that I knew everything about... or so I thought. It started out as my dad who works for a respectable software company, and as a hobby of his he played games when they first arrived to the PC. When he introduced virtual games on a computer to me, i've grown intensly attracted to games and admired the creativity that the designers put into them. I saw at a young age how games evolved into what they are now.

When I was young, I never understood how and what went into the making of a game. As a young boy, my creative mind took control and it was as if I was actually there inside the virtual world of these games. My imagination made the game play experience even more entertaining and memorable. As time went by, games become more advance and everything that gamers wish for came to life. Finally after years to come, World of Warcraft (WoW) hit the markets and what impact it had was astronomical to the gaming community.

All WoW players remember our first experience when it was first released, such memory's will never pass. I thoroughly enjoyed everything that Blizzard Entertainment had to offer with their new MMO.

II. Curiosity of cheating

After playing WoW for a couple of years, I got bored of the same game play style I've been playing for so long. I've role played with the story line, fought in PvP, and worked as a team in raids. There was something missing, even though WoW has reached my peak of expectations for one of the greatest MMO's, it just was not enough.

I remember single player games have cheat codes if you got bored, so why could I not cheat in WoW? Obviously there is a Terms of Service you agree to saying that you would not undertake in such ideas or actions, but human nature proves we are very curious creatures. I thought about it for a while, and decided to do a little research on the topic.

I came across hacking websites, forums, and various fan pages and what I found was surprising. There are actually people across the internet who have been hacking, exploiting, and exploring hidden zones in World of Warcraft. At the time, I knew hacking was out of the question, because I had no idea what its like to hack and too lazy to learn it on my own. Exploiting on the other hand sounded great, but again I had no idea where to start. Exploration, now that sounds like something I can do, you just find hidden locations and try to find a way in right?

Every cheater has what I call their breaking point, where they show their true colors and start to let their curiosity take over. My breaking point was in World of Warcraft, and boy did I stumble across something big. Later in this article you will see how big and vast the underground market in the exploiting side to video games really is.

III. Becoming an Exploiter

To think of one as a exploiter, it just sounds silly, but I could not fit my self in any other category of a cheater. I never thought about hacking, the words, "law, criminal, jail, court, lawyers ect" came into my head by just the thought of it. I've always been good at debating with others, and can almost always convince my self that I can justify anything I do. So theoretically it is not my fault if the company has a flaw in their product and I happen to stumble across it even if I am intentionally looking for flaws, how could they blame me?

I first thought to my self, if I want to succeed at this I am going to have to learn off of what others have done in the past to exploit. I did a lot of researching, and the first thing that came to mind was how could I re-create what I just read or saw. That did absolutely nothing and I got no where trying to re-create exploits that where fixed. At the time, I knew so little, so I was best off looking for bugs my self.

After a while I found useless bugs that did nothing, until I came across a disconnect macro on some forum. For some reason I thought just disconnecting your self was a exploit it self, even though it did absolutely nothing except immediately kick you from the game. Then it hit me, what if you disconnected your self right when the server is trying to communicate with you, like casting a spell or trading.

My mind exploded with ideas to test, disconnect a trade, spell, this and that. I started finding flaws that I never thought even existed. Once I found bugs, I immediately learned everything about it and what caused the flaw. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what went wrong, most of the time you can visual see that if you do these exact steps you get this result.

Before I knew it, I was no longer depending on other peoples experiences or explanations on websites for help, I was finding stuff that no one had posted or possibly never stumbled across. Things started looking up for me, and I was one step closer in my journey to making a fortune.

IIV. Working with a Team

As we are all different and have our strengths and weaknesses, I found that having a leadership role has always been a strong strength of mine. I understood to lead a team with a clear objective to exploit a game you must have a good background and have some experience of how some of the mechanics work to fall back on.

Naturally after my long days of researching I already knew a few forums to begin my search for my future partners to reach my goals. I must say, after talking with a few people who I've been following for some time I already knew who my partners where. Everything worked out flawlessly, and before I knew it I had a team of exploiters willing to work with me and share our finds to help feed on each other.

Within the first month of working with my team, we tripled the finds and made major progress in looking for flaws in the game. A friend said I sounded like a reverse engineer, some one who takes apart something to learn how it works. I find that funny, because my methods are using no third party programs or any knowledge of hacking.

We all shared a common idea, find out how to do something easier then what is intended. Our minds collaborated, and we argued more then I ever did with my family, which is a lot. The more we debated and argued our points, the more we became less close minded and thought more like each other. We used our knowledge from one another to formulate working exploits, with out the hassle of trail and error.

After releasing some of our work to the forums, we felt that we could educate a lot of people who shared the same interest as we did. If we where lucky, maybe some one might tell us something we did not know, but mostly we got a lot of "lazy leechers" who asked a ton a questions and we felt like we had to spoon feed them.

IV. Cons and Pros of Working Solo

As I stated above, there are a lot of benefits when sharing your finds with other people. You can mooch off of others, and vice verse. If you are not careful, you can find your self in a sticky situation. There are many things that can go wrong, when you do share valuable information to other people, no matter how much you trust them.

Some times you happen to come across a big exploit, something that you keep to your self not for greed, but for protecting the new information you just uncovered. It is the human error that you fear the most, and if you are smart you will not tell anyone. As bad as it sounds, the less people who know the higher chance it will work in the future.

If you work alone, you keep everything you find. If you work with a team, there is a chance you could lose everything you have. A high risk to take, but everything you are doing is already a risk, it just depends on how far are you willing to go.

V. Finding A dupe

After a year and a half of exploiting flaws in World of Warcraft, it got to the point I started to find major bugs that I could exploit. These are the kind of things you would expect a private hack could do. I was literally turning the system against it self, and playing the game with advantages others could only dream of. Unfortunately it took me a very long time to start thinking of even trying to find a dupe or anything of that nature.

I've heard of dupes, exploits that could help you become one of the most richest and powerful characters in the game. I knew they existed, but in the back of my mind I thought it was impossible or not even trying to look into it.. Until one day I found a actual working live dupe. The best part about finding this dupe was, I calculated in my brain the formula on how to exploit a bug I found and in my head I saw the result.

I was astonished to believe that something like this existed from most likely the beginning of WoW and no one has ever came across it. I was more shocked by the fact on how easy it was, and it was hiding under everyone nose this entire time. I felt like I stumbled across a buried treasure chest and thought how can I keep this with out anyone knowing?

I first tested it, just to make sure I was not going crazy, and when I saw how many items I duped it was unbelievable. This was just the beginning into a world I never knew existed. After becoming extremely rich with thousands of gold, I bought everything in the game had to offer. In some cases, I flooded the server with items and quickly painted a target on my back.

It did not take long for people to assume I was cheating. Looking back on it now, there is a lot of people that would be angry how carelessly I treated this dupe. I did hear about people making money, buying and selling gold in World of Warcraft. I did some more research, and found many websites that offered tons of services such as power leveling, selling gold and items, even buying gold.

I thought if I have a dupe, why not try to make some money off of it? After selling stupid amounts of gold straight to a Chinese level one character, I made a good couple of hundred bucks and thought I could run my own gold selling business. Then the worst thing happened that you can imagine.

After just one month of having a dupe, it was fixed and I was banned. That was huge wake up call I was not expecting. Here I was, thinking if I ever wanted money I could just hop on and dupe some gold then hop off with a couple hundred bucks for the day. Things do not work as simple as that, not if you are careless as I was.

I quickly learned from my mistakes, and did more research on dupes and started to see if there was anyone complaining about the sudden spike of items I duped on my server. I saw a few post but nothing to make the head lines of any fan sites. So I realized something, I had an opportunity to take full advantage of. This could become a job to me, I could possibly use this talent of mine to find major exploits and make profit off of it.

Who doesn't want a work at home job that pays four times the amount of a normal job in one day? So my journey continued to find another dupe, and this time my objective was clear, find a dupe!

Now if you are still reading this, thank you for taking the time and go grab some pop corn because my story gets interesting from here on out.

VI. Finding a Second Dupe

You might think me to be bat shit crazy, but yes, I believed I could find another major dupe in WoW. This time, I did my homework...

I researched on dupes and found out what a huge and rare opportunity I had and was crushed to know that I lost everything. I told my self, I would rather have the ability to find a dupe over an actual working dupe any day. What good is one dupe when you risk it getting fixed, why not go out and find more dupes if one gets fixed?

Dupes are not something that is easy to find, after a years worth of exploiting I know that from experience, although I was not exactly looking for one either. I knew I was taking on a huge challenge, and most people would laugh at me for even thinking I could get lucky enough to find a second dupe.

So I went out and got me a team that is all about business. I found me a scripter who could write any bot in the game, you name and he does it. I found a middle man who had all the Chinese contacts you need to sell gold or items in bulk quantity, for a good price and do not have to risk selling straight to Chinese websites and risk getting banned.

I devised a plan to smuggle gold from one player to another with out blizzard catching on, I had VPN, computers, everything needed to set up a plan if I ever found another dupe. At the time, my team had a huge faith in me, and after showing them proof of what I did in the past they where sold. So here I am, I got the team, I got the contacts, I got the tools. I am now ready to look for another dupe that would be nearly impossible to find...

One month later I found my second dupe, and this time it was better then duping items, I was duping straight gold. I could not believe it! Not only did I find one but TWO dupes in WoW. I was screaming off the top of my lungs I could barely control my self. I do not care what others think, they may say no one is that lucky, yet I call it determination and strong will. I found countless flaws in WoW, and now a second dupe.

I told my team what I have found, they could no believe it, so I collected all the information and sent it their way. Luckily I ran into some real team players, anyone of them could of ran off with that information but these guys kept their word and where loyal to the end with me.

We quickly began working on a bot that could do this, my middle man supplied us with all the accounts we needed and gave us good news that he had buyers lined up just waiting to buy from us. My and my scripter worked day in and day out building this bot, I had no scripting experience but I understood the basics of it. He ran into problems, and then I told him what it was or what changes he needed to make to the bot so the exploits worked correctly.

It was almost two months that passed and we finally got a working bot, amazingly the dupe still worked meaning no one else was onto what we had or at least if they where they kept their mouth shut. So then we put the bot in full production mode and If only you could of seen the masterpiece we put together...

The hours, the days, the time we spent working on this and every day we just imagined paying off our bills, buying a new car, throwing money in the wind living like rich guys... Our hopes where high, and our determination was unmatched, we where the perfect team.

VII. Then comes the problems

We where so busy working on the dupe that nothing else in our lives where more important then getting this to work. If it worked, it meant that 90% of all of our problems could just be washed away, after I heard what my middle man told me about how much money we could make a day I almost shit a brick.

And once we went full production, the money started to fall in my lap. When you actually hold the cash in your hands, the feel of it, the smell of that green paper, I never experienced such a feeling of complete success. They say the journey is the best part of an goal, in this case it was the finish line that tasted so sweet.

Everything that was going they way it should go was going as expected, there where no problems this time... Or so I thought. Two months after full production scale on over forty servers, all of our accounts where banned and the dupe was fixed. At the time I was in college having a party when I got a phone call from the middle man, and the words he said where Devastating. "There is a problem, the dupe is fixed and all of our accounts are banned", from that moment I went straight to my dorm and turned on my computer to confirm it.

The dupe, and all of our hard work has gone down the drain. All of my worries that where washed away suddenly came back with a shock that you could feel through your body, and our nightmare has came true. Blizzard had caught onto our operation and cracked us down, ever threatened my scripter via phone.

Seeing how I am not really tied to any of this, I am just the guy that finds the information and they do the rest of the work, I did not worry that much. I instantly got a new account, started back up fresh, and began working on a work around for the fix Blizzard quickly put in. It only took me two weeks to find a work around, and with in another three months of preparation
and making another bot, we where back in business.

Technically this was my third dupe but it was honestly just a work around, same method just tweaked a bit. This time we took extreme measures, and decided to sell less, use more useful methods to stay under the radar, and out smart Blizzard. We honestly thought that if we played under the radar, we should be able to make a dupe last for a very long time.

After spending more money, time, and resources we finally got our operation in full progress and within one month it was fixed. This time, I got pissed and said if I find another method we are seriously going to look over our methods of transferring gold, duping scale, and contacts. It got to the point where I found a third work around Blizzard bandied patches, and another month they fixed that after we messed with it.

Eventually we got to the point we started to lose money because of all the computers we where buying and internet ect, we also had no dupe and then I found a fourth workaround and the exploit worked just not the dupe. Blizzard finally had enough with the dupe and put a hardfix so if anyone finds a way to recreate the exploit we used, the dupe will no longer work... so they think.

VIII. Finding a Third Dupe Method

So we all agreed that Blizzard is watching us, we need to find something else and by we I mean me. I am the guy with all the solutions apparently, something breaks with the exploit and I can fix it, until Blizzard puts a hard fix on what your exploiting. This time I had to find a new dupe method using completely new mechanics, features they added, something that no one else has ever came across or even Blizzard has a check for.

Now you might think I am completely crazy at this point, but I promise I did indeed find a third dupe method. After remember some old exploits I did way back in the day, I decided with the experience I have now, I am going to mess with the stuff I did not think of much when I first started exploiting. Then I remember I had came across a very unusual exploit, something where the server thinks your not connected but when you really are.

With this, I found a dupe method within one week, and let me tell you I can guarantee that no one in this world had came across this dupe method. This was even better then any of the dupe exploits I had found in the past, and it was also a straight gold exploit. No player interaction required, which was the best part. I would also like to mention, any information of duping gold was lost during the process, so I was nearly undetectable.

I told my team and we once again started right away on it. This time, it was a $%*# to automate. A human could go faster then a bot, but we had too many servers to supply and not enough people to do it. I my self, could support my self by doing this on my own, but id be working a good four to eight hour shifts duping by hand. As an American I am a lazy $%*#&$%, so I left it up to my scripter to do the best he could do.

It turned out alright, took us about four months to complete it but finally got it working. Then all of a sudden it got fixed just right before we went into production, let me tell you the pain we felt with four months of hard work crumbled right before your face was devastating.

I am still to this day searching for a new method, and will continue my work with my team anonymously. To all future exploiters, I hope the best for you and hope if you happen to come across any similar situations that you could use this article to fall back on when needed.

Moral of this story is, if your planning to cheat... Good $%*#ing luck.

- Corvo

[yakahz]

same thing, trying to be lazy fag when making it automatiic, and then, when finally it works FLAWLESS, being fixed in no time, same thing in gw2, wow, rift and even la2, that is kinda annoying i must say

[skeletonboy360]

What a fascinating story

[xonix]

Quite an interesting read, thanks. As far as I know, Bliz can track the source of gold, and if a lot of gold is coming from one source, more than they intend, they attempt to fix it. I'm doubt it's going to be easy making a living out of exploiting. I'm sure there are a select few who make a crapload of money, but I doubt many do. If your scripter writes bots, why not just bot for gold?

[Thepro27]

Interesting read, I was very fascinated with the whole story. At first, I looked and saw how long it was and was like hrmmm ill just read a little and move on, but as I got farther and farther, it got better and better.

I myself have always been interested in finding such things like you did, but I've never had the time to try to think of such ways, get VPN's,etc. etc.

Good luck with your future finds, I hope you guys can make it big time!

[tomatom]

you should tell us how many dollars have you earned via duping overal so far. Just for the curiosity

[Dreamy]

Wow, I had a blast reading this. Its really well written and it really catches your mind, you just couldn't stop reading Ever thought about writing a book? Maybe that'll bring in some cash.

[flashburn]

Anomalous? Good read but who / what is Anomalous?

[SlippyToad]

Great story couldn't stop reading

[Corvo223]

you should tell us how many dollars have you earned via duping overal so far. Just for the curiosity

A lot, but not enough.

[Furiousgeek]

Really interesting =)
When i saw this all page, i was close to fed up, but i really enjoy this reading.
Well writen BTW, thanks man, +rep.

In some point it make me remember the passion i had to find some bug on private server, but i used to run some hack tools, like WPE pro.

This feeling you had when you finally found a working tricks, this is so ****ing amazing !

[shindaustin]

Don't know how legit this is, but its really well said. Great story which as someone above me said, brings back memories of duping on private servers. Every time you find something new it brings that pulse into your WoW veins and makes you feel like you are playing for a reason. Good-luck finding your next dupe, i know there is something out there.

-Shindaustin

[eliasbajen]

i dont know if i belive this is true..
but damn, VERY well written and def worth some +rep

Now go write a book

[Cen01]

luv u blizz0rd

[Master674]

^ hi cen

ot: pr00f pl0x