"I once used a bot on Ragnarok Zeny," admits one anonymous gamer from New York who got bored with grinding for experience and rare-item drops. "In Ragnarok Zeny, the amount of time needed to get to the next level rises really fast as you go up."

From needs come solutions. The Internet is filled with downloadable hacks, bots, and exploits that lurch around the battlefield, slay monsters, and collect loot while kings-to-be pound a few cold ones. If a player is cunning and can avoid detection from moderators, they can rear a godly character in little time. Browsing Hack Directory is like shopping at a cheater's market: It has directories filled with bots that are ready to take on monotonous leveling and farming jobs.

Nobody loves an unmanned bot. But how do you feel about real players who farm gold for the purposes of exchanging it for actual cash? Can that still be considered cheating?

MMORPG blogger Tobold takes an extensive look at cheating as it applies to MMORPGs. He references IGE (Internet Gaming Entertainment), a company that services the virtual economies of several MMORPGs by letting players buy in-game currency with credit cards. "IGE isn't cheating, because they aren't even playing," he argues. "The farmers aren't cheating as long as they aren't using bots to farm. They are playing the game in a particular way but inside the rules of the game."

Tobold does stress that "they aren't playing nice, which makes them a nuisance," but that in the case of a game like World of WarCraft, it's really up to Blizzard, not the player, to define "cheating." "In cases where selling virtual items is against the [end-user license agreement], they are in infringement of the EULA, and thus 'illegal,' and could rightfully get banned. But that is a breach of contract between them and Blizzard, not an issue of 'cheating' in the game and ethics."