History GoodBadBugs / MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRPG

* The [[AlchemyIsMagic Alchemy]] feature from ''[[NexusWar Nexus Clash]]'' has a bug wherein if a potion recipe has all unique items (that is, each item occurs exactly once in the recipe) the alphabetically ''last'' ingredient in the recipe is not used up when making a batch of potions. Rather than being patched, this bug has been kept because it is loved by the players and dev team alike. The bug turns the previously random Alchemy feature into a minigame that requires strategic thinking to choose optimal recipes which save the best ingredients.

** In the same vein as the above glitch, once a player's summoned pets gained the ability to dual-wield (typically in the high 20s), equipping them with a pair of weapons ''would'' actually change their delay to the weapon, but again, their damage was unchanged unless the weapon's base damage was high enough. This led to pet classes equipping their pets with a pair of ''Fine Steel Daggers'', which weren't particularly impressive, but ''were'' particularly cheap had a very low delay of 19, turning their pets into blenders. What's more, a necromancer had the spell ''Feign Death'', which caused them to be ignored by enemies while their pet attacked everything in sight. It was common for a necromancer to go into a dungeon, equip their pet with daggers, then feign death and go to bed, only to wake up several levels higher. This was eventually patched in three ways: By locking a pet's delay to a fixed value independent of weapons, by making it so [=NPC=]s never attack idle pets, and by instituting a timer wherein a pet despawns if its master stays in the feign death state for longer than about 60 seconds.

** A similar bug sometimes occurs in ''WorldOfWarcraft''. Sometimes when zoning into an instance, the game for some reason doesn't display the gear of other players in the group, leaving them looking like they're naked.

*** Even better, Kazzak's DeathBlossom attack - which was intended to keep raids from cheesing him with too many players - also ''healed'' him for the same amount of damage it caused - AND, the Kazzak fight had an incredibly strict Enrage Timer (if you did not kill him in X time, he went berzerk and began attacking much, much faster and for far, far more damage). Kazzak would hit that timer before he even reached the city. What this amounts to, was that once Kazzak reached Stormwind, he was effectively invincible, constantly pumping out thousands and thousands of area-effect damage that was constantly healing him for ''far, far more damage than could ever possibly be dealt.'' In order to get him out of the city, [=GMs=] would need to basically restart the entire server, as nothing in Stormwind - not the players, not the [=NPCs=] and not the human faction boss - could do anything against him but die in horrifying droves. Even without knowing anything about World of Warcraft, the "Kazzak in Stormwind" videos of such encounters are freaking hilarious.

*** On a similar note, in the Icecrown Citadel raid instance, there is an encounter called the Gunship Battle, wherein players must shoot down an opposing airship with cannons, and as part of the encounter must leap back and forth between ships with the help of rocket packs. The problem was that Druids in Bear Form... displayed the rocket packs directly on their asses. This was 'fixed' very briefly by disallowing any shape-shifted player to use the pack - and then fixed right back due to outcry from tanks not really wanting to have to change forms just to fly over and do their jobs. To this day, Bear Tanks fly by ass power. The webcomic ''Webcomic/DailyQuests'' [[http://daily-quests.com/comic/?p=285 illustrates it nicely]]

*** The Kappa Event itself was a bug. The US server was never supposed to receive that event (this was confirmed by Creator/AeriaGames when they decided to hand out the special outfits made for this event without the event itself), but {{Cave}} accidentally let the Kappa Bully demons slip in one of the updates. Atlus Online then requested the event wasn't removed due to popular demand, and kept the original schedule for the event. They skipped the 2nd part of it, though.

** Star Wars Galaxies was originally designed with 10 planets; three of these planets (Yavin IV, Dathomir, and Endor) were supposed to be wild adventure planets, where players were unable to build houses and structures. However, for the first few months of the game, players could still place houses on these planets. SOE quickly removed the code that allowed for houses to be placed on these planets and told the owners of existing houses that they had best move or risk having them deleted, but the threat was never followed through on and a handful of these "wild houses" still existed when the game shut down.

* ''LaTale'' has the Invoke bug, which allows you to completely direct all of the boss' attacks away from the players in exchange for only using long range attacks and one player sitting in some (rather harmless) lava. Given almost every boss will be ''{{that one boss}}'' when you first fight it, and Invoke is the first instance boss in the game, you can see how a lot of players would be quick to exploit it.

* Certain weapon types in ''[[PhantasyStarOnline2 Phantasy Star Online 2]]'' have advanced attack-cancelling combos which enabled players to move faster than the standard walking speed. According to a developer livestream, this behavior was not intended, but because the technique was so popular, they decided not to try to fix it - instead, they decided to ''increase the maximum movement speed globally'', as to effectively "match" the top speed that this technique granted, thus theoretically nullifying its usefulness. Interestingly, the technique is still rather useful, as the max running speed is not instant - the character must not have its weapon drawn, and must gradually build up momentum in order to reach max running speed - but the attack-cancel dash and similar techniques still allow more skilled players to move more quickly immediately out of an attack.

** The Arc release has a feature where players can explore and collect resources from uncharted islands, each with procedurally-generated topography, flora, fauna, and custom lighting. Players immediately found a bug where said custom lighting will remain in effect if you teleport from the uncharted islands. Naturally, some have used this for landscape photography, screencapping Runescape's existing SceneryPorn in [[{{Pun}} a whole new light]].

*** One of the most famous was the Grimtotem Spirit Guide, a [[SoCoolItsAwesome spectral wolf.]] "Spectral" looking creatures were, at the time, nearly all untameable (there was one exception, a ghost cat, and since this happened, a new type of pet the "spirit beast" has been introduced, which is comprised entirely of rare creatures that have one-day spawn timers.) This particular beast was especially interesting, a random NPC in the middle of nowhere had a spell he would cast which would summon one of these creatures for a mere five seconds. Tame Beast, the spell that, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin tames beasts]] took 20 seconds to cast. Hunters however, managed to figure out that by stacking nearly every cast-reduction spell and enchantment at once (a pricey feat) and getting at least two other players to help you (one to mind control the NPC who summons it, and one to cast Bloodlust, a cast time reduction spell) you could get the cast time on Tame Beast to just under 5 seconds. What drew so much attention to this particular bug, however, was that a Blizzard employee actually posted shortly after the bug was discovered that, since the method was so cool, it would be left in the game... Only for the Grimtotem Spirit Guide to quietly be flagged as untameable the very next Tuesday. Oops. Apparently what he had meant to say was that those who had already gotten one by the time the bug was fixed would be allowed to keep it.

** After the Dark Lord class was introduced there were some issues with the health of Raven - Dark Lord's newly introduced pet, so devs made him indestructible. At the time, the Raven would attack once per each click of the mouse, either randomly around or at pointed target. Result? Clicking tools that made the DL one indestructible powerhouse eliminating even the most powerful bosses in a matter of split-second, wiping the events clean and thoroughly dominating the PvP. It didn't help much that the Raven could attack at least 2 tiles farther than any other character. While the developers quickly adressed this, some privately-owned servers left the things as they were, ultimately leading to their own [[GameBreakingBug demise]].

* In ''VideoGame/RuneScape'', after the Evolution of Combat, boxing gloves are for some reason classified as two-handed swords. While they are still incredibly weak joke weapons, it allows for lots of cool animations that were originally only meant for a {{BFS}}, the epitome of which is Meteor Strike, where you [[{{Badass}} leap above the screen and smash down]] with a [[GroundPunch ground-shattering punch]].

* ''StarWarsGalaxies'', past and present, has been riddled with hilarious bugs. At one point, when a MOB or NPC would spawn "incorrectly" for various reasons, they would instead spawn at the center of the planet at coordinates 0,0. Hundreds of mostly hostile mobs could accumulate between server resets. Going anywhere near this area would cause insane lag and even high-level characters would be dead before they could even react.
** The game features fireworks and fireworks launchers. When they were first implemented, players quickly found that one could use the launcher to "launch" ''anything'' in the game into the air, and they wouldn't come down. Cue hundreds of players frustrated as quest [=NPCs=] float inaccessibly in the air, players stuck in the air, and even entire cities hovering twenty meters above where they should be.

** Early in the game, players could use the /pickup command to pick up not only items that belonged to them, but any item in the world that could be targeted. Savvy players used this to rob NPC locales of furniture and items, some of which have never been attainable through legitimate means. The glitch was fixed quickly after it was discovered, so only a few items made it into the player population, but they tend to sell for massive prices when placed up for sale.
** Star Wars Galaxies was originally designed with 10 planets; three of these planets (Yavin IV, Dathomir, and Endor) were supposed to be wild adventure planets, where players were unable to build houses and structures. However, for the first few months of the game, players could still place houses on these planets. SOE quickly removed the code that allowed for houses to be placed on these planets and told the owners of existing houses that they had best move or risk having them deleted, but the threat was never followed through on and a handful of these "wild houses" still exist.

** Though more of an oversight than a genuine bug, it still qualifies: In the beginning of EverQuest, hybrid classes were assigned a 40% experience penalty to offset what was perceived as an otherwise unfair advantage over single-role classes. This was accomplished not by penalizing earned experience points, but instead by requiring 40% more experience for a given level than a class without penalties. Sometime down the road, after the Tank/Damage/Healer trinity became more understood, the developers realized that the hybrids' "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" design was, in an environment based on specializing in a particular role, a limitation in itself, and removed the penalty. They did this by simply applying a 40% bonus to all earned experience. Fast-forward to the Planes of Power expansion, where the Alternate Advancement system was implemented, which introduced an alternate experience point pool used to purchase upgrade abilities. Learning from past mistakes, the developers made the experience tables for earning these points the same for every class. However, they '''forgot to remove the previous bonuses granted to hybrids!''' This resulted in hybrid classes gaining alternate advancement experience 40% faster than other classes. By the time the issue was discovered and fixed, many players had racked up hundreds of alternate advancement points that their fellow non-hybrid gamers could not.

*** Even better, Kazzak's DeathBlossom attack - which was intended to keep raids from cheesing him with too many players - also ''healed'' him for the same amount of damage it caused - AND, the Kazzak fight had an incredibly strict Enrage Timer (if you did not kill him in X time, he went berzerk and began attacking much, much faster and for far, far more damage). Kazzak would hit that timer before he even reached the city. What this amounts to, was that once Kazzak reached Stormwind, he was effectively invincible, constantly pumping out thousands and thousands of area-effect damage that was constantly healing him for ''far, far more damage than could ever possibly be dealt.'' In order to get him out of the city, [=GMs=] would need to basically restart the entire server, as nothing in Stormwind - not the players, not the [=NPCs=] and not the human faction boss - could do anything against him but die in horrifying droves. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR-kBDVMjA8 Even without knowing anything about World of Warcraft, videos of such encounters are freaking hilarious.]]

*** A similar (but much less powerful) thing happened to Shammies when they removed Dual Wield from the talent tree. They got a point back for the removed talent, but kept already slotted talents regardless if they had enough points, allowing them to get 41/21 builds.

*** The Kappa Event itself was a bug. The US server was never supposed to receive that event (this was confirmed by AeriaGames when they decided to hand out the special outfits made for this event without the event itself), but {{Cave}} accidentally let the Kappa Bully demons slip in one of the updates. Atlus Online then requested the event wasn't removed due to popular demand, and kept the original schedule for the event. They skipped the 2nd part of it, though.

* In ''VideoGame/{{zOMG}}'', players used to cherish the Turtle ring for its ability to raise your defense so high that enemy attacks would deal negative damage and heal you. An update that overhauled the game's defense mechanics and rebalanced the rings put an end to this, and one of the devs stepped forward to declare that a) this behavior was due to a programming oversight that could have been easily corrected (but for some reason wasn't until now) and b) the Turtle ring was never intended to have any healing properties. Naturally, some players complained about the loss of such a beloved GameBreaker.

*** One of the most famous was the Grimtotem Spirit Guide, a [[SoCoolItsAwesome spectral wolf.]] "Spectral" looking creatures were, at the time, nearly all untameable (there was one exception, a ghost cat, and since this happened, a new type of pet the "spirit beast" has been introduced, which is comprised entirely of rare creatures that have one-day spawn timers.) This particular beast was especially interesting, a random NPC in the middle of nowhere had a spell he would cast which would summon one of these creatures for a mere five seconds. Tame Beast, the spell that, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin tames beasts]] took 20 seconds to cast. Hunters however, managed to figure out that by stacking nearly every cast-reduction spell and enchantment at once (a pricey feat) and getting at least two other players to help you (one to mind control the NPC who summons it, and one to cast Bloodlust, a cast time reduction spell) you could get the cast time on Tame Beast to just under 5 seconds. What drew so much attention to this particular bug, however, was that a Blizzard employee actually posted shortly after the bug was discovered that, since the method was so cool, it would be left in the game... Only for the Grimtotem Spirit Guide to quietly be flagged as untameable the very next Tuesday. [[InternetBacklash Oops.]] Apparently what he had meant to say was that those who had already gotten one by the time the bug was fixed would be allowed to keep it.

* ''RagnarokOnline'' has a few. One example was when special equipment sets for PvP were introduced. They decreased the damage you received from players but greatly increased the damage from monsters including bosses. Quite soon they were started to be used to kill bosses using damage reflecting skills. Was fixed though.

** In the ObviousRulePatch category, a misplaced decimal caused Smoke Grenade in the Devices powerset to debuff 100% tohit (The normal critter had 50% tohit, bosses 75%, at that point), instead of 10%. This allowed /dev blasters to solo in total safety.

* In [[GaiaOnline Gaia Online]]'s ''{{zOMG}}!'', players used to cherish the Turtle ring for its ability to raise your defense so high that enemy attacks would deal negative damage and heal you. An update that overhauled the game's defense mechanics and rebalanced the rings put an end to this, and one of the devs stepped forward to declare that a) this behavior was due to a programming oversight that could have been easily corrected (but for some reason wasn't until now) and b) the Turtle ring was never intended to have any healing properties. Naturally, some players complained about the loss of such a beloved GameBreaker.

* The physics engine of SOE's MMOFPS ''{{Planetside}}'' could be exploited in several useful, or amusing ways.