I decided that I was the equivalent of a raid boss

Years back, after I quit my EQ addiction, I played on a persistent world Neverwinter Nights server for a few months. I'm not sure how many players there were on the server at the time I played, but the active player base was probably only a few hundred. I honestly can't remember how many players could be on at the same time, but I'd guess it was around 50. That made it a small server, but the game world was entirely too large (with extra, completely empty cities occasionally being added, and later removed, with no one noticing), which meant that most of the game world was unpopulated and, more importantly, completely mysterious to most players. It was pretty mundane--players could gain XP through defeating NPCs in the middle of the woods and random dungeons up to a certain level (10, I believe), after which all XP needed to come from DM events. To make things worse, most of the NPC encounters and loot wouldn't respawn until the server reset, which could be twice a day, or twice a month. Finding mobs and chests that respawned automatically was really important, as was keeping them secret. Grinding for loot or XP was actually against the rules (unless you had a "RP reason" for killing lots of umber hulks or whatever--I think I just claimed they killed my father and so I would kill them all until I was level 10, at which point I would have my vengeance), and most of the DMs only did events with the high-level characters that they were already friends with, which meant actually getting to a comparable position of power on the server was nearly impossible. One one hand, the drama of the most important characters was always really stupid: "oh no my sword is HAUNTED!", or "I MUST SACRIFICE MYSELF TO SAVE THE WOOOORLD!", but on the other, I wanted to be part of it so that I could bring it all crashing down. All RP eventually ends in some sort of fight, and if I couldn't win on a purely-mechanical basis, or due to DM intervention (as they'd always side with their already powerful buddies), I decided to add weight to my character's arguments by exploiting the shit out of that server as hard as possible.

Luckily, the server itself seem to be remodeled every few months, and tons of new exploits would be introduced as new, poorly-scripted content was introduced. This would be my primary method of achieving power. The second, less interesting mechanic was the broken pickpocket skill, which let me steal random items from other PCs, basically at any time. I created a new character just to specialize in pickpocket, who I then used to rob the high level PCs as much as possible, knowing that many of them would not attack me directly (instead, they'd try to subdue me, or paralyze me, or some other role playing bullshit, because people were scared to use PVP on a server with PVP by default), and have me thrown in jail. Which would be great, were the jail not DM controlled, meaning that half the time when I was put under citizen's arrest they'd just stand around with me captive for a while before getting pissed, making threats, and storming off (since there was no DM on there to play the guard and put in me jail or the stocks, and retrieve their stolen items from me).

The purpose of all the pickpocketting wasn't to piss players off (although that didn't hurt). Instead, I was only interested in occasionally acquiring a DM generated item from a higher level player. In online NWN games, DMs can create all of the standard premade items. They are also able to create unique items (although I'm not sure if they could do this directly in game or what). Sometimes this was just random magical items, but occasionally it meant unique items with specific magical effects that you wouldn't find anywhere else. Naturally, these items would be given away without much overall thought in the purpose of some event or special quest, which meant that many were hilariously broken themselves. Many players, interested in maintaining the roleplaying facade, didn't even realize how broken some of their shit was.

As I mentioned earlier, as people redid areas and content for the server, lots of bugs and exploits were introduced. Eventually, I found one broken NPC who could be used to duplicate items (related to some half-assed and otherwise useless crafting system). I found another who would, when used as a merchant, sell certain items for less than he would buy them for. Of course, I instantly saw the utility in this, and proceeded to give myself far more gold then I would ever need, and launder it to multiple characters (for some reason, the DMs could see how much my PC had on his character and in the server bank, but not on any offline characters). After discovering a bug in their implementation of some custom feature, I was able to determine if any DMs were online at any given time (since they had the ability to hide that status), and safely exchange money between my mains and my mules. I also used the item duplication exploit to acquire as much high level equipment as possible (bought from both NPCs and PCs), and save it away (in case the server changed and some of it became unavailable and highly sought after). I wasn't able to copy more than a few custom items, as my obsession with those only really became A Thing after that exploit was fixed.

The problem with infinite gold was that there wasn't too much to buy, after a point. I could get the highest level equipment, but DM provided stuff was far better, and most PCs didn't want to part with it for gold (because what would they buy with gold, after all?). Regardless, equipment would only get me so far against PCs far stronger than me, who I couldn't get the XP to match them in level (since the DM inbreeding meant they only did quests among those same high level players most of the time). That's where I started looking for exploitable items. I began searching the most obscure, never-traveled zones on the far side of the server for broken items in loot tables. I found a few things---scrolls of a weird, non-standard spell that, if successful, would destroy a player utterly. Their corpse would be consumed by fire, preventing resurrection. This meant they definitely lost XP, and their items too. Unless they had gold stashed in the bank (with which they could only get shitty stock gear from merchants), they were relegated to the default, useless noob gear and handouts from sympathetic friends. The spell was rarely successful, and rarely used (since people rarely fought to the death, because they were weird). But with persistence, I stockpiled enough to be able to take a higher level player down and seriously fuck their shit up, which would lead to gallons of RP tears---manhunt parties combing the wilderness for my dwarven blackguard, wanted posters for me in the main city, angry forum threads about me, DMs messaging me out of character telling me how much they hated me and how I should die. The usual, basically. And since it was RP rules, I'd just walk into down the next day with a different hooded garment and dare them to recognize me without doing a specific skill check with DM assistance. "How dare you goode sir! I have never been to your humble town before, and I have certainly never slaughtered the innocent and christened by weapon in the blood of children. What do you mean I look like the guy that did it? Are you saying all dwarfs look alike? Are you a racist?"

After a while, they had the idea to quietly let PCs buy crafted magical items (using generic values from the DM guide) from DMs. I poured money into an enormously overpowered greatsword with multiple magical effects, enough armor to actually let me hold my ground against a player with 10 levels on me, and fucking teleportation boots. Yes, they had some broken scripted system for teleportation (it involved using chat commands and stuff along with spell items). I found the item in the DM guide, and convinced a newer DM to make them for me (the older ones knew how badly that would end). Suddenly, I could move around the world faster than literally anyone on the server, escape any fight, and then return minutes later to drop a spell and fly off again.

Later, I went on to acquire a huge number of other overpowered and unbalanced magical items through an auction event they held, tapping into my cash reserves. A couple DMs were annoyed, but assumed I had gotten cash (which no one else cared about) from farming some obscure monster for XP and gold in an obscure area (in fact, I did this too, because finding monsters that awarded XP in this server's weird system was hard to do, but I managed to find some that no one else knew about and use them to level up and get some, but not nearly enough, gold). Combined with my prior stockpiling of broken loot, I finally had a big enough arsenal to challenge the incumbent heroes of the server. In fact, I ended that auction by paralyzing half of the players present, summoning a hoard of elementals to attack them, and then spamming area of effect magic to attack them all at once. Keep in mind, I was a blackguard, which meant I had no real magic of my own. I was just using the items that the DMs had just sold me, completely in character.

So far, I had just been setting up for my final act of pissing people off enough to get the entire server to drop the RP and admit that they were lonely weirdos. A few weeks after my attack on the auction, I went to the main city, which at the time had a single bridge for entrance or exit. I decided to charge a toll for crossing, and made up some obscure RP rant about how that bridge spanned the sacred river of my ancestors and how the White Man destroyed our lands and people and how dare you defile our sacred goddamn river. This failed to convince most people, so I started off my making an example of one of the first to cross the bridge by using one of my broken fire scrolls to incinerate his character and permanently destroy everything he owned. A dick move, but the guy I targeted was a huge tool, so it was a good way to get the ball rolling. At this point, I believe a few people paid the damn toll, a few people ran back to the main city to get help, and a few people cried to the DMs.

But no DMs were on that night. I had gained access to the DM schedule, and none would be on that night, unless someone got on AIM and found one willing to log in. This gave me time to have fun.

Some lowbie told me that he didn't have any money, and asked to join my team instead. It was a useless gesture, as he was around level 2, but I accepted him into the bloody fold. I'm fairly certain I killed him in the madness that followed, but I can't remember if it was intentional or by accident. Not that it matters in the least, of course.

At this point, I decided that I was the equivalent of a raid boss, and that I really had nothing left to lose. I entered the main city (where all the available players were currently running around trying to gather up a group to resist me. Most players were somewhat lower level then me, but the few members of the high level DM-favorite club were present, and they were way higher level than I was (only a few levels, sure, but in DnD that's a lot). After choosing the exact perfect spot in the city, I waiting for the rest of the PCs to start attacking me in waves. Using one of my items, I put a permanent buff on my AC and regeneration (it was supposed to be temporary, but it was unlimited uses, so I set a macro to use the item and keep me permanently buffed). I then created a number of friendly, high level elementals to fight by my side (these, unfortunately, had a limited # of summons per day, which I needed to rest to reset). As players approached, I activated an item that cast Cloudkill as often as I wanted, and used a pseudo-wand of Finger of Death to start picking off the weaker ones as my elementals distracted most of the PCs. This destroyed most of the first wave, or at least scared them off, allowing me to actually enter the battle and take a few of them down with my comically overpowered weapon, causing them rest to back off for a minute. At this point, the OOC chat channel was filled with accusations of hacking, people crying about weeks of XP lost, and people asking where the DMs were. Even in normal chat, people were boldly breaking their cherished RP out of frustration (I recall hearing one person yell, "DIE IN A FIRE YOU CHEESE EATING FAGGOT". I'm honestly not sure where the cheese part came from, though). Bear in mind that "weeks of XP lost" was a fairly accurate assement--players below (but close to) the level cap were unlikely to know the loophole in the XP cap system that let certain monsters still award experience, and those above the level cap would need multiple, very long (and boring) DM events to regain lost XP.

At this point, the actual high level characters decided they had some holy imperative to defeat me, and started delivering paragraphs of speeches as I was still slaughtering the weaker players (presumably so that DMs could later examine the chat logs, see their just and totally-valid RP reason for attacking me, and shower them with XP and praise). Fortunately, by generally keeping the skies filled with flak of various sorts (ie, the various item effects I kept firing off), I was able to slowly chisel away at the health of these PCs, who I would otherwise likely lose to in a 1-on-1 fight (again, due to the level different). Although most of my "tricks" were somewhat known, I had saved a few for this sort of occasion. Every time the PCs got my health low, I pulled out a scrolls that cast some sort of custom-spell to turn me into a vampire, instantly granting me full health, regen, and much better attack and defense. People were generally confused as fuck at this turn of events, as only a few people (mostly GMs) knew the item existed (as it turned out, it dropped from an obscure NPC in an obscure tower out of the way of anywhere important, and I had been farming it for months). I would spit out some canned, pre-prepared dialog, "AH! YOU HAVE UNCOVERED MY TRUE EVIL FORM! THE DEEP DARKNESS OF MY SOUL IS LAID BARE!", in an attempt to cause them to type a response (hopefully allowing me to trip them up with a different spell scroll while they were typing). Eventually, the scroll would wear off, I would turn into a dwarf again, and kite them around the city, occasionally popping off fireballs until I would stop and become a vampire murder machine again. I was able to start taking the high level PC characters out, which caused them all to flee for the time being, with most of them messaging people about how much of an ass my character was and how they would kick my ass in real life and how their friend was the head DM and I would be BANNED FOREVER.

However, at this point, more high level characters were arriving from across the server to join in as they had "felt a disturbance in the Weave" or whatever bullshit RP excuse they wanted to throw out after hearing about the situation on the OOC channel. I did the honorable thing and teleported away to a safe location on the other side of the world, where no one ever went (since it was far away, half programmed, and generally boring). After healing up, replenishing my item stocks, and resting (in order to reactive my items with limited uses per day), I teleported back to the main city. The important PCs had already left again after much deep RP discussion about my rogueishness and how they needed to hunt me down, and left to do just that. Or perhaps have RP sex. Or both, whatever. Regardless, at this point the city was filled with the same low level characters again, annoyed at having their shit wrecked earlier, and having stupid RP chat in the inn or tavern or whatever. Of course, at this point I interrupt their chat to begin serving heaping plates of murder, before teleporting off again. For the next couple hours, I repeated this cycle every 15 minutes or so, since these players had nothing else to do other then chat in the inn. Even littered with the dead, they'd still stand around, poorly-RPing about how good the ale was today and how comely the bar wench was. That was, apparently, 90% of the action on the server. The OOC channel was still filled with death threats and attempts to locate me (which was stupid, because in order to teleport I had a macro mapped to use my teleport boots and actually "speak" the teleport command in chat, which included the location of my destination).

After a few hours of grinding all action on the server to a halt, a DM arrives and promptly throws me in DM jail (limbo or the void or something equivalent). However, lacking a RP reason to ban me, he was forced to simply release me after a few days.

At that point, knowing that even killing half the server wouldn't get me banned depressed me, and I forgot about that damn game. My only regret was that I wasn't able to incinerate all of the high level PCs (unfortunately, the broken scroll that did this only had a horrible success rate, so most were spared that hilarious fate).