[Tyhm]

Why must everyone just insist I'm lying instead of actually saying anything condusive to conversation? When I came on you couldn't walk through L13, there were no staffers to speak of, and the conventional wisdom was if you can't get where you need to be, hack. I never went that route because I prefer to fix things for everyone, not just myself - after some time resizing gifs and acting as a human signpost, I did a stint as a tour guide before joining the LAT. That was when the GPs started cracking down circa summer 2000, and I am told that before it was much worse.
Did everyone hack? No, but a lot of people did. I could just arbitrarily assign everyone a number on logon and let 10% of the population hack but the other 90% would complain. I could keep the codes a secret from 90%, but same problem. So I let 100% hack in a controlled, in-character way to prevent 3% hacking in an uncontrolled, 2002 way. It's a calculated risk.

Jeezes. Everyone who hates 1998 or what I've done with it kindly get a consensus on what your point is - that 1998 was the wrong sample year and things were REALLY perfect in the following update, or that 1998 was the right sample year but it should have a full-time staff keeping the hackers off. See also: All my prior posts on why it's an authentic server and why everyone secretly lusts for the Disney version.