OP-image: https://i.redd.it/jjtrwl8ho52b1.png

This is not a post about promoting cheating software. Using any kind of cheating tools in Tibia is strictly forbidden and will result in a deletion if you're caught using it. This post instead focuses on highlighting one of the most influental persons in Tibia, who changed the course of the game forever, for better or worse. It includes some little known facts about this specific person as well. He left the Tibia scene without saying a word and thousands of people were clueless as to what happened to him. This happened around 2010 and if you played Tibia back then, chances are you were a member of his Tibia community or knew someone who was. This is not a tribute to the person in question either, but about recognizing the impact he had. All software mentioned in this post is obsolete and no-longer in use by anyone.

Richard McDaniel or as most Tibians knew him, "LordOfWar", was the founder and owner of NGSoft, LLC. A company which released the infamous Tibia cheating software "TibiaBot NG" in mid 2000's. After digging some information about the company behind the software, using archived pages, I managed to find that it is indeed Richard McDaniel that created it according to public and official company registers in the US.

His software undoubtedly changed Tibia forever and what came after that was years of botting taking place in the game. Around 2010, he was already stepping back from the game and very few people knew where he went. His website was shutdown only a couple years later and he was never to be seen or heard of again. Not even his accomplice "ekx" (the creator of ElfBot NG) knew where he went. Who knows what would've happened if he never released his software - or if he would've continued? But his forum was with no doubt the largest active cheating community in the history of Tibia. In fact, at its peak, it was the largest Tibia forum - surpassing the old site World of Tibia.

After finding out who he is, it turns out, he switched from software development to Bitcoin mining sometime in late 2009, in the fear of getting involved in a lawsuit by CipSoft GmbH. He had read an article about a cheat developer in World of Warcraft who was sued for his software - and he did not want to become the next guy in line. He left Tibia forever and signed up on the popular Bitcoin forum "Bitcointalk" in 2010 under the pseudonym "NghtRppr" and eventually started a Bitcoin trading service. We know that this is him due to him taking part in a few interviews and podcasts in the Bitcoin community throughout the years where he announced his real identity. Lookign up "NghtRppr" will result in some podcast episodes.

He's one of the world's first Bitcoin investors and traders.

His forum posts can still be read until this day and there are some hints that he was the NGSoft owner. He mentions he made his first million dollars before BTC - and they must have came from his Tibia software. He was a Delphi programmer, a not-so common programming language, which is exactly what TibiaBot NG was programmed in. Even the scripting language used in the software was Delphi.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256.msg78437#msg78437

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5054.msg73958#msg73958

Some claim Richard was not a very good programmer and was much more of a business man than a software developer, that would hire other programmers and cheat developers to build his software. That may very well be the case. But if it wasn't for him, Tibia's botting community might not had grown to what it once was. And ironically, if it wasn't for him, Tibia might not have survived this long. Because of his software, players realized you could make money in the game without playing it by yourself, which attracted tens of thousands of players, which has stuck for years to come. Notice how the online record of Tibia was in November 2007, at the very peak of his software. His software was the gateway to a lot of future programmers as well who first learned how to build scripts, and later release their own communities and software.

Whatever people might think about him, Richard McDaniel deserves a spot in the "Hall of Fame" in Tibia.