Hmmm, an interesting question indeed. Like 6 years ago I started playing my very first MMORPG called Knight-Online, published by some shinny Malaysian company. I had a Rogue (with archer speciality) and wasn't playing hardcore at all. Fun only u know.
The funniest thing by far was luring. In Knight-Online (KO) most maps are connected with each other into one kick-ass large map. So, if u was skilled enough, u could lure some really strong mobs into n00b areas (including villages and towns) and enjoy some bloody onslaught. I didn't use any hacks/cheats at all, so it was a real rush to be luring super strong bosses who could kill me in one hit! And it was a really great feeling of accomplishment to see 'your' bosses slaughtering 1000 n00bs in less then 10 minutes. But after like 4-5 weeks of hardcore luring I got banned for 2 weeks. This was enough to lose my interest for the game and stop playing. In september 2003 however, an USA based company called K2 Networks bought the rights for Knight-Online and started a new server called 'Ares' in the USA. So, US KO was born.
I deceided to give this new old game a chance and got completelly hooked up. If I would say that I was playing hardcore, I wouldn't say anything at all. I was an addict. I spend all of my free time on that game and if I didn't need to go to school, I would be playing US KO 24/7 for sure. And no, there were no cheats for that game. No cheats at all. If u wanted to hack US KO, u had to be a real hacker and be able to do a complex memory hook which is x1000 more difficult then editing data.pak or something like that.
As I said, I was a real top player in that fantastic MMORPG. I was in the best clan on the server and probably in the top-10 of the best players over there. But at some point I started to fall behind. There came people who had even less life then I did. I knew that if I would do something, I would fall behind even more and become a 'just another player' instead of a 'uber leet player'.
And exactly at this point a very skilled hacker called 'Elsasa' joined the game. Then he released the first public hack for US KO called 'KOHack' on fuckgaming.net (the forum is dead now, so no need to hide the link) and this was the beginning of a new life for me and for maney others. The Knight-Online section of fuckgaming.net became extremelly popular, more and more skilled hackers joined (of course, non of them was as skilled as Elsasa, but still they could contribute some usefull tuts, hacks, bots and macro's).
At first, I was just a simple cheater. This means that I only download pre-made hacks/macro's and used them without adding anything from myself. Then I started to learn AC Tool (a very simple, but still pretty powerfull macro's recorder with advanced capabilities like memory read/write). But that prog couldn't create any GUI (Graphical User Interface) so I had to move on and learn my very fisrt scripting language - AutoIt.
For some time it all went good - I was playing hardcore & legit during the day and at night I had a low level bot character who was farming gold for me without the fear to get my real high level char banned. But then I started to use a Pay2Play commercial hacking software called KOSP which was developed maney months later by some mysterious Chinese hacker. That prog was the best hack I have ever seen in my life. It had everything u could possibly need in US KO, including skill hack and bot. I even used this hack on my real high level character. But at some moment I got caught by my own clannies. They forced me to quit the clan in which I have been for years. I felt really bad, it was like my whole world just collapsed. Of course I remained playing US KO and cheated as much as I could, but it wasn't the same, so I started to play that game less and less often, untill I definatelly quitted.
After I stopped playing US KO, I haven't played any MMORPG's. I haven't made any cheats for any game. I was playing single-player games and my old love - Counter-Strike 1.6 only. But once, almost 5 years later, during one of those long october nights I was looking at my old US KO screenshots and got a big nostalgy feeling. So I went to fuckgaming.net and found out that it's dead and it's content moved to sn*xd.net. After reading that new site I saw that one of the US KO fuckgaming.net mods called Stork is now playing 2Moons. So I gave that game a try. I made a level 24 char and booom - IP banned. At the forums I read that all non-American ip's have been banned, coz GameTribe bought the rights for that game and wanted to destribute it for the Europeans.
I was one of the first players on their CB server. After reading E*PvP for like 2-3 hours, I knew everything what I needed to know to create my own hack. Then it took another 1-2 weeks to work out my knowledge into an easy-to-use program. I called my new program SECportal:
S - Sn*xd.net, former fuckgaming.net - the place where I got into the hacking scene;
E - elitepvpers.com - the place where I learned everything I needed to know about hacking 2Moons/Dekaron;
C - Cheatengine.org - the place where I got into advanced hacking, like memory editing and bypassing anti-cheat protections.
Summary:
I was a hardcore MMORPG player for like 1 year and now, 5 years later, I consider that 1 year to be a lost year in my life. A 16-17 years old boy should hang out with friends, drink beer, smoke weed, get girlfriend(s) and not play some game for 24/7, even if that game is really great

Right now I am an university student, I have a real social life and don't play any online games, at all. The only thing that I kept from that pr0-gamer time is a big love for hacking online games, lol. So, now I am a free-time gamehacker who don't even play the game I am hacking atm, lol^2. Btw, at Dekaron EU my highest character is level 19, which I made to test the hacks only.