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How much do I lead the player? Not much anymore. I point out things like doors or entrances to people who bother to read the room descriptions, and sometimes I give general hints, but most of the time I leave it up to the curious adventurer to find things past the hints.
I tend to not make a lot of quests in my areas, mostly because I lack imagination, but also because once a few people have gone through my area, the secret is out. And player do talk, at least on the muds I've played and built on. One mud has a special quest players must do to gain a specific level, and one guy went afk and let another person drag him through the entire quest. That guy even did teh hardest part, killing the "boss" at the end, and then just turned the quest over to the guy who needed it. Seeing those things doesn't give me a lot of hope for the hidden bits in any of my areas.
As to unscrupuloous immortals, you'll find them all over. There's not a lot you can do about them. Also, immortals always have an edge over mortals, it tends to come with the position, even if they never use it. There's no way you can do away with that edge, you can lessen it slightly, but that's about it. and the only way I've found to lessen the edge they have is to work offline and upload the work after you're completly done. That way they see the area for the first time when the mortals do, and so there's less time for them to encounter things from it.
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