Is it worth the risk?

Chirru · April 2014

running a Bot is risky...so i believe.
The question then is this: Why are people taking the risk?

Is it maybe because there are corrupt players who absolutely want to cheat?
or is it because people want to bug the game?
Is it because there are actually players who buy of gold merchants?

honestly..if you are one of these bot players...shame on you.
you are a thief not only in the game...you are a thief in real life also.
Yes, i am fully aware that this is an insult. Well, maybe it is not...after all,
your account will be banned if you are caught out cheating and
there must be a reason for that.

Sharee · April 2014

It is a simple business for them. If income minus expenses results in a positive number, they will continue to do it.

The solution is to decrease their income (don't buy gold) and increase their expenses (report all bots and gold spammers) and they will go away.

Unfortunately for that more players would need to understand why gold farmers are bad for the game.

Moomoo · April 2014

Chirru wrote: »

honestly..if you are one of these bot players...shame on you.
you are a thief not only in the game...you are a thief in real life also.
Yes, i am fully aware that this is an insult. Well, maybe it is not...after all,
your account will be banned if you are caught out cheating and
there must be a reason for that.

Are you trying to get the individuals who bot to reconsider botting by scolding them loool? THIEVES! This game is for pious, law abiding citizens! Desist immediately!

Delte · April 2014

I would say most of the Bots people see are gold sellers who will also level up characters and sell the accounts.

The only way to really stop them is for players to not buy those accounts, the problem is that some players are so unscrupulous that they will do anything to cheat the game systems even if it means buying an account with a full maxed out veteran ranked character.

There is a solution but it would remove some of the fun aspect from the game for the genuine players, along with replayability.
That solution is to remove loot, gold and exp from the bosses in the public dungeons once that achievement has been obtained by that character.

Or remove public dungeons completely which is something I am against because I honestly like public dungeons. Another way is to have a mob swarm every so often when the boss of that dungeon dies in X number of times within the hour the whole dungeon spawns a mass of elite mobs that rush down to the boss and do an forced wipe on all the Bots in the dungeon.

Another option is to turn on free world pvp and let the players police he dungeons and kill the Bots.

zamiel · April 2014

Risky?
Let's just crunch some numbers.

Gold is currently (with the worst exchange rate) 6 USD for 15k gold. A full game costs 55 USD, so they have to farm out at least 137500 gold on every account to break even.

This amount of gold is very-very hard to raise and it takes a lot of time. It's so ridiculously high that I have severe doubts that ZOS is actively banning farming accounts, they might ban the individual characters, maybe some selling accounts even, but I dare to say that the actual farming accounts are largely intact.

thilog · April 2014

Is there maybe a legal argument that the bot software is an addon, thus legal? I think this is likely a good excuse, that if we can use addons, why not use bots? Surely it's the same thing?

As for dealing with it and dealing with bots/gold sellers.. they need to make it a criminal offence in the countries concerned and hunt them down like the dogs they are and deal with them. Whilst it remains a civil offence, nothing will ever happen outside of banning accounts and to do that companies have to prove the offence first, it's a legal obligation to protect themselves. Again the resources to do this, is outside the scope of most gaming organisations, thus nothing is done.