Can this bot situation get any worse?

vaxure · April 2014

Since most all of this is mostly speculation, I'm curious if anyone has actually worked for a Studio and had to remove bots from their game?

Robbiejuve · April 2014

I think everyone is over reacting about this situation, especially with the tiring "I'm going to quit because of this" posts.

It is annoying but I have never been stopped from completing a public dungeon due to this behaviour (maybe I was delayed 45 seconds waiting for a respawn), so I dont understand why you guys are getting so worked up about this?

The fixes so far are addressing issues where you cannot progress further in the game. This is a small annoyance, not a block. It does not belong anywhere near the top of the list of fixes needed right now.

Cry_Wolfe · April 2014

@robbiejuve i think you underestimate the effectiveness of farm bots when it comes to depleting crafting materials.

I agree that the gold farming industry can only exist if players buy gold, but from what i understand, new account do not cost goldfarmer outfits anything near what you might expect, nor are teh funds generated by their new accounts so easily accessible for the game publisher.

At least as it stood 5 years ago; russian mafia were supplying stolen credit card details to gold farmer outfits (no doubt at bulk rates), these were then used to start multiple accounts across many games. These are your bot accounts, they are expendable. Proceeds generated are then laundered thru AH transactions, guilds and to players who've bought gold from the outfit.

An interesting note on this whole industry is that the cash provided by gold farmers to their mafia handlers was just another layer of international money laundering, and that losses incurred on the gold farmer side of the equation were so insignificant in the greater scheme of the operation as a whole that even mass bans were never a real disincentive to continuing operations.

So on a greater level, players don't really have to buy much gold for these operations to continue their activities as the entire activity is all about "making your money work for you", even if that "money" is in reality stolen credit with a limited lifespan. Goldfarming, on the global scale, is just a better financial risk than what ever else the russian (?) mafia might want to do with however many thousands of credit card details they can lift from the internet every day....

How true this remains since the lid was blown on this operation some years ago now, I am unsure, but it is good reason not to take bots personally, rather just report them and hope that the Game company puts measures and systems in place to monitor for and deal with bots and gold sellers.

Kythia · April 2014

Hm, the gold seller spam has to died down a little. I only got one spam mail so far and the Zone Chat is surprisingly game-related.

Yet, all the dungeons are still full of the army of bots. Thats a rather strange priority. I wish I could turn-off the single player dungeons and get my EXP and Skyshard via handout at the entrance the way I can turn off the Zone Chat. Then it would make sense.

Still, a glimpse of hope is better than nothing.