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Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Why I hate bots
Just a few weeks ago I started to get more and more tells in game from people with names like "jdjjssdffggh" asking me to go to this or that website to buy World of Warcraft gold. And prices were constantly falling, to as low as $40 for 1000 gold. Somebody told me that there was new bot software out, and in fact you could see a lot of hunters in obviously bot-controlled movements farming the best spots in the game. On the new server I made my Alliance priest on, of the first 10% of players that reached level 60, an astounding 67% were hunters during off-peak hours. Meanwhile I get less tells, and the gold prices seem to have gone up again to $60 per 1000 gold and above. Rumor has it that Blizzard found a way to detect the new bot program and banned thousands of them. Well done, I say!
Having said that, I must add that my reasons for hating bots are probably different than those of other people. Because I don't mind "normal" gold farming, where somebody (Chinese or not) is playing the game in a more or less regular way, trying to maximize the amount of gold earned per hour, and then selling it to other players with less time and more dollars. As armchair economist the concept of time being equal to money isn't new to me. Whether a player farms gold himself to buy an epic mount or whether he pays another player to farm that gold for him does exactly the same thing to the game economy. Making that transaction illegal only distorts the game by favoring the time-rich over the money-rich. Buying gold isn't any different than paying somebody to mow your lawn.
All that is only true if the gold enters the economy by somebody actually playing a character, killing mobs and selling the loot. As soon as the gold is created in an automated way, by means that aren't available to the average player, the equation changes. Worst of all are money dupes, or other cheats that create gold out of thin air. While fundamentally being the game programmers fault, somebody finding and using the dupe bug can bring the whole game economy crashing down. But bots are equally bad, because they allow a single person to run many bots at the same time at a much lower cost than paying somebody to play. Having to pay the gold farmers a wage limits the amount of gold that can be farmed per server. Even the most skilled gold farmer needs 20+ hours to gather 1000 gold, and at a sales price of $40 that just isn't feasible.
But my main reason why I hate bots is emotional. It devalues my achievements in the game. I might be proud to have reached level 60, or having made a certain amount of gold. And then I watch a bot character doing both of it faster and without human supervision, just controlled by some sort of extended macro. That dispells any illusion that I might have that playing World of Warcraft would actually require some skill. I stopped playing chess when cheap toy computers got powerful enough to consistently beat me. I often quote Sid Meier who said that a game is a series of interesting decisions. As soon as I feel that the decisions aren't interesting, because even a bot can do them, the game stops being fun.
- posted by Tobold @ 1:51 PM Permanent Link
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Some of my Guildies made a sport out of killing bots. This can be done, when you flag yourself pvp on and then tag them when they just killed their Mob (or so i understand), they will then shoot at you aswell and this way enter PvP Mode. You will see that it requires some human skill to do PvP ;)
I agree that Bots are annoying, but even worse are those guys, who use Keyloggers to get your account info and then sell all your stuff and transfer the gold via some trial accounts and sell it asap.
Savrukk
I agree that Bots are annoying, but even worse are those guys, who use Keyloggers to get your account info and then sell all your stuff and transfer the gold via some trial accounts and sell it asap.
Savrukk
# posted by 
: 4/10/06 15:00
: 4/10/06 15:00
Yes, keyloggers are downright criminal. While bots and farmers create new money, keyloggers steal it. No effect on the economy, but the guy who loses everything he has is hurt a lot, and might well end up stopping to play.
"Making that transaction illegal only distorts the game by favoring the time-rich over the money-rich."
The problem is though that even if there's a real person behind a 'toon used for professional farming there really is no difference between them and a 'bot. They both accomplish exactly the same goal: Spend Time so other people don't have to.
This wouldn't be much of an issue except that Professional Farming is essentially arbitrarily scalable to whatever degree the manager of the Professional Farmers is capable of handling.
I'll agree, 'bots are more efficient, but in the end, it's all the same. As long as they're making a profit on the gold they sell, there's nothing stopping the companies that employ professional farmers from just employing more people, which gives exactly the same effect as a 'bot would.
The problem is though that even if there's a real person behind a 'toon used for professional farming there really is no difference between them and a 'bot. They both accomplish exactly the same goal: Spend Time so other people don't have to.
This wouldn't be much of an issue except that Professional Farming is essentially arbitrarily scalable to whatever degree the manager of the Professional Farmers is capable of handling.
I'll agree, 'bots are more efficient, but in the end, it's all the same. As long as they're making a profit on the gold they sell, there's nothing stopping the companies that employ professional farmers from just employing more people, which gives exactly the same effect as a 'bot would.
# posted by : 4/10/06 20:09
: 4/10/06 20:09
But my main reason why I hate bots is emotional. It devalues my achievements in the game. I might be proud to have reached level 60, or having made a certain amount of gold. And then I watch a bot character doing both of it faster and without human supervision, just controlled by some sort of extended macro. That dispells any illusion that I might have that playing World of Warcraft would actually require some skill.
Tobold, I see 14 year olds with hundreds of hours of freetime a week having done so faster and more efficiently than I ever could, because I actually have some other things to do in my life. Does that mean that they've stripped any meaning from the in-game decisions I make in the course of play with my friends?
Of course not, it's silly on the face of it. It's a silly contention at base. Arguing that farmers mean the economy then favours those with real money who can afford to buy 500G+ epics on the AH in exchange for a couple hundred dollars, sure, though even those people only impact your play if you engage in PvP, and at least pre-60 on a non-PvP server you don't have to even remotely engage with those people.
Me? I've bought a little goal and had the gall to share it with my friends when we're more interested in progressing through the scattered plotlines than in grinding through repetitive boredom. It's worth it to me to exchange fun for cash. I object when bots are farming the areas I need to kill things in to finish a Quest and we cross up. That's about it.
I don't play WoW for the PvP (I have GW for that, on the odd occasion, or DropTeam or Steel Beasts or ...). Outside of that, farming just doesn't affect me, automated or not, lest it serves me as a "boring part fast-forward" button, and while there are those who'd object ... I don't have time for them either.
Tobold, I see 14 year olds with hundreds of hours of freetime a week having done so faster and more efficiently than I ever could, because I actually have some other things to do in my life. Does that mean that they've stripped any meaning from the in-game decisions I make in the course of play with my friends?
Of course not, it's silly on the face of it. It's a silly contention at base. Arguing that farmers mean the economy then favours those with real money who can afford to buy 500G+ epics on the AH in exchange for a couple hundred dollars, sure, though even those people only impact your play if you engage in PvP, and at least pre-60 on a non-PvP server you don't have to even remotely engage with those people.
Me? I've bought a little goal and had the gall to share it with my friends when we're more interested in progressing through the scattered plotlines than in grinding through repetitive boredom. It's worth it to me to exchange fun for cash. I object when bots are farming the areas I need to kill things in to finish a Quest and we cross up. That's about it.
I don't play WoW for the PvP (I have GW for that, on the odd occasion, or DropTeam or Steel Beasts or ...). Outside of that, farming just doesn't affect me, automated or not, lest it serves me as a "boring part fast-forward" button, and while there are those who'd object ... I don't have time for them either.
# posted by : 4/10/06 23:23
: 4/10/06 23:23
“Buying gold isn't any different than paying somebody to mow your lawn.”
I have to disagree. Buying gold with real-world money introduces an alien component into the game: the real world money. It’s like bringing gold from Mars to Earth and going shopping. It is going to have some destabilizing effect.
Also, the gold-buyers screw up the Auction House. The player with 1k gold to spend, and who can get 1K more anytime they want will spend a wad at the AH. I, an honest player who acquires gold in-game, cannot compete.
I have to disagree. Buying gold with real-world money introduces an alien component into the game: the real world money. It’s like bringing gold from Mars to Earth and going shopping. It is going to have some destabilizing effect.
Also, the gold-buyers screw up the Auction House. The player with 1k gold to spend, and who can get 1K more anytime they want will spend a wad at the AH. I, an honest player who acquires gold in-game, cannot compete.
# posted by : 5/10/06 00:34
: 5/10/06 00:34
I have to disagree. Buying gold with real-world money introduces an alien component into the game: the real world money. It’s like bringing gold from Mars to Earth and going shopping. It is going to have some destabilizing effect.
That isn't true. You can't buy anything with real-world money in World of Warcraft. You can only give the real-world money to somebody, who in turn gives you his virtual-world money. That isn't any different from lets say you giving gold to a real-world friend to get him started.
People often make the mistake of thinking that a MMORPG was some sort of competition, a race, a contest to win. But if you translate the rules of a MMORPG into a real-world competition, you get something very strange: This isn't a race where everybody starts at the same time and the fastest guy wins by crossing the finish line first. Instead everybody runs not only at his own speed, but also different amounts of hours per day. It simply doesn't matter how fast you run if you run only 4 hours per day and somebody else runs 12 hours per day. How far you advance isn't related to your speed / skill, it is nearly exclusively related to the number of hours you can spend advancing per day.
If anything, buying gold makes the game *more* fair, not less, because it allows the people who fell behind to buy "hours" from other people who spent a lot of time in the game. And if the gold thus bought is spent on money sinks like epic mounts, there isn't even an effect on the game economy.
That isn't true. You can't buy anything with real-world money in World of Warcraft. You can only give the real-world money to somebody, who in turn gives you his virtual-world money. That isn't any different from lets say you giving gold to a real-world friend to get him started.
People often make the mistake of thinking that a MMORPG was some sort of competition, a race, a contest to win. But if you translate the rules of a MMORPG into a real-world competition, you get something very strange: This isn't a race where everybody starts at the same time and the fastest guy wins by crossing the finish line first. Instead everybody runs not only at his own speed, but also different amounts of hours per day. It simply doesn't matter how fast you run if you run only 4 hours per day and somebody else runs 12 hours per day. How far you advance isn't related to your speed / skill, it is nearly exclusively related to the number of hours you can spend advancing per day.
If anything, buying gold makes the game *more* fair, not less, because it allows the people who fell behind to buy "hours" from other people who spent a lot of time in the game. And if the gold thus bought is spent on money sinks like epic mounts, there isn't even an effect on the game economy.
As soon as I feel that the decisions aren't interesting...the game stops being fun
This reminds me of when I played City of Heroes. I enjoyed getting with a group of heroes and using different superpowers to accomplish a task. Using forms of crowd control, picking certain strategies... It was slow-going but we made progress and had fun.
Then I found out tanks could herd huge groups around a corner and have a blaster blow them all away with one hit. Or a fire controller could use pets to kill a huge amount of mobs while the other members of the group soaked in the xp.
At that moment the game ceased to be fun. Sure I could continue to play like I had been playing and let the xp trickle in, but when the better choice was to group with a tank or fire controller and have them do all the work or just roll one myself, the thrill was gone.
This reminds me of when I played City of Heroes. I enjoyed getting with a group of heroes and using different superpowers to accomplish a task. Using forms of crowd control, picking certain strategies... It was slow-going but we made progress and had fun.
Then I found out tanks could herd huge groups around a corner and have a blaster blow them all away with one hit. Or a fire controller could use pets to kill a huge amount of mobs while the other members of the group soaked in the xp.
At that moment the game ceased to be fun. Sure I could continue to play like I had been playing and let the xp trickle in, but when the better choice was to group with a tank or fire controller and have them do all the work or just roll one myself, the thrill was gone.
I should start by saying that I have on occasions bought gold, but really if I'm honest I'll admit that it's cheating.
Yes, within the context of the game and it's ruleset, buying gold is cheating. I'm ok with that, but don't bother trying to defend it. It's like an athelete saying 'not being able to take performance enhancing drugs favours the natural talent rich over the money (or willing to risk your body with dangerous drugs) rich.' You're fooling nobody, and I hope you're not fooling yourself.
Yes, within the context of the game and it's ruleset, buying gold is cheating. I'm ok with that, but don't bother trying to defend it. It's like an athelete saying 'not being able to take performance enhancing drugs favours the natural talent rich over the money (or willing to risk your body with dangerous drugs) rich.' You're fooling nobody, and I hope you're not fooling yourself.
# posted by : 6/10/06 10:59
: 6/10/06 10:59
You claim in your post that a "skilled farmer" can generate 1,000 gold in around 20 hours or above?
WHAT?
Where is this "magical" place in the game where that kind of cash and sellable trash drops off of mobs to generate that much cash/hour? Even if it takes around 24 hours, that's about 40g/hour. Insane. WHERE?
WHAT?
Where is this "magical" place in the game where that kind of cash and sellable trash drops off of mobs to generate that much cash/hour? Even if it takes around 24 hours, that's about 40g/hour. Insane. WHERE?
# posted by : 7/10/06 21:57
: 7/10/06 21:57
There will be and always was bots in mmorpgs but its realy sickens me I recently quit playing mmorpgs becuase of bots
There are differnt types of bots, bots that level for game gold then sell it on there web site with the charactars.
Then theres the bots that do it to level up as fast as posible.
There is just no way to compete with some one who bots or buys game-gold so it just cutt my motivation to play any mmorpg ever agian im so disapoionted because it was one of the best things I have done with my life compete in a game to be the best.
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There are differnt types of bots, bots that level for game gold then sell it on there web site with the charactars.
Then theres the bots that do it to level up as fast as posible.
There is just no way to compete with some one who bots or buys game-gold so it just cutt my motivation to play any mmorpg ever agian im so disapoionted because it was one of the best things I have done with my life compete in a game to be the best.
# posted by : 12/2/08 23:12
: 12/2/08 23:12<< Home
