Movement mods will not work as of next patch.
 

Yep its official

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...p=1#post169829

Good. Now they need to get rid of the "see all target info" type mods.

This is my stance on it:
For me it took the tidium out of the game. I'll have to say that unless they find another way to take that tidium out, my life span in playing and enjoying wow will be lessened, and when thats lessened so are the lifespan of my mods.

Target info crap is inconsequental, while its nice to know what level a mob is its not a detriment to my playing experaiance if I don't know. It causes me know physical discomfort nor does it make me agrivated, I'm just like, "oh crap, run!" The loss of mods like AutoTravel are going to make things more agrivating simply for the fact that I'll get more frustrated and I'll have more handcramps, I use a keyboard alot and movement can get wearing on my hands.

My take on it is just the opposite of yours. I am in agreement with blizzard. One form of automation leads to another, leads to anther etc... I've played too many games where automation went unchecked resulting in uncontrolled botting to such an extent that the game(s) was totally compromised. The game is extremely well thought out and so was the travel system, there's no need for these automation mods.

WoW has a bunch of firsts for me. First RPG game. First on-line game. First time mod'ing a game.

Why are bots bad?

The programmer geek in me wishes there were a bot-friendly server that I could experiment with. I think it would be really cool to "solo" with a group of my own bots. The NPCs are so horribly boring in WoW. Wouldn't it be fun to make some with personalities?

Why are bots bad?

AFK Farming, AFK Gameplay just to name two.

To play devil's advocate for a moment...

How exactly do these two things affect you? If someone wants to pay $15/mo to have their computer AI play for them, why not? It shouldn't affect you in the slightest, unless it gets to the point where the actions of their AI would be considered to be griefing you, in which case report them.

Now don't get me wrong, I dislike the idea of AFK farming because it would encourage the people who farm gold to sell for real money (a practice I abhor).

My stance on the current issue of mods like AutoTravel, however, is the same as Kaelten's. The game is immensely more enjoyable if I don't have to spend 1/2 to 2/3 of my gameplay time steering a character on a long run that I may have ran hundreds of times before. From an RP standpoint... shouldn't my character *know* the way by now without me having to basically tell him "ok, keep running straight... run straight... ok, turn a little to the left since the road curves here... ok, a little to the right..." etc.

Also from an RP standpoint, shouldn't our characters be able to at least walk and talk at the same time?? How many of you can effectively chat while steering? Didn't think so.

People who really want to bot are going to bot using illegal 3rd-party tools, regardless. All changes like these do is hurt the legitamate gamer who uses them while *at the computer* to help alleviate one of the more tedious and un-fun aspects of the game.

Gold farmers get rich using bots - places get camped 24/7 a day and people actually at the computer can't use them because someone is on vacation for a week and left their bot there to kill stuff. Lets say for example its also smart enough to rez itself, so you can't just try to kill it. If enough people did this, the influx of gold into the game would cause the prices of everything in the AH to double or triple, and the existing gold that legitimate players have obtained would be worth a lot less.

Just an example ;)

That being said I'm kind of sad to see movement mods go away because the way they had to work was acceptable to me, but I guess not to blizzard. I was considering installing one. Oh well :(

Perhaps I'm an ignorant hardass that doesn't know diddlysquat, I know I'm not a saint by any means; however my opinions are strong and unwavering on this issue. I've always considered any sort of unattended activity to be detrimental to the core of any game, no matter how slight the impact. I have a lot of gaming principles that I stand by, and not using any mods that allow this type of activity is one of my first priorities. Anything that allows one to perform outside the scope of the intended interface should always be questioned, regardless of the user's motivation. I think this is what Blizzard did and I agree with their decision.

If you have a hard time using movement in the game without a bot type of mod, use mouselook, program a mousebutton to be used for the Autorun, get a trackball mouse; there's lots of alternatives to botting that make travelling easier.

Please note that this stance makes all mods ilegal in your standpoint sense all of them change the "intended interface"


Anywho, I would like to point out that on a very real level this will have next to no impact on botting.

Botters don't use scripts for the most part they use advanced third party programs to do things, and if they ever used script for moving, then I'm sure keypress commands from windows and synthisied hardware events will take their place.

The people who that are going to be impacted the most are those who don't abuse this type of mod. The ones that are like, **** you mean I have to waste 15 mins of my time trying to dodge the damned fence on the road, instead of enjoying myself?

Farming is the problem then?

Then 12 year old kids home for the summer playing 24x7 are also a problem? :)

I think a better solution than outlawing bots would be tracking "exhaustion". The longer you play the worse your character acts. Exhaustion is a negative ability modifier that slows you down, lowers your abilities (all abilities!) and lowers your damage. A totally exhausted level 60 can be killed by a level 1 Kobold.

That's fun, realistic behavior that kills bots. (Could give a purpose to all those beds and chairs in the game... :)

Another take on exhaustion is just from a game-play perspective: your drop rate goes down. A totally exhausted character doesn't get anything from killing a mob. The *loot* is exhausted!

Oh, by the way, I'd track exhaustion by the player's account and not by the character. It wouldn't stop farming if somebody has 10 characters on one account and just switches whenever one gets exhausted.

This is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time for helping the casual gamer keep up with the powergamers. I think you should post it on the Blizzard forums... who knows, there may be the teeniest of chances it will get noticed and implemented.

Lazzy People
 

Lets see a bot in a baseball game hmmmm.. The runner never has to run after hitting a homerun? Hes got a bot to do it for him.. What are you people thinking This should of never been aloud in the first place. Get up of you lazzy asses and run yourself .. Never in my life have i ever seen this meny lazzy people ...

It's over on the Blizz forums at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...hreadID=338547

I'm putting on my asbestos suit now... :)

posted a reply outlining my thoughts on it...
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...hreadID=338612

This would slow people down who play hours on end, and kind of make it so casual players and hard-core players reach levels at relatively the same time. Once you reach 60, the xp ratio drop wouldn't really matter, as you will be doing pvp or raids more than anything...

It's kind of ironic that you believe playing the game "manually" is the opposite of being lazy. Just a guess, but I bet most working adults think playing the game IS being lazy. :)

So far the anti-botter arguments come down to:

1. it makes farming easier
2. it violates some people's opinions of how to play the game correctly

Any others?

The fact of the matter is, regardless of popular opinion on the topic of what is and is not "botting", there has to be a line drawn somewhere. Most MMORPG games draw that line here...

Any period of gameplay in which the player can be engaged in activities (moving, fighting, looting, what have you) while UNATTENDED is considered "botting". Granted this is not cut and dry black and white, as there will be various cases in which people can argue that going afk alone is unattended gameplay (which is why they have auto-logoff timeouts). Another example is auto-follow although this is a necessary evil that most developers accept due to it's benefits.

Personally I feel that the autorun addon falls into the category of unnatended gameplay. While you may or may not agree, you cannot argue that it DOES in fact allow you to do something that you would otherwise have to do manually while physically at your computer. This is proof in and of itself that it DOES allow unattended gameplay in some form. Things like auto-follow is a mechanism that is part of the game without any third party programs addons, while this addon is something someone else developed and frankly allows you to do something the developers didn't intend to be possible...

Remember, they are not trying to take away something that is essential to your enjoyment of the game. They are trying to destroy avenues that botters can use to destroy your enjoyment of the game. Personally I would rather be present when my character is being played, as that is the whole point of playing a game in the first place. Otherwise you may as well pay to watch someone else play...

You're missing the "bot owning the camp" bit too. Enough people with bots, everything is camped by a super efficient bot that will always react faster than you because its going at the speed of the processor instead of your brain. Even worse, a pvp bot? Given enough AI, and the right interface functions, you could program something to do almost anything for you (fishing bot comes to mind, but again, thats back to gold inflation)

Pretty much it comes down to the point that the people with bots will start to inconvienence the people without them in a pretty short period of time, and not only that, but since its a bot, they're gonna be there 24/7 (or whenever they're not playing) and then whenever they're done, they'll sit them back there and even if you're at the camp, you go back to the "bot can react way quicker than you can" argument.

So if you look at the bigger picture, its more than just "making farming easier" and "thats not how you're supposed to play" - at excessive levels, the economic impact alone would make it to where normal players simply wouldn't have enough gold to buy things, because gold is so worthless in the player economy because of the massive influx of gold due to farmers.

I totally agree with Rem. Remember something else too. While some of you may not be happy with this change, one things DOES ring loud and clear. Blizzard is aware of the farming problem, and is looking at ways to prevent, or at least hamper it as much as they can. It is never easy to do something like that without hampering regular gameplay as well, but I believe they are doing an admirable job so far of listening to peoples concerns, and doing what is in the best interest of all of us.

There IS a farming problem in WOW, whether people know about it or not. Only the developers can really do anything about it, because farmers / botters always find a way to get around it in the end. It is an ongoing thing that takes time to battle...

I can see both sides of the argument and I'm not going to comment on either side. I am going to comment on one thing and one thing only:

Keep it civil, folks

So far, the thread has mostly remained civil. Keep it that way. Discussion and debate is completely acceptable and even encouraged. However, attacks of one another are not.

This is the only warning I will issue. Don't make me get cranky.

This sounds like the fatigue in Star Wars Galaxies : from the first enemy you fight, you gaine fatigue, which is a mental disability. You have to rest your fatigue and heal it by watching dancers or listening to musicians. It was a way to give a purpose to these two professions, but the beneficial part is that you are forced to go to an inn from time to time, because your efficiency decreased a lot.

The idea could be exploited in WoW but should carrefully be planed as extremes could gank gameplay for casual gamers...

great idea tho Littlejohn !

If the bot gets fatigued then it won't be very effective. Give people the choice: your bot can play or you can play, but you can't do both. (The game gets a *lot* harder if you play exhausted...)

So you've never killed a mob?! Humans are very competetive with the AI in the game -- this isn't a pure click fest. Why do you think player-made AI would be so much better than Blizzard's? (Off-topic: I've always thought it would be fun to choose to play a random mob. Spend an afternoon in an instance giving players some surprises. Every time you die, you get transported to a different random mob. :)

I agree with you 100%! I just don't see anti-botting measures as effectively fighting that problem.

A warlock's pet AI or auto-run doesn't hurt anybody. I think Blizz crushes these mods just because they want a very clear, no exceptions, anti-bot policy. What's the goal of the policy though? Advertising? Winning the hearts and minds of players? That seems unlikely to me.

If they are trying to eliminate the "aftermarket" for gold, items and accounts, that makes more sense. BUT, it's not going to work -- all they are doing is creating human bots in cheap labor countries.

They've got to limit in-game supply. It's impossible to reduce spawn rates, so they must either reduce per-player drop rates (easy) or reduce per-player kills (also easy). I bet both of these could be done so that only a very small number of players are negatively affected.

P.S. I'm not using any of these affected mods so I'm not mad about it or anything. I don't even use decursive! It's just a very interesting problem that I don't really understand completely. Oddly, I sort of see the genesis of robot discrimination here. If people can't handle a bot beating them in a game, God help us if bots ever learn to post on a message board!

P.P.S. How do you know I'm not a bot? And does it matter? :)

We did that as guides in Everquest. Was pretty fun to play NPC characters from time to time and give out items. I am sure many players are familiar with the GM Events...

And they (EQ) actually had that in the game for players as well for a short period of time (was it Test server only Bela? I can't remember now), where you could play an NPC. You hit the button, it randomly chose one for you, you died, you respawned as something else. Was fun. Freak the heck out of newbs I can tell ya .... "hey, what's going on?!?! the mobs don't act like this!"

Something like this is coming out in the next expansion for eq from what I hear.

You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you ;)

The thread over on the Blizz forums got several responses by people who like to farm for long periods of time. I guess if lots of players like to do that, then there's no way to distinguish between "good" players and "bad" gold farmers. (These players do seem kind of anti-social to me though. One said that e-Bay gold doesn't hurt anybody. Another said he's been GM'd for excessive farming.)

I really don't understand the desire that mobs must drop the same stuff after you kill them 57 million times in a row. It crosses the line from fun to work for me. Actually, it's WAY over the line.

Has a game ever had declining drop rates? First 10 mobs drop 10s. Next 10 drop 9s. Next 10 drop 8s. (Obviously this has to be per-player. It would suck if I killed 10, then you came along and only got the 9s drop rate.)

This thread seems to have focused in on botting, so this might be a bit of a hijack.
As I understand it, this will negatively impact a number of autobuff/autocast addons. It's another issue, but personally, I wager the autocast mods that key off movement will find another trigger that works. They always do. That leaves us with the core of the change, as it was described in the quote above: automated movement.

Admittedly, I only skimmed the thread over on the official forums, but a number of posters seemed to be most "up in arms" about the detrimental effects this change will have on AddOns the likes of AutoTravel and Abandon Ship anyway. Not the buff mods, but the actual travel mods themselves.

This has probably been mentioned somewhere already, and would be no small feat for Blizzard to implement, but why don't they include an alternate means of travel in the game? If there are honestly that many people that find the act of foot travel in this game to be -that- irritating or tedious, then the game has a design flaw.

Give folks a reasonable mounted travel option, from town to town, with the ability to dismount at any point along the route, and it would seem you have eliminated a large platform for a great deal of their userbase complaints. I was thinking a rental mount on a fixed path. They wouldn't have to go everywhere, just "fill in the gaps" with logical routes. A Kodo ride from Camp Taurajo to the back gate of Ogrimmar or that Epic Kodo orc guy at the edge of the salt flats. That sort of thing. Have them travel at mount speed, but follow the normal foot roads/paths. Then, when you needed to tromp all the way up to the sludge fen or down to Freewind Post on your 15th alt, you could at least have an option to "horse-it" and hop off close to where you wanted to be without having to dodge disgruntled emu and hyenas with attitude problems all the way there.

Heck, if that's too much trouble to implement, maybe the flight masters should just sell gnomish "parachutes" to mitigate falling damage, and then enable the jump button during flights, or at least portions of flights. You could keep these parachutes use-specific through backstory of some kind of "static line" engineering that only works with a contraption on the flying steed.

Then again, after I take a look, the movement mods don't seem to be -that- popular, when you look at sheer download numbers. Unless they are packaged with popular suite's I'm not aware of? I don't even know. It could just be my skimming of the official post just picked up on what I wanted to read, or there is an unusually vocal minority squawking over there. I recall one poster even threatening to take the issue to the press in the UK, LOL.

<shrug>

DAoC style horse routes are the one single feature I find I miss in WoW. It was nice to be able to hop on a pony to "x" and know you could jump off half way there and usually be reasonably close to wherever you wanted to be. It would at least give you a minute of relative safety to hit the rest room, nuke a burrito, whatever, before you and your group got underway. Typically, this was while you waited for someone that "forgot to jump" rather than while you were personally en-route... but hey. ;)

that or implement waystations in the larger areas with small mounts that you ride to a waystation. Make them work just like a griffin, where you ahve to ride it to the end, but at least with a waystation, you could potentially get to the middle of the area quickly...

You can then hop waystation to get across areas. You just have to ride twice (town to waystation, and then waystation to next town)

As for the autobuff addons that fire when you hit forward or a movement key or whatever, it is easy enough to set a simple frame to fire on a fairly common event (or a few events). I kind of didn't understand why they decided to do it via movement triggers in the first place...

I agree withe the City to City mount idea as an option for those who have issues manually navigating the world. I don't agree with exhaustion as a fix, this would negatively impact people who aren't doing anything wrong.

On a side note, mods such as AutoPetFeeding could soon be addressed as well. Although minor it is a bot function.

One of the things I liked the most about WoW when I first started playing it was how cool it was to venture out into unexplored territories and discover what was just over the next ridge... The difference between the various areas were so distinct and striking, it was so much fun to just explore...

But now, after 60 levels on one character, and a total of about 30 or 40 levels across various alts, the exploration factor just isn't quite the same.
I haven't used any auto travel mods, but I can see their appeal. I can't count the number of times I've travelled the same routes over and over...

As Blizzard defines them, auto travel mods provide automated gameplay, which in general can be a Bad Thing. However, trivial actions, such as moving from city to city on foot don't sound to me like they would have a detrimental effect on the overall mechanics of the game. If a player can still be attacked during his travels, I don't see why it would be so bad.

I'm not sure why auto-travel mod discussions almost always descend into the realm of auto-farm/auto-kill/auto-play mods.
There is a massive difference between the two categories, both in concept and in complexity of implementation.
Recording and playback of motion between coordinates is a very simple concept. There is no reaction or conditional actions taken.

The category of 'auto-play/auto-combat/auto-farming' is completely different. A mod that aquires targets, applies a strategy to defeat the target, loot the target, recover lost resources, and repeat the process... Handling all the possible conditions and reactions, for various classes, targets, areas...
I believe Blizzard could easily defeat a mod like this due to the complexity involved, without resorting to implementing a new game mechanisim like the fatigue concept.

Previously, Blizzard has taken ideas from the most popular user mods and incorporated them into their GUI. If auto-travel, or some other form of 'common path travel' is popular enough, I imagine Blizard could implement something in-game to provide this functionality and still prohibit user-created automation.

Taken alone, I really don't see the auto-travel mods as being that bad. I don't see how it would affect anyone other than the player, and it certainly wouldn't give them some kind of huge advantage...

As to the effect of excessive farming, automated or otherwise, I do not believe that this sort of behavior would have a substancial detrimental effect.
Assuming 'Bad' Farming provides a proportionally large sum of money, what would one do with it? Sell it on ebay? Buy items on the AH?
If it were disproportionately distributed, via ebay or another real-life transaction, these other players would be faced with the same decision. What to do with the money?
What can money really buy in WoW?
For those whom have reached the 'end game' phase of WoW, money doesn't matter quite as much as the 'uber loot' bind-on-pickup items from high level instances. Money won't buy these items, and by the time you can actually use the best bind-on-pickup items, you've leveled up to the point where you can easily afford to buy most anything on the AH.

So, if a level 20 character suddenly had 5000 gold, what would happen? They might buy all the slots in the bank, and fill them with 16 slot bags. Maybe they'd outfit themselves with a full compliment of 16 slot bags to carry around, and the best level 20 equipment available on the AH.
Maybe they'd get a few enchantments.
Buying the bags would give some money to some high level players who made the bags, buying the enchantments would also give high level players some money. Not very much money, and certainly not enough to destabilize the entire economy.
What if they decide to power level a trade skill by buying out all the items on the AH that they need? They could buy up hundreds of stacks of wool, silk, dust, herbs, ore, whatever they needed. If they worked at it, they might level their trade up to 225 in a single session. They'd still have to actually 'play' the game to go level up to get beyond 225, (as I recall, I had to be level 40 to train alchemy beyond that point) and that's something money won't do for them.
What about all the materials they bought on the AH? I can't recall ever seeing a shortage of low-level trade goods on the AH. I'm not sure anyone could actually buy all of a certain category before people would keep selling more and more to replace it... So there wouldn't likely be a shortage of the materials for other people. But what about prices of these materials? Would they skyrocket as our imaginary rich character bought these items in massive quantites? Once he was done buying them, who would pay the high prices? Lower level characters who would typically buy them couldn't afford them, so they would either farm them themselves, or wait for the inevitable undercutting process to take over, and deflate prices within minutes.
Even if a relatively large percentage of players, perhaps as high as 20% on a single server suddenly had thousands of gold, there's just not much you can really do with it to actually affect other people.
If someone outbids me on a really rare item, it doesn't really matter if they 'bought' their money or not, as there's always going to be someone richer out there who actually earned their money some other way than 'bad' ways.


Let's take this to the extreme.
What about the 'normal' person running about trying to make their way through WoW, without the excess gold 'everyone' else would have if 'bad' farming were rampant?
Would they still sell their vendor trash after killing level 1 mobs and learning the ropes?
Would they still run around doing quests, gaining money and items from NPCs and looting items as they gained XP? Would they still buy the level 1-10 grey equipment sold by the vendors before they could even begin to look at what's for sale on the AH?
When would they start to be affected by being the only person on the server without 5000 gold in their pockets? NPCs wouldn't change their prices for training. Minerals and herbs would still be found in the usual places in the wild, fish would still be swimming about in the streams and lakes.
They could still take their linen scraps gathered from kobold corpses and fashion tattered robes to train their tailoring, and assemble meager leather armor from the skins of the animals they've killed.
The only place that would affect him would be if he tried to buy something on the auction house. If everyone was so rich, and gold worthless, he wouldn't be able to afford anything. He'd be forced to kill things, run through instances, and use what he found on corpses for equipment... until he found something to sell.
He could go collect some kind of trade good, and sell it on the AH at huge prices (everyone is rich, so prices must be super high) and suddenly he'd have a lot of money too. After selling a bunch of things he found in the game, he'd be rich from selling items at fantastically inflated prices. Just like everyone else.

I don't know about you, but that really sounds pretty similar to my own personal experiences in this game. Everyone else seems super rich, you work your way up to having as much gold as everyone else, because no one can affect what you make or find out in the wild. Anyone can find a really rare item that makes them a fortune overnight. Anyone can spend 24/7 grinding through instances to find rare items, and be on equal footing with all the other ultra-rich players.


I've heard a lot of people say that 'bad' farming would destroy the economy, but I just don't see how that would happen...

I, for one, never like UI doing things for me. It trivialized the game. It removed the skill from the player and put them onto the computer.

Need a heal? No problem! Just pop-in an add-on and it'll automatically tell me which heal will be most efficient for you. Move to another computer and you're screwed cause you've never learned, yourself, how to do it properly.

I'm very happy to see these bot UI add-ons leaving. The game is ment to make you learn your character as well as the game. When you got UIs doing everything for you, you've failed half of your learning course.

As for the comment earlier about how a movement UI removed the tandim of constant runs; I've personally never had problems with it. I just pop-on autorun, and switch between two systems while my character is running. Or I'll look over their Inventory, questlist, etc and build a "plan of action". Just imagine the game w/out gryphons. :p

The game is ment to make it feel "large" and that it does (EQ tried this but massively failed when they added 200%+ speed buffs). You spoke of Dustwollow Marsh, which means you hadn't gotten your mount yet. That's part of the game and one should imbrase it, not trivalize it. When you turn 40 you can get youself a mount, kind of like a "reward" for making it that far.

ufortunately while the argument that it "does no real harm" is a somewhat valid argument, the true case is not so easy to discount. Past games have taught most that farming actually inflates economy and prices, resulting in devalue of in-game funds.

Think about it in terms of real life economics. The easier it is to come by money, the more exensive the goods in that area. That is the concept of "cost of living" in the United States. If you can get money easier in one place than another, usually the cost of living in that location is also higher. The same would be true in wow, except there are no boundaries such as location. The easier it is for players to get gold, the more people sell their goods for. It becomes a self propogating issue that can become serious if left unchecked.

THIS is why you have different prices on different servers. Player population and ratios affect gold income and as a result affect the prices you see in the AH. Easily getting gold from an online "farmer" also affects that...

In real life economics, 'cost of living' increases when inflation causes the prices of all goods and services to rise, thus increasing the 'cost to live'.
However, in WoW, with two exceptions, all prices for goods and services are fixed.
The Auction House and Enchanting prices are the only variable prices.
The cost of living concept relates to necessities, such as food, housing, clothing, gas, etc.. whereas the AH is more of a luxury.

The vast majority of items on the AH are items that people have found and are trying to sell for more than the vendors will pay for them. If those items get overpriced due to inflation, it still won't have a negative effect. Everyone has the same chance to go out and get the same items as anyone else. Everyone has the same chance to sell overpriced items at inflated prices. So what's the difference?

But there's some items that you need that can't be found in the wild. Some items have to be made by other players. Some are better than what you can find in the wild, some aren't. Are they absolutely necessary? Probably not.
Some potions are great, but not absolutely required. Enchantments are pretty nice, but also not an absolute requirement.
Can you level from 1 to 60 without ever touching the AH? As far as I know, sure.

The essential element of progressing through the game, the biggest 'cost of living', is experience. Gold won't buy XP.

Cause everybody doesn't have that luxury.

Inflation raises prices, there's no doubt about that one. It's been shown and proven many times fold in many games; SWG, EQ, Lineage, LineageII, etc.

Inflation breaks the economy in that your average users are no longer able to compete with. When you average user can't complete, things go downhill. The game gets ruined and no new comers will be able to catch on without some high level financial backend.

Don't think that everybody had the luxury to run a bot on their computer while AFK, cause they don't. It's actually your rare users capable of doing that. If you can, you're one of them. Some here may be able to, but your average user does not visit these or blizzard's forums. We're only a very, very minute percentage of the full player base.

Mondoz doesn't think that. His idea is if prices are infllated, then the 6th level player coming to the auction house for the first time sells his stack of linen for 80g. Now he's rich just like everybody else...

I can't find a fault in the reasoning, but it seems like "everybody knows" that gold farmers ruin economies. Perhaps gold farming raises prices for rare stuff, but not for common stuff? If that's true, then 6th level players would see stacks of linen for 80s and desirable weapons for 80g. That kind of imbalance would ruin the game.

Here's a cynical thought. Game companies want players to identify with the game and feel a sense of ownership over (i.e. commitment to) it. What if companies like gold farmers because it gives players a common hatred? Hatred makes an awfully strong bond. Maybe there actually is no harm to the game, but companies take advantage of the myth to increase loyalty?

I think you missed my point. Anyone has the ability to go to the AH, and sell anything they have for any price. I could go sell 1 piece of linen cloth for 1000g if I wanted to. If gold was really worthless, and everybody had tons of it, then it would sell.


Inflation in WoW would mean AH prices rise. Nothing else.
If I recall correctly, SWG had a much more player-dependant economy than WoW. You could only get items from other players, only be healed by other players, etc... That's not so in WoW.

I don't understand. 'Average users can't compete.' Compete how?
Ruined how?
They can't go on quests? They can't get XP?

High prices on the AH mean that I can't go kill some mobs and get good gear?
High prices on the AH mean that I can't go kill some mobs and get items to sell on the AH at those same high prices?

Why would a newcomer have any problems? Even if they had tons of gold, they couldn't do much with it unless they played for a while and leveled up to the point where gold actually did anything.

Even when you have gold, what does it get you? Better gear? Okay. But is it the only source of that gear? No. Anyone can go out and get the same items that everyone else can. The best items can't be traded or sold.


I don't understand much of that.
I think you're saying that most people can't run automated programs to farm items. I don't think anyone will disagree with you or debate you on that point.

My point is that in WoW, gold farmers would not 'ruin' the game as many have claimed it would. In other games perhaps, but not all games have the same economies, the same rules, the same mechanics, etc. I still haven't seen any convincing arguments that it would in WoW.

Exactly. :)


I don't think that kind of imbalance would happen, though.
For the purpose of my comments, I'm assuming in your example that the 80g 'desirable weapons' are the ones the 6th level player could actually use.
From personal experience, the number of low level uncommon items far outweigh the number of very high level uncommon items. I'm speaking of how many times they appear on the AH and how many people generally have them. I submit that in our hypothetical WoW realm of rampant gold farmers, low level uncommon desirable items would not sell for insane prices. I don't believe their availability is low enough to allow the market to bear those prices.
If I saw that I could make a killing selling 10th level green items, I'd take my level 60 character, and run through deadmines a few times, and have enough green items to retire. However, since that's not a very difficult or rare ability, the market would be flooded, prices would plummet due to the amazing ability of WoW auctioneers to undercut one another like rabid dogs, and prices would match the item's rarity.
For the even more desirable items, Blizzard's Bind-On-Pickup concept is brilliant. You can't hold those really fantastic items ransom for billions of gold, even in our Farmer's Realm. Even a poor low level non-farmer, typical average joe can go with a few other people into an instance and have the exact same chance to get an 'Uber Item of Doom' as anyone else.
Bind on Pickup is a fantastic equalizer.

However, Bind on Equip items can be sold at any price. But the market would force their price to a level that matches their rarity. Items that are fairly uncommon would be less than really uncommon items, and so on. Epic items will always sell for proportionately more than rare items, etc...
The one important constant is that no matter how much money everyone has, drop rates will not change. If I had 500,000 gold, it's not going to make that Uber Staff of Ultra Death show up more often.

If everyone had 500,000,000 gold, you wouldn't see level 10 characters running about in epic gear, and MC runs wouldn't become snooze-fest cake walks.



Sorry I'm so long-winded. ;)

But then it throws things off balance vs NPCs prices. They are static and can't change. And how many new player at the level 6 knows about the Auction House? I real new player, not one that has already leveled to 60.

And lets not discount the fact added botting start incuraging eBaying as a different revenue for selling excess gear and money.

NPC prices for items stop mattering around level 12 or so. Beyond that, the gear they sell do not have bonuses, and are not as good as the items found on corpses. No one buys them.
NPC prices for training aren't really relative to anything anyway. They don't go up very much as you approach level 60; they don't really scale with level. Inflation wouldn't matter there.
NPC prices for trade good accessories (vials, thread, etc...) become negligable after a while, so inflation doesn't matter there, either.
Flight route costs are also low enough to ignore as well.
Repair costs are also already extremely low, and wouldn't be 'thrown off' by inflation, either.

What balance are you speaking of?

Inflated gold prices only matter when it comes to AH prices. Your level 6 character that doesn't know about the AH wouldn't be affected at all by gold farmers.
If he's not buying from the AH, then he's not concerned at all about how much money other people have.



As for ebaying money, I also don't see the harm in that practice. If someone wants to spend their real money for something in a game, I think they should be able to.
It doesn't hurt me if someone else has their 'uber' gear because they bought it, and didn't actually find/earn it or if they used their credit card.
If you want to buy someone's level 60 character, go ahead. I think the fun is earning the gold/items/XP myself, but if someone else's fun is to take a pre-made 60 and go from there, how does it hurt me?

It's a strong argument for sure. What's missing on both sides is evidence...

It would be interesting to have PvP and PvE "anarchy" servers -- bots, gold farming, etc. are all allowed. Players could transfer characters there like a test server.

Does anybody have any links to papers describing the psychology or economics of on-line games?

Hurts the guild he joins. People buy lvl 60 characters to get into end-game. If you don't know how to play that character, you can cause the guild more wipes than prevent. I high end guild doesn't have time nor the patients to teach somebody how to play their character from the ground up.

In WoW, once you hit 60, what is there to do, besides raid?

Farming is the problem then?

Then 12 year old kids home for the summer playing 24x7 are also a problem?

"I think a better solution than outlawing bots would be tracking "exhaustion". The longer you play the worse your character acts. Exhaustion is a negative ability modifier that slows you down, lowers your abilities (all abilities!) and lowers your damage. A totally exhausted level 60 can be killed by a level 1 Kobold.

That's fun, realistic behavior that kills bots. (Could give a purpose to all those beds and chairs in the game...

Another take on exhaustion is just from a game-play perspective: your drop rate goes down. A totally exhausted character doesn't get anything from killing a mob. The *loot* is exhausted!

Oh, by the way, I'd track exhaustion by the player's account and not by the character. It wouldn't stop farming if somebody has 10 characters on one account and just switches whenever one gets exhausted."

While I can see "why" some may want this...Blizzard won't ever do this. Nor will any other online anything. For one simple fact. We are paying customers. They can't legally deny me access to the subscription I am paying for, because I "play" too much. In fact...due to the fact I play much, should be an incentive for them to encourage me to continue...I am, after all, paying for their salaries.

I pay the same as everyone else, yes I do power game, but mostly due to the fact, that where I live I am isolated, for the most part, and have little else to do...unless i like to drink, which got boring years ago...playing wow, is also like a IM system with graphics for me. I keep up with my friends in the states, while playing a game i enjoy. if something else comes up thats interesting I do that instead. *shrugs* to each his own.


And on the botting issue...Bots always destroy MMORPGs. They destroy the in game economies, close off most of the best places to game, i.e. best spawn sites, best drop areas, etc. A great example of Bots running amuk (sp? er, ya, *shrugs* its late >.<), would be the Dancer, Musician, and Doctor professions in Starwars Galaxies An Empire Divided. When launched many of the more social gamers LOVED the Dancer/Musician/Doctor professions. They just danced, chatted and basically loved it. Its exactly what they wanted, and they got to help other players in the process too. it was great, you come in after a tough bounty mission to find that hawt Twi'lek dancer smiling at you as you come in, and she dances the problems away (healed mind bar/stat wounds, i forget which >.<). And chats with you the whole time about anything. always engaging always a good time, then the holo grind was launched to "help" people get jedi...and what do you think came next? Bots. Afk grinders. The cantinas turned into an automated ghost factory....and the only reason anyone even went to one, is when one of your dancer/musician friends were there, or if none of them were on and you need a heal....not to mention the bots spamming chat asking for tips...begging more like. It got to the point that most of the socializers either quit the game out of frustration, or moved on to something else.

The doctor profession was great too. You could buff your friends, work on crafting the ultimate buff pack ( and many spent months just screwing with components to do it), help other players take on dangerous areas by keeping them alive, etc....after the holo grind started you could master doc in around 9 hours or so....due to damage bots (guys that would macro a combat ability that ate their action bar, there by allowing you to heal them and get xp), due to the fact you could even macro your character to heal while you were afk. you just came back once an hour or so, and trained...it became a joke.

You could grind any profession in that game in no longer than 3 days at most. the image designer profession could be grinded in under 3 hours, if macroed right.

see the point i am making? if you don't, then you don't agree or don't want too.

Bots are bad for business, which is why most mmorpg's are taking a more active role in gutting the ability to do so. Yes, this can hurt the casual, even honest power gamer, but its a small price to pay to keep the price of a "Light Feather" at 10 cp per,...not 10 GOLD per.

Anyways, just my thoughts on it, hopefully none were offended, and if so, I do apologize, and hope that you see this as debate, and not personal attack.

Chemosh
Earthen Ring Server

If you want to see what botting does, or afk grinding, go play Shadowbane, their servers are anarchy incarnate and new players quit shortly after signing up due to massive griefing....they had like, what?, 15 to 25 servers? now they have 3. clear enough evidence?

I will say that eventually, keyword: Eventually, all players WILL use the AH. So Eventually all ARE affected by gold inflation, gold farming, afk loot farming, etc.

Granted they are not "required" to use the ah, but at some point you must take the path of least resistance. that is the ah. but when that path becomes more impossible than the only other route, it detracts from the fun factor. some will still argue, but again *shrugs* to each his own.

"NPC prices for items stop mattering around level 12 or so. Beyond that, the gear they sell do not have bonuses, and are not as good as the items found on corpses. No one buys them.
NPC prices for training aren't really relative to anything anyway. They don't go up very much as you approach level 60; they don't really scale with level. Inflation wouldn't matter there.
NPC prices for trade good accessories (vials, thread, etc...) become negligable after a while, so inflation doesn't matter there, either.
Flight route costs are also low enough to ignore as well.
Repair costs are also already extremely low, and wouldn't be 'thrown off' by inflation, either.

What balance are you speaking of?"

Might be the fact that by your own statement you pointed it out.

"NPC prices for items stop mattering around level 12 or so. Beyond that, the gear they sell do not have bonuses, and are not as good as the items found on corpses. No one buys them.:

That fact alone is why the AH is so very beneficial. the only time people actually do buy the junk from vendors (weapons mostly) is to skill up a weapon, without worrying about paying 2 to 8 gold on repairs for their blue/epic gear.

Being able to swing by the Auction House, and quickly purchase the next best weapon for your level is very convenient, a huge time saver, and much better than wasting hours on end hoping for a drop, only to realize you just gained another level and the weapon/armor is already obsolete. Now you don't really "need" gear at your level always, this is true, but it is nice to have the option....and gold farming, generally takes away that option, or complicates it unnecessarily.

In a nutshell gold farming = bad business for gaming companies....hence them cracking down on it, when it goes wild.

*shrugs* to each his own, hopefully something i said here, helps someone else...if not oh well.

And a good guild will recognize this, and either teach them or kick them.

I know plenty of players who have reached level 60 on their own, yet have no idea how to really play their class.
Let's face it. Anyone with the patience to do it can reach level 60. It's not that hard to go run the easy missions.
Having reached level 60 on your own does not mean you'll be any better than someone who bought one.

I would love to see some data on this. I think it would be extremely interesting.
I'm sure it won't be long before someone writes their thesis on the economics of online games... :)

Actually, people have. Read something about MMORPG economies, etc. they went into detail on a lot of things.


Oh, and I stand corrected. As I read through all the posts, I see what Mondoz is talking about. In "most" other mmorpg's its either completely or mostly a player dependant economy so gold farming flushes them down the toilet.

But he brings up some extremely valuable points.

1. 1 gold or 1 billion gold is irrelevant when coming to BoP items. You are right I do love that about WoW.

2. The fact that WoW built such a strong economy in the game, fixing all the "important" prices in the game so that anyone of the appropriate level could use them without being bankrupted. I.e. Flights, training, repairs.

3. While personally it is always nice to have lots of gold, he is right...its not really needed that much, unless you come across something very rare, and even then nothing stops you from just going to go get it yourself.

Good arguments all. And sound. Never saw it that way, as far as WoW is concerned.

(some snippets removed)
In the case of SWG, I completely agree. That game was all about professions, and I believe the complete boredom from doing them the 'right' way was what drove people to create these mods.
Spending 8 hours a day running about collecting mineral deposits?
Spending all day in a hospital healing people?
*yawn*
I didn't play it very long before I just couldn't take it anymore.

I've been playing WoW since it was out of beta, and I still haven't run out of things to do. There've been a few times I've had to 'grind' a few things, but for the most part, if I'm bored of something, I can go do something completely different, and have fun doing it.

If auto-grinding leads to lots and lots of characters who cannot gain any new abilities by performing tasks, then I think we're already there. I have a level 60 character, and about the only things I could level up anymore is my reputation with various factions and fishing. I guess I could go get gold for an epic mount, but there's no other aspect I could improve by using an auto-bot. I believe there are a vast number of people that are at the same point, and yet the game isn't destroyed. If someone gets to that point through artificial means, I can't tell the difference... And the sheer number don't seem to be a problem, at least on the server I play on.
All that's really left at the moment is to go on raids, play some pvp, battlegrounds, and finish up old quests. Those aren't something you could bot.

I think this is generally true, depending on the game. SWG was the perfect environment for bots, because other than fighting, all you could possibly do was grind. Designing a game where all you did all day was push the same button over and over again is a horrible design.
Other games I've played had better designs, and botting was less attractive, and more difficult.

Then we have WoW. As far as I'm aware, in the game's current state, botting can only yield gold and xp. And bots that can yield that sort of thing completely unattended would be a fairly impressive programming feat.
And yet, WoW's economy is designed in such a way that I truly believe that rampant gold farmers would not ruin the game.
The AH would be the only thing affected, and everyone has the same chance to find items out in the wild that will sell at the newly upwardly scaled market price. I belive the prices would go up, but not the actual value of the items.
If a light feather goes for 8 g instead of 8 s, then I can sell the light feathers that I can't use to the people who can afford them, and you can sell your light linen for 8 g and afford to buy your light feather.

A bottle of coke used to cost a nickel. Now it goes for a dollar.
Back then, people wouldn't have been able to afford it, but because the prices increased across the board, at a fairly equal rate, it's not such a big deal.
This is how I would imagine the economics of WoW would be affected.
Perhaps not in other games, but I think due to WoW's excellent design, it would weather the storm of inflation quite nicely.


Personally, that's exactly how I'm reading all of these posts.
I'm glad this is a place where every other post isn't some kind of childish insult like it seems to be on the official boards.
An intelligent discussion online seems to be something of a rarity these days.
Although, you can feel free to throw in a 'your mom' comment every now and then to lighten the mood. ;)

Thanks. I agree. I think this has been a pretty interesting discussion.

Botting/Farming/eBaying/etc... as only it applies to WoW alone was really my point all along. I'm certain these behaviors can destroy other games, and I think the SWG points have described this perfectly.

Bad game design is a massive component in this concept. I've seen games that cover the entire spectrum of player based economies and no economies at all.
City of Heroes and Anarchy Online spring to mind as having almost no economy at all.
SWG was completely the opposite, and had an extremely fragile economy. I think theirs was an interesting experiment, but ultimately showed how bad things can go.

However, WoW's concept of an economy is the best I have seen.
Their BoP concept, their camp-resistant instances, their implementation of the AH... I think all of these are wonderful checks and balances against rampant inflation, even in the face of rampant gold farming.
I'd absolutely love to see what WoW's economic model did if LittleJohn's idea were attemtped, and gold farmers and eBay'ers were allowed to go nuts on a single server, just as an experiment.
Of any online community game, I really think WoW would stand the best chance of remaining intact, and preserving the same experience it provides now.

On a side note, I've actually tried to play 'price fixer' on a couple occasions, just to see if it would actually do anything.
I've bought up all the items of a certain type, something seen not very often... Raised the prices of them, and re-listed them.

It never works. There's always someone who comes in right after, and undercuts my prices.
Before I know it, someone else has undercut them. And again.
Suddenly, I'm left with these items that I can't sell for a profit, much less the price I actually bought them at.

I have about 5 'Tomes of Arcane Brilliance' in my bank right now that I would have to practically give away to get rid of. :)
At the time, they seemed to be fairly rare, and run at a pretty good price. Now their price is in the toilet because more people are finding them somehow.

In other occasions, for really rare items, that I've only seen once or twice, those can be bought and resold for more, but even then, you're running the risk of getting stuck with a pretty pricey item that might never sell. Someone on my server does this excessively with blue and purple items. But almost always, someone else undercuts him, and it's suddenly a non-issue.

And for common items, like wool or low level ore, just forget it.
There's way too much of it out there, people put it up for auction at a fantastic rate, and everyone wants to undercut each other.

Some of these experiments really make me thing WoW's setup is currently darn near invincible, and scales fantastically.
Blizzard really pulled off something special.

In response to prices on varios servers I've played on about 5 or 6 servers now and what I've seen is that if you had a big farming guild then you'd see level 1's selling purples for 400-650g and being laughed at and ignored by everyone.

AH prices will go up, but I don't think the average person really buys that much at that point but rather only level 60's alts with ton of money they got from farming gold actually buy that.

But a few dedicated crafters can easily change portions of an economey like that by providing needed wares for reasonable prices.

To some extent the addons like Auctioneer and AuctionMatrix and even my own KC_Auction will contribute to inflation as inevitably the averages they store get slanted higher and higher as people post for higher and higher prices. People use these averages as a standard to sell by instead of trying to figure out what a item is actually worth. You have enough people doing this and prices will go up.

just some random thoughts.

Not exactly. Farming for items would actually cause prices to go down. Supply vs demand; over supply and the price drops.

The biggest issue about farming itself is when people turn items they have into coin not gained by players (ie; merchants). When the ratio of money gained > money leaving the economy, the prices rise. Bot farming is the leading culprit.

Bots are bad ... and I do feel anybody that would vote for bots must be doing a bit of that nature his or herself or there wouldn't be an argument on their side. Who wants to see the price of their favorite lvl 45 staff/sword over 1k cause of farming?! An economy should never be allowed to the point where a user must bot just to keep up (if you want that goto Lineage II where I hear a lvl 20 item costs a couple million Adena).

Um quince you misread my post I was refering to people relying on teh increasingly rising averages provided by programs like auctioneer can cause a form of inflation.

and as far as botting goes I dont support it at all, and I think most of the people here that have said anything is that they believe that the econmy that blizzard's setup is more resistant to botting induced inflation than other MMORPG's and that it would be an interesting experiment to see if this was true.

I havn't actually seen anyone vote "Pro Bot" in all this, just that people would like to see the functionality of something like AutoTravel remain in the game in some form or fashion.

That's a very interesting comment. What is an item actually worth? I'd say items are worth what people are willing to spend for them. Isn't that close to what your auction mod reports? (It'd be perfect if there was a way to exclude the prices of all the items that didn't sell.)

My main is a tailor/enchanter. Frequently I've got extra strange dust that I put up for auction. If somebody has listed stacks under what I know I can sell it for, I usually buy them out just so I can sell my stuff for the price I want. There's really no risk for this since strange dust has no deposit. (I just bank the extra and sell it later.)

Happily, it the norm, not an exception, around here. :)

The only "your mom" comments that are allowed to be used on this board would all be directed at me, so you might want to be careful ... ;) :D

yes mommy I'll be careful. :runs:

:p

Go back to talking about the changes

That's true. I'm probably the most pro-bot person here -- I'm also a newbie who hasn't witnessed the wreckage bots cause. :) I think autotravel is fine, but "click to heal lowest party member" crosses the line. That's too much like an aim-bot for my taste.

The most important thing for me is a vibrant, creative add-on community. If mods are ultimately limited to only making different shape buttons, I think we will have lost an amazing opportunity. I've spent time looking for other games with scripting features like WoW and I haven't found any. It's a killer feature. Is losing auto-travel going to kill scripting? No, certainly not. But I think I'd better defend it because something I use may be on the chopping block next.