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07-03-05, 02:52 PM   #50
mondoz
An Aku'mai Servant
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 31
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.

...

Afk grinders. The cantinas turned into an automated ghost factory
....
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.
....
after the holo grind started you could master doc in around 9 hours or so....
...
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.
(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.

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.
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.


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
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.
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