It’s easy to be indifferent towards gold farmers when they aren’t affecting your choice of spots, so for boss hunters and high level NPC farmers in Runescape, brushing off the effects of gold farmers is a lot harder once those same bots start overrunning your high level training areas, as seen in the above video.
When a company like Jagex has the kind of profits, again like Jagex (almost $60 million annually, and that’s profit), you’d think hiring a dedicated bot busting team would be in the cards. But again, Jagex appears to have the same apathy toward combating bots that I have toward paying my auto-loan.
The video above showcases just one of the many sites in Runescape where botters (almost all of them gold farmers) are farming a mini-game. Now, in this particular mini-game, players must run through a maze, avoiding the creatures that roam it, otherwise they are teleported back to the start. A Splinter Cell stealth-style game. One of the creatures, as noted in the video, became stuck in place, making the maze impossible to complete. That, of course, does not stop the mass of bots from trying to force their way through anyway.
History repeats itself, and much like last time (2007), Jagex will likely not act until the gold farmers start hitting them where it hurts: The bank. A major point I’ve always thrown forward is that the 2007 trade restriction updates were put into place in retaliation not against botting, but against credit card fraud: Gold farmers using stolen credit cards to pay for membership. I’m not going to speculate on how the bots are paying for their membership this time, but I find it unlikely they are suddenly going legitimate.
Reading K2 Networks (GamersFirst) talk about cheaters reminds me of the black knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Even though King Arthur continues to hack the black knight apart, limb from limb, he continues his volley of verbal assaults at Arthur’s ability with a sword, to the point where, in defeat, the knight offers a draw.
In an alternate reality, I might be complacent with Gamersfirst’s handling of cheaters, but given their work in titles like Knight Online (which is full to the brim with cheaters, bots, and gold farmers), my hope for APB’s future is on uneven grounds. Of course, if you go by Gamersfirst’s words, back when Realtime Worlds was still running All Points Bulletin, the company had the information to ban the high number of cheaters, but simply chose not to enforce the rules. The implication being that the new host will be enforcing the rules.
With the latest K2 Networks blog, the APB team has offered a thank you to the cheaters for providing them with useful information.
For the past 3 weeks we have been watching and observing user behavior in Closed Beta. We’d like to extend a “thanks” to the 60 odd players that have been toying around with various hack tools (about 0.4% of the players). Thanks to your hard cheating work, we are now much better equipped to deal with you going forward. How? I guess you will find out.
I wish GamersFirst the best of luck with APB, and I will be there when the game comes out. Unlike their other titles, however, APB isn’t going to survive if it is filled with cheaters. The first failed launch should have been enough of an indicator.
Asian MMOs live and die like rats. They appear quickly, populate an area with many of their clone offspring, and several years down the line it becomes difficult, nay impossible, to get one of the major gaming publications to even take a passing glance at that carcass in the streets, other than to pinch their nose and complain about the smell. Mmosite.com may be a sensationalist, almost tabloid-esque, news source whose community will gather like a lynch mob whenever a new game carries the title “subscription based,” but I do use regularly browse their news and forums to get a glimpse at the current happenings in Korea/Japan/China. They also give a lot of space for Asian MMO developers, offering them blogs and server space to get their game out. In a way, they are the nega-MMO Fallout.
Did I mention MMOSite was sensationalist? Now, of course I won’t knock on the site for desiring a controversial topic to write about, but it feels like every few months MMOSITE runs an article about the latest big-name MMO from China/Korea being overrun by cheaters. In this case, the game is TERA, and they point out that bots are getting by quite easily in this action-based MMO due to the presence of areas filled with mobs that have low health, low attack, and spawn frequently. Due to the number of bots clogging training areas, allegedly “many” legitimate players are quitting the game out of frustration.
MMOSite has a point, however. I’ve yet to see a substantial number of free to play games in Asia die solely because of the level of botters, but TERA is not a free to play MMO. TERA launched with a subscription, meaning players are far less likely to just ignore the large number of cheaters, and the game’s life expectancy will take a hit if cheaters are not addressed.
TERA launched last month in South Korea, and is set for a North America/European launch sometime later this year.
I don’t want to get into the whole discussion on whether or not Jagex is a corrupt corporate entity, but with last week’s news that the developer is now offering the option to pay to be unbanned, one has to bring up the ethical concerns of a company having a financial interest in banning its own players. As one player put it, imagine if you will that a judge received 20% of the fines he issues out. Sure, plenty of judges would put ethics above money and still work fairly, but when those odd cases do slip through the cracks and a player is unfairly punished, it will bring up the question of “are they ignoring my appeals because they are incompetent, or because they think I’ll pay up to be unbanned?”
The official response from Jagex (Mark H) is that these fees are being used to fund the ICU (Internal Conflicts Unit?) so that less membership fees and advertising revenue have to be used to fund it. Jagex’s official policy appears to be that cheaters should have to pay to fund the staff that have to look through their appeals. Again, the specifics are something Jagex refuse to release, so we’ll have to wait until someone is given this offer before we can talk specifics.
But while we’re on the subject of cheaters, Jagex announced alongside the wilderness vote that they had a system in place that was infallible in catching bots. Naturally, I advised players to be wary of this claim, as it had been made in the past to no avail. Nonetheless, I was proven correct over the past week since Jagex revived free trade. In many parts of the free world, and members worlds, bots are more common than even before free trade was initially taken away.
So Jagex is capable of removing the cheaters, but unwilling, which would mean they lied about having a no tolerance policy. Otherwise, they are willing, but incapable, which would also mean they lied about the system they had in place. Which one is it?
MMO Fallout 