Tag: Gold Farmers

Martial Empires Monster-Police Will Murder You


File this under “pretty damn cool.” For years, MMOs have been looking for new and inventive ways to kill gold farmers and bots, and quite a few spectacles have come out of it. Aion instated the G-Unit, a team dedicated to bot busting, as well as public executions, Eve Online had Operation Unholy Rage, Runes of Magic has injunctions, and Guild Wars has had public executions in-game as well. Of course, I’m just summarizing.

I’m sure many of you won’t recognize Martial Empires, but the game does make news today for the company’s intuitive offering in bot busting: Baited NPCs. These monsters patrol the game and act as bait to bots that will attack anything. The monster itself publicly announces “do not kill me!” and those who heed the warning will go unpunished. Those who do decide to attack the monster will be immediately killed and turned into an unplayable ghost, which I’m guessing can only be fixed with an email to Gamigo.

The idea itself is pretty unique and intuitive. Chances at success? None. Considering Gamigo plays host to a large number of MMOs, I don’t understand why anyone thought this would be effective. The entire system could easily be circumvented with as simple as an If/Then statement in the bot’s programming stating that if the NPC sends a certain string of code (that will be unique to the bait-NPCs), not to attack it. It also isn’t difficult for bots to recognize and respond to chat, as even in Runescape and other MMOs there are bots designed to allow very basic conversation should another player approach them.

Martial Empires is a very new MMO, so perhaps I’m being too harsh on it.

Runes of Magic: Security And Bot Busting!


Cake for Runes of Magic!

MMO companies love to keep your account safe. Not only does it keep you happy as a customer, but more importantly it lowers the amount of time and money they must spend on providing customer support to everyone who loses their account. So today’s news brings Runes of Magic into the front, once again, talking about their attempt to increase security and decrease the presence of gold farmers.

In an attempt to stop brute-forcing, accounts will be blocked if more than five unsuccessful login attempts are made over 24 hours. If a sixth unsuccessful attempt is made, players will be notified by email. In addition, IP addresses will be temporarily blocked if more than five unsuccessful logins are made from that particular IP address (presumably also within the 24 hour period).

To make things even better, customer support has been gifted better tools to help recover your stuff presuming you do become a victim of identity theft and find your bank cleared. According to the notice, Customer Service is now able to restore characters to 99% peak efficiency. The tools themselves will of course be upgraded as time goes on.

Furthermore, in the fight against gold farming, which those of you who play Runes of Magic will be well aware crippled the diamond trading market earlier this year with restrictions, you will be happy to know that the legal department has successfully placed nine injunctions against companies and individuals taking part in illicit gold trading, and the offending parties are being removed from the game as you read this. More networks are being banned from Runes of Magic, so if your town’s gold spammer isn’t gone yet, he will be eventually.

More on Runes of Magic as it appears.

The More You MMO #3: Earn Your Powers


NC + Rooster Teeth =

Once again Rooster Teeth has teamed up with NCsoft to inform those of you who may be considering buying accounts/powerleveling, and entertain those of us smart enough not to. Today’s lesson? Don’t buy your characters, otherwise you’ll end up as dumb as Caboose. Oh and you’ll be naked and alone.

Runes of Magic: More Diamond Restrictions


If Funcom's money was gold-backed...
Won't be trading this for diamonds.

It feels like it was all the way back in January, more specifically the twelfth, that I was maliciously defending Runes of Magic (being the troll I am, apparently). Frogster implemented an update that bound all diamonds (cash shop currency) purchased to the player’s account, if said diamonds were purchased with a credit card or through Playspan. The reason for this was that gold farmers mainly were purchasing diamonds on throwaway accounts with stolen credit cards, and then transferring them to their main accounts to sell to buyers.

Well there is more news in Runes of Magic’s Diamondgate. Earlier today Runes of Magic shut down for what was supposed to be routine maintenance, only for an announcement to appear on the forums that the ability to trade diamonds for gold will be shut off for the time being. Frogster’s reasoning is due to a drastic rise in gold selling recently, and assures players that the trade will return once it is deemed “safe” to freely trade.

Current auctions will not be affected.

Well Played, Sir. Clever Spam?


If Funcom's money was gold-backed...
I wish I had a farm.

It’s always good to have some form of anti-spam protection on your blog/website especially if, like me, you find yourself being taken into flattery, however genuine, a little too easily. For example, if it weren’t for the intercession of Akismet, I likely would not have looked past:

Hey great website, you really know your stuff. Definitely adding this to my blog tracker!

to:

buy wow gold aion kinah cheap prices fast delivery jklfdkjsklfjsldfjklakfjl;kjqiouerpoijl;cvkn

Since MMO Fallout’s inception last year, we’ve blocked hundreds upon hundreds of gold farmer spam messages, and multiple phishing attempts. My point is that every time they are becoming much more clever in their attempts to look human. For instance:

Today Akismet flagged a twitter trackback. I always trackback trackbacks, as they appear on MMO Fallout, to ensure that the website is genuine. After going through a Twitter account, a Digg-esque website, yet another website, and finally coming upon a blog, I found an ad-supported WordPress blog, where the typing looked something like this:

Fallen Earth announced this week that wow gold would be leaving the company to wow gold

And so on. Keep vigilante, MMOers! Just wait until gold farmers start making their own video games. This unsolicited testimonial for Akismet spam protection is brought to you wow gold.

Star Trek Doing Something Right: Hello Goldfarmers!


You be assimilate...for low fee instant deliver!

Gauging subscriber numbers in an MMO that doesn’t want to reveal them is difficult. Although it is possible to go through a company’s financial reports and make an estimation based on income, you still won’t end up with a hard number. Gold farmers, on the other hand, are an excellent indicator of how well the game is doing. An easy formula to remember is that as presence and force go up, the population goes up with it. In Aion, for example, gold farmers see the game as such a lucrative market that they are doing everything short of breaking into the NCWest offices armed with pistols, in order to push NCsoft back and keep selling to the community.

So launching to one million accounts aside, if I had to gauge Star Trek Online’s success by how many spam bots I had to put on ignore this morning in-game, I’d have to say the title is doing well for itself. Cryptic also appears to be doing a decent job of banning the bots, as almost all of the accounts I put on ignore were banned by the time this article is coming out.

More on Star Trek Online as it appears. Oddly enough, I don’t remember Champions Online having this issue. Maybe gold farmers hate super heroes.

Guild Wars Vs Account Theives: Aion To Follow Suit


With 16,000 accounts gone, less queues!
you must be this tall to buy gold.

No, not as in lawsuit. NCsoft’s Guild Wars has been taking several measures to protect accounts from theft, including their most recent venture: Requiring you to name one character on your account in order to log in (meaning I just lost access to my account). Aion, also published by NCsoft, is taking a similar run of reminding players to keep their accounts secure, although for slightly different reasons. Guild Wars has fansites being hacked to worry about, while Aion is more focused on irritated gold farmers.

Aion bans thousands of accounts on a weekly basis and as you can expect, such a move can get pretty costly for gold farmers. The result? Using your accounts to gold farm. It saves cash, and there’s nothing to clean up when the ban hammer drops. Aion has released a security warning to players regarding in-game links being used to phish accounts, as well as the possibility of NCsoft master account theft.

I don’t think players should need to be reminded to be wary of what they click on, but here we are.

Aion: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly


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Aion launches in four days, and the title, much like Champions Online did earlier this month and in August, is stealing much of the spotlight here at MMO Fallout. So much so that I’m putting together a new section for MMO Fallout: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Not that that particular mechanic has ever been done before). Since preselection began today, it’s one of the better times as any to get a good preview in.

Continue reading “Aion: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”