I don't know one MMO that boots you if your 30 min AFK. Maybe something like Counter Strike... a fast shooter server where you are clogging it up. Do you have any idea how many players would be off the server if that would be true? NO one would end up playing if they booted us off in 30 mins.. trust me.
By this logic then claiming the 500 FREE SC each month is an exploit. And logging into LoN each month to claim FREE cards and possibly FREE in game items is also an exploit. Don't forget all those exploiters that took advantage of a FREE level 85 heroic character.
All exploits, I say! Something seriously needs to be done about this. I'm thankful this thread has brought so many exploits to light. If we all band together, maybe we can reach the 20-page count the OP was looking for and the devs will agree with all of us to ban all those cheaters!
You must not have played too many then. There are plenty of them that will kick you for being motionless for too long.
You are not proudly displaying your All Access badge. Can we assume you are taking advantage of the FREE to play exploit?
The auto passive thing for me would suck that's why I have disabled the option. I leave my mercs on burn all the time or in the few times I use a healer merc its set to reactive until I decide that it can heal under the more mana efficient stances. So I dont watch my mercs alot of time amd asume they are working. Now if they were set to auto passive it would result in either my mercs not doimg dps, the rogues that I dont use much would be more noticable but the wiz mercs I probably wouldnt notice until i would notice the mana bars. The healer merc if I used it I wouldnt notice until people started dieing. Amd a tank merc I wouldnt need to worry about cause that's the wifes merc since shes a cleric and would probably notice hes not attacking since wrong person would be taking damage. If someone is auto afk merc killing and I know they are afk I would just kill in the spot. But I nly if thwy are in a spot I need\want for something. If they die oh well thats the chance they take by being afk. and would only do so if I knew they were afk for a while. I am pretty good about respecting camps because I hate when people use the excuse that soe only recognizes first in combat. To me thats dumb and a cop out because you want to move in on someones area and I believe soe uses the first in combat rule because it would be easier to police than if they recognized camps. But if your camping an area with mercs afk then I personally feel u armt really holding claim to the camp. I could be wrong but thats how I view it. And not editing this for grammer because posting from a tablet.
Realistically speaking, how many mobs covered are we talking about and how many total kills in that time? I am guessing this is a level 100 group fighting mobs that are level 87-88ish. If this group is macro-ing, that is a whole other story and should be dealt with. If it is simply 3 toons and 3 mercs willing to expend 1200 pp per hour to get negligible experience while aggroing 4-6 spawns at best in a zone as large as The Grounds? Meh, not concerned.
My biggest complaint with /afk killing is how it pretty much destroys immersion when you come across it. AFK people in general are very unnatural to see in combat zones often times. On a related note, the other day I actually ran across someone that was /afk with some boxed characters who desires some credit. Rather than having 3-4 characters stacked on each other next to a pile of campfires on top of a quest NPC like most people do, they actually sat their characters around the fire in a circle a little off to the side. That was actually pleasant to see. It is a shame that more players aren't like this.
How does this affect you? Was he taking pulls from your camp? Was he pulling the entire zone and training people? Seriously how does this affect you in any way?
I just wanted to add that in my army of mercs, I also have a Cleric merc -- for the times when I just want to AFK.
I personally think my cleric merc is cheating because sometimes I go several kills without 1 heal making me do all the work. Wonder if he is afk gaining free xp.....
World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, RIFT, Tera, The Old Republic, Fallen Earth, MechWarrior Online, Planetside 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Landmark (and probably Everquest Next), and those are only the ones that come to mind at this moment. I'm sure there are many others. In fact Everquest is the only game I know of that Doesn't do this. Still why is there so much opposition to this, yet no argument to the Pros of keeping it? We've already show'd the Cons, zone disruption and questing roadblocking. I'd love to see what benefit AFK farming with mercs is doing for the community as a whole.
When I go to the Grounds to get dailies I've never seen this that I'm aware of. Most camps are selected to prevent having odd adds spawning on top of you or roamers coming through. I'm sure that there are some places where you can reliably have several mobs pop but I'm not so sure that those really would be in the way. Can you give some examples of places by /loc that you see people doing this? Also what named PH they are camping on top of as well? I'm not saying it's not going on, just that I've not seen it at all. But given that I try to grab my 5 kills and leave I don't always look around that much to try and find somethint to be irritated with
Clearly we need Druid mercs! Sometimes they heal, sometimes they nuke, other times they just wolf form.
Let's see, the new Banestrike can require 10,000 kills in some categories, that is a lot of kills active or passive. Then there is a matter of adjusting faction, some times it can be fairly quick as in the case of my new telebinder to Western Wastes doing a few sessions around the arena area, Derakor was up second trip and added a healthy COV boost. Killing trash for faction gets old very fast, and a kill count in the 1000s for banestrike, I really see no problem with finding a spot that has a number of auto agro mobs and leaving your merc/pet to gain ground while you are at work or sleeping. The problem seems to be more with folk who don't like to see people making a gain without active effort, and who can't find a different location to go about their business. Life has lessons to teach in how we play games, and games have lessons in how we live life- I doubt that anyone that complains about AFK killing would ever expect to collect interest on bank deposits, and would refuse to be paid for their lunch break. Hmm, why don't we give a little more thought to where we are and the whats and whys, if you want to have fun, go ahead, but be careful about waking sleeping dogs.
A merc that casts group black wolf? I think I know what mages are going to be asking for in the next expansion. Don't forget randomly evacing the group. Key part of being a druid.