Botting has been in EQ2 since its conception, and it will continue to be in MMOs long after EQ2 is gone. I think the attitude of "it doesn't affect me", is more about pick and choose your battles. Botting instanced raids has a very small impact on the server, vs. botting in crafting / harvesting/ contested quest mobs etc. If it does bother you, screen shot it and report it. Otherwise, move on.
You do have to remember that if you open a petition about a suspected bot group that you document the heck out of it. Things like FRAPS video of the entire group moving and casting simultaneously, /tells from the botter (always use /report also if there are tells confirming botting). Be polite in your report and businesslike, no hysterics. Just say what you think is going on, why you think that it's against the rules, and provide evidence. Really, this is the only thing you can do. And if the GMs don't do anything to the group, then /shrug and move on. That means that the GM didn't have enough evidence to prove misconduct.
Also just wanted to point out that this guy is most likely buying 24 kronos off the broker, if not more. That is going to drive the price up for everyone.
Actually, not really. They can easily identify the behavior from their own logs. I think what makes a difference is how you establish the botter impacted your player experience. That seems to be the key factor they take into consideration. Reality is, so many botters they don't want to kill the entire revenue stream, so they selectively enforce their EULA and punish botters that impact other players negatively. Good examples is locking down contested content (dungeons, named spawns, quest areas, avatars, etc). In those examples I could point you to dozens of cases of suspensions and bans.
If there's stuff in a /tell and you did not do a /report, they will do exactly nothing. The reason for the other documentation is because the GM may pop into the zone and the malefactor may not be engaging in suspicious behavior at that point... you can't identify botting really from the logs, apparently.
No, they can and have. They could ban every botter tomorrow, they choose not to. Well, not every, but the most common platform out there they could.
Yep. like I said they did it with the trak event server and when they had that wave of 'accidental' suspensions. They can easily detect the running processes on your computer through EQ2. Also a large portion of in game platinum is generated through instance heroic and raid kills/chests, so the entire 'doesn't effect me' shtick is bull. Of course now it REALLY doesn't effect me because I left this ever quickening sinking ship.
Sad to see the person botting a raid and others have such an effect on krono prices. I wish more people would petition this so we can stop the economic spiral.
You do realize that Krono prices continue to go up with or without botting. They have steadily gone up about ~ 4 plat per week since DoF has came out. Currently at 39 plat, that is about 8 hours of solo farming vendor loot in sinking sands, not really that inflated.
heck i'm more impressed some guy can actually play 24 toons at once, I get a headache from trying to manage 4 at once.
If he's doing contested mobs, I can see where that's a problem. Crafting, maybe. Crafting is going back to becoming the redheaded step child now that Domino is gone though (as far as I can tell, any way), so that won't matter for long. /sad sigh IMHO, if they subscribe and buy expansions on each alt account, they are keeping the game from sun-setting. This is not a bad thing. Even if they bot craft, the limitation of weeklies keeps them from drowning out the competition completely and every thing else is barely worth crafting ever since mass crafting. (Don't get me wrong here. I LOVE mass crafting! Who wants to sit around all day crafting 100s of tiles or individual armor pieces for every one you know and their alts? But most crafted items barely go above vendor price any more aside from the first month or so after new stuff is added.) Consider this. What is someone that raids with a butt ton of alts harming? Chances are they are as sick of people as I am, hence they don't want to join a real guild, (just maybe a pal or two occasionally) hence the multi boxing. Sure there is someone out there that didn't have to arrange his schedule around 23 other people and is in BIS items, but who really cares for any real reason? (If it's just jealousy, jump in line with people who don't raid at all but still want raid gear without buying it, I guess?) We all play games for the escape in our own ways. Why force people to play your way when they aren't harming any thing. (Economy has been borked for a long time any way.) Now look at what good someone like that is doing. They buy a copy of the expansion for each toon if they farm the newest stuff, possibly even subscribe to equip the fancy stuff (I am assuming FTP still has some kind of gear restrictions?). A bunch of those on each server could boost the game's income enough to hire a few more devs. If you are a decent human being and get talking with someone who frequently multi-boxes, they're usually happy to drop an alt and help you. It's hard to find a group, and I'd rather not boot a multi-boxer that has potential as a group mate/s, would you? Also, was he actually controlling mobs and making them do different things at different times? Or was there just a train of AFK toons behind someone? AFK auto-follow is not only OK, but it's a FEATURE of the game intentionally added at the beginning and improved on a year or so later to keep them from getting stuck and lost. I've seen soooo many idiots blow their top when I have 5 toons AF on my toon, claiming that I'm cheating, that it is just not even funny. :\ I've also been eating dinner while a friend let me AF on him and been called a bot... which.. the stupidity just astounds me when people mistake a feature of the game for a bot... In those cases, people need to get a grip and stop flipping out just to flip out at someone. :\ That also happens waaaaay to often. Hell, you know what would be awesome? Subscribers being allowed to set Alts to be merc armies. XD Or a setting to be a merc when on auto-follow. That'd defiantly be a good incentive to subscribe, I think?
I think it's possible. If I could afford to sub on 24 accounts, I'd do it just for appearance gear, house items, and mounts. People are ********, some of the biggest ones I've met were cocky because they were in some big time raid guilds and had BIS armor to make up for their atrocious personalities. I'd pick up a few of my friends when they needed stuff, but basically, I'd just like to see all the content without having to deal with people attitudes, schedules, drama, and other BS and be able to help my friends that are also tired of the same crap. So yes, I absolutely would, if I could, bot my own raids, just to have a hell of a lot more fun than back when I tried raiding. I'd also feel a lot more accomplished being able to bot a raid zone than I do when I just followed a bunch of geared up people. I probably would never be able to afford a few computers capable of that and the subscriptions needed. Currently I'm lucky to run 3 accounts on my PC and three on my hubbies (and now that writs don't count towards guild level after 100 I let the subs go on those... brilliant move again DBG... Hope the cash shop status items are making up for however many other people doped subs without writs as alt incentives). But yah, maybe solo raiding is just some rich guy tired of people's crap? /shrug I'd rather have rich guys playing games than turning out like "The most dangerous Game" or something... /shudder
Honestly, you should be upset that a third party program is responsible for the continuing rise of Krono, but it's not necessarily botting that's the problem. (Honestly, it was people exploiting a couple plat dupe problems that were left in the game for a while, but that's aside from the point. I wouldn't be entirely shocked if that was intentional to "encourage" people to use krono as currency for the high-end stuff. Adding bags of plat and increasing inflation kinda tipped my mind more in favor of that conspiracy theory.) Third party program that installs and updates custom UIs (well, custom UIs and/or tinkering with code) are what enable people to price beyond the 9999 plat, 99 gold, 99 silver, and 99 copper that the game caps out at on pricing broker items. I love my custom ui for crafting and for being able to look up items while I price items, but I've never used it to go past the game's cap. But hey, I use the layout editor for decorating alllll the time, and that's a third party program too. It has no effect on the game it's self the way breaking the pricing cap does though. (It's bloody IMPOSSIBLE to make a seamless floor out of tiles without the editor or notepad.)
