What is the deal with this place called Drunder and why are botters still allowed to disrupt the economy on our beloved servers? If the rules have changed, please advise.
I know 2 cheaters in MajDul (in Crushbone before) reported 2million times (Dev, GMs, the big boss!... send me a PM if you want more information) and they are still selling in broker and action what they get... When I read about Drunder I though, well, FINALLY, after 2 years, they are going to do something about the cheaters... but well,... it was marketing only.
There is a thread about that Info about Drunder | FAQ Info about Economy | Kronos on the Raise "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
I always hear there are tons of botters but I don't see it, maybe I just don't pay attention to what others are doing. People say you can tell because toons are on AF. I'm not a bot and if I am not the tank, I AF the tank if running any amount of distance. Then they say they are always doing SLR, I know tons of people that are not bots that sell tons of things on the broker and SLR. So maybe it is just me but I think you guys are seeing things that aren't there. At least in the amount you say they are.
There are a huge number of botters on Splitpaw. You can tell they are botting by the way they follow their main character; they don't switch between running and walking like a normal /follow, they run and then abruptly stop, and they stack perfectly on top of one another. If one of the characters gets stuck, rather than stopping like a traditional /follow, they will continue to run in to the terrain. The botters mostly hide away in the instances and sell things in public channels but if you see them in a contested zone, you'll see the main character engage the target followed by 5 others instantly kicking in to action the moment the mob receives damage. Scouts are often seen running in perfect circles behind their target only to return to their original position, stacked perfectly on top of the other characters. Some botters have their healers set up to recast abilities the moment they are off cooldown even when outside of combat, so you'll see Templars casting Holy Intercession and Vital Intercession every 30 seconds even if they are standing near a bell, on /afk for hours...
There are Botters all over this game, every server, ive reported multiple times bot groups on stormhold, got an answer to my petition asking for the named of said botters. i replied.. nothing happened. it seems they pretend to care but really dont care if you bot or not.. its kinda sad really. but nothing will be done about them so its just a fact of eq2.
Oh people get sent to Drunder... those that are unpopular in chats and who's sarcasm and wit are too much for some people so they report the person until they are finally banished and so quit the game forever... but botters? They spend lots of money running several accounts so lets not touch them...
My question is why do people care so much about people botting/boxing or whatever its called. There is so much to do in this expansion, Key quests, AS give just about as good gear as Heroics, running groups. Unless your in the contested and someone is killing everything with a bot group there is probably no interaction. Why even care?
Because prices are ruined so its harder to sell stuff to make money to buy the spell books you need and because the best hunting grounds ARE empty of mobs and full of botting groups who are mass killing. But such is life in a F2P game, so I'm told.
I have to say I saw a LOT more botters before the game went F2P than I have since the game went F2P. Then again I probably don't spend a lot of time these days in the awesome bot spots.
Until they implement some massive system where botters cant impact the economy (SLR made impossible, less tradable items, fights that are very hard to make scripts for) people are gonna care about botters, and rightly so. Don't even try to start some line of 'botters don't hurt anyone and mind their own business' because its wall to wall BS. Although I think its a symptom of much bigger problems, mainly poor itemization from solo to (now to a lesser extent) raid and a complete lack of a proper DF tool. Botting is so attractive because its so much more rewarding and easier to execute than legit groups, including a groups worth of loot going to one player. If there was a proper DF tool and thus more people getting successful groups the grievance with botting would go down tremendously since successful, legit grouping players would dwarf botters and their overall impact would become minimal.
I think the major disconnect is the lack of action. Botters are obvious. Botters are everywhere. It's not hard to spot and it's not hard take action. The problem is, Daybreak doesn't do anything about it. Every time I send in a petition I get the same copy and paste reply "We will investigate this matter and take action as needed. As per our Privacy regulations, we cannot let you know about the action we take upon the completion of our investigation". Then 2 days later, another petition, another response. When did the Dev team of this game lose their clout? Used to be even the most MINOR infraction got your account banned. Now we let botters and cheaters run rampant? Is it because you're worried about losing the subscription money? Is it because they drive up the price of Krono by farming plat and buying Krono? Thus causing legit players to buy Krono to sell to the botters? Not to mention the second some "exploit" is found in the game by legit players, it is reported and fixed in days, but detrimental bugs in the game (Like zones not functioning, spells not functioning properly, gear procs not working beneficially) they take weeks and months to fix. If a gear proc was working incorrectly in a beneficial way, like adding double POT or Double Fervor, or stacking when it shouldn't, the proc is fixed within the week. This is the status of our game now. They create a server specifically for these type of people, and then refuse to send them there. It's not hard, anyone who knows anything on the servers knows who the botters are on the server. They're the ones selling 25+ of the rare shinies, or ethereals on the broker. Whole guilds, like The Avatars from Everfrost (Now Halls of Fate) are a perfect example. Need to be removed from the game.
In WoW they would gather the information, figure out how they are botting or hacking in large numbers, and ban in large groups and fix the hack hole. So they may be doing that, but in... say... 3 months spans of time or when enough people are discovered to make the manpower time worth allocating.
I tri-box on a regular basis, but I don't SLR anything and I don't sell the shinies, I just use them for my three accounts, so please don't report everyone that boxes, because a lot of us are just having fun and seeing what content we can do.
If you aren't using 3rd party programs to run your accounts, thenyou aren't botting and aren't doing anything wrong.
Maybe Devs should approach one of these botters you describe to see if they can't help the Devs figure out how to make mercs that effective. Although Devs could always sell the code the botters are using on the Station Cash store to enable a 2nd account to box itself in the background legitimately for players who have more than one All-Access account.
Here is a little wisdom to pass along... If you don't buy anything from people you suspect are using automated software to run multiple characters (botting), they may just not find it profitable and stop. If its a couple of people, boxing characters, they are not considered to be 'botting' Heck I used to 2-3 box early in the game but then I gradually started playing only a couple characters due to play-time and never went back boxing.
There is a distinct difference between boxing and botting ... and it has been explained in the post above. Please learn the difference.
