Guild Wars 2

Are the waves of level 83-84 undead at Penitent and Shelter that level due to there being more than X number of players within a certain range, or are they that level regardless now to ‘punish’ players for farming those two spots the most? It’s impossible to check their levels for 1-2 people doing the event, because bots swarm both ends of the tunnel 24/7.

The reason I ask, is that earlier today I was gathering and on my way past Shelter, I noticed it was up and decided to get a hit of karma before gathering some more. So I show up by the door, and see that the first wave hasn’t come yet, but the two wads of botters at each gate are farming as usual. Then, when the first wave showed up, the bots, who sit out near the top of the stairs and looking into the alcove, are suddenly VAPORIZED by the by the wave of lvl 84 undead, leaving me and the only other real player there (16-20 bots and 2 real players, you read that right) staring down the barrel of 12 or so may-as-well-be-veteran undead. By ourselves. We were gifted with a repair bill courtesy of this change.

So, are the bots not only griefing our economy, are they griefing our events now too? Are they causing the spawn of much harder mobs, which obliterate the bots and leave the real players facing a badly upscaled encounter while being outnumbered as well?

Or is this event now tuned for the high pop servers only, and their constant high ‘real person’ presence around these events?

I’m going to be honest, whichever of those two it is, it’s not good or fair for lower population servers. If the mass amount of bots is the cause (and I suspect it is), then these bots need to be gone NOW.

Not only that. I believe that bots are responsible for destroying Grenth temple events chain. It was said in the patch notes that this has been corrected but unfortunately bots did not agree. When I’ve logged yesterday I’ve seen 2 bots that I see next to the cannon (from event chain) for few days already and of course event was broken already. 2 bots. Destroy my favourite event probably for few days.

Please stop posting complaints about “bots”, instead take a closer look at the structure of the company that owns the game and you will realise why “bots” and gold selling companies will always exist within these types of MMO games.

Anet is owned by NCSoft Corporation, a company with a public stock market listing, and as such the ANet game client sales reported to NCSoft directly affect their share pricing. “Bot” accounts artificially increase the number of account sales and therefore also increase the financial viability of NCSoft as a whole to their shareholders. This type of sales increase may well be “morally” corrupt but as far as the shareholders are concerned it is more than acceptable as shareholder reports do not differentiate between the sales to “bots” and regular human players.

Bearing this in mind, it is not in the best business interests of NCSoft to impose restrictions that may cause a permanent drop in the number of new account sales that are being subsequently utilised solely for the purpose of “botting”. Periodic deletion and mass banning of these accounts serves two distinct purposes.

Firstly, these actions serve to reassure the human players that actions are constantly being undertaken to address the “issue” of “bot” accounts and thereby increase the amount of goodwill into the gaming community through users public forum discussions showing thanks and appreciation for the apparent willingness of ANet to take action against “bot” accounts.

Secondly, the companies that initially acquired the accounts used in “botting” will then find it necessary to acquire new accounts to replace those banned. This of course leads to the aforementioned artificial increase in account sales reflecting in the bottom line stock value of NCSoft as a whole. Due to the financial gains to be made by the “botting” companies ANet can feel assured that the deletion of a few thousands of “bot” account from time to time will not dissuade them from repurchasing those accounts or drive their “bot” economy into unsustainable losses.

Finally, there has always existed the distinct possibility of collusion between the game host and “bot” companies in the form of payments made to the game host to allow the “bot” company to continue to reap financial benefit from the utilization of the game hosts client to conduct their business. Once again this would also contribute to the bottom line financials and viability of NCSoft as a whole.

The above machinations I have described have been in place in nearly all MMO game releases of of the past decade to varying degrees. The “behind the scenes” policies regarding “bots” and gold sales have always been rather thinly disguised by encouraging end users to discuss these issues on the supplied game forums whilst acknowledging and agreeing with their complaints thereby giving the false impression that the game company does indeed have their best interests at heart.

I am sharing this information with the GW2 community as a wake up call to all of you. I have previously been in a position structuring these very types of scenarios in various online business models and have now taken the position of strongly disagreeing with the further use of this practise due to it’s very immoral basis.

I fully expect this posting to disappear the moment it is discovered by a moderator and I further expect to be banned from these forums for submission of this post. I have therefore saved of copy of this text for later reposting and dissemination to various user groups and game reviewers.

Regards.

Anet also patch the cannon quest this morning that everyone has been farming for days and have still completely ignored the issues in the Straights of Devastation. I have been waiting for over a week to go see the npcs there to get my next tier armour and been held up by the constantly bugged quests. I found it galling they would allow the cannon glitch to carry on so long but this was tempered by the fact i could farm it too and in some small way benefit from their laxity but now thats fixed too i cant even do that. I dread to think how much gold and gear was put into the economy thanks to that glitch.

I’d like to think they have been busy with halloween issues but this issue predates them and at this point i can only assume they dont really care at the moment about end game players and are just looking to promote the event and gain a few more box sales.

Loving the game, hating the support.

MHO