This is a descriptive explanation for those that do not understand how important it is to remove botters from the game. I will try and keep it short and sweet.
First, botters run a program (A 3rd party program) that allows them to manipulate a character while they are away. It would be easy to setup multiple accounts and have multiple accounts patrolling a spot together to kill things. They all tag it and get credit. They level up and they get drops.
These drops are then flooded into the market. When you sit in one area and farm for a log period of time, the types of drops are kind of all the same thing and a lot of it. If you have 5-15 characters all with bags full of loot, that is a drastic supply into the market.
So, while their bots are getting loot, they are sitting on another character controlling the market prices. First, they sell a bus load of the rare materials they have been farming and make cash.
They could sell to you, but that is small time gold increase. They manipulate the market now and control that commodity and make it so that everyone is paying top dollar, people who underbid are bought and resold at their price. This is why you will 1, 1, 1, 1, 30, 1, 1 on each level of cost in the TP. That 30 is the price they are setting. Eventually they will come in and buy out the 1, 1, 1, 1 below the 30 and add them to the 30. After awhile, they will spread out the huge volumes of drops and reduce the cost of that particular drop to a fraction of the original cost.
This is why when you are leveling crafting, you will see that one ingredient costs barely a 1/3 the cost of all the others and you go, “well, obviously I’m going to make my insignia with these and save some money.”
As they move from controlling one rare drop to the next the gain more and more control over the supply in the market. Eventually, casual players will not be able to make any money on the TP because all the good drops have been flooded into the market by botters.
Since the casual player is making barely enough to gear up, level crafting, and buy fun stuff as they get to 80, those with time limitations buy gold. They see that buying from gold sellers is a much better way to get more bang for you buck and buy illegally.
I spent over an hour in the Norn zone with HotW dungeon and ran around and reported botters. I told others around me to report them also for botting. Then I had people whispering me telling me not to report them and that I should just go enjoy the game and leave them alone. I was almost overwhelmed by the amount of whispering I got from various botters telling me to stop reporting their bots.
I sent in reports on them as well. They are still there and still botting. Anet, you are losing more and more money every moment you allow 3rd party gold suppliers to actually make money off your game when you offer a way to buy gold with your in game store.
Please don’t merge my post with your closed post. That is just as bad as governmental censorship. If you don’t want us complaining about it, then fix the problem.