Slashdot Mirror
Confessions of an Ultima Online Gold Farmer
petbath writes "A long time UO player who is moving on makes some interesting confessions on how he managed to earn over 100k in real world money by setting up a bot farm." Commentary available on Terra Nova. From the post: " Between the pressures of my competition, the required maintenance work and the impending doom of on-line game markets, I decided to retire my bot farm in favor of other possibilities that required less work to maintain. Last May I sold off the last of my game assets and today I have posted my bot army for sale on Ebay. I don't want to part with these beasts of burden, but I do have to close this final chapter in the gold farming adventure."
..and all part of the GAME, in my opinion.
you'll never be able to stop people from doing this kind of things.. so embracing "anything goes" attitude could be a good thing. like, a REAL matrix online where if you could you would be allowed to code your own vampires and walk through the system as something like the keymaker(so that you wouldn't lose your accounts or be prosecuted if you were caught but the moderators, 'agents', would try to stop you in the system - unless of course you became so powerful within it that they'd stay away from you if you maintained a bit of stealthiness)..
what's "magic" anyways if not bending the world, *breaking* the rules. he's bots were probably more like real zombies than anything else in the game. invaded by bodysnatchers! what a marvelous spin it could be on the game, conspiracies and blackmarket gold.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This should be compared to the hordes of Chinese sweatshop gold farmers which, in the opinion of many, ruined Lineage 2, and which are setting up shop in WoW.
According to WoW players who managed to find a farmer who spoke English (most don't, but will happily swear at you in Chinese if you hamper their gold farming), they run a pretty tight racket. Several people share one account (presumably to save on monthly fees, though they may be using stolen CC's anyway), leading to one character - generally the most apt race/class for farming whatever the current cash cow is, but usually a human paladin - being played 24/7. In some cases, the character is named the same across multiple servers (such as "Loly").
The farmers hand over all the cash and items they obtain to a boss, who auctions the items in the in-game auction house and stockpiles the cash. Using one of the various gold-for-money websites, they coordinate with their customers and hand out the purchased gold, often via in-game mail. The farmers must meet a gold quota each day in order to get paid their cut, which is why they often resort to unfriendly play practices.
Their weakness, however, is that they XP grinded to get to level 60, which means they haven't done any instance quests, so their gear is substandard. On PvP servers, many legit players have found that the farmers' PvP-fu is weak, in part due to the trans-Pacific lag, in part due to their gear, and in further part due to not having any experience in PvP combat.
In any case, there are numerous complaints about the gold farmers on the official WoW forums, though there has been no word from Blizzard on any account actions taken against the gold farmers for ToU violations. Many are concerned that if Blizzard takes too long to act, the in-game economy will be irreparably damaged.
Gold (or gil in case of ffxi) farming is such a huge problem for MMORPGs. I haven't played deeping in to other MMORPGs other than FFXI, but I know in that game it is a serious problem. If you are not familiar with the issues, the gil farmers infest nearly every part of the game. Certain monsters drop the really really good equipment. So people will camp them 24/7 and try to get the drop and then sell the items for insane prices that people somehow manage to pay for. Some will use bots that fish for them to make a profit that way. Some will just kill whipe out creatures in an are continuously to collect what they drop and sell.
The real problem is how do you deal with the people who do this for money. Companies do a certain amount of policing, but it is difficult to determine what a legitimate transaction is and what a gil seller does. Any solution you come up with had its drawbacks as well. Like, say the uber gear isn't dropped by the tough monster, just some random monster in the area. Then these people would go and sweep the whole area ruining it for people that are trying to level. For this issue anyways, the only thing that anyone has come up with that makes sense is to admit that you can't stop people from going after the uber-items. The company just needs to make equipment that is slightly worse that sells for a reasonable price so that people who don't have x uber item isn't consider under equipped. It's sad really...it would be nice if people who sold gil didn't exist...MMORPG were meant to be a game and they are harming the fun for people who just want to play. But if there is profit to be made, there is always someone who puts that over their fellow man.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I hate to say this, but the online world needs lawyers. I read where a fellow poster commented that this is supposed to be human-human interraction with the accompanying mores; but that the game does little to discourage anti-social behavior.
So, what you do is set up a jury system. You suspect somebody of botting, then charges are raised, assets are frozen, and a short trial is held--online. Found innocent, then perhaps retribution v. the original claimant. Guilty, then assets are stripped (perhaps redistributed to those in the court).
The present system bans users. That should not be a big deal to a dedicated exploiter. They will just set up a new account. Put a sting on them via a court system, then there'll be a penalty paid.
The problem is, you're reproducing the real world; with all the evil (lawyers) that accompany.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
You just described SecondLife. Never heard of it? Most people haven't.
What do you get when you cross a mountain-climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scaler with a vector.
So if the farmers, or their "boss" is selling in-game gold for $$, then it's understadable that it's hard to determine what is a legit trade, and what is one of these "black-market" gold for $$ deals.
/. crowd to show me the error of my ways.
However, what if the company went at it from the other end. Have an employee make a quick account somewhere, then use a little company money to buy some of this in-game gold on one of the trading sites. Then wait for the contact in-game by the gold courier, grab the name of that account, and ban it.
That way, you'ld know it was one of these farming accounts, and you would have "stung" them, so to speak, so you have the evidence you need. Since it's not subject (yet, at least) to actual laws, they can ban it based on their ToU agreement, and that's that.
Would they get them all? Of course not, however, these several people are all trying to spend all that time building up a pack-mule farmer character, and all are trying to meet a quota. So if that account is banned, they lose all that effort. They can make a new account, of course, but they will have to pay a new registration fee, (providing that you can deal with the stolen activation code issues) possibly have to use a different IP addy, and the company makes a bit of additional cash off them each time.
This would lead to at least a reduction in the overall number of these things, as the sellers can never be sure they aren't selling to a "mole". If enough headway is made this way, it would also make this kind of thing much less profitable for them.
Now, I'm sure there are problems with that scheme that I'm not seeing, so I'll just trust to the usual
-Mendo