Curse

fusa · Mar 19, 2008, 09:37 PM // 21:37

Here's a little better explanation of what I'm talking about. I know someone who did this using Comcast, I've done it with Road Runner and a couple of other smaller ISP's. Its very simple and takes less than a minute to complete.

http://jimwarholic.com/2007/05/forci...ip-address.php

The Fox · Mar 19, 2008, 09:44 PM // 21:44

However it's avoidable!

FOR THE PEOPLE WITH BRIANS!!! (economics below)

Any simple economics classes will teach one that prices will increase as the quantity decreases for a desired good or service. In this way the update, will positively affect the situation in Guild Wars for the player base.

HOWEVER, I doubt Anet considered that as botters decrease, the economy will experience an increase in demand for gold and if this increase large enough, it could cause prices to rise to a point where even more botter sellers to enter the game than before the update. This would be due to a potential increase in demand for gold as inflation decreases.

Decreasing inflation will cause a percentage of average players, who were content not buying gold, to start buying gold, as their wealth decreases, due to increasing prices. IF this percentage of people creates a BIG ENOUGH increase in demand, it could overshadow the decrease in supply; caused by the bans. This would mean the update was a failure.

NOW THE SOLUTION
Ban as many botters as possible BUT ALSO increase the drop rate (somehow) to compensate for the decrease in inflation as these botters are banned. Possible suggestions have already been listed on the forum like removing loot scaling, bringing back consistant chests ect.

The great part is that since you control the drop rate, you can make this increase directly proportional to the decrease in inflation and thereby make everyone happy WITHOUT making anyone mad. Everyone gets better drops, and established "wealthy" players still retain the same value in their toys.

Moral of the Story: Make stuff drop more often and you can prevent this shift in demand, while also controlling the supply of botted gold. If you don't, then your efforts to ban botters will be crippled by your own success.

P.S. - As listed earlier in this post somewhere, you could also leave the botters alone and just increase the supply of gold. This would naturally decrease the need for botters as less people demanded their service. However, I'd prefer to squish the botters, than have money falling from the sky.

Fril Estelin · Mar 19, 2008, 10:07 PM // 22:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Fox

FOR THE PEOPLE WITH BRIANS!!! (economics below)

Are you sure about your reasoning, given that RMT are only funded by a small minority of gold buyers (from what I've read so far on RMT)? Increasing money income for most people won't satisfy these ex-gold-buyers, will it?

(on the other hand, you're bringing an interesting point: what will happen to the gold-buyers? maybe they'll simply quit GW ...)

The Fox · Mar 19, 2008, 10:16 PM // 22:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Are you sure about your reasoning, given that RMT are only funded by a small minority of gold buyers (from what I've read so far on RMT)? Increasing money income for most people won't satisfy these ex-gold-buyers, will it?

(on the other hand, you're bringing an interesting point: what will happen to the gold-buyers? maybe they'll simply quit GW ...)

Yes, I'm sure. Don't forget to consider that your "small minority of gold buyers", could grow to be significantly larger. Seeing more botters after this update is only a possible situation and it is entirely dependant on the elasticity of the demand and supply curves for gold buyers & sellers.

I'm not saying we'll see more botters. I'm just saying that it's theoretically possible, if they don't also control demand by offsetting the upcoming decrease in inflation as less gold is "created" in the Guild Wars economy.

Fril Estelin · Mar 19, 2008, 10:29 PM // 22:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Fox

Yes, I'm sure. Don't forget to consider that your "small minority of gold buyers", could grow to be significantly larger.

How so? The vast majority of GW players want it to stay a no-monthly-fee game, how could there be more who want to buy this sort of additional fee? I mean, what would be the reason, in particular given the type of anti-RMT message that Anet is sending (like the rest of the MMO industry)?

Quote:

I'm just saying that it's theoretically possible, if they don't also control demand by offsetting the upcoming decrease in inflation as less gold is "created" in the Guild Wars economy.

As I said above, isn't a more realistic alternative that the old gold-buyers will quit and the rest of the GW crown will just go ahead without demanding more RMT?

The Fox · Mar 19, 2008, 10:37 PM // 22:37

Yes your probably right. It's more "realistic" that there will be a bigger decrease in supply than increase in demand, which will cause the overall quantity of RMT to go down.

However, this decrease in RMT will not be AS significant than it could have been, IF they don't also increase the drop rate to prevent the demand from increasing.

Lem · Mar 19, 2008, 11:24 PM // 23:24

However with less gold in the game the overall value of gold would increase, so whilst your items might be worth less actual gold, that gold would be worth more.

Chthon · Mar 20, 2008, 12:36 AM // 00:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

IP is just like a big hammer on the head of RMT companies, it won't kill them for sure but may be push them to the point where they say "we're not making enough profit in GW, let's reallocate our resources to MMO X instead".

As I mentioned in a different thread, the MMO companies should unite against RMT companies...

Thanks to your post, it just occurred to me that the MMO companies may be consciously choosing not to team up. Presume for a moment that a-net truly believes they can keep the RMT companies out of GW reasonably well through their own efforts. And, if they do so, they can drive more RMT companies to switch to ruining WoW instead. The worse of a RMT problem WoW has, the more of their customers switch to GW. It would seem a-net has an incentive not to team with Blizzard on stamping out RMT altogether... presuming they have confidence in their ability to stop RMT better than Bliz can.

Fril Estelin · Mar 20, 2008, 12:49 AM // 00:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Thanks to your post, it just occurred to me that the MMO companies may be consciously choosing not to team up. Presume for a moment that a-net truly believes they can keep the RMT companies out of GW reasonably well through their own efforts. And, if they do so, they can drive more RMT companies to switch to ruining WoW instead. The worse of a RMT problem WoW has, the more of their customers switch to GW. It would seem a-net has an incentive not to team with Blizzard on stamping out RMT altogether... presuming they have confidence in their ability to stop RMT better than Bliz can.

That would be a very, very, very, very (ok enough now) bad reasoning on their part. This is exactly how the security threat on the computer got out of hand and hackers became professionals tied to mafia and other corrupted organisations (to those who don't know, this is a reality as of today). With this huge change, the security HAD to unite, and they did to a certain extent (which is also why the problem hasn't been eradicated, people still make money out of this).

If Blizzard or SOE's user accounts are hacked, it's very probable they'll get on GW accounts too, via obvious links (players on the 2 games). And if RMT companies can be as big as to really bother Blizzard or SOE, they can crush to pieces Anet (even though they have great programmers and a wonderful software architecture).

Hopefully, the gaming industry being much much much (stop it!) bigger than the security industry (and even the movie industry!), they'll make sure that something is done. And if we can accelerate this, we'll all have a much better gameplay experience. (but as for security, people don't act, they react and wait that their own personal gameplay is directly affected) My main concern is not technical or even economical, but legal, as there are ramifications to the problem that are not clear yet.

Technically it's not difficult to erase RMT, just too costly to have fancy statistical analyses and support for unbanning wrongly banned non-RMT farmers (well, there are some basic social engineering that RMT companies could play, but this would not be very rentable for them if NCSoft staff and procedures are stringent). Let's hope that it's built in in GW2 and that we can finish our game of GW1 until then

.

The Fox · Mar 20, 2008, 01:04 AM // 01:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lem

However with less gold in the game the overall value of gold would increase, so whilst your items might be worth less actual gold, that gold would be worth more.

True, but the people must likely to buy gold are the guys without it, who need the money to buy skills or who want new armor and haven't already been rich enough to buy it before. Therefore, this group is more prevalent to my hypothesis and would probably still prevent the update from having as much of an affect as it could, unless they increase the drop rate to compensate.

lol Don't condem me for trying guys...

It's a good arguement and one that would be good for the gaming community!

NeHoMaR · Mar 20, 2008, 03:10 AM // 03:10

For ArenaNet staff; Important thing about banning IPs:

Most of people use dynamic IP, that means people use the same IP for some hours, sometimes weeks, then ISP change it to other. So, you cannot ban IPs for a long period of time, or you possibly will be denying access to a legit player if ISP assign that IP to him (if he live in the same area of the gold seller live/work)

EDIT: Oh! I forgot something about open proxies: Sometimes, the "open" proxies are not intentionally open to the public to use it, lot of times are virus in normal personal computers silently opening ports for use as proxy, so again, this could be denying access to a real player (with no antivirus ^_^)

ArenaNet should already know this, anyway this could be useful for forum visitors.

Mr Emu · Mar 20, 2008, 03:39 AM // 03:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Fox

However it's avoidable!

FOR THE PEOPLE WITH BRIANS!!! (economics below)

Any simple economics classes will teach one that prices will increase as the quantity decreases for a desired good or service. In this way the update, will positively affect the situation in Guild Wars for the player base.

HOWEVER, I doubt Anet considered that as botters decrease, the economy will experience an increase in demand for gold and if this increase large enough, it could cause prices to rise to a point where even more botter sellers to enter the game than before the update. This would be due to a potential increase in demand for gold as inflation decreases.

Decreasing inflation will cause a percentage of average players, who were content not buying gold, to start buying gold, as their wealth decreases, due to increasing prices. IF this percentage of people creates a BIG ENOUGH increase in demand, it could overshadow the decrease in supply; caused by the bans. This would mean the update was a failure.

NOW THE SOLUTION
Ban as many botters as possible BUT ALSO increase the drop rate (somehow) to compensate for the decrease in inflation as these botters are banned. Possible suggestions have already been listed on the forum like removing loot scaling, bringing back consistant chests ect.

The great part is that since you control the drop rate, you can make this increase directly proportional to the decrease in inflation and thereby make everyone happy WITHOUT making anyone mad. Everyone gets better drops, and established "wealthy" players still retain the same value in their toys.

Moral of the Story: Make stuff drop more often and you can prevent this shift in demand, while also controlling the supply of botted gold. If you don't, then your efforts to ban botters will be crippled by your own success.

P.S. - As listed earlier in this post somewhere, you could also leave the botters alone and just increase the supply of gold. This would naturally decrease the need for botters as less people demanded their service. However, I'd prefer to squish the botters, than have money falling from the sky.

I'm afraid I don't have a Brian, I only know one

enemyunknown · Mar 20, 2008, 07:00 PM // 19:00

We are adding the ability to block certain IP addresses from the game. In the coming days and weeks, we will be using this capability to block addresses of RMT companies that heavily abuse the game.

One happy camper here, Gold-sellers finally being sorted out;
A word to all the complainers, yes the IP blocking is going to cause problems in the short term, but unless YOU can make a better solution, quit the whinging.

Keep up the great work ANET.

Master Reamer · Mar 21, 2008, 01:44 AM // 01:44

OK so I have been unable to access GW since about the 18th I get a Code 005 error when it tries to connect to RA (where all my character were last) I take it after looking for a solution that probably the ISP I use (Bigpond in Australia) has got me blocked because of IP address issues?

Any help appreciated

Trub · Mar 21, 2008, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Emu

I'm afraid I don't have a Brian, I only know one

Brian's are rare breeds yanno.
If your having IP issues..(router configs..ect) send in a support ticket to ANet, they aren't mind readers.....sorry.

cthulhu reborn · Mar 21, 2008, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Emu

I'm afraid I don't have a Brian, I only know one

Indeed, I always have to smile when someone claiming intelligence doesn't seem to be able to spell a keyword ,such as brain in this case, correctly

Amusement aside, I do feel this is a great and important update. There has been a lot of criticism on the lack of intervention in these matters and they have done things about it and this, I feel, is a good step indeed.

Every systems has good and bad things with it and I am sure that Anet are taking that into account.

I do think some of the commentaries here about technical matters regarding IP blocking and such are interesting if not useful. Though I would think and hope that Anet has people working for them that understand such things and have taken that into account as well.

All in all I think it's great that they take time and put effort into this game even with GW2 lurking around the corner. I would say that is applaudable and will certainly help them to make GW2 a game with a good start as well.

Although I have not always agreed with some of the in-game changes before I do believe this is a good thing. Just something about going through a lot of trouble to get FoW armour or tormented weapons or whatever, only to find out it's not special anymore cause a bunch of people just paid some real cash and got it without any effort.

Hash Mama · Mar 21, 2008, 06:31 PM // 18:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by kai_razorwind

Wow...way to go Arenanet! The game is *JUST* out for 3 years, and you're already taking measures against something that has been happening since june 2005! Hats off to ya! And maybe while you're at it, why not try to address the real problem, which is that your friggin drop rates suck? Why the heck do you think that people buy ingame gold? *HINT* you've got a "casual" game that rewards heavy farmers.
Thank god you're game developers and not running a country.

Best comment i have ever seen on this forums....but look at politicians, they act the same way/so sad.

DarkKnight · Mar 22, 2008, 09:59 PM // 21:59

If bots disappear there will be less farming overall leading to a natural increase in drops. Weather this will be significant enough to notice a difference remains to be seen however.

The Fox · Mar 24, 2008, 01:03 AM // 01:03

Should I spend all day proof reading for key stroke errors, when I could be doing something else?

:P That doesn't make my post any less relevant.

Zahr Dalsk · Mar 24, 2008, 01:13 AM // 01:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Fox

Should I spend all day proof reading for key stroke errors, when I could be doing something else?

:P That doesn't make my post any less relevant.

You could take 15 seconds to spot any obvious errors...