Curse

TurinPT · Mar 19, 2006, 03:26 AM // 03:26

nah dont think so Don, 4 identical non-moving monks all level 2 and werent even in a guild.

Reported it, lets hope they do something.

updated the pic btw.

Autumn_Leaf · Mar 19, 2006, 03:37 AM // 03:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aejorii

Don't make me bust out the Emma xxxxstone pictures..

Oh, too late.

Because everyone that looks the same is a bot :rollseyes:

looks like a bunch of overworked hookers to me.
they're all lined up. look at the ranger in the first pick thinking bout which one looks best (hard decision).

Captain Arne Is PRO · Mar 19, 2006, 03:42 AM // 03:42

how does oneself end up in a party with a bot?

Haggard · Mar 19, 2006, 03:49 AM // 03:49

i'm confused, is a farmbot a computer program or a slang term for a crazy asian farmer dude? surely youd make more in the long run from actually farming youself than writing a whole computer program which can somehow adapt to situations?

Mercury Angel · Mar 19, 2006, 03:57 AM // 03:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Haggard

i'm confused, is a farmbot a computer program or a slang term for a crazy asian farmer dude? surely youd make more in the long run from actually farming youself than writing a whole computer program which can somehow adapt to situations?

An actual farmbot is a program written to farm for you, yes; How can a farmbot become more efficient than a person?
1.) You can run them while you sleep or are otherwise incapable of working, thereby increasing your efficiency significantly.
2.) You can run multiple at a time and merely go between them as a sort of 'supervisor' making sure they don't get stuck glitched or whatever. What you lose in individual productivity, you make up for in numbers.

Farmbot however has become somewhat of an overused term, and has thusly been watered down.

Misa · Mar 19, 2006, 05:02 AM // 05:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matsumi

yea, I've been noticing ALOT of more bots recently, they are all Mo/W of course, and something I also noticed once is that they have weird similar names like Ting Ting, and maybe bling, or tin tin, or something odd. Really kind of depressing that a game I once enjoyed is now over-populated with these things. I've tried blocking them at the entrance to talus chute as well, because it looks like a monk marathon going outside. I've also noticed that some are in guilds, and hearing them try to sell things is strange too, "ck cao y sako dan dan?" Huh? lol, weird.

Ting Ting is not a weird name...... It's actully my birth name and a pretty common name in southern China :P

But yea, I think I will go invite bots just for fun now ;D

studentochaos · Mar 19, 2006, 05:11 AM // 05:11

I feel some pity for the farmbots so maybe I should make an attempt to explain them better. I am an academic with the Chinese Academy of Science and I am initating a survey to investigate this behavior of Chinese playing foreign video games professionally. Everything which follows is based on pretest data and can not be shown to be statistically signifigant (so don't quote me).

Most are not programs, they are people. They speak some to no english, but the better paid ones do (and play WoW, not guildwars). Based on my initial estimates the company makes about $180 USD a week on a guildwars operation, about half of which is divided up among the workers (low profit margin to guildwars means operations are small and low rent, often just one person.) Working conditions are poor, they are universally chain smokers to keep focused, and generally have a highschool or lower education.

A name like Long Da or Ting Ting does not mean they are a farm bot, it means they speak some chinese, I have met alot of Americans with similar names. The farmbots names are usually pretty heroic though. Personal taste really. I have never seen them ever use a numerical coding to the names so the pictured bots are likely programs not the mythical "chinese farmer."

Anet has nerfed this behavior by game design. Guildwars is the least farmed by these groups and only by small operations. A good polar example is World of Warcraft where the operations are often over a hundred people, profit margin is higher, and they work in clear and dedicated shifts (though powerleveling is the most common method). Guildwars making all high level equipment for vanity only means that the insentive to spend real world dollars on it is very low. In a game where equipment matters alot for gameplay (Diablo 2 for example, a long time favorite of the chinese gaming farming industry) they have no trouble getting foreigners to fork over real world dollars. Additionally, these people are not to blame for any price in guildwars. Green items are based on supply and demand, crafter prices are set by Anet, and rare materials are somewhere inbetween the two (the behavior of the prices suggests there is no real mechanism, but you can get a good deal once in a while). These people generally farm ecto and sell at going rate. Some do unided items or open chests for rare skin weapons, however, they can not sell these at prices people aren't willing to pay and because no monoply exists, the prices are high due to competative bidding. Supply is so vastly outstripped by demand the prices are very high, but Anet designed it that way intentionally. However, ANet does care about its customers and green items show that. It isn't just about the stats, it is about the fact they have high stats on rare skins. No green is sells for above what the average player could eventually afford and thus everyone has some access to vanity.

I hope this sheds some light on a topic which just makes many Guildwars players hate Chinese people, without fact or information.

Note: If you speak Chinese I suggest talking to these farmers. They are in fact generally quite friendly.

shadowfell · Mar 19, 2006, 05:01 PM // 17:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunai

But to say that a company of this magnitude would decide to make the decision to sell in-game gold on Ebay, which their EULA forbids, under the guise of a different person or group is unrealistic. If you think that a company doing this is a likely occurance... then you are just too naive for words.

Yes, to think that a person would say/do one thing, whilst actually doing/saying the opposite.. yah...that never happens.....

btw, that monkbot screen is stepford creepy

Pro-Monk · Mar 19, 2006, 05:29 PM // 17:29

All this talk of bots gets old. Yes, there are bots, but probably not near as many as players claim to see on the forums. There a lots (and I mean 10's of thousands) of non-bot 55 monks that players use to farm cetain areas. So just seeing a steady stream of monks run through a portal doesn't mean every single one of them is a bot. Futhermore, if Anet could easily tell the difference between a character that is being actively used by a player or is a bot, don't you think they'd already dealt with it?

I am also amazed at the detailed descriptions about bot activites once they leave a portal. Unless you are in a party with a bot (which is exceedingly unlikely) you haven't a clue of where they go or what they do. I'm very leary of anyone that says they have gotten in a party with a bot because, by definition, a bot follows a predefined set of actions. How would a bot work in conjuction with human controlled players? Just doesn't add up to me.

I seriously doubt that Anet takes much action when they get reports of bots, simply because there is no easy way to tell whether the reported player is a bot or not. This thread is a good example, who can really say what was going on? It would be a very, very poor practice to ban accounts without absolutely being able to tell that a bot program was being used.

Alias_X · Mar 19, 2006, 05:51 PM // 17:51

I think it is safe to say that if there were two people suspected to be running a bot buisness, and one was American, the other was Chinese, the Chinese guy would be convicted.

Ling Ling, Ting Ting, whatever. If there was a party full of Rob1, Rob2, Rob3, I would think they were bots. Don't even try to say that we are being racist and we think they are bots because they have Chinese names. That is BS.

The one thing we can use to fight this is our knowledge. The fact that these bots are made by people in China, and that their names are Chinese or Ying YangleDoodle, can be used to our advantage. We can use this knowledge and assume that a Ying Ying LangLeMa Shee Ni Hao who is spamming "asdfs 242 35" is a bot. Not soley because of the name, but you cannot say that the name isn't evidence towards the fact that this person is a botter.

Count to Potato · Mar 19, 2006, 07:01 PM // 19:01

I hate sweatshops

The Herbalizer · Mar 19, 2006, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Zardeone

I didn't see the original picture but from the replies I understand that the names were something like this:
Somename1
Somename2
Somename3
or something like that.

Well, a few years ago some hardcore clans got all their members to use the same name (other games).
For example, you'd have the Pongs:
Pong1
Pong2
Pong3
Pong4

They were known only as pong and they were usually very good players too.
"omfg, the pongs are here! run!!"

I remember people like pongs, milks, ______ (the underscores), G.R.U.N.Ts, etc...

Maybe this guy was the leader of a guild like that?

Something comparable to this are teams which use special names like:
Left Nut
Right Nut
or
Fanta, Cola, Pepsi...

So it could have just been a guy helping 4 other guys do goofy things

Red Apple
Golden Apple
Yellow Apple
Etc are all quite popular I hear

Matsumi · Mar 19, 2006, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Misa

Ting Ting is not a weird name...... It's actully my birth name and a pretty common name in southern China :P

But yea, I think I will go invite bots just for fun now ;D

Sorry, that wasn't really my intention, and I was just trying to give out an example of 4-5 different characters with like sounding names (that wasn't their real names of course). I had no idea ting ting was a chinese name, I won't use that example then. I've seen some though that seem to be that have names like Boy BoyBoyBoy or ;alskjd ;oasjdaks, like coming up with a name was just too much of a pain or something, maybe they were bots, but maybe not, it's kind of like a UFO sighting for me.

Yawgmoth · Mar 20, 2006, 03:45 AM // 03:45

They may well not be any bots or anything like that but just characters done for FUN purposes of showing together in towns during events. I have seen things like that before.
Why would a bot creator even care about all of them looking identical ?

Former Ruling · Mar 20, 2006, 04:59 AM // 04:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

They may well not be any bots or anything like that but just characters done for FUN purposes of showing together in towns during events. I have seen things like that before.
Why would a bot creator even care about all of them looking identical ?

I think the point is that it was all the Default monk female model...Like their was no customizing of the character.

but..meh...

---------------

I think ALOT of people have the wrong ideas about Farming programs

* First of all theres ALWAYS a human on the other side. BE it a 6 yr old getting paid 20 cents a day, or w/e, their still there.
* Its NEVER fully automated.

Thats the big parts. They actually dont use many "illegal programs" really. Sure its possible to just write code to have the monk do w/e autoed, but that would be plain dumb on their part.

Nope...Their workers...They go out...maybe run a program to get the skills off at the right time, but then they MANUALLY go back into town and sell stuff, and then repeat it.

The point being is to NOT look like a farmer to the admins of the server. So they do as much stuff as possible manually and just run programs so that they get skills off at the right times.

They just dont talk/do stuff the same alot/ because their getting paid to be mindless farmers...its the only money they can make they cant risk getting thrown out by socializing.

-----------

And Asians farm alot anyway. alot of Asians have to be the best, have the most money, etc, and they dont mind just farming the same palce all day...its fun...

bad person · Mar 20, 2006, 02:38 PM // 14:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by TurinPT

nah dont think so Don, 4 identical non-moving monks all level 2 and werent even in a guild.

Reported it, lets hope they do something.

updated the pic btw.

Reported for what? Between my son's and my accounts (4 total) I could easily recreate almost the exact same thing. It's easy to get 2 or 3 instances of GW on one computer, so I could log into 2 on my laptop, another 2 on my son's computer, create 3 new characters (all looking the same and not in a guild) and run them to the desert with my warrior. Does that make me or any of my other characters bots?

If anyone has the ability to determine whether a character is a bot or not, it's Anet. There is no way that you could tell simply by watching the actions of a character. And for those who say they've joined a bot on a farming run, think about it - if it's truly a bot would it be accepting an invite or interacting with you at all?

Matsumi · Mar 20, 2006, 05:26 PM // 17:26

That doesn't really make any sense, that's why. Why would somebody, even if they have 4 acounts, go and create 4-5 identicle characters all mo/w or e/x, run them to droks to get outfitted, and then stand around like that with them? Who's playing them all? Your son and you? On 2 different computers? Most kids I know don't like to hang out with their parents in a game, or in real life, maybe some do, but it's doubtful to me. Even still, what's the point of creating 4-5 identicle characters? A line/sync dance? Maybe you could make a video in game off a song from Robert Palmer or something, where your the stud singing, and there's hot looking identicle girls all around you dancing to it... lol. I guess if they really aren't bots, that's pretty funny. I still have theories about the strange dialect they speak in that's like no other language... they're aliens! There was a ship that landed near piken square, piloted by gwen (who surprisingly needs more items from you, and follows you around), and the doors opened and out crawled 6 identicle characters that looked like us, but had strange habbits and behaviors, and they want resources! Lots of resources!

bad person · Mar 20, 2006, 06:29 PM // 18:29

The point is that seeing a group like that doesn't prove anything - anyone with multiple accounts could do the same thing. Anet won't do anything without any proof, and I'm sure they have much better ways of finding bots (or people using macros) than someone reporting seeing 4 identical characters with similar names being run someplace.

MSecorsky · Mar 20, 2006, 08:42 PM // 20:42

Oh man, I feel bad now. Real bad. All those poor monks with only 55 hp trying to make a living in the cold wilds of the Shiverpeaks, looking for a friend to party with them and help them out. I know what I must do. I must join with the wretched masses and bring Symbiosis to give them a fighting shot at life.

My charity begins tonight!