Bot Control Plan?

[Zanion]

yeah the abyss i think is the best solution to fight bots...but have in mind that it is not 1005 necessery to go to the abyss to farm

[Skold]

NCSoft is going all out on AION and not holding anything back. They want this game to beat WoW, to beat other MMORPGs, there is no way in hell they aren't going to have a horde of people working in every department making sure the game is working flawlessly with no unfair advantages.

[Calindor]

ughh

They arent going any more all out than they did on L2, or that they plan to do with L3. This is NCSoft Korea's third game. Their business model already stated that they dont plan on beating WoW, and they wont strive towards that as a goal...because its pretty much impossible..WoW had too many things going for it along with the perfect release date for a North American game. NCSoft is rather focusing on many smaller projects rather than one big one like Blizzard is....But that doesnt mean they dont want Aion to be a success, its just beating WoW is an unrealistic goal for ANY mmorpg right now, no matter how good.

[Skold]

Business plan? Are you crazy? In recent interviews with NCSoft they said they are taking "new angles" to take down the large player base of WoW, this includes AION. In addition, it is not a unrealistic goal because its already well known information that once WoW hit 10,000,000 players around the world, the amount of players still playing the game has dropped dramatically, and is expected to drop when WoTLK hits. People are looking for a new game. NCSoft said you either had to be bigger than WoW to compete, or more creative. - Hence PvPvE.

[Calindor]

They also said they are taking the approach of focusing on many different smaller MMO's like they are currently doing and developing rather than focusing on 1 main MMO like Blizzard does.

You are being naive, when Aion and GW2 are done, the majority of NCSofts resources will go into future produtions like Lineage 3...which will have its own engine developed by NCSoft.

[Skold]

I'm not going to argue with you, you have been trolling all day. Either way, I highly doubt they would just "not care." they are going to have lots of people working on AION after release. If you need proof go look at NCsofts job sections, its not exactly a small "now hiring." list.

[Endrance]

Skold, there is no proof yet how much NCsoft will care about Aion. I understand that you don't want Aion to fall because NCsoft doesn't care about their game, neither do I. But fact is, that NCsoft has done exactly that in the past.
We'll see what's gonna happen to Aion soon enough. It all depends on how much NCsoft has learned from their mistakes.

[SoraNashimi]

I agree with Endrance.. Also WTF are pots that everyone was talking about in the last page? Potions? You put in a code when you buy potions? O.O?

I still wonder about that team to track down those people like I heard before =p, will they still be having that?

[Calindor]

Originally Posted by Skold

I'm not going to argue with you, you have been trolling all day. Either way, I highly doubt they would just "not care." they are going to have lots of people working on AION after release. If you need proof go look at NCsofts job sections, its not exactly a small "now hiring." list.

I've been trolling all year.

And also dont misinterperet GW/TR/CoX/etc... as the same games as Aion. They are run by seperate companies funded by NCSoft. I've been playing mainly NCSoft games since Lineage 2 was released in 2004. I find it hard to believe that they plan to take WoW down with Aion, especially the way they've done things in the paseed.

I would also like to see your sources, because NCSoft and Ken Choi in the FAQ Aion videos specifically answered a question on how NCSoft will respond to WoW's success, and he said something along the lines of focusing on many small MMORPG's rather than 1 big one...They are developing a bunch, even basic 2d ones that are F2P with purchasable items.

When L2 was it, they started failing and losing money badly (I think at one point their stock declinde by close to half)...since then they've been doing GW, CoX, AutoX, TR, etc...and its bringing them back up.

[amica]

Originally Posted by SoraNashimi

Well one thing that will screw the bots over is the Abyss =p, thats where you get all the best xp, gold, and everything else down there, and its both pvp and pve so really bots aren't safe down there hahahaha, start farming, opposite faction spots an easy kill, you can say goodbye to being alive hehe.

Well...not really true. Rappelz has all out pvp, but once upon a time, that game had an incredible amount of bot farmers (still does honestly) running around the newbie towns farming for items. Being an all out pvp server, you would think, "oh I'll pk them to teach them a lesson, etc. etc." What you didn't know was that the same botters actually had a guild of legit players which would KOS you once you start killing their bots. They eventually created smart bots that would auto-log out once a pk hit was attempted on them, and relog back and continue their program after a certain amount of time. Also if you did successfully kill them, they'd just spawn back in the nearest town, and run all the way back to the farming spots like a bunch of little chicks following their mommy.

Same thing happened during the OB of Granado Espada. The game was infested with bots, and even on PK servers should you decide to kill them, other "families" or guilds that owned said bots will kill you if you tried to harm them. Players that engaged in RMT would try to kill off the same bots that provided them with their in game cash by spawning level 90+ spinelles on the droves of bots running all over the maps disrupting the legit players playing.

My point here is, what would we do if say in said Abyss, a botting guild decides to do the same thing? Everytime you tried to kill off their bots, an enemy group race will come and try to kill you for disrupting their "business"?

The only time that the bots got reduced in GE was when they formed a special team whose sole job it was to track down each bot, and ban their sorry behinds to oblivion. But from what I heard they disbanded the group due to it being too expensive for the company to pay for. If they did that in Aion, I wouldn't mind paying for that extra service as long as that is their sole job...to hunt for bots/botters.

[RenegadeAngel]

Originally Posted by amica

Same thing happened during the OB of Granado Espada. The game was infested with bots, and even on PK servers should you decide to kill them, other "families" or guilds that owned said bots will kill you if you tried to harm them.

That never happened to me, I killed bots for hours on end.

[Fleiva]

Calindor, you're wrong on something, NCsoft isn't focusing on "more but smaller projects". Aion team counts with more than 100 devs and 2 times the initial funds of WoW, that doesn't sound like a smaller project to me. Aion is an AAA title from NCsoft korea, which hasn't developed anything for a while, if NCsoft publishes games from arenanet that only means arenanet team is also working on their own project, if you need to do 5 projects with a limited team, projects will be smaller, NCsoft is hiring more people in order to generate more projects.

To be honest, L2 experience with NCsoft america doesn't count. How would such a small team in 2003 imagine the masses and masses of bots and RMT that game would attract? Well, not like if it was hard, considering the game was a bots heaven: Mobs grind in a game where everything can be purchased through gold, and where people won't bother killing you cause they might loose more than what you do. Not to talk about the public leaks, hackers having the source code of Lineage II caused havoc. NCsoft's Austin team, which was quite small and with low funds by then got overwhelmed.

Anyways, I just hope they have learned from that, while I can easily forgive an error, im not akin on forgiving a second one, this would be my last NCsoft's game if they don't make things right, community wise.

[Calindor]

L2 also started with more funds aswell...From what I understand NCSoft only has the devs for the games they run (currently L1 and L2), games like GW have Arenanet GMs...although I may be wrong. If the US side has more devs that for L2, well that is a step up.

if NCsoft publishes games from arenanet that only means arenanet team is also working on their own project, if you need to do 5 projects with a limited team, projects will be smaller, NCsoft is hiring more people in order to generate more projects.

I dont really understand what you are saying here...of course they are growing, because they are paying these other companies to do the games for them, so NCSoft itself stays the same like it was in L2. But Ken Choi himself did say in an interview (one of those 11 Aion ones) that NCSofts focus right now to respond to WoW's competition is to focus on multiple MMORPGs rather than 1 or 2 successful ones. That doesnt mean Aion will be another L2, or they wont put resources/effort into it, its just that I dont think anyone has expectations for Aion to reach WoW's success level.

[Fleiva]

Yeah, they are aiming towards a huge audience by trying to approach all the tastes, but that doesn't mean NC's projects are smaller or less ambitious, that only means they have more people working than anybody else.

[d0minus]

They should take Gw's approach: do an open proxy scan upon connect, ip ban bots/block their accounts, and a report feature. Oh, and patch public bots. There is no excuse for not patching all bots available to the public.