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LotRO cracks down on superman exploit
An exploit that is allowing Lord of the Rings Online players to super-charge their toons is on the end of a stern warning by Turbine today. The studio says that it has already banned and will continue to ban accounts seen using this deliberate loophole. "It has come to our attention that some players have been utilizing an exploit to change how powerful their characters are in the game world," the studio posted today. "Upon receiving reports of the issue we began an investigation. Due to the way our log system works we can definitively detect every account that is taking advantage of this exploit." Turbine is currently working on a fix for the problem. [Thanks to Superswim for the tip!]
ArcheAge bans 16k spam accounts in alpha
Ahh, spammers. They are the mosquitos of the MMO world if mosquitos could email and send global chat messages. Trion is no stranger to spam-squashing and as Community Manager Evan "Scapes" Berman demonstrated in a recent post, the studio is bringing out the big guns against ArcheAge's spammers who have been plaguing the alpha test. According to the post, over 16,000 spammer and gold farmer accounts have been removed from alpha already, and Patch 1.2 (arriving next week) will have even more tools to fight the "general asshats." Scapes encourages players to keep reporting those illegal accounts and contact support if you discover that your account has been compromised.
Why the botters do it
Frybread over at Notaddicted yesterday posted about a chat that he had with the owner of an American gold botting company. Evidently the massive gold farming bans that went through on Monday hit his company especially hard. First of all it's interesting to note that there are such companies in the US as well, so China doesn't have complete monopoly on the illegal gold selling market. So what is it like inside a botting business? Well, the anonymous business owner runs an office with about 150 computers. It sounds like a lot for a guy who runs his business using bots, but he explains that all tells need to be made by actual people since they are monitored constantly. When asked how many accounts he lost in the ban sweep on Monday, he says 100. All of his characters were between levels 40 and 70, which answers a lot of questions I've been having about all those people I have been competing with over primals. The question came up, why do it if you risk losing your business? The reply was clear and without hesitation: I'd rather deal with the risks then [sic] work a normal office job. This is now the third time I have read an interview enlightening the reader to the plight of the poor goldfarmer just trying to make a living at the game he loves. But if you love the game that much, why do you abuse its rules and harm the player base to make a profit? Sure he lost 100 accounts, but he'll have those back in a month, and will be out skewing economies once again. [via Notaddicted]
