Forcast: Potential Future Multiboxing Issues

[Xzin]

I don't want to say this because the implications are..... well.... rather huge. But it needs to be said. I posted this in response to a how to make wow gold thread but thought it bore mentioning on the "main" forum.

Let me ask a question.

What prevents chinaman farmers from putting together $800 or less single machine, software only boxing entire single party farm teams?

When I started boxing, this wasn't possible. The hardware was not there, the complexity was huge and the software was not even written yet.

But now....

Advantages:

Instance only, so you can level up without being reported.
5x the profit with a single "worker".
Getting ganked is less of a problem.

We might start to see chinaman boxers before too long. Not entirely sure that is a good thing for us though. We already take some flak as it is but there are so few of us that Bliz doesn't mind too much.

If all of a sudden chinaman embraces boxing on a large scale..... we might have some issues.

If little Timmy can barely get a group together to take down Strat and he has at most one or two solid attempts per day but chinaman is doing 15 minute baron runs..... 24 hours a day.... looting everything, with 5 character slots for loot.... Maybe not the most relevant level 70 dungeon but you get the picture.

The entire market would turn upside down if allowed to continue. Assuming chinaman can control 5 characters at once..... which isn't THAT HARD if all you are doing is static content with an AOE class. You only need to aoe heal, aoe damage, single damage and single heal. Maybe 20 buttons total. You could run it on two monitors. Healer on one and DPS on the other. If you wanted me to design the best farming 5 box, I could tear through static content (but would not be very good at PvP/arenas) but who farms those for gold?

[zanthor]

While definitely a possibility, the single farmer that gets banned then costs 5x to replace. Blizzard does track money exchanges and bans accordingly.

I think that the idea of racking up $70 a month from valid customers is too much to pass up for them just to try and stop someone from farming gold... there are too many OTHER issues.

On the other hand, it could lead to quickly outlawed applications for multiplexing leaving us with a 1:1 hardware solution only.

[Shogun]

I'd rather they did that than bot tbh... although nothing stopping them combining botting and this. They already "play" more than one account per person as it is, from what I've read in interviews etc, 2-3 being the norm, but then who can say how much of that is "botted" and how much they actually do?

And while most of the bought/sold gold comes from China/Asia, not all of it does...

[kalih]

Make it yourself, via direct farming or AH.

Make gold "soulbound" essentially.

Erm.

Me@AH: "1 copper bar for 5000 gold? Who in their... oh"

[Ellay]

I've seen multiboxers before on my server that appeared to be "farmers", after a couple weeks they were never seen from again.

I don't see this as being a problem. It's easy to track where items / gold are being sent to now and if it is for the wrong intent they will be taken care of.

[kadaan]

1. Boxing isn't hard, but it's not easy either. I don't see farmers being able to box instances. I've seen some who have a hard enough time killing non-elites their own level, and most look like they only use 2 or 3 buttons tops.
2. Botting is easier. Doesn't require any manpower.
3. As zanthor said, 5-boxing = 5 banned accounts. It would be a huge red flag if a priest+4mage group did nothing but farm instances and mail gold. With a single character it's a lot easier to fly under the radar.


More than gold farming, I think selling characters would be a bigger concern. Get a 70 frost mage and 5-box with 4 alts from 1-60 in a few days. Not sure how long it takes to "order" a level 70, but boxing would dramatically reduce the time.

[Steph]

You could also go to the hunter forum and post that you fear that blizzard is going to ban all hunters.

It's not the tool, but what you do with it. There is a massive difference between what we here do and a goldfarming company running accounts online 24/7 with two shifts.

Just comparing the IP and CC info combined with the playing times and profile should divide goldfarmers that multibox from players that multibox rather easily.

[Wilbur]

Its an interesting theory Xzin, however its been done with Bots for the last year or so. Admitedly, there are probably only a handful of farms that do this worldwide. The only real costs are paying the developer to write the software, buying sufficient equipment to run it on (With stripped down clients with no graphical rendering you can get 30+ bots running on a Quadcore) and paying someone to 'monitor' the bots and then generate gold from the auction house.

I can forsee a problem if Farmers do begin to use Multiboxing as a viable method of gold creation, however the threat from bots is far greater and most likely far more viable from an owner/operators point of view.

No I'm not talking about the bots you see running around Tanaris farming :P

The level of botting that is currently possible can consist of stripped down clients, fully automated groups, with Excellent Warden protection operating entirely in instances, automation of repairs, mailing, even Raid tactics. These botters do exist, however its highly unlikely you would ever see them, and if you did, theres virtually no chance you would realise they are bots because of how human their movement can now be made.

[Rhod]

Just comparing the IP and CC info combined with the playing times and profile should divide goldfarmers that multibox from players that multibox rather easily.

I'm guessing Blizzard has a program in place that watches this. I'm sure some of us have had our accounts looked at by Blizz, then flagged as Ok after they've reviewed our playing habits. With the ability to track account/character transactions, I think we'll be okey dokey :wink: .

[Majestic_Clown]

Sorry to make this thread go dead by a vague comment but....

Legit dual boxers are safe, non legit players for botting, gold selling etc are not safe and get banned on a regualar basis.

Can't say much more really.

[Jaws5]

I understand the point, but most us us are not gold farmers.

for a 5 boxer day quests give about 100 gold a day per char.

takes about 1-2 hours per day so 250-500 gold per hour. Now that's farming. Granted you can only do that once a day.

I have lost track at the number of times I was in scholo with my priest and 4 locks working guests (lvl 57-60)

wisper ( gold farmer what are you doing with 4 locks in that instance, give me gold or I will report you)

I have farmed rep in Ramparts to get all 5 to Honored before I started quests. same wispers most of them not in English.

I have been reported sooo many times for boting , gold farming , hacking , cheating ,etc. I have never been banned. I have only 5 boxed since June 07.

Before that I did dumb things like get two chars to HWL and GM ( now that was dumb and a time sink)

I agree if you want to farm with a 5 box setup you can do well, but fishing bots and killings bots will always out produce 5 bot/boxed teams.

Motes of water, fire, air, are the money makers. cooked fish also

Blizz has very good ways to look at our cash flow in and out of char mailbox. The new 1hour delay helps with that.

Right now we are low maintenance for blizz, 75 per month for 5 plus accounts. We are more mature than the common player. We do not ruin others game play. Many try to ruin ours, but we uselly win (gee shadow priest and 4 affiliction locks stack up nicely)

Anyways just my 2 cents

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I see your point, Zin, but I really think Blizzard is bright enough to tell the difference and ban from the sales end, not how they made the gold. Consider this: how do farmers sell gold?

Many large sales from one account (to wit: changing names does NOT fool blizzard's per-account logs).
Many small sales from one account.
Many small sales from multiple accounts tied to a specific owner.
Sales via trial accounts.
Many small sales from multiple accounts to a 3rd party recipient.

All of those transactions are now tracked. So they can link all the sales on an account and what account(s) those "mules" got the gold they sold from, so they can chain-ban everyone from the seller all the way back up through the farmers that supplied 'em.

People make the silly statement that Blizzard cannot track this stuff and that's why gold sellers still exist. I think it's less that than it is just plain resource-consuming to prosecute the thousands of these folks that do it. There's a breakover point where taking the time to investigate and ban accounts takes up more monetary resources from service reps than you lose to gold sellers' negative effects. I haven't the foggiest idea where it is but I'd bet you a week's pay Blizzard knows. ;)

[edit] Also, don't forget that a farmer that's smart enough to multibox effectively will require higher pay than his button-mashing friends.

Additionally, don't forget that multiboxing makes you a very OBVIOUS target for reporting to GMs. Which means you have a much higher chance of being investigated and, if you're a farmer, multi-banned because they chanced to catch on to your black-market dealings. I would not underestimate this aspect.

[Xzin]

Most all are very good points. I don't see this being an issue today, tomorrow or even next month. But a year, two years down the road.... SOME farmers may go into it. Maybe if bots become truly "illegal" (not likely - aren't we as real players, in a way, bots)? More intelligent right now, sure. But I GUARANTEE you that the captchas that we use right now to keep spam bots out will be broken again and again by increasingly intelligent "AIs" (more image processors).

Imagine, if you will, a bot that plays not as a program but as a computer running a computer. Instead of modifying the data, it plays like a player does.

You dump the screen, do basic image analysis to give the computer the data. It can respond to GMs. It can "think" in so much as it can do basic player functions. It can act and react appropriately. With little to no downsides to death, it can keep plugging away. It does not need to sleep. We are getting better at real time image analysis. It can track health bars, inventory, know where it is spatially. Everything a basic human can do. And it would interact with the computer without any hooks, any extra input. It would, in essence, to Blizzard.... BE a human. Only it would be a computer controlling a computer. Hell, put the entire OS INSIDE a VM and then have the program CONTROL all of the game client. I HIGHLY doubt Blizzard could ever detect something like that - it would be "stuck" inside a VM, which people would and will use for all sorts of purposes other than botting.

We aren't there yet. But we will be someday. Then what do you do? Ban players? How do you know which is which when the computer looks and smells and tastes and acts like a human?

These are not problems we will face right away but I guarantee you that we will. And I love thinking about them and their ramifications.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Now there's an angle that's definitely interesting. I wonder, though, at what point we will have to start "training" our AI's to do things for us in a completely new manner. For example, the only training AI's today (in the form of bots as they exist today, at any rate) is just the coder trying to catch all the possible decision trees that a user might run into, coupled with the ability to navigate obstacles and areas depending on where the pre-programmed static "task points" are located.

Now, what about tomorrow when AI really is a form of AI and not just some shambling conglomeration of pattern-matching batch files? That, I think, is where things get really interesting. And, probably by nature, much more difficult to spread around for other people to use.

Of course, it remains to be seen how fast we advance AI's as I can see quite the backlash from the first few successful ones being trained to trade stocks, for example. :P

[Xzin]

There are already PLENTY of programs that buy and sell stocks, futures, commodities, etc.

They have been operating for decades.

But they are mostly pattern matching. They can't THINK.

I don't expect the evolution of computers to be able to think. The evolution, in my mind is more towards automation. Recognizing things and being able to react in a semi intelligent way. Avoid obstacles. Obey basic sets of "laws". Perform X job. Think smart(er) industrial robots but on a smaller and cheaper scale.

The last steps we need are awareness. Stereo vision. Real time image processing. Enough processor power and battery power to handle all of this. It is coming sooner than you might think but I don't see SMART AIs hitting anytime in the next 10 years. Basic pattern recognition and working within a structured situation (like WoW) with a fixed set of variables is one thing. THINKING on your own with 5+ senses (people have more than 5 basic senses, think balance, etc) and stereo vision... robust pattern mapping.. everything that makes humans, well human... is a FAR cry from the next few iterations of computing. But give it a few decades. When computers are programmed how to learn instead of try to learn on their own. Whey you teach them the objective is to get to the flag in mario brothers and you let it figure out how to so do.... THAT is what will happen first. WoW is more complex but boils down to the same basic things. Resource management. Positioning. Movement in 3d space. Triggering actions appropriately. At first it will be crude, sure. But it will be pretty amazing how fast it gets going once it actually gets going. ESPECIALLY when there is profit motive. Do you think we made it to the moon because we just decided it make it happen? It was purely political. America had to beat the Russians. Profit can be just as compelling. Just look at Glide and what it can do. I have never even run it but I know it well enough to know that it and Inner Space can act and run almost like a real player. Sure, it is just a veneer and detectable but it amazes me how much it has progressed in only a few years.

WTB a computer program that can LEARN (evolve?) how to defeat Mario Brothers. Heck, just emulate it and let it go to town. Show it the flag and give it some basic instructions and let it figure it out. THAT will impress me and the scary part is how soon somebody will wind up doing that.

The future is a fantastic place.

[Ellay]

What your describing though is beyond dual-boxing though. That's just straight up partial - AI. I see where your going with it, but that would affect the entire gaming community, not just us :)

[stompershock]

Unfortunately most of you make a invalid point when you say the entire 5 man group would be banned from gold sales. Only the one doing the selling would be, so in reality you have a "throwaway" toon that loots and sells the gold and he is the one that gets banned and all you have to do is fill in his spot and you don't loose any time farming. Even then if he only sells to US gamers the risk is very low, untill he sells to blizzard. If you sell to chinese companies you get screwed very fast because all there accounts are already flagged.

Just bassed on Xzins Cathedral farming vid you can do 100g in a half hour, then bounce to another SM instance and possibly get 200-250g /hour total. Even at those rates you could pay minimum wage with US workers.

Were it gets scary is 10 mans, if you can get a group to do 500g/hour then you have a cash cow.

So for those of you that run 10 mans is that possible?

[Xzin]

Not sure if 10 mans are soloable. Initial indications indicate not really. But level 70 5 mans....

And yes, this might be a great way for them to minimize their exposure to getting banned. If they only lose 1, they can easily replace. Especially once level 80 or 85, 90 hits and it takes more to get a character "up there" (assuming they don't make it easier somehow).

We have cars with frickin LIDAR beams on their heads. Computer algorithms smarter than what we currently have isn't TOO far fetched.

http://jalopnik.com/assets/images/gallery/12/2007/10/medium_1786461369_74391e76be_o.jpg

http://jalopnik.com/assets/images/gallery/12/2007/10/medium_1787307484_8fe082a2e7_o.jpg

[Ellay]

200g an hour is 40g per person. You can farm any type of primal and make more gold as one player than doing the instance run with 5. As well 1 player will not exhaust an entire farming area before respawns.

I'm overall not trying to downplay what is brought to the table but every item is tagged, every transaction is recorded. The "throw away" character mentioned will still have links to the other characters just pooling gold to him.

They know how the whole money laundering scheme works.

[stompershock]

you give them to much credit, unless you are talking from personal experience

those pics are REDICULOUS

[kayb]

Gold farming is not a "real" problem for Blizzard. They only claim it on the surface due to the moral issue Gold Farms present. You have to think about what drives the game forward. Mostly it's the top end raiding guilds. I've bought probably around 30k gold myself, and I'm in a top raiding guild with Illidan on farm for a couple of months. If they'd want to ban me, they would have done it a long time ago. Shouldn't be very hard to track my 5000 g economy spikes.

Probably close to half the people in my guild have purchased large amounts of gold just to keep raiding effectively. Pushing through new content is costly, not only on repair costs, but flasks, gear, potions, mana oils etc etc. Before the pot-nerf, I probably used elixirs/flasks for at least 100g pr day, on top of 50-100g repair cost. So close to 1000g spent every week, and that's not including new enchants for gear upgrades and stuff like that. Now I don't use much since everything is on farm, but come Sunwell I'm probably gonna purchase some more.

[Gallo]

If anyone wants to read a VERY interesting book about the future of technology, pick up The Singularity Is Near - by Ray Kurzweil.

It is an amazing book that talks about the up and coming innovations in technology, and how it is going to change society. Imagine having tiny robots floating in your bloodstream that allow you to get 100 times more oxygen to your brain and muscles. Imagine tiny robots that will fight disease from inside of your body. Imagine computers that not only "think", but that can intelligently design other computer programs.

It's an amazing book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near is a synopsis of some of the chapters.

[unit187]

blizzard has made 1 hour delay for mail sending gold and AH gold delivery, they dont care about gold farmers eh?

blizzard really monitors gold leaks and probably ban gold sellers here and there

[Xzin]

Yes! 100x cell oxidation! Sign me up :)

[Zseth]

If anyone wants to read a VERY interesting book about the future of technology, pick up The Singularity Is Near - by Ray Kurzweil.

It is an amazing book that talks about the up and coming innovations in technology, and how it is going to change society. Imagine having tiny robots floating in your bloodstream that allow you to get 100 times more oxygen to your brain and muscles. Imagine tiny robots that will fight disease from inside of your body. Imagine computers that not only "think", but that can intelligently design other computer programs.

It's an amazing book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near is a synopsis of some of the chapters.



All I'm going to say to this is, pick up a Sir Issac Asimov book. Any of his books really. He has accurately described the future over and over again. The cool thing is how he did. Every nerd/scientist I know has read the Foundation Trilogy and want to bring about what he describes. Fiction becomes Reality faster sometimes than new fiction can be made lol. Look at what Star Trek did for society. The inventor of the cell phone got his idea from Star Trek. And who did G Rod get star trek from? Sir Issac Asimov.

[Wilbur]

you give them to much credit, unless you are talking from personal experience

Being someone who obviously knows a bit about server side detection, what would you say it is doing the server side detection? A human or a pattern matching Algorithim? Blizzard are very effective at eliminating farmers, and I'd wager this is mostly down to the server side software at their disposal which is continually monitoring pretty much everything that can or could be automated, as well as generating huge reports on gold/item transfers, etc.

As far as small-time botters go, you are quite unlikely to get caught if you are sensible and have well written bots. Glider is probably the most well known for 'end user' botters, It allows grinding although rather stupidly, it doesn't deal with zoning, mailing, or even quests, thus meaning that to effectively bot with it you have to zone into an instance and set it running, or risk it in the open. Innerspace is the "real mans" platform, and what I'd wager most of the commercial botting farms are using. Its a development platform, Its functionality extends to how good you are at programming, and with ISXWarden you are fairly well screened from all client-side detection.

All in all, we will see an increase in farmers using 5-man groups to farm, however I really doubt that they will be anything like the current ones you see, instead they will be cold, calculating, well written programs that are capable of dealing with most eventualities being checked over by one skilled programmer everytime an "anomolie" happens.

[HPAVC]

You dump the screen, do basic image analysis to give the computer the data.

There was a proof of concept fishing bot that did this to scan for the lure, repositioned and snooped the audio channel in a crude way and right clicked the loot.

Goldfarmers already do raids to gear paid characters, I don't see why they need to multibox. If you need to outfit your characters in blacktemple gear its likely you might have one or two characters there just for duplicate loot.

But frankly most high end guilds already do this in selling raid slots for gear or tuning up a character to sell on ebay.

[kayb]

Goldfarmers are not doing Black Temple. I highy doubt they even do karazhan. And afaik none of the top guilds on my server are selling spots in BT raids.

[Tonuss]

Gold farming is not a "real" problem for Blizzard.

I think the potential threat for multi-boxers isn't gold sellers or instance-farming. Blizzard already is working on limiting the impact of gold farming/selling, and daily quests have probably put a nice dent in their business. And instances are... instanced.

I think the potential threat is if gold farmers decide to multi-box outdoors. On many servers there is already plenty of competition for locations where players can farm stuff like motes for primals. If there is an occasional multi-boxer monopolizing a spot now and then it's probably no big deal. If certain choice spots are being farmed 24/7 by teams of gold farmers, Blizzard will step in at some point. If it becomes a wide enough problem, they will take whatever steps they need to stop it, which could include banning the use of software keystroke broadcasters, and being aggressive in pursuing multi-boxers.

Mind you, I'm not saying this is even likely at this time. But if there were to be a threat to legit multi-boxing, I would think that it would be from wide-scale 'hogging' of farming spots by gold farmers, and the disruption it would cause to other players.

[Gallo]

It would be extremely easy to stop multi-boxing, from Blizzard's side.

Turn off /follow

Neither software nor hardware methods would matter at that point. It would simply be too difficult for 99% of people to want to mess with.

Don't give anyone any ideas :)

[Xzin]

Even without follow, you could emulate it with a program and hacking the art files. It wouldn't be pretty and possibly detectable by both GMs and warden.

But why shoot yourself in the foot?

[fling]

I became a Legionnaire on my rogue, right after the original honor system was released. I would guesstimate 90% of my honor came from farming gold farmers in Azshara while I leveled to 60. I would kill 2 or 3 at a time, until they would get a full group+ out to camp me. I am drooling imagining what my rogue could do to one of those people if they tried to run 5 accounts.

Once I decide on 3 or 5 boxing, I could have bot wars with them... :twisted:

[Phate]

Just bassed on Xzins Cathedral farming vid you can do 100g in a half hour, then bounce to another SM instance and possibly get 200-250g /hour total. Even at those rates you could pay minimum wage with US workers.

This is an incredibly unspectacular amount of income. I can do 200g/hour in arcane tomes + signets + greens + cloth solo on my warlock, without instances.

Another consideration with Chinamen boxing is that like you said, you guys catch a lot of flak already. If their English isn't great, they may not be able to convince the GM that they aren't a bot, or at the very least make him a bit suspicious, so they might get the banhammer anyway.