Forcast: Potential Future Multiboxing Issues

[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.

[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