[Unnamed botting program] PWNT

[Aethon]

When I read about Blizzard's complaints that botters "spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time" I was pretty angered. Are we talking coal or barrels of oil here? No, we're talking about electronic gold. Now I won't deny that MMO currency is beginning to gain a reasonable amount of real-world value, but real-world litigation is a very clear statement that Blizzard considers their gold to be a real-world commodity - thus legitimizing gold sellers.

The resources consumed are not gold or virtual mobs, but real world electricity, server capacity and bandwidth. Blizzard charges based on the fact that each account is going to consume a certain percentage of their bottom line in expenses, botting drives that up by being online 24/7. It also causes an increase in customer support incidences as they are reported, investigated, etc. Other resources consumed are the programmers working on Warden, anti-cheating code, etc.

Ok, so where do multiboxers fit into your theory? People still report us constantly, which requires time and effort to investigate whether we're multiboxing or using some other program. Same with Warden, etc. Additionally, there are people that MB 10 characters. Most botters I've known (and this is previously being one myself and frequenting the glider forums) only bot at most 1-2 accounts. Even if they stayed on 24/7 (which they don't, believe me, it's a fast way to a ban) they would still take up less total bandwidth then a multiboxer. Also, while many botters will run BG's, no one bots arenas. Arenas take up a bit of resources themselves.

And the fact that they base it on estimated usage is crap. Has my subscription price gone up when they reached 5 million players? 10 million? Will my subscription price go down when WoW declines to 1 million in the future? I don't think so.

Botters represent as small of a community as multiboxers (probably why some people ask if we're bots) the impact to the WoW economy is negligable, as noted after every single banwave. Primal prices didn't go up (as one would expect after a reduced supply) they stayed the same or reduced in some cases.

Try reading the arguements and testimonies for Blizzard, you'll laugh yourself into next Tuesday.