Talk:Bot

From my understaning of economics, which is not bad but by no means perfect, wouldn't bots result in a lowering of prices, not inflation. For example, if there's one fruiterer in town who sells 10 apples a day, he can sell them at say $10. But if suddenly we had three fruiterers in town and all of them are selling 10 apples a day (ie 30 apples in total), the price would drop from $10 to something lower. This is because demand for apples has stayed the same but there's more avaliable, so the seller has to settle for a lower price. In other words an increase on the supply side results in a price decrease. Oh just noticed I just noticed I'm commenting on an article of yours Lunarbunny, I'll do the economics corrections if you keep doing the English grammer ones :) It's a well written article too by the way, uploading a picture example is a really good idea. --Xasxas256 08:30, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree that an increase in the number of any item will end up lowering the price. However, I removed the "causing human players to be able to sell for less," since if that's meant as downside, then human players being able to buy for less is an upside.  --Fyren 17:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The harmful side-effect of bots is that the items they farm are not just sold to other players lowering the proice of goods. Abundance is not exactly bad.. Ectos dropping frm 15k to 8k is awesome. The problem is that they cause inflation because the farmed good are then sold on e-bay for real money. So, suddenly Johnny B. Noob has 200 Ectos and 1 million gold. And he goes and buys a worthless Icy Dragon Sword for 100k (simply because he CAN) just to show it off to his guildies. Then Tommy B. Noob who has never owned more than 10k all his Guild Wars life, feels jealous, so he too goes and buys 200 ectos off e-bay. All of a sudden.. William T. Hardworker is screwed because he spent the last couple of months amassing 400k which now is worth nothing. :) --Karlos 18:27, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Two people buying gold does nothing. A lot of people buying gold would do it, but then the problem isn't the bots, but the people buying gold.  --Fyren 19:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * True, but it's the bots that made that gold so readily available at cheap eBay prices.--Kiiron 05:12, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I suppose it depends a little bit on how many bots there are and whether they a mostly selling their items in game or on ebay. I don't actually see farming bots as a huge problem myself, I would imagine that they'd largely just sell the items they collect to merchants (the point of a bot is to be self sufficient) because they generally just want as much gold as possible for sale on ebay. Also selling an item to another person may raise suspicion and get their account canceled. My reasoning is that I'm not that fussed if there's a few people around buying gold off ebay.

I guess if bots are selling items which is resulting in price decreases it's good for buyers, bad for sellers because the economy is artificially changed, perhaps the aricle could reflect that. But I'm not changing a Fyren edit, he holds too much clout around here, if I'm a small fish in a big pond, he's one of the sharks that eats little fish. Ok that might be a little dramatic, the real reason I'm not changing it is because I'm not that concerned either way and people can probably put 2 and 2 together and work it out themselves. I'm also bit worried that whilst I really enjoy economics, others probably don't share my passion for it and don't want to see this article turn into an eco thesis!

Ok now onto what Karlos has said. In your example, the 400k that William T. Hardworker is not worth nothing, the fact that more people now also have large amounts of money doesn't matter in itself. But if everyone had more money, then inflation will probably occur, everyone is now prepared to pay for more for goods. But in you're example we've already established that basically bots farm items such as ecto and sell them, driving prices down. So the 400k that William T. Hardworker has is essentially worth more as he can now buy more items with it than before. But we've got two factors that counterbalance each other, more money or disposable income means that prices increase but an increase on the supply side is driving prices down so it's hard to draw conclusions on whether William T. Hardworker is better off or not.

Also I'm not sure Karlos if everyone would agree that Ectos dropping frm 15k to 8k is awesome. If you're farming because you want to buy that 15k armor and an ecto drops, you'd be spewing if it's only worth 8k instead of 15k, as Fyren and myself have basically pointed this out. Ah all this economics talk it's great, I almost want to go back to uni! --Xasxas256 21:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the three of us are generally in agreement about what's happening, just not what the article should say. I think we all agree that more farming, by itself, lowers prices but that selling gold for real-world money (probably, at least) causes inflation.  So what's left is what this article, on bots, should say.  --Fyren 22:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry I went a little overboard with my last comment, saw all this chat about the economics of bots in Guild Wars and I got a little excited!!! I'm happy with what this article currently says anyway, the only line I'm questioning is: This in turn leads to flooding of the market, causing price decreases. I'd just prefer it to mention that this is good for buyers but bad for sellers and perhaps that the market prices have been artificially lowered. So something like This in turn leads to flooding of the market, causing price decreases, this is good for buyers but bad for sellers. But it's implied anyway in the line that's currently there.


 * But the article doesn't mention anywhere that gold is often sold on ebay, it probably should. I think this is the main reason why Anet cracks down on bot farming. I don't think the main harm is the large-scale gathering of items, the selling of game gold online for real money is the worst thing. I don't know, mentioning sweat shops might be good too (although sweatshops workers are not bots of course, has sweatshops been mentioned in some other article already?). --Xasxas256 23:03, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

HAHAHAHA! I make the article, I notice it passes by without any attention. One edit and everybody's all over it :). Sorry about the improper economics, the bot report I made before I created the article kind of got to my head :P. I've done 3 reports so far... &mdash; Lunarbunny 00:18, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Could someone confirm this?
In all games I've ever played, bots never sell directly to players in-game. They farm areas that produce lots of vendor trash, sell to the vendor, and then eBay the gold. It seems far more likely to me that the "bots" this article refers to are simply players trying to sell their goods. I know that many bot programs can evaluate certain loot as valuable, and save it from the vendor. However, this loot is, to my understanding, generally given to a human to actually sell in town.

A link to a reference that any bot works this way would be appreciated. Otherwise, I'd like to edit this article to state that bots operate only to farm, not to sell items in $trade.

&mdash;Tanaric 22:52, 9 May 2006 (CDT)


 * It seems (maybe much) less common now, but I think there at least were trading bots. I'm not sure what you're asking for as a reference, since I doubt you'll find any evidence that's not anecdotal about any kind of bot.  The behaviors listed in the article might not individually be bot-like, but combined it'd be pretty odd.  To throw my personal observations in: the article mentions automatic attempts to open trade windows, but several months ago in the old tombs staging area, there'd always be one or two characters standing around storage that would trade with any character near them ONCE, plop in items, and say something.  If you made no response, they'd always wait the same delay and cancel the trade.  After a cancelled trade, they'd leave you alone.  Or, characters that would sell "seven gold axes/bows/whatevers," which were generally crappy items, as a lot for some fixed price.
 * In other MMOs, there's a pretty big gap between item costs (as in effort required to get an item). You might have to farm some mob a zillion times to get one drop.  On top of that, there's usually a big gap between item value (as in usefulness, not price).  But in GW, greens don't offer any particular advantage except maybe making it easier to find what you want.  Gold items, especially with the recent patch, very often have max upgrades and near max mods.  I would say these two things mean in GW the top items have perfect numbers but finding slightly worse numbers is common and, in the end, those slightly worse items are only a few percentage points less efficient at most.
 * I think in GW, the items that get farmed up that are less than great are worth more than in other games (at least, relatively). So it's worthwhile to sell those seven iffy golds when in another game something that's not a special drop of some sort is just trash.  --68.142.13.105 23:51, 9 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Interesting, but I've personally witnessed (fairly dumb) humans doing the same thing (in EQ with somewhat common crafting material drops that still sold well in stacks) with a couple macros set up for quick access. If somebody could link me to a bot program or a bot's source code that did this, I would be happy with the current state of the article. &mdash;Tanaric 23:56, 9 May 2006 (CDT)


 * My first point was that I think you're unlikely to find a binary or source for any GW bot. As opposed to people being dumb and not saying where they're farming because then ANet will find out!!@# someone using a bot has a real monetary interest in making sure no one else has it and that ANet doesn't know how it works or even exists.  --68.142.13.105 00:04, 10 May 2006 (CDT)

Wording of why bots are harmful
Quote from the article: "Bots are harmful mainly because they make the large-scale gathering of items simple, fast, and easy. This in turn leads to flooding of the market, causing price decreases. Bot use is greatly frowned upon by regular players."

Could it be that bots are instead harmful because they make the large-scale gathering of extreme amounts of money simple, fast, and easy, in turn leading to flooding of the market with cash, causing inflation instead of deflation? Noob4sure 15:36, 8 July 2006 (CDT)

Wiki bots
I think this article should talk about them, or at least have a link to the appropriate page, since they get talked about on the wiki. -- Gordon Ecker 19:25, 26 October 2006 (CDT)