… As long as your not a bot.
I don’t know where people get this idea that bots were ever a good idea in a video game, your telling a program to play a game for you, instead of playing the game yourself. Heaven forbid you play and have fun yourself, you’d rather delegate it to something that has no concept of emotion, empathy, or humanity. The point of a video game is to “PLAY” it. Yourself.
I’m a broke warrior with mining and blacksmithing, a terrible combination, I know, shame on me for trying to support my own business. But I want to make the pretty metals protect me and kill things in the game. Yet I can hardly find any materials out there to level up my blacksmithing and do things with it to make me money. And the Auction house isn’t any better when so many posts are overpriced and disjointed from realistic expectations to obtain.
- Low Flying speed because BROKE (why do we only start with 60% flight speed when our fast ground mounts are at 100% speed?)
- Bots…
- Low node population
- Low node spawn time
- Low material gain per Node
- Overpriced Auction House posts that make you think the tariffs made it there somehow
- Just some nobody that has a life and a job outside of this game and doesn’t have the skills nor the inclination to start his own bot as that would defeat the purpose of playing the game if you’re not playing it.
- Also because of said job and life, I can’t quite commit as much time to the game
- Unfun to go mining when there is nothing there to get
I’m sure I could list more things here, but I think the idea is clear that something needs to be done to address these issues, drive the prices of the raw materials on the AH down, get more PEOPLE into the business. I don’t know how it is doing herbalism, but Mining sure isn’t fun. And yes, I know its a competition thing, we’re all out there getting these resources and competing for them, and I’m not saying competition should cease, but you can’t compete with a bot. They’ve already gone past the finish line because humans need breaks and can’t always get to it quick enough. We’re not perfect.
Here are some solutions that I can think of to help address the problems:
- Increase mining node population (IE put more nodes into the map)
- Increase node spawning rates between a node being gobbled up and when it returns
- Increase layer count, and also give a better idea of what layer your on
- Find a solution to bots running the games economy, like timing them out if they play longer then x time that a normal human shouldn’t be able to do, code something into the game that can try to detect bots and kick them out ( I’m sure this is already being worked on since this as been an issue since 2004, but preventing bots from ever entering in the first place will do better then detecting and banning them days, weeks, or months afterwards when the damage is already done )
- Increase per node resources gained
Q & A:
“What about the Economy for the minerals?” Don’t care. It can crash. Things are way too expensive as it is across the board. The HUMANS that play it will help the economy recover, its happened before and it likely needs a bit of a reset anyway.
“What makes you think that you will get anywhere trying to get rid of the bots?” Its a HOPE that a GAME made for PLAYERS can be PLAYED by the HUMANS that want it.
“Why just mining? Why not tackle other professions? What about Herbalism or skinning?” I don’t know how herbalism is doing in this sense. That’s not my area, I’m not going to tell them what to do and how to do things, I’m sure bots are in that category too, but if we get rid of bots in general, then that should ease things, but I won’t comment on it. Skinning is kill creatures, skin them if they are possible. Mages can mass kill things and skin a lot of things. But that feels more earned and hyper spawns exist in parts.
“Why not just use other professions to make your money and then buy the materials?” Do you remember when I said I was BROKE? Even with the other characters that I have raising their levels and skills, I’m not at the point of making decent money. I still don’t have fast flying on my warrior. It takes time and resources, and I hardly have either. And that dodges the point of this post, the problem is automation in a game meant to be played by players and handled by players, not bots or people too lazy to play the game themselves. ( How does this even make sense? If you don’t want to play, don’t even touch the game. )
“Play the auction house then, loser.” Nope. Takes money to make money as they say, and there are a number of things on the auction house that shouldn’t even be there, like trade goods that you can buy from the vendor selling in the AH for triple or more? That’s just dumb.
“Why not switch professions to something more profitable? Obviously Blacksmithing is expensive to level up.” Yup. Your right. Blacksmithing is expensive to level up, and this is why. And I choose not to go into other professions on my warrior main because I’ve got plans with professions on other characters. Sure, warriors are not the best farmers, but I made him for raiding, and between everything else, I just want a chance to farm up some materials for my own blacksmithing and put that out there to make a little money. But I still need to get to that point to do it.
Suffice it to say, this rant is just about done. It’ll probably go unheard by Blizzard, and people will comment different things, whether for ill or good, I can put my complaints somewhere to get ignored, criticized, critiqued, laughed at, or even get some agreements with it and feel like a weight is lifted off my shoulders. But the main problem is lack of material from a system that is struggling to grip with the fact that bots have ruined the experience as part of the core gameplay is being automated, squeezed dry, and put under a choak hold so the bot mafia can keep it all to themselves. Please just accept that this is a complaint from a guy with a life and a job that just wants to play the game that I can access all of the areas of content in it with REASONABLE competition and difficulty. I play it to test my skills, not my patience. I am not good at it, but I’m trying.
Thank you for reading my rant.
