Ferial
Old Alpha
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2012
- Posts
- 785
- Location
- Sweden
- Avatar Name
- Chris Ferial Book
MA doesnt have a problem with bots, they generate income. They could never stop botting, its impossible with the software we have.
MA does have a problem with bots, and they know it. Bots generate income, short term. But they also inevitably reduce the income long term. Whether or not the short term increases outweigh the long term decreases remains to be seen. I am under the impression that the bot-supporting features were implemented for a specific reason (F-key, removal of the explicit anti-automation from TOU). I think that that reason has since long played out its role and what we are seeing now in the community (as botting is getting more and more acceptable in the community) is an increase in understanding of the long term implications of this.
MA could likely detect and flag a majority of simple bots with relative ease. It is very easy to tell a simple "macro bot" from a real player, both visually and programmatically. Whether or not they want to, at this point in time, is a completely different story.
While a bit of a stretch, one could think of this "Item rain" as a potential beginning for the pushback on botting. From MAs point of view, outright disallowing automated gameplay and enforcing it would be financial suicide (short term). Not disallowing it would likely be financial suicide long term. The solution? Give a lot more people the ability to turn over a lot more PED and then disallow automated gameplay and start enforcing. The positives might outweigh the negatives, on a decently long time frame.