Hi -
A brief introduction about me:
I have an 18 year relationship with MMORPG's and ARPG's. For those of you who are familiar with the franchise I led the largest PK clan in Diablo 2 hardcore (BMPK, sorry I had to plug the name for old-times sake). I was at the helm of the group which introduced TPPK, an extremely unfair script program which annihilated a target's character at the blink of an eye, destroying thousands of hours of game-play. I also wrote some of the first guides for "botting" in Diablo 2 hardcore which was widely distributed through a Diablo2-dedicated hacking, scripting, and botting site.
In short - I have a good amount of experience in exploiting video games. The good news is that those days are behind me and that's not the reason I joined Entropia.
You're probably asking, "Great why are you here then?"
I just wanted to pop in and let you know that I think Calypso is losing a lot of money to Chinese gold farmers, botters, or exploiters in the Calypso Gateway new player questing area. I've been playing Entropia for about 3-4 days and I just did the Caly Gateway new player tutorial for the first time today (I started on Ark).
While I was doing these missions I found that there were a LOT of new players wearing the yellow jumpsuits who were all "Freelancers" and didn't belong to a Soc who knew exactly where to go, the fastest routes to get there, and were all non-responsive to inquiries or questions.
Usually, players who are new to the game will actively chat with other people. Not this time though. I was thoroughly ignored while these other avatars went through their tasks with impressive expedience. There were many times that I would be lost, or I wasn't exactly sure what to do with one of the training missions and I would just wait for someone in a full-yellow costume and a *Freelancer* tag to drive by and all I had to do was follow them until I got to the next checkpoint in the mission. All-in-all while I went through the Calypso Gateway missions I saw probably about 18-24 other players who fit this description exactly, and all were playing through the tutorial extremely quickly and they all knew the routes necessary to get from one place to another very quickly. I mean VERY quickly. These players all had little or no problem zipping through trees, around rocks, around lakes, and through streams at full speed in their roadsters while on a near-beeline for the next objective's target. They rarely hit anything or messed up when driving. From what I understand Entropia has a fairly small player base and they attract anywhere from 80-150 new players a week. I highly doubt that 1/6th of the new players were all playing at the same time at 9am on a Friday in Shanghai (Im an expat who lives in China).
To sum things up: I have experience botting and scripting for video games in the past. I think that Entropia is being victimized by botters or Chinese farmers for the 3-4 peds that can be gained in TT value when completing the Calypso training missions. Everyone I met in these missions filled the same description: non-responsive, full yellow suit, *Freelancer*, who knew exactly where to go in the fastest way possible.
For those who think that 3-4 peds isn't worth botting for, or it isn't worth spending a day doing.... it is perfectly normal for some people who live in the northern parts of China to think that $1.60/day is a "good" salary. It's about what a rural-town prostitute would make in a day. I think that it would be easy for someone to be running the training mission 8-10 times a day at the speed that they were doing it, so $3-4 USD per person per day.
My intention for making this post is not to spread information about a bug or an attempt to cause harm to MA/EU in any way; but to protect my own investment. I have deposited a decent sum of money into this game already (a little more than $1,000 USD) and I am interested in playing a game like this for the long-haul. I wanted to bring my observations to the attention of MA/EU Developers and Security staff and I don't really know how to do so other than these forums.
I'm not really sure if this is the right place to post this, or if these forums are controlled by MA or by another private party. If this is the wrong place or if it contains information that admins feel shouldn't be spread, please delete or redirect this post to the appropriate area.
Thank you.
Dio
Edit -
I am begining to understand that some EU players are not the same as traditional MMORPG players. So I've compiled a few links that may help you learn about the gold farming industry and how it may be effecting EU:
http://hi.baidu.com/yopmuwmyxcgmnye/item/bab1710417f86512cc34eac4
http://www.edge-online.com/news/feature-exposes-gold-farming/
Pictures of a Chinese Gold Farm for Diablo 3:
http://imgur.com/a/BlU1H
A brief introduction about me:
I have an 18 year relationship with MMORPG's and ARPG's. For those of you who are familiar with the franchise I led the largest PK clan in Diablo 2 hardcore (BMPK, sorry I had to plug the name for old-times sake). I was at the helm of the group which introduced TPPK, an extremely unfair script program which annihilated a target's character at the blink of an eye, destroying thousands of hours of game-play. I also wrote some of the first guides for "botting" in Diablo 2 hardcore which was widely distributed through a Diablo2-dedicated hacking, scripting, and botting site.
In short - I have a good amount of experience in exploiting video games. The good news is that those days are behind me and that's not the reason I joined Entropia.
You're probably asking, "Great why are you here then?"
I just wanted to pop in and let you know that I think Calypso is losing a lot of money to Chinese gold farmers, botters, or exploiters in the Calypso Gateway new player questing area. I've been playing Entropia for about 3-4 days and I just did the Caly Gateway new player tutorial for the first time today (I started on Ark).
While I was doing these missions I found that there were a LOT of new players wearing the yellow jumpsuits who were all "Freelancers" and didn't belong to a Soc who knew exactly where to go, the fastest routes to get there, and were all non-responsive to inquiries or questions.
Usually, players who are new to the game will actively chat with other people. Not this time though. I was thoroughly ignored while these other avatars went through their tasks with impressive expedience. There were many times that I would be lost, or I wasn't exactly sure what to do with one of the training missions and I would just wait for someone in a full-yellow costume and a *Freelancer* tag to drive by and all I had to do was follow them until I got to the next checkpoint in the mission. All-in-all while I went through the Calypso Gateway missions I saw probably about 18-24 other players who fit this description exactly, and all were playing through the tutorial extremely quickly and they all knew the routes necessary to get from one place to another very quickly. I mean VERY quickly. These players all had little or no problem zipping through trees, around rocks, around lakes, and through streams at full speed in their roadsters while on a near-beeline for the next objective's target. They rarely hit anything or messed up when driving. From what I understand Entropia has a fairly small player base and they attract anywhere from 80-150 new players a week. I highly doubt that 1/6th of the new players were all playing at the same time at 9am on a Friday in Shanghai (Im an expat who lives in China).
To sum things up: I have experience botting and scripting for video games in the past. I think that Entropia is being victimized by botters or Chinese farmers for the 3-4 peds that can be gained in TT value when completing the Calypso training missions. Everyone I met in these missions filled the same description: non-responsive, full yellow suit, *Freelancer*, who knew exactly where to go in the fastest way possible.
For those who think that 3-4 peds isn't worth botting for, or it isn't worth spending a day doing.... it is perfectly normal for some people who live in the northern parts of China to think that $1.60/day is a "good" salary. It's about what a rural-town prostitute would make in a day. I think that it would be easy for someone to be running the training mission 8-10 times a day at the speed that they were doing it, so $3-4 USD per person per day.
My intention for making this post is not to spread information about a bug or an attempt to cause harm to MA/EU in any way; but to protect my own investment. I have deposited a decent sum of money into this game already (a little more than $1,000 USD) and I am interested in playing a game like this for the long-haul. I wanted to bring my observations to the attention of MA/EU Developers and Security staff and I don't really know how to do so other than these forums.
I'm not really sure if this is the right place to post this, or if these forums are controlled by MA or by another private party. If this is the wrong place or if it contains information that admins feel shouldn't be spread, please delete or redirect this post to the appropriate area.
Thank you.
Dio
Edit -
I am begining to understand that some EU players are not the same as traditional MMORPG players. So I've compiled a few links that may help you learn about the gold farming industry and how it may be effecting EU:
http://hi.baidu.com/yopmuwmyxcgmnye/item/bab1710417f86512cc34eac4
http://www.edge-online.com/news/feature-exposes-gold-farming/
Pictures of a Chinese Gold Farm for Diablo 3:
http://imgur.com/a/BlU1H
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