FYI: Gateway if unchanged presents possible problem with Gold Farmers!

[mrproper]

Again, this is at most 60 cents an hour when executed perfectly. Why would you do such a complex procedure requiring hundreds of avatars, when you can just use a few and sweat like mad for way over 60 cents an hour.

As cheap as electricity could be, remember that EU requires a rather expensive video card. And that there are already better money grinding alternatives in the game. And that you can make more money with a computer doing any other activity on the web, besides a 30 cents Entropia enrollment.

Sure it could be done, but seriously, MindArk only spends 0.3$ on every new potential client? Are these 1.5$/hour clients really worth so little?

 

[aridash]

If this is done with a third world country family it could be 12 people working on it with plenty of time......or could be an actual business set up to do it with people doing one step and handing off the account for the next step. All done 24 hours a day.
[...]

Mac address and IP adress can be changed. Mac's with software that clones and IP with a router.

poor third world families do not have electricity, network connection and PCs capable of running cryengine, let alone banks of them. the Chinese who do MMO gold farming are not third world peasants, and $0.6 /hr is not going to interest them. they probably live better than someone in an inner city project or trailer park. (i saw a program on one group, they had a damn masseuse see them in their break time, in offices that looked as nice as any in London).

as for this IP thing, you can change that but when the network recognises the abuse it can just block an ISP range... then the next, or the town/city, whatever. its really simple to detect and act upon. go through a proxy? very obvious, probably banned quicker. and as pointed out, the registration is not fully automated, with apparently a manual check involved.

you are over thinking this, its quite apparent from the reworked values of items and fact you get so little ammo and need to use nearly all to acheive the missions, this scenario has already been considered by MA.

 

[ranpha]

poor third world families do not have electricity, network connection and PCs capable of running cryengine, let alone banks of them. the Chinese who do MMO gold farming are not third world peasants, and $0.6 /hr is not going to interest them. they probably live better than someone in an inner city project or trailer park. (i saw a program on one group, they had a damn masseuse see them in their break time, in offices that looked as nice as any in London).

.

Chinees have like 3 billion ppl. Just 10.000 or so work in those damn nice offices and are considered rich. The other 2.9 billion are beneath the poor border. So 2.9 billion possible sweat farmers. But indeed cryengine does require some PV power to play but a simple netbook with a ION chipset is enough. You 350 eruo here but in china itś probaly a knock off for 100 euro.
But there is proably another problem.CHina goverment proably blocked EU already same as WoW.

It aint that difficult to gold famer but MindArk aint idiots and they monitoir it. Changing mac address or ip addres wll make you run out once and changing an ISP ip adress isnt that easy as you think. And believe MA already has country in complete ban. Romania is/was banned once forthose reasons alone.

All in all ... you need 1k ped to cash out with a IBAN bank account (trackable etc). Ma monitoirs your ava because you dont depo,not activy (just stand to collect the items) and tt only stuff. .. Hmmmm dont think they catch you then ? Thats why the first depo takes so long to veriy stuff.

 

[Ludvig|MindArk]

Chinees have like 3 billion ppl. Just 10.000 or so work in those damn nice offices and are considered rich. The other 2.9 billion are beneath the poor border. So 2.9 billion possible sweat farmers.

China is expected to maaaybe reach 1,4 billion people this year

(Was actually in the newspaper this morning)

 

[Spawn]

Ok it's not as profitable as sweating, But you do get a free gun and free mining gear.
Something which is quite a lot harder to achieve using sweating. Maybe these free avatars will find a market to sell eucalyptio rifles and the mining gear at camp swamp. If the supply is unlimited then the ppl at camp swamp will have guns to shoot for a really low price forever.

Why would you buy an opalo at the tt, if you can have 200 eucalyptio's for free?
Big teams of 15 noobs all with eucalyptio's hunting combibo, could mean something for the economy
rookie ammo could be traded for sweat.

A free trade market would emerge at camp swamp, where sweat would be the preferred currency. Unlimited mining gear, weapons which are traded for sweat. Why would you ever deposit?? Just create multiple avatars and bring the stuff to camp swamp.

This is not about the money, it is about actually playing entropia for free and keeping it that way really easy.

 

[-Archangel-]

This is not about the money, it is about actually playing entropia for free and keeping it that way really easy.

It's not free nor easy
Sure a random noob could create 10 -20 accounts and transfer the results to his avatar in order to get a better felling of the game without having to deposit or gather sweat
But in the long run some of this newcommers will deposit so MA will gain from them, and none will gain enough to withdraw due to this activity

(assuming MA is doing things right and have warning procedures to lock offenders that abuse the system)

You can play entropia for free
MA advertises that you can play for free
You can sweat gather for free for an unlimited period of time, something that I could not.

You can not create enough accounts to make the exploitation of the gateway worth it without sending alarm signs to MA

MA knows how many accounts are created and where from (IP range, and Haxtor said something related to the computer, probably the MAC)

So playing for free is not an issue to MA
There are dozens of games available today with more interest to gold farmers with higher profit per hour and less computer requirements
So no professional gold farmer is going to do through the gateway

People are and have been milking the economy way before I've joined 6 years ago

through reselling
and they make much more than 10 PED profit per hour of game play



Not free because it requires time and a fairly nice computer.
Account creation of a believable avatar name will probably cost them about 5 minutes of computer time
(I acccept that a bot can do the job
of creating the email,
chaging the IP,
MAC, whatever,
requiring MA aproval,
check the email to see if it got it
create the avatar process

but if you don't have a nice computer
the mission will take much longer just to gather the rewards because of the time it requires to load the NPC, moving the avatar even by a human will require the extra 10 minutes in an updated computer

All that to gain less than 1 USD per hour

Sure you can get people work for less than that
but what people ?
somebody who was enough knowledge to use a computer to that degree of commitement usually will require much better payment (yes 2 USD is much better payment for example)
and in no way will be able to finance the activity

somebody else will have to do the initial investment

and for what ?

the chances of profit are so slim

 

[billairboy]

I think MA have good control of the "farming issue" so it will be no issue at all. In the end, they are the ones who gives away the money.

 

[Pirx Danford]

when you can just use a few and sweat like mad for way over 60 cents an hour

Well but selling sweat takes time and also the demand is limited.

Lets assume a worst case scenario:
Given through automation someone can create 200 avatars the hour and extract the money, also assume it would be 50 pec extracted and as manual steps are involved its only done 10 hours the day.
That are 100$ damage a day by one gold farmer, assume that 1000 gold farmers are active and the damage to MA would be 100K US $ each day.

Given that MA closely monitors withdrawing activity I would suggest to not buy ped from anyone you don't trust 100% ingame (if you do such at all)!
Because I am pretty sure MA will not pay out any accounts that earn their ped this way.

 

[psychnosiz]

From a previous exploit-drama:

It may be that the knowledge of such exploits encourages more people to play while not actually resulting in additional "winners".

Besides, the difference between scammers and eu players is that actually make money, their logic is completely different.

 

[Fredy Olafson]

If this is done with a third world country family it could be 12 people working on it with plenty of time......or could be an actual business set up to do it with people doing one step and handing off the account for the next step. All done 24 hours a day.
...............................................................................................

all PC systems that require to play CryEngine 2 cost at least 400-500 $ each . to put at work the hungry family from third world country of 12 members you need at least 5 -6 PC and they work in shifts to gain 0.6 $ an hour , not to say 5-6 PC with a power supply each 400+ W is quite cheap on electric bill and not to forget some decent internet connection able to sustain data transmition for at least 5 -6 PCs
so they need 2000 + US $ invested in computers , so they can earn 14.4 $ in 24 hours and feed 12 people at least .
the main question is how could they raise 2000+ $ if they are so poor ? they worked for less than 0.6 $ an hour and raised 2000 +$ and now they upgraded to farming in Entropia for 0.6$ an hour ?
if this was possible would have been done already on VU 9 when 1k sweat was +5 ped , and trading in Twin would bring more than that in an hour, in the VUs before CryEngine 2 when a PC system would have been cheaper .

 

[mrproper]

Lets assume a worst case scenario:
Given through automation someone can create 200 avatars the hour and extract the money, also assume it would be 50 pec extracted and as manual steps are involved its only done 10 hours the day.
That are 100$ damage a day by one gold farmer, assume that 1000 gold farmers are active and the damage to MA would be 100K US $ each day.

Have you tried the missions? Do you think one person can operate two consoles at the same time and finish in less than 15 minutes?

Also, sweating can be run in parallel, and only requires a simple positioning and autoclicking action. Selling is a non-issue, the sweat does have the farmed value.

I could be wrong, but last time I tested sweating you could make 5-6 peds an hour?

 

[Simon God]

I think we are overlooking the fact how cheap MA/FPC is, to actually let something like this happend.

Don't know what the quote is again but something like "a bug that costs MA money gets fixed in a day, bugs that costs the players money..."

something like that

 

[mrproper]

I think we are overlooking the fact how cheap MA/FPC is

You mean investing at most 0.3$ for each new player?

 

[Simon God]

You mean investing at most 0.3$ for each new player?

Well that's one of the things. But things like in game returns, cost of playing etc.

 

[Pirx Danford]

Have you tried the missions? Do you think one person can operate two consoles at the same time and finish in less than 15 minutes?

Yes and as quest givers and dialogues remain the same its easy to fully automate it.
I expect that if only the accepting of quests and clicking through all dialogues is done its pretty easy to do this, you don't need to actually do any missions to get a bit of tt-able things, well okay maybe its only 25 pec tt value then.

Thing is - sweat is a no risk matter for MA because even if farmers would sweat, the value still comes from players buying the sweat.
But in this case MA is handing out free value and that is dangerous for them

 

[Talania]

Seen several people talk about how you need expensive computers to run EU.

The farmers that do things like this and use a website to sell the credits they get from games use stolen credit card info to get what they need.

As for needing an expensive computer, I have a computer I built in 2004 that runs EU in safe mode just fine.

 

[Simon God]

Seen several people talk about how you need expensive computers to run EU.

The farmers that do things like this and use a website to sell the credits they get from games use stolen credit card info to get what they need.

As for needing an expensive computer, I have a computer I built in 2004 that runs EU in safe mode just fine.

I think your picture that all gold farmers are some kind of scammers, is wrong. I knew several real gold farmers in wow when i used to play that. And most of them are very normal people.

 

[Stave]

I think your picture that all gold farmers are some kind of scammers, is wrong. I knew several real gold farmers in wow when i used to play that. And most of them are very normal people.

isnt gold farming a form of scamming?

 

[mrproper]

isnt gold farming a form of scamming?

No, it's a form of digital farming.

Gold farmer keeps grinding boring stuff, collects gold, he does nothing wrong.
Gold farmer exchanges his gold with another player, in exchange for no virtual item of the same value.
Gold farmer receives real money from another player, at real exchange rate.

It's a win-win situation, where is the scam?

 

[Stave]

It's a win-win situation, where is the scam?

exploiting a game to get cash?

 

[Simon God]

isnt gold farming a form of scamming?

I guess since gold farming isn't really allowed by blizzard in wow, it can be called scamming or breach of TOS.
Anyways my definition of a scam is where you take something from someone by lying or decieving the mark.

 

[mrproper]

exploiting a game to get cash?

Ok. I bite. Where does the cash come from?

 

[Oleg]

Seen several people talk about how you need expensive computers to run EU.

The farmers that do things like this and use a website to sell the credits they get from games use stolen credit card info to get what they need.

As for needing an expensive computer, I have a computer I built in 2004 that runs EU in safe mode just fine.

If they can get anything they need with a stolen credit card, why on earth would they waste time making 3p an hour clicking on NPCs?

 

[aridash]

isnt gold farming a form of scamming?

scamming implies one party is being decieved and not getting what they think or paying more than they should. gold farming per se is therefore not a scam as both parties know what they are getting. using the selling of game items/cash to obtain Credit Cards for illegal use, that is a scam.

 

[kingjehu]

Gold farming requires bot control of the avatar(s)... you can't bot control 200 avatars to run around that confusing map, click the right NPC, then teleport to PA, then TT the ammo, then trade it to a single avatar.

Gold Farming really only works in a situation where loot can be collected through botting, not through NPC interactions.

Its a non-issue.

MY



JEHU

 

[Talania]

If they can get anything they need with a stolen credit card, why on earth would they waste time making 3p an hour clicking on NPCs?

To get your credit card info.....they can't just keep using the same cards forever.

 

[Oleg]

To get your credit card info.....they can't just keep using the same cards forever.

You should make up your mind what it is that you're worried about

 

[JohnCapital]

Talania here's the deal. You have brought forth two major issues:

1. Farming Gateway Island's freebies at a pace fast enough to profit, even if very little.
2. Farming Gateway Island's freebies to sell the ped via websites to gain credit card numbers.

RE: #1
You can run through the barman, scientist, mining, crafting and hunting NPCs to grab the following without actually running any of the missions:

1. Solomate - 0.09
2. 2k ammo - 0.20
3. 5 lyst ingot - 0.15
4. 5 oil - 0.10
5. BP - 0.02
6. Book - 0.02
7. Orefinder - 0.06
8. Excavator - 0.01
9. Bombs - 0.50
10. 3k ammo - 0.30
11. Refiner - 0.01

Total = 1.46 ped
Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

The minimum you can withdraw is 1,000 ped, so they would need 685 Gateway bots to run through there.

So, for ~$95 (1% withdrawal fee plus normal bank fees, assuming they aren't in Sweden) they have to run approximately 685 bots x 5 minutes = 3,425 minutes or just over 58 hours worth of man/bot-hours. (yes, over 2 full 24-hour days worth of activity.) And that doesn't count processing time to create the new accounts, change IPs, email addresses, etc.

I'm pretty sure that high level of activity on Gateway island would catch someone's attention.

So farming Gateway for withdraw money is not gonna happen.


As for issue #2:
Unlike other games, where to get more "ingame currency" you need to perform actions in the game (I.E. actually play) this is not the case here. We deposit money directly into MA and get our peds direct. Those looking for "discounted peds" on shady sites is a VERY thin market.

However, the "selling peds on websites" is already occurring, without Gateway at all. They (the farmers/scammers you mention) offer peds at 25-50% discounts claiming various BS reasons. ("I want my money quick and don't want to wait to withdraw. Blah blah") IF anyone takes them up on it, they need to make it look semi-legit, so they can have a clean CC number. So they deposit enough to cover the "purchase" the victim made on their website. (deposit using a stolen CC of course)

And I happen to know MA tracks down deposits w/ stolen cards v-e-r-y carefully and lock/ban the avas, and those involved in any transfers very quickly. (Had a close friend get caught being an unwitting mule, or middle man, in one transaction. He was temp-locked, went through the whole "send your ID" thing. The other avas were banned and the peds were removed.)

In short, Gateway has zero effect on the method of CC scams involving MA.


For both cases, this is a non-issue.

 

[LeWolf86]

Well if the red flag isn't noticed or acted on quick enough.... If they could get $100 every 7 days by abusing gateway.... thats $400 a month.... $400 is shit loads of cash in many asian countries where living standards are low.... yet access to computers and such is easy....

Like I said.... farmers in Asia live off like $120 a year... per family member.... Banker (educated) in Phnom Pehn had job ad like I think $250-$300/month....

 

[Igorl]

MA wouldnt care to check every single bot - but there is always a risk of not getting the money.

I mean - they check manually before paying out. DO you really think they will cash out someone who traded 200 avatars in 2 days only receiving the same amount of money everytime?

Regards

I.