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Role Playing (Games)

Confessions of an Ultima Online Gold Farmer 46

Posted by Zonk from the grumble-grumble dept.
petbath writes "A long time UO player who is moving on makes some interesting confessions on how he managed to earn over 100k in real world money by setting up a bot farm." Commentary available on Terra Nova. From the post: " Between the pressures of my competition, the required maintenance work and the impending doom of on-line game markets, I decided to retire my bot farm in favor of other possibilities that required less work to maintain. Last May I sold off the last of my game assets and today I have posted my bot army for sale on Ebay. I don't want to part with these beasts of burden, but I do have to close this final chapter in the gold farming adventure."
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Confessions of an Ultima Online Gold Farmer More

Confessions of an Ultima Online Gold Farmer

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  • heheh.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:43AM (#11481256) Homepage Journal
    ..and all part of the GAME, in my opinion.

    you'll never be able to stop people from doing this kind of things.. so embracing "anything goes" attitude could be a good thing. like, a REAL matrix online where if you could you would be allowed to code your own vampires and walk through the system as something like the keymaker(so that you wouldn't lose your accounts or be prosecuted if you were caught but the moderators, 'agents', would try to stop you in the system - unless of course you became so powerful within it that they'd stay away from you if you maintained a bit of stealthiness)..

    what's "magic" anyways if not bending the world, *breaking* the rules. he's bots were probably more like real zombies than anything else in the game. invaded by bodysnatchers! what a marvelous spin it could be on the game, conspiracies and blackmarket gold.

    • Re:heheh.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:53AM (#11481396) Homepage
      the problem is, the game quickly ceases to become fun for all but 5 or 6 players trained in computer programming. the other hundreds of thousands of players end up having a crappy time. the very concept of "game" is based on the idea of rules. the rules are there to keep the thing fun. without them, the magic drains out of it rather quickly.

      • Re:heheh.. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )
        ah but that's part of the gamemakers challange, to seal the holes, to not accept false information from the client - to not send information it doesn't need - to make the gameplay hard to script inputs for.

        and really.. if it's suppsoed to simulate virtual britain then there really isn't 5 or more __POWERFUL__ people in the whole country anyways - botmaster would be a lich lord, no? getting smacked by zombies sucks, sure, but it's supposed to suck.

        the game should be intresting without owning a castle... it

        • Re:heheh.. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:47PM (#11482154) Homepage
          you're still missing the point, which is to maximize the fun for the most number of people. a tiny minority breaking the game's mechanics and economy comes at the cost of the fun of hundreds of thouands of others. that's not a game, that's real life. people play games to get away from that kind of frustration.
          • then maybe they should play only with friends and not with strangers? or police those 'breaking' their laws, gods trying to catch people trying to be gods themselfs? my point still stands that everything should go in the virtual world created purely for fun, that they shouldn't ban players from spicing it up and definetly should not sue them. and that it would be much more fascinating IF there was no in-coded magic tricks.. that you had to really learn the worlds holes and jump off from a table and miss the

      • Re:heheh.. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        AFAIK, in most of these online games you are playing _with_ other people. There are cultural and social norms. So it's not a case of "the game engine lets me do it so its fine" - that's fine if you are playing alone, or if everyone agrees that's the rules to play by.

        If you break the "norms/cultural rules" too much, you might end up playing alone.

        It's not that much fun playing _alone_ even if you've worked out how manipulate the system to make yourself "so powerful".

        Of course in the commercial games, if a

    • Re:heheh.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by madstork2000 ( 143169 ) *
      I keep trying to sell my brother and his gamer friends on a survival of the fittess concept game were you try simply to survive. The concepts of building teams and armies, and allowing custom weapons via an API and generally unlimited scripting / building. Basically an anything goes world , maybe not like the Matrix (at first), more like the online world in Snow Crash.

      A virtual world were geeks ruled.... And the real-life popular crowd was more-or-less just wannabee posers using off-the-self avatars.

      It w

  • This is more of an advertisement for the auction.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:52AM (#11481385)
    There are no confessions, other than "this takes too much time, I have too much money... buy my old hardware"....
    • Totally.

      Not only that, but this guy had a whole computer for each UO instance? What a moron.

      He could have had one decent computer with a lot of memory running linux and 10 instances of VMware.

      Also, the top has some sort of disclaimer like, 'don't try any of these exploits at home', and then not a single exploit is mentioned.

      I was kicked in late 1999 from UO for duping diamonds. I had so much money and so much wealth, I was completely bored, so I really didn't mind the kicking.

      The way I did it was to

  • seems to me... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rogabean ( 741411 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:55AM (#11481418)
    The UO gold rush is dead. You can not possibly make this kind of money any longer. The article even states that the way he did it doesn't work anymore.

    So what does this look like to me? It looks like the scammer is trying to get his last "piece of the pie"

    to use a tired meme...

    1. scam UO players into buying gold for real money
    2. quit that and put up computers used on ebay
    3. post slashdot article to draw attention to auctions
    4. ????
    5. profit!

    Just looks like another scamming scamming to me.

    • Scamming? Please. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Rhys ( 96510 )
      He's offering them virtual gold for real gold and they're taking him up on the offer. There's no possible way to call this scamming as long as he's delivering the product.

      You may not like it. You may consider it exploiting or breaking the ToS. Go for it, I'm a bit peeved at people in AC that'd been doing that (a lot of duping going on there too the devs and MS didn't have the balls to ban), but mainly because when I eventually quit, I couldn't ebay my house/account.

  • The new motif: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:55AM (#11481420)
    This should be compared to the hordes of Chinese sweatshop gold farmers which, in the opinion of many, ruined Lineage 2, and which are setting up shop in WoW.

    According to WoW players who managed to find a farmer who spoke English (most don't, but will happily swear at you in Chinese if you hamper their gold farming), they run a pretty tight racket. Several people share one account (presumably to save on monthly fees, though they may be using stolen CC's anyway), leading to one character - generally the most apt race/class for farming whatever the current cash cow is, but usually a human paladin - being played 24/7. In some cases, the character is named the same across multiple servers (such as "Loly").

    The farmers hand over all the cash and items they obtain to a boss, who auctions the items in the in-game auction house and stockpiles the cash. Using one of the various gold-for-money websites, they coordinate with their customers and hand out the purchased gold, often via in-game mail. The farmers must meet a gold quota each day in order to get paid their cut, which is why they often resort to unfriendly play practices.

    Their weakness, however, is that they XP grinded to get to level 60, which means they haven't done any instance quests, so their gear is substandard. On PvP servers, many legit players have found that the farmers' PvP-fu is weak, in part due to the trans-Pacific lag, in part due to their gear, and in further part due to not having any experience in PvP combat.

    In any case, there are numerous complaints about the gold farmers on the official WoW forums, though there has been no word from Blizzard on any account actions taken against the gold farmers for ToU violations. Many are concerned that if Blizzard takes too long to act, the in-game economy will be irreparably damaged.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:06PM (#11481561)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Gold is absolutely not a big part of the endgame (as we know it right now, at least). Besides, this is not a server hack or artificially created wealth, somebody is still getting the actual items off of actual creeps.

        Personally I do think that those who violate the ToS shouldn't be surprised if or when their account is purged, but hey. I don't plan on breaking the ToS any time soon.
    • Yes sports fans this gets complex very quickly.

      First of all we have the purist gamers and, let's say, some casual gamers (apparently many) that support the activity of our subject. Of course we also have entrepreneurs, hackers, manual laborers, and outsourcing (if it can be called that anymore) and paranoia (I mean, now any farming party or group can be looked at askance). and godonlyknowswhat the publishers and their IT staff are up to.

      In any case the MMORPGxyz world is perhaps the most complex an

  • Such a tough issue (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brkello ( 642429 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:02PM (#11481518)
    Gold (or gil in case of ffxi) farming is such a huge problem for MMORPGs. I haven't played deeping in to other MMORPGs other than FFXI, but I know in that game it is a serious problem. If you are not familiar with the issues, the gil farmers infest nearly every part of the game. Certain monsters drop the really really good equipment. So people will camp them 24/7 and try to get the drop and then sell the items for insane prices that people somehow manage to pay for. Some will use bots that fish for them to make a profit that way. Some will just kill whipe out creatures in an are continuously to collect what they drop and sell.

    The real problem is how do you deal with the people who do this for money. Companies do a certain amount of policing, but it is difficult to determine what a legitimate transaction is and what a gil seller does. Any solution you come up with had its drawbacks as well. Like, say the uber gear isn't dropped by the tough monster, just some random monster in the area. Then these people would go and sweep the whole area ruining it for people that are trying to level. For this issue anyways, the only thing that anyone has come up with that makes sense is to admit that you can't stop people from going after the uber-items. The company just needs to make equipment that is slightly worse that sells for a reasonable price so that people who don't have x uber item isn't consider under equipped. It's sad really...it would be nice if people who sold gil didn't exist...MMORPG were meant to be a game and they are harming the fun for people who just want to play. But if there is profit to be made, there is always someone who puts that over their fellow man.
    • With my personal experience in FFXI - I'd have to agree with this. Anyone who plays FFXI knows about Leaping-boots farming. I really think its time the companies that make the games did something to level the field. Be it banning selling (and taking action)) or creating a system to encourage and regulate it - the simple fact is that it is ruining the experience for anyone whose trying to participate in the activities the Sellers are abusing - be it Fishing, Crafting, NM, or glitches (duping...)

    • Re:Such a tough issue (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
      I was thinking about discouraging camping through GM actions, disabling camped spawn points for a few weeks or occassionally spawning a really big monster instead that simply wipes out all the campers, perhaps have the monster not drop any items if it wasn't in play long enough, etc.
      • "spawning a really big monster instead that simply wipes out all the campers"

        I really like that idea... something roughly as strong as Bloodtear Baldurf that spawns randomly in place of spawns like Lizzie or Argus. Of course, something that powerful would wreak havok if it spawned in a place like Gustaberg (all those poor low-levels!) but maybe it could be set to automatically ignore anyone under level 12 (and viciously attack anyone over it :)

      • Well, it would discourage camping...but it would discourage legitimate campers too. It's really tough to think of something that damages gil sellers and not the good people. They could make everything Rare/Ex so you could only get one and not sell it, but a lot of the great items are low level items with really good stats. And people who are really crazy about gaining gil are able to buy that and make their uber character. It's so tough...I thought maybe having a sign up sheet, and if you are on the top
        • I meant discouraging ANY camping. Having a bunch of people sit around waiting for a monster to appear just so they can kill it doesn't make any sense in a roleplaying, gameplay or fun context. And in general I'd say monster drops should heavily depend on the time that monster is already in play and how many players it already killed (some legendary monster almost noone can defeat would therefore have a huge hoard and be some kind of jackpot if someone managed to bring it down).
          Perhaps demand that a unique m

  • Need Lawyers . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dausha ( 546002 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:27PM (#11481861) Homepage
    I hate to say this, but the online world needs lawyers. I read where a fellow poster commented that this is supposed to be human-human interraction with the accompanying mores; but that the game does little to discourage anti-social behavior.

    So, what you do is set up a jury system. You suspect somebody of botting, then charges are raised, assets are frozen, and a short trial is held--online. Found innocent, then perhaps retribution v. the original claimant. Guilty, then assets are stripped (perhaps redistributed to those in the court).

    The present system bans users. That should not be a big deal to a dedicated exploiter. They will just set up a new account. Put a sting on them via a court system, then there'll be a penalty paid.

    The problem is, you're reproducing the real world; with all the evil (lawyers) that accompany.

    • Re:Need Lawyers . . . (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lu Xun ( 615093 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:32PM (#11481949)
      2024. The downfall and destruction of every virtual world is traced to a single /. post from early 2005. The bounty is set at 500,000 NewDollars.
    • Great post. Much like saying we should factories without workers.

      Lawyers are an integral aspect of justice. If you're going to ask for courts, you have to realize that you're asking for fairness, which means both sides get a chance to have a professional advocate - even the bot-using farmer.

  • Oh, I misunderstood (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hambonewilkins ( 739531 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:41PM (#11482085)
    I thought the point of games was that they were an entertaining diversion to real life, not something that you would dedicate hours of your life as if they were a job.

    This doesn't sound so much like he was playing a game, but rather doing monotonous, brain-numbing programming in order to have the computer play the game for him. What's the point?

  • One of the things you have to realize is that MMORPGs are designed specifically to generate monthly subscriptions.

    They do this by limiting how fast players progress, by forcing you to do the same actions over and over again, and by introducing item scarcity. The game is only made fun enough so the greatest number of people maintain their monthly subscriptions.

    A great game would be a vast world, where you really only have to do something once or twice, and you are never waiting in line to camp a monster s

  • What about company moles, so to speak? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @06:18PM (#11486213)
    So if the farmers, or their "boss" is selling in-game gold for $$, then it's understadable that it's hard to determine what is a legit trade, and what is one of these "black-market" gold for $$ deals.

    However, what if the company went at it from the other end. Have an employee make a quick account somewhere, then use a little company money to buy some of this in-game gold on one of the trading sites. Then wait for the contact in-game by the gold courier, grab the name of that account, and ban it.

    That way, you'ld know it was one of these farming accounts, and you would have "stung" them, so to speak, so you have the evidence you need. Since it's not subject (yet, at least) to actual laws, they can ban it based on their ToU agreement, and that's that.

    Would they get them all? Of course not, however, these several people are all trying to spend all that time building up a pack-mule farmer character, and all are trying to meet a quota. So if that account is banned, they lose all that effort. They can make a new account, of course, but they will have to pay a new registration fee, (providing that you can deal with the stolen activation code issues) possibly have to use a different IP addy, and the company makes a bit of additional cash off them each time.

    This would lead to at least a reduction in the overall number of these things, as the sellers can never be sure they aren't selling to a "mole". If enough headway is made this way, it would also make this kind of thing much less profitable for them.

    Now, I'm sure there are problems with that scheme that I'm not seeing, so I'll just trust to the usual /. crowd to show me the error of my ways.

    -Mendo
  • I wonder if he did a low level format on those hard drives.....
  • ...that the bad lag and downtime is keeping the bot farmers off my server!
  • Since gold is one of the most generic items in game, It would be hard to track. However, If you could follow gold transfers from account to account, and set up a sting operation for gold, you could deduce which accounts were gold farmers. I would imagine that most of the gold farmers use a clean account to send gold in game, and not their stock. So you could see the gold trail tracing back to the storage accounts.

    The problem I see is to set up a sting op, you are more or less giving them money. However, if

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