This game is funny (just a few observations from this wipe)

[Super Tacoman]

The point of my post is that i was bored and wanted something to read from my arctic brethren.

"I've waffled back and forth on if botting should be allowed or not, but until a day comes when it is available for everyone I applaud every single time someone gets stripped or abyssed or deleted for pulling this crap."

Agreed. 

I think there is a huge problem with a multi/bot justification which i've read from a member of SoB forum posts.  Something to the effect of 'We started the wipe clean, but when our numbers dipped we started multi/botting'.  The problem with this is that by multiing/botting you increase your zoning power, helping you do zones more efficiently to potentially maintain equipment sets or items.  Also if you're multi/botting and pking thats just lame, plain and simple.

this last wipe i joined groups, i led groups.  i tanked and i healed.  i powerleveled newbies and gave them coins and showed them where to find tablets.  i also multied.  having played with and without multis i can tell you there is no comparison.  as you say they increase zoning power.  they also drastically decrease boredom.  i wont ever go back to playing this game with just 1 char.  if i dont play my friends dont play.  do you really want to stop me and other players like me from playing this game?  would the game really be better off without us?

[Aemon]

Also if you're multi/botting and pking thats just lame, plain and simple.

SoB were the most active pkillers and we had bots after a number of key players quit. But a lot of people get those two distinct things confused, the correlation between pk and bots is not 1.0 but closer to like 0.2, at least for SoB. With PoG a couple years ago, the correlation was much higher. PK was mostly done by Essovius and Veigar (a human) who helped us police our enemies' alts. The bots weren't ever used for pk unless it was against BiA and dele who also have bots and know what they're up against. Or if someone was just aggravating (summoning us), that might be another case. But I think many people have a misconception that there was some patrolling death squad of bots. That's far from true. Check the in-game pk command.

Yes you could say bots increase zoning power and help you dominate your playing time, I do not disagree with that. But at the tier we play at, our competition BiA and dele also employed bots, and in fact actively hunted us with bots. The bots of SoB never actively hunted Myth or Maza. I think Maza would probably even admit as much, Myth is less objective and a lot more whiney.

Arctic has been on a secular decline for over a decade, I think everyone recognizes that. Each time, the solution to bots has been to chop off the arm to save the body. No effort has ever been made to find a sustainable solution, all the while Arctic decays as there are fewer limbs to cut off and the playerbase withers away. I should just leave these threads alone and come back in a year when I only have Hoss and 2 mortal minions to debate because that's the path Arctic is currently on. It's scary but the only voice of reason in the forums these days seems to be Daniel.

[btown]

omg can you stop whining already?  the only voice of reason is another major botter? lmao.  FACT IS you aren't half what u think u are with ZERO bots!!  same with dele and all the other botters.  yea you guys still can control but without bots its a different ball game

[Jorquin]

i think you need to relax buddy

[btown]

what its true

[Bryton]

Umm we controlled the first 3 months of the wipe without bots.. Brandon you're retarded go back to your hole.

[Rezin]

If your trying to make yourself feel better about how much you pissed off the rest of the mud, and made it completely unenjoyable for yourself I hope its working, but the fact is, your clan DID hunt myth and maza as soon as you ran off any of your actual competition, when either clanned tried to get peace from you, they get directed for weeks to 3 different leaders within the same clan who make it next to impossible, and even if somehow they do get peace from some, you still don't get peace from your other goon squad of RGB that has been laming the mud up for a good 15 years now...and since SOB has left the mud, the # of people that have returned is 100% more beneficial to the game, instead of 1 player and 9 bots playing and keeping 75% of the people that want to play off, now theres 20-30 people playing and no bots, so your argument that in punishing your clan and causing them to leave made more people leave the mud...my response is good riddance, your presence did nothing but piss off everyone who wanted to run around and explore with there friends.  Sure its a pk mud, and if your group of people were really interested in clan battles and clan warfare, maybe instead of ambushing anyone who could have posed any type of threat thus taking out all of there main characters so they have an uphill battle trying to face your clan from that point on is a shitty time, not to mention even if only 1 or 2 of your players are online playing, you still field 10 man groups, forcing anyone that wants to face you into either botting or not playing, of course they could roll new characters and try to stay unknown, but at least 5 people I know that have tried to come back this wipe were killed before they reached level 10 by your 'essovius' and 'veigars' how does killing someone before they can even become a threat satisfy your desire to have active clan battling and a pk environment?

[Rezin]

Maybe if you hadn't of abused the power you had being able to field a 10 man group with 1 person controlling them all by killing every single person online, the mud wouldn't have complained so much and you wouldn't have been stripped of gear and punished, at times I can remember trying to ask your clan if I was being hunted or my friends were being hunted, only to receive the response, the entire mud should fear us right now, because you aren't trying to defend your clan, you aren't trying to have pk battles, you are bored and you are trying to kill anyone you can find anywhere, a lot of us have been playing this game for over a decade, act like you have matured with the game and use some common god damn sense, try to be a bit more conservative with your power trip, maybe don't be so arrogant as to say, just cause we are cheating that means everyone else is as well, so that makes it ok

[Cosmo]

Please keep all posts to 140 chars or less #thatisall

[btown]

I remember last wipe we were doing cyan and we tried to bot a shaman char to be our summoner and hoss caught us and shouted out we were botting.   that was pretty damn embarrassing to me and I felt like a scum cheater.  however you guys seem to feel justified and pride as if you were saving the game by keeping your bots active.  just shows the difference in POV. 

[Rezin]

exactly btown, they keep stating that they were doing it cuz the mud is dead and since they got punished there goes half the mud, but in reality, the reason the mud lost most of its people is because of the shitty way they played and treated other players, and since they have left the mud, theres just as many ppl playing if not more now that the scum element has been removed, how can you honestly think you were doing us a favor loading high level equipment for yourselfs and killing anyone who is opt anon or any name you don't recognize

[Jorquin]

i see brandon admitting he's a scummy botter

[Brafu]

I'm not sure how anyone can justify using bots/multi'ing by even suggesting that it helps the mud. When a clan bots in order to maintain the power they achieved with real people it only hurts the game and other players/clans. It really creates an imbalance and does anything but help the mud. Why? Because now the clan can log a 10 man virtually at will and doesn't need to worry about half the headaches other non-bot using clans do when they try to organize zoning (or pk). Getting 3 or 4 people together and on the same page is a hell of a lot easier than 10 who have the attention span of a gnat.

Not to mention those bots are using eq that should rightfully have been recycled into the eq ecosystem, or even not loaded for those chars in the first place.

If it was confined to a much smaller scale (such as a couple friends using a healer bot so they can have some fun zoning), then it wouldn't be such a big issue. But it's when clans use bots to give them an unfair edge over the competition that the real issues show up.

[DCPTY1986]

Regardless with and without bots we killed eveybody off the mud anyway.

- Dale (Chorillo)

[Joe]

Back in my day Cale would repeatedly damn myself and others for a week or more for telling noobs how to greet the constable of Solace. Now people are botting rampantly *smh*