(In my best medieval fantasy British accent) Hurry my friends for our time is short! I have a dire message that I must relay to you for without the passing of this knowledge we surely face imminent defeat. Sauron has a new legion of minions which are unlike any enemy we have ever seen before. These daemons and vile beasts know no fear and show no signs of slowing. I implore you to resist and fight their advances! Do not give in to the temptation you may have to lay down your sword and join them!
Okay, enough of that. Sadly it’s true though that Sauron has found himself a new ally in the gold sellers out there. Lord of the Rings Online has in the blink of an eye been taken over by a massive legion of gold advertisers and farmers. With the addition of Book 10 and Beryl Shards (the new SoJ/Currency) it has become more clear than ever just how many gold farmers and enemies we truly face. If you haven’t come across one of these rabid farmers or been accosted in tells (I get 8-10 an hour regularly) then count yourself lucky – you’re time is soon.
Wherever a higher level rare spawn or named mob is you will certainly find a group of 5-10 mindless drones roaming around. These farmers are not your usual cut and paste MMO gold farmer; these ones are dangerous. They will train mobs on you, muscle you out, and do anything in their power possible to cause you discomfort and ruin your game experience. I’m not exaggerating here either. I truly believe if you cross these farmers they add you to a ‘spam list’ and have you flooded with tells. The in-game tells and messages are gaining strength as well. It’s become unbearable lately to deal with the in-game mails and tells that interrupt your normal messages. And all this has happened within the past few days.
The Turbine and Codemaster boards are now the product of the lack of support that the players are receiving on this issue. So far we have seen no evidence of any Turbine support to stop the farmer’s actions. The players are taking to the boards to voice their concern and it’s become evident in this week’s LOTRO Weekly Forum Digest. It’s out of control and it needs to be looked into immediately. Show us you care Turbine!
Now I know this topic is very familiar to many of you. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop this completely nor would I expect that of anyone. The task is simply too daunting without backing from our legal systems. There is however action that can be taken to stop the assault on LOTRO. I believe strongly that much of their strength is being drawn from the easily obtained and farmed crafting materials. These are HIGHLY sought after and thus will always be worth something. Make them bind on acquire! Lower their drop rates! Do SOMETHING to discourage the camping/farming. Give us the utilities in-game to block messages containing certain phrases. UI Addons are not allowed (for good reason) but we need the ability to combat this spam.
I plan to follow this closely and look into more solutions to the situation LOTRO players are facing. Hopefully through a bit of creativity and diligence we can thwart this attempt by Sauron to attack our community.
Even though I don’t play LOTR, I really feel for the players in the game. Sadly, I think that gaming companies don’t really mind botters/farmers that much, because they are subscribers . . . and money is money. I guess they are just not too concerned about upholding their EULA and preserving the intergrity of their game.
I ran into this same botting/farming activity in Lineage 2 – where, I would say, a majority of the players were either botters, farmers . . or worse, ebayers! These rule-breakers were a part of Lineage 2 from its outset, but became really bad when the FBI (and, I suppose, their counterparts in other countries, begans shutting down private servers.
At the time private servers were shut down, Lineage 2 had been out for about 2 years. With its tremendous grind and a level cap at 75, only the most hardcore players had reached the cap by the time those private servers were shut down.
I’m sure some of you are asking, “How does shutting down private servers effect the retail version of the game?” Well, let me tell you! A tremendous amount of the people who played on private servers now began to play retail. My server became over-run with Greek players. They outnumbered the players who had been on the server to begin with. These new players quickly bought adena (the in-game currency) off eBay, ran bot programs and levelled to 75 in about 3 weeks.
NCSoft, the developer and publisher of Lineage 2, did nothing about it. You’d see armies of single-minded bots, all moving as one . . . and the GM’s simply ignored it. The only way real players had to fight back was to try to train these bots. In Lineage 2, when you died, you dropped gear . . so it was worth it to train the bots, and most people did it. The cool thing was . . when players die to monsters in Lineage 2, they drop parts of their gear. Sadly, seeing that this might cause their new bot-subscribers to quit, NCSoft PROTECTED the bots by eliminating the feature where a player dropped gear to monsters. NCSoft, in a terrific public-relations move, also began banning everyone who even MENTIONED the botters on their official website.
That’s where my horror story with Lineage 2 ends – because after 3+ years of leading one of the oldest clans, and one of the most repected alliances, we all pretty much quit.
Sorry for the above convoluted post. I was really tired! lol
I feel the pain many of us in Middle Earth are being sujected to as well. I was reading an ongoing debate between some players while adventuring in the North Downs the other evening and I nobody had a clear cut or logical solution to the problem besides going anonymous…which is a good feature, but players shouldn’t be forced to use it only because of the gold farmer spams…
I have made it a point to report the names of any ingame messages I receive from them…Turbine needs to take action before it get’s any worse..
Personally, I like the way EQ2 does it and I believe atleast to handle the tell spam, LOTRO should adopt a system similar to this.
You get truncated tells when they are deemed by the system to be spam and you actually have to click on the message to view the entire thing. On top of this, you can disable viewing of ANY spam messages from your chat window.
The item farming is a difficult issue. I’m not sure I agree with the BOA system for the crafting resources as this could definitely slow the influx of new items into the world. Its a tough call Keen, but to be honest, I never really felt the need to buy anything in that game besides my mount and a couple crafted weapons every now and then. Maybe its different once you hit 50.
It’s way out of hand. It seems I get pelted with spam after logging in, one after another for about five minutes. I make it a point to ignore the sender but a new name will appear from another company proclaiming some other reason to purchase gold. Lets not even get into the in game mail where I receive one email if not more a day.
I agree with Brackishwater, binding is not the answer. If I want to advance my character a little easier, I farm my own resources, sell them and then buy or trade for what I need.
I mentioned in a post some time ago that the companies doing this are doing it with Turbines blessing because they are getting a cut. If people were not buying farmed gold we would not be getting these messages in game.