The rise of the bots

On the new server my level 60 guild mates keep complaining that many of the hunting grounds are camped by gold farmers using bot programs. Rumor has it that there is a new bot program out, which Blizzard hasn't detected yet.

Up to now I didn't have any problems with the gold farmers, bots or not bots. But this night I woke up just before 5 am, couldn't sleep any more, and logged into WoW. Just for fun I ran a Censusplus count to see who is online: 350 people online, of which 70 "players" are level 60 hunters, the most favorite botting class. One in five characters a bot, at least during the small hours, that is pretty significant.

This is the first server where I get random tells from people named "Wsdfg" or so, telling me to visit this or that website for cheap WoW gold. Seems prices are down to about $50 for 1000 gold. I wonder if the market is going to collapse soon, or whether Blizzard finds a faster way to detect and ban the bots.

I don't mind the regular gold farmers who play manually like everybody else. I figure it doesn't really matter whether Joe Buyer farms himself for his epic mount, or whether he pays somebody else to farm for him. The number of farmers playing normally is limited by the demand for gold, at some point farming gold for dollars doesn't pay a living wage any more, not even in a third world country. But I do mind if the gold is farmed by bots, because if you can automate gold farming, the cost to farm gold drops significantly, and there is nearly no limit to how much gold can flood the market.

Up to now I don't see many signs of inflation on the auction house prices. In fact I'm already buying stuff like major mana potions, because a stack of 5 for 3 gold is much, much cheaper than the prices on my old server. And when I sell my green items, even good ones like "of the eagle" stuff isn't selling very well, in spite of me putting them up at quite low prices. Falling gold prices, lots of bots, and little sign of people buying all that gold make me think that market forces might push the gold farmers off the server before Blizzard does.