Elanthiel's Ethical Essays #1: Buying From Bots |
|
Hello, and welcome to the first installment of RuneScape Ethical Essays. I will be making a series of essays dedicated to addressing all sorts of ethical problems that the average Runescaper might face while playing the game. The essays might provide you with a way of playing the game in a better way (from an ethical point of view), or they may simply provide a good read. This installment of the Ethical Essays will cover the subject of buying from bots. As this is the first of the series, I will explain what inspired me to write these essays and what purpose they serve for me. Some time ago, I was riding my bike through an open area, and I let my mind run free. Somehow I landed on the subject of ethics on the internet, and to the subject of buying materials in RuneScape from obvious gold farmers. I decided that I could share my thoughts about this with the rest of the world, and how could I share them better then by publishing them here? As for the purpose of these essays, I can be quite simple in my reasoning: I want to make everyone live a better life. Now, I already know that that isn't going to work out. These essays might hand you a way of keeping up good habits, or they might bring up good points for discussion. Or you could just read the essays, laugh about my stupidity and move on. In any case, at least you read the essays. Now, on to the actual subject: If there is anything that we can rightfully call evil in the world of RuneScape (other than Zaros), it is the gold farm system. Gold farmers (mostly in China) make tons of 'bot' accounts, which are then controlled by a program to collect the valuable resources from RuneScape. Those resources are sold (usually by masses, 1000k or more yew logs/flax/pure essence/sharks are no exception!) for billions of RuneScape gold, which is then sold for real life currency. Prices can range from roughly $3.99 per million to $10.99 per million. 1000k flax (sold for the current market price of 95 GP each) is 95M GP and at an average price of $5 per million, that is $475.00. Unfortunately, this is not even close to the amount of cash being sold over RWIT (Real World Item Trading) websites every single day. Usually, a 'successful' RWIT website makes $1000 every day! In China, that is a fortune. A large amount of cash is made that way, and it supplies a lot of people in China, so why be against it? Yet again, the answer is simple: they ruin the game for everyone else. Rule-abiding players are outsourced when bots sell their merchandise well below market prices. They create an economy where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor since they only sell their merchandise in massive bulk, thus making it incredibly hard for new players to succeed. Furthermore, by breaking the rules they set themselves in a position to get banned, risking all those millions of gold that have come from outside the bot community. Now, I won't focus solely on the system of RWIT gold farmers, I'll merely focus on one chain in the system: resource sales. When strolling the forums in search of a bargain, you often find threads like “selling 1000k flax ~=~=95 ea” or “selling 975k yew logs, only 290 each.” It is usually quite clear that these massive amounts of resources are not collected by skilled effort or mass accumulation of merchanting goods. What conclusion can one draw from such threads? There is only one. Those logs are logs sliced off trees by characters that go by "hiuwei938" and "aswed2314". Low leveled bald men in green shirts and brown pants, wearing nothing but clothes they might have gotten from randoms, always walking the same pattern, not saying a word. In short, this merchandise comes from bots. Yes, those are the same bots that ruin the game for the fair players who would like to collect their resources themselves, or purchase their merchandise for fair prices. They are the same bots that provide a link to the RWIT gold farming system. So why should we even consider supporting these massive sales? By buying from them, you actually give them a method to practice their evil workings. By buying from them, you can be sure that your precious gold pieces (which are now in hands of the probably automated seller) will be turned into real-world currency, thus powering the system that - as stated multiple times before - ruins the game for everyone. You can be sure that your gold will eventually be removed from the game, marked as "RWIT gold". "And why should we care?" You should care because by giving them your gold pieces you are helping the gold farmers to ruin the game for everyone. You rarely see a non-member cutting their own yew logs, because the bots have taken over every yew tree that exists in the free-to-play world. You rarely see people mining their own pure essence, because the bots dominate that market. The people who have to depend on mining pure essence for their income are forced to search for other, usually less profitable, ways of making money, since people go for "easy" purchases by buying from bots. They won't buy if you don't have massive amounts, since that is what the runecrafters want. With all those bots, it gets harder and harder for fair players to earn their gold pieces. "But they usually sell for lower prices then other people" And that is exactly why you should not buy from them. Because they offer low prices, people are more tempted to buy from the bots. Players who abide by the rules usually ask a higher price for their merchandise since they put real work into procuring their products, whereas those in charge of setting the price of bot products don’t care if they sell for a lower price since they don’t spend any time working for their merchandise. By buying from a bot, you lower the market value of the item, and you make it harder for the honest player to sell their items for fair prices because you don't buy from them. Simply put: you make it less interesting for honest players to sell their resources in two different ways. Bots have the power to manipulate prices since they own such massive amounts of their merchandise. This includes, but is not limited to, sharks. Sharks were once worth over 1000 gold pieces each, even in huge amounts. Then the bots came and began to fish and sell millions of sharks, causing the price to drop to a mere 475 gold pieces each (note: that value was the lowest value recorded by me). For the hundreds of fishers who are dependent on selling sharks as their main source of income, this meant disaster. I myself lost several millions of gold in total bank value when the bots took over the shark industry. In other ways, they can establish the same monopoly, thus seriously disturbing the cash flow of hundreds of thousands of players. The bots represent a power that could completely destroy the RuneScape economy if given enough time. Now, I do want to say that I am not completely consistent with my own statements here as well. I do, on rare occasion, buy from bots. I try my best to buy products from players when I’m in the market for them, but sometimes this is not manageable. For instance, I would never buy any fish, log, bowstring, flax, etc. from bots. There are just too many players economically affected in these industries. Consider all those thousands of players who cut yew logs for money, with lots and lots of effort, and nobody to sell it to because everyone buys from bots. The only merchandise I actually do buy from bots is pure essence. This has some simple reasons. First of all, players selling pure essence are hard to come by (although when I see them, I'll buy from them). Almost all the pure essence miners are bots. Second, when I want rune essence, I want it in large quantities, usually 10,000 or more. No player is going to mine 10,000 rune essence for cash. By the time they were done, they would have already gone to either iron, coal or other means of making money. When buying pure essence, you can't get around the bots. Although I hate it, I'll have to live with it. The only option for getting unbotted pure essence nowadays is by mining it yourself, which is very tedious. But then again, that is the only exception I make. Whenever I see someone offering 200k yew logs, I laugh and go to the honest player who is very proud to have cut 1k. The prices might be somewhat higher, but hey, it's fair trade after all! |
|
Written By: Elanthiel Edited By: Rocky Martin Coded By: Donut Juice |