14 DAY TRIAL // Sometimes, companies decide that enough is enough, and, for one reason or another, they begin to dish out bans like it's the end of the world. Earlier this week, we saw Microsoft denying that the number of Xbox Live users banned was around one million, but the number still remained up there, on top of the charts. Another company decided that it was time to thin out its members this week and opt for a "quality over quantity" fan base. This time, it's the massively multiplayer online role-paying game scene that has shredded a few pounds off its waist, as a large number of accounts have been banned.
The company responsible for this bold decision is NCSoft and the game that had to withstand the rain of bans is Aion. After an unscheduled server restart, a lot of accounts have become unusable. 16,000 players from American and European servers have lost their access to the game after they were found guilty by NCSoft of gold farming and spamming advertisements to other players with the help of bots.
Andrew Beegle, NCSoft's community manager, stated that, "We are taking a very hard stance on this issue." A lot of the banned people will try and plead innocent and act as the victims of a tyrannic sentence, but that won't get them very far. According to Beegle, the bans are perfectly motivated as they "have sophisticated processes and procedures in place that help us keep unwarranted banning to a minimum."
Some people might see bans as a bit of a harsh decision for something as trivial as the equivalent of "cruise control." But farming bots have a huge impact on the gameplay and world dynamic and their presence leads to a deterioration of the gameplay experience. Being computer-controlled, these bots are ruthless, effective killing and resource-gathering machines that act as the pinnacle of unlawful competition in regard to the human players.
With perfectly planned routes and exact data on the respawn time of collectible resources, these drones leave nothing behind for other players. The same applies for bosses or even regular mobs in a certain area, as the flood of bots leaves human players unable to complete quests or get the items from the so-called bosses. If you think that this can be compared to an overpopulated server, then think again. Bots never tier, never stop and there is no way to reason with them. The advertisement-spam is not something to be ignored either, and, if you've ever been infected with spyware, you know exactly what the problem is.