Buy the Farm

Rich Thurman, at one time possibly the biggest gold farmer in Ultima Online, ICQ’d me the other day to let me know it’s all over. He’s moving on and – in the hallowed tradition of MMORPG liquidators everywhere – putting his famous automated gold farm (pictured left) up for auction on eBay. No, the machines don’t come bundled with the gold-harvesting uber-macros he wrote for them, so don’t go getting ideas. But if you want a piece of virtual-world history, make your bid. And if you want a rare first-person glimpse into the world of the hardcore farmer, check out Rich’s farewell confessional to the UO community, in which we learn of high-tech hacks for dodging GMs, mob wars between competing bot-runners, and the curiously ludic motivations of at least one unrepentant exploiter. It can now be revealed, as well, that virtual crime pays: Rich claims to have produced and sold over 9 billion gold pieces in two years, for a total rake of about $106,000, all while holding down a respectable day job as a software consultant and putting in quality time with his wife and three kids.

What then to say? As Brian Sutton-Smith and others have pointed out, the hard distinction drawn between work and play is a peculiarly Western and modern one. I would further argue that computer networks in particular and the drift of modern capitalism in general are working hard to collapse that distinction throughout our culture, and I’ve been trying for months to find the right words to make that case (for my latest effort, see this essaylet I just submitted for publication in the German art magazine Kunstforum). But for now, I think Rich’s story says it all a lot better than I’ve managed to.

Comments

[ren]

1.

Julian > But if you want a piece of virtual-world history, make your bid

Someone pass round the hat, it should be the first exhibit in the TN museum of all k00l things historical and MMOish.

> As Brian Sutton-Smith and others have pointed out, the hard distinction drawn between work and play is a peculiarly Western and modern one.

TL’s recent work on Pro Gaming and work on power gaming and pleasures is a v interesting angle on this.

>I would further argue that computer networks in particular and the drift of modern capitalism in general are working hard to collapse that distinction throughout our culture

I totally owe this blog a review of Pat Kane’s book The Play Ethic.
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0333907361/026-7576298-6014003, which take a modern spin on Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism I’m getting to it – honest.

[Andres Ferraro]

2.

From the auction: "The HD will be formatted"

Just reformatting means zilch as far as data removal goes - Freeware tools undo formats or file deletions. Zeroing out takes quite a while and is effective to someone not willing to spend the $400-$4000 data recovery runs. DoD specs for data erasure (or others with walking patterns, multiple passes, etc) will do it, though. This tidbit of techno-paranoia goes for the Mutable Realms auction too. Actually, for any auction that includes a hard drive. Saw some public auctions of government PCs (not on eBay) and well... Just plain scary.

[Nathan Combs]

3.

I find this point by Rich Thurman (from his confessional cited above) to be intereresting (as to why he quit):

In the end, however, it wasn't GM intervention that was the challenge. It was interactions with the less than desirable persons that also farmed gold. Interaction with people like Lee Cadwell, aka Black Snow Interactive, was like being in an old west town where you were asked to leave by sun down. "This game aint big enough for the two of us....DRAW!," is a quote that comes to mind. You can read some of the ICQ logs here. There were even people that made bots that hunted bots. The motto was, if I can’t compete, I'll just make it so no one can.

Bots that hunted bots... fascinating, and how did they know a bot from a player... or were those just collateral damage.

[Rich Thurman]

4.

@Nathan -

A good amount of time put into creating effective bots is making them not appear bot-ish. The GM's at least in UO really didn’t spend their time hunting players that macroed, rather they relied mostly on player enforcement. Kind of like the old neighborhood watch concept. So, the "better" gold farmers would devote a good amount of time making it so that their bots are not noticed.

In UO, I can spot bots pretty quick, because the basic bots are very consistent and regular. They always bank at the same place etc, etc. And you ALWAYS see them.

My bots rotated from bank to bank, and place to place. I ensured that if you were to see my bot, you would have to wait about 8 hours to see it appear again in the same place.

As for bot that hunt bots, that is extremely easy. You just nab the ids’ of all the toons that enter your screen and log them. Before long, a pattern emerges. You start at a bank and collect IDs, then you start working the farming areas that gold can be made and do the same. After cross referencing both data lists, you know what your competition is doing and who they are, and you can possibly interfere with them.

In my case, this guy named Lee had a bot that checked up on us and paged a GM when it saw us. I later wrote a bot to hunt his bot that hunted my bot. I found allot of humor in that.

[magicback]

5.

Coming from the Automated Expertise Management thread to this one and integrating concepts from the thread on AI, I think we are moving one step closer to fully automated MMORPGs (e.g. Progress Quest).

And "bot wars" becomes a mainstream gameplay. It may even be televised.

[Darniaq]

6.

Rich Thurman wrote: The GM's at least in UO really didn’t spend their time hunting players that macroed, rather they relied mostly on player enforcement

This is currently Blizzard's approach in WoW as well. In an abstract sense, I would prefer they made a good show of force against bots themselves, validating the "right" way to play to all those players who want to play the "right" way.

However, I also think requesting player involvement can be good community management. Many vocal posts at the game forums are about botting, and most early ones wanted Blizzard to personally visit wrath upon each bot, preferrably while the bot-reporting player was there to witness it. To each of these threads though, a rep would respond with something like "please report this activity to [email protected]". Now the effort is placed back upon the player.

Unfortunately, the email approach doesn't allow the player to feel the vindication they seek that only comes with watching justice visited.

[Lee Delarm]

7.

The resources (including time, money and manpower) required to police the world 24/7 for bots is not feasible for any company that wants to make money. Therefore, they rely on players and in game mechanics to either highlight or pinpoint bot locations (common bot spots) and players who are possibly bots.

Justice from above is something vindictive players would surely love to see...but will never unless they work for Blizzard. Some people just can't seperate that it's not their game, their simply renting the time on the server :P

[PrezKennedy]

8.

Or play Anarchy Online... then you wouldn't even be renting the time because it's free now. :-)

[Ryan Kelln]

9.

Lee Delarm: The resources (including time, money and manpower) required to police the world 24/7 for bots is not feasible for any company that wants to make money.

Entirely untrue - if the botters can catch each other using bots the companies can surely do so automatically as well. Companies just need to hire people like Rich to write some data processing code to locate the botters.

Obviously the war of botters trying to appear more and more human would still continue but the company has the advantage because they have better access to the game's data/records than a botter.

[Andres Ferraro]

10.

Ryan,

There are those who would write multithreaded bots using interacting rules of action. Those would display emergent behaviors and change patterns dynamically and adapt to changing circumstances - sometimes failing, of course. Not saying they would pass the Touring Test, but that data mining for bots should not be over-hyped as the be-all-end-all of botting - it should be viewed as one more step in an escalating race.

[Rich Thurman]

11.

The main two goals in my bot designs were to make gold and not to be seen. I eventually stumbled on to some game mechanices that allowed me to run "invisible" most of the time per itteration. Pior to that, I was seriously considering implementing ALICE into my botting engine: A.L.I.C.E.

The more human like, the more up-time you get.

[Lee Delarm]

12.

Ryan> Entirely untrue - if the botters can catch each other using bots the companies can surely do so automatically as well. Companies just need to hire people like Rich to write some data processing code to locate the botters.

This is my point however, the money, time and resources required to either get a good data mining operation going is most likely (I don't have any hard statistics for you) going to be cost prohibitive. From a generalized personal experience, coding in security measures for a game I'm in the process of making is a long boring process reducing the time I get to spend actually coding or designing the game itself.

In a large company, these costs can be translated into time, manpower and servers. I don't believe the cost of what you're suggesting basically is cheap enough to do on the scale it would need to be done in order to have any significant effect. If your tools are dynamic enough to keep up with the bots, or perhaps, if it ends up not affecting gameplay at ALL whether they're in game or not is entirely up in the air unless someone can show some data as to the opposite being proven? (i.e. can anyone show where company made data mining tools have been effective in improving gameplay because of the reduction of bots? not neccesarily the removal of bots themselves but that the production of enterprise tools led to say...an increase in profits because of removal of bots).

[joe]

13.

rtdnsqtwhchialnpd

[jessica]

14.

raltaa!

[joe]

15.

ddmnsfuiibh

[jessica]

16.

mf!

[Gov]

17.

We'll be following up to see if the government got their cut.

[alarm]

18.

Really...has anyone thought to report these cheaters to the IRS for fraud? Surely their dishonestly doesn't vanish come tax time. Don't get mad, get even!