Mystery in Augury Int. 1

They're not doing it solo, or with scripts/bots.

Prices of monk runes have dropped immensely in the last few days, if I remember correctly. From the low teens to high single digits. The AoE patch did its job; hopefully, screw offs like these farmers will start to play the game a little more, and stop using their free time as a marketing venture. And yes, the district is filled with farmers, I'd say far more than only 10% of them are botters.

Oh, and the economy is anything but wrecked, it's getting there, but Anet'
s cracking down on farming is fixing things, with luck new ways of making money will appear, other than this soloing crap. Message From Light in game, I...I mean he...is a professional runner.

I don't understand why you're making such a big deal of the fact that they're hanging out in an international district.

This does not mean you can assume any group of Chinese players standing around are automatically botters. That's as prejudiced as me assuming any group of blacks standing around are drug dealers.

So they choose an international district to hang out and trade. It is so unthinkable that they might want to trade with players from other realms?

Because I'm Chinese and disgusted by your blanket statements. As I've said in multiple posts, I stand around trading all day. That's how I play GW. Then you come along and call anybody with a Chinese name standing around trading all day in Augury 1 are all professional farmers.

I disagree. I feel that UW solo monks, mostly American players, are getting much better drops.

Once again, UW solo monks.

Quality of drop is dependent on how often you farm an area, not how often the gaming community farms an area.

Which is the point of debate for this thread.

Maybe one day you'll realise that not everyone thinks exactly like you do. Bye. /wave

Script and bot farming will be easily detectable to A.net, and thus accounts banned. Where is this mass paranoia regarding botting coming from?

A shao-lin temple? sorry i couldnt let that slip ;P

anyways, it appears to be about 60/40 bots and people, which is still a far higher percentage than anywhere else. try talking to a few of the ones that are moving, sometimes you will get no answer, sometimes you'll get illedgible dribble, and sometimes you'll get a "?".

as for the ones spamming
WTS(insert symbols here) 909 MMMM
WTS(insert symbols here) 910 MMMM

they are indeed ALL scripts/bots, as it is impossible for a person to change the numbers (varying anywhere from 1-5000 from what ive seen) in the time frame of .9 secs. If you whisper one of them, they will stop for about 2 seconds, run over to you and start the whole "50k OK" crap; whether you cancel or buy, after the window is closed they resume their spam right where they left off.

Hmmm....
So let's say all these players are chinese professional farmers.
Why do they do that?
To make virtual gold.
Why do they make gold? Because professional farmers can sell gold for true dollars.
Why do they sell gold for true dollars? Because there are so many rich Americans or European gamers who are so full of dollars/euros that they see no problems to buy VIRTUAL goods; on the other hand Asian people have to eat and it is a fun way to make money and to supply for your family. Think of this: being paid to play video games. A dream becomes true.
Solution to stop Chinese Farming?
Strike at the source: ban all the players who buy virtual gold on net.
Why it's not done?
Eh. Gamers who buy virtual gold are Anet's customers too. They paid for the game. Worst, each bot/professional farmer is a game sold, too.
And Anet is a company that is not making games for fun. They make it for money.
Unless farming bots disgusts so much GW community that every one leave the game, nothing will be done about this.

my 2 cents,
sorry for the english.

the good thing about guildwars is that everyone can meet in international , lets not make it a place for flames and racism

Let them farm (bots/no bots, who cares).
I farm all the time, and i bet all of you farm also.

How else are you gonna get a 15^50, 10/10 30hp gold weapon?
All people that goto uw or fow, are farming (ecto/shard/gold items).
Why else would you go? to do the same quests over and over again?

One other important note. Farming the UW is not done by many people solo now, most of them do it with 2 people.

At the same time, the number of monks leaving Augury through west exit is much lower than before.

Are we finished beating a dead horse here?

This thread was so amusing, I sat here and read through all 6 pages instead of doing the work I'm being paid too.

I've got all that research, and yet I still can't decide what's more pathetic, the people endlessly making up insane hypothetical situations to explain what's a fairly bloody obvious set of farmers, or the people they're discussing.

Ancient PC, you're beginning to look sad. Seriously man, it's emberassing to read at this point. Flame me, flame others, but at least come up with plausible defensive arguments. Numa whatever is making valid retorts, calm, reasonable arguments, and is being fairly (though nor perfectly) respectful of other people's opinions when he responds to them.

You're just arguing for the sake of arguing. Either that, or you're not doing a very good job of presenting your case.

I love this little exchange. It shows the complete lack of understanding of all things "asianese", and it shows some very bright people making fools of themselves for no reason.

In fact, I have to join that party? Why am I logging into this little rumble in the first place? I've finally figured it out. It's not you guys, or the famers, or the Ebay buyers... I'm the idiot for getting involved. And so is everyone else who spouts off an opinion on this without supporting arguments, or something new to say.

Signed,
Moron, logging off.

So, besides latent racism and a mild case of [-----] envy, exactly what is wrong with farming and people "playing" the game differently than the way you want to play the game?

I have a friend whom I've been trying to get to play GW for months. He feels that he *needs* to play WoW in his free time since he is paying for it because "GW is not as good because Anet couldn't charge a monthly for it". Is he right? Of course not! Can I call him names just because he has a different (albeit flawed ^.^) opinion?

It's a big world out there, if the tiny virtual world of GW is getting you down, log off, go out side, soak up some warmth of the sun, give your (insert favorite person/pet/whatever) a kiss, a hug, take a deep breath, and just be thankful for what you have and remind yourself that others may not have the luxuries that you have taken for granted.

Alright, I'll be blunt then.

1) I'm bored at work, you can tell from the quantity of posts. Sometimes I argue for the sake of arguing.

2) There are underlying tones of racism throughout several of the posts which I am severely ticked off about.

3) Pro farmers are the minority, not the majority of Augury 1.

4) Blanket statements and generalizations should be avoided at all costs.

There's my stand in a nutshell.

I was curious, so i went there.
Since i'm not a beta tester, i can't change the language.
Anyone know how to say "wtb crystalline sword or chaos axe req8" in chinese?

I've been there before but I never saw people spamming stuff like merchants. I'll go back today just because I'm curious and want to see it with my own eyes.

Just one thing for you guys to think about...

Farming is not ILLEGAL!

Using Bot is...

So if somebody is farming going in and out of augury d1... ANET cannot do anything as long as they are not using Bot programs..

Okay guys? Thanks and HF =)

You know I never said "you". You added that. I wasn't necessarily referring to you at all. I was making a general observation. And you pulled one part of my post out of context.

The point I was making in that post is people from different places and cultures play the game differently and also socialize in different ways. We are playing a game owned by Asians. Yes, that's right. Koreans own this game and whether you want to believe it or not Asians play online games with a much greater intensity than the typical North American. Every game put out by NCSoft is closely watched by Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese. NCSoft is the premier Asian gaming company outside of Japan.

It is very likely that some of the people in the Int Dist are cheaters. But definitely not all of them. And, by the way, I have been in that district, and others quite often. You shouldn't make an assumption that just because I don't agree with you that I haven't experienced the situation. I just have a different outlook than you do.

When I played Lineage a lot one of the people who taught me the game was from China. He explained a lot to me about the Chinese way of playing as well as the competition between Korea, China and Taiwan players. There is a whole different mindset about using account teams and even with using third party programs.

I'm not saying I endorse or approve the use of bots or cheats, because I don't. I'm only trying to point out that there is a whole different culture playing the game and they are going to socialize and behave differently.

If you were playing on Chinese servers and found a decent place to farm where other English speaking people hung out and B.S.'d, wouldn't you hang out there? If some of the English speakers might (or might not be) cheaters would you not hang out in that district at all just because of that fact? Or would you go hang out in the Chinese main districts where people kept asking you if you were a cheater just because you're American.

Do you even see where I'm going with this? Everybody likes to have a villian to project onto. But choosing a race to objectify just because.... maybe ... or I read a website that was close .... or whatever is just wrong.

Maybe if we spent some time getting to know people we might be able to learn from them. Instead of being jealous of how successful other people are at farming, get to know them and learn to hunt cool items yourself. Believe it or not it's possible to have and hunt for killer drops at the same time. I just don't see the reason for all the hate.

You could, but you would find LA Int empty...that's the point. Almost every Int. is virtually empty except Augury.

It's a shame racism is invoked in this conversation. It has nothing to do with racism. If the drones in Augury were speaking French I would still have mentioned it. Would it have been racist then?

I am in favor of a free market, but when game gold is sold on Ebay it disrupts the economy for those of us who don't want to link our world money with game money. I mean, for fifty dollars you could become filthy rich in the game, and that doesn't seem fair.

This whole thread was worth it to read Ancient PC's admission:

I know a lot of the concerns here are NOT racist.

But I also know that - all too often - I hear racist comments when I'm in an area filled with text from Chinese and Korean players.

The attitude often is that, somehow, they shouldn't be there because they don't speak English. The great thing about the Internet is that it does let us move beyond borders and, when we're lucky, actually learn something about the rest of the people in the world. To me, it's a plus, not a minus, when a mission area is crowded with people from all over.

Some of the comments I read in game (not here) are amazing. I have heard people say that the Asians are stupid because they can't speak English. It would be funny if not so sad since I suspect the people making those comments do not have the ability to speak other languages. Many of the most obnoxious comments come from people who are native English speakers (as I am) who seem to have trouble speaking English in any coherent way.

Look are some of these people farming? I'd be amazed if they were not. I sure spend too much time farming myself. Are some of them working for sweat shops farming gold? Yeap. And it's a shame that happens, I'm against it. But, even there, it's wrong to blame the people who do it ... they're trying to earn a living under tough circumstances.

I know this sounds sort of bleeding heart but I've been bothered by the instant zenophobia in game for a long time. Most players aren't that way, but there are enough of the others to poison the atmosphere at times.

Again, I want to be clear here - I'm not saying that people in this forum who are against gold farming from sweat shops are wrong ... I'm just saying that sometimes the arguments play into the hands of those who are.

To be honest I'm suprised it took this many pages to turn into a race war.
I feel like I'm in ToA when we don't have favor.

As a matter of fact, YES!

First off it keeps the redundancy of comments down.
And most importantly it keeps you from sounding like your a moron.

How can you test for mods on an unided item? Somebody has mentioned that the +hp mods work even while the weapon is unidentified...has anyone been able to confirm this?
Is that the only mod you can check for?

If you really want to, you can go run damage calculations, watch for vampiric outside of town, attack with it to see what level of vampiric, test for +dmg while enchanted, compare amounts of damage you take to check for +armor. Theoretically, you could check for everything. Practically, you check for vamp, +health, +energy on staves/wands, and that's about it.

On the screenshot it's chinese text by the way, not "asian". And if you try the ingame "Korean" language you can see that it's not korean either, very different characters.

The chinese written language is one of the greatest heritage that we have left. Nearly every other 'pictographic' or 'ideographic' language has disappeared, except for chinese. Korean doesnt count, because it's mostly a syllabary i.e. characters represent sound, like the roman alphabet , AFAIK. Chinese written language is beautiful as well.

I tried to talk to one of the guys, asked if he was chinese he said yes. I talked a bit about "hanzi" and sure he knew what I was talking about, but unfortunately I couldnt really discuss much of anything, either he didnt want to talk, or likely he could not really say much in english, which is understandable as the language and the mindset is very different. I'm betting the few english he could talk (or chat rather) he actually learned in the game

I even learn some chinese thanks to them :

WTB 金武器 !!!

gold (warrior) items

ROFL

see http://www.zhongwen.com/

No racism against Chinese people here, please? I'm Chinese and don't I try to play the game as it was made to be played? I don't think farming is an infringement of the EULA in any way.

Actually, that means Gold (金) Weapons (武器). That includes staves and wands and whatnot. Chinese is a beautiful language.

Anyways,I'll try to do this request.
我要買Crystalline Sword (水晶劍) 或Chaos Axe (紛亂軸), 武器要求水平8

The best I can do at the moment. Oh and if you want the simplified, for Chinese mainland trading:

我要买Crystalline Sword (水晶剑) 或 Chaos Axe (纷乱轴), 武器要求水平8

Well...yeah. Try not to papper me with requests for translations please.

Edit:
"shao-lin"
Posted by someone above in this thread...
It's Xiaolin or Xiao-Lin. I do the martial arts myself.

Well you just proved your second point wrong. And who cares if a topic is mentioned more than once? Do you have any idea how large Guildwarsguru is? And yet you insist people read all of it before posing a question? Give me a break.

mayb augury is their Lions arch dis 1 for us...

Ah, thank you



If anybody at Anet is reading this :

PLEEEEAASE ADD SUPPORT FOR WINDOWS IME (CHINESE/JAPANESE) IN EU/US GUILDWARS ! THANKS !

There are businesses set up in different parts of Asia (especially China) that employ people at minimum wages to sit in front of a computer and allow bots to farm areas until their constant botting is noticed, at which time they play the role of the "real" person and give any administration that might ask any questions the answers they want about the account, so that there are no problems.

Actually, the whole phrase should be 金色武器 (Gold-Colored Weapons) (If it was just gold weapons, newbs would ask is it 23 or 24 carat )

Quick question, why do the players in International Districts get numbers in their names, but we can't put numbers in ours? (unless they changed it, I haven't made a new character in a while)

In the wow beta I've met some korean guy (from opposed faction) and after I killed him a couple of times in the same area another one came and told me "Please don't kill him because he won't get payed if he don't get 10 gold for today" Wtf? My 1st encounter with PRO farming.

Hah, this reminds me of back when I played Diablo 2. This was back when that flash animation Gonads and Strife by Threebrain was relatively new, and in the Diablo 2 Online lobby you could create and enter a chat channel named whatever you wanted, say if you wanted to talk to friends privately in channel hamster guts or something. For some reason, I decided to go to channel Gonads and Strife, only to find that not only was the channel not inhabited, but it was FILLED with Sorceresses covered in magic item find + equipment, the ideal build for farming certain bosses for good items. It was obvious by the rate of sorceresses entering and leaving the channel as well as no one saying a thing ever that it was for some reason a popular channel for people to set their boss farming bots to sit in while waiting to jump into the game to farm. I guess Augury Int D1 is GW's channel gonads and strife.

i just visited there... that was fun...

some observations:
1- either the bots are well-programmed or most of the avatars are NOT bots. i tried to stand at several choke points on the exit, and the monk avatars have actually tried to avoid colliding into me.

2- yes, there is a steady stream of tattooed monks heading outside...

3- there is no chat there, everything in the public chat is trade. i did try to initiate chat with some people, and they are willing to chat in private

4- a quick example of the public chat there:


translated: (the english based sound stuff i am kinda rusty on...)
1- paying high price for sword, axe, bow, must be max damage, call out if you have it
2- buying +30 fort <...>, also buying shield (req 7,8,9), also crystalline weapons
3-5- buying weapons
6- <similar to 1>
7- I am only buying sword, axe, in clear trades

in contrast, i jumped to Lion's Arch American Dist1 and here is what I got:


ok, so they prefer to announce WTB instead of WTS. to me at least, it just seems that gamers are not all that different. honestly, there really isn't anything sinister going on... ;p

^^^

Thanks for the translations, I wondered what "shou wu qi" means.

Interesting observation about wtb/wts.

It looks like some players have korean names, but still type in chinese. Maybe chinese can't type in chinese characters for their names..

I wonder why there is no Korean chat ? I assume they have the game since the language is already available in-game ?

omg, wrong wrong wrong

1.They are all Chinese sweatshop managers. A farmer gotta work 12 hours a day, farmers dont get time to spam WTB/WTS
2.They are all Chinese, even with Korean Character IGN, they are Chinese.
3.They are always buying weapons and upgrades from farmers to sell to English players.
4. Its a closed market, Chinese only or whoever can understand and communicate only
5.why its closed? cuz only Chinese farmers sell items cheap enough. they need to submit certain amount of cash per work shift so they have to cash items quick. sell low is the way to go.
6. the English thing they type, Its not English, its Chinese character phoneticism.
7. bot? yes, its bot. I got confirmed from them.
8.Those are not gamers, those are business ppl.

LOL You got the apple!

You're welcome.
"shou wu qi" actually, strictly speaking, translates to "taking weapons" --> in this case meaning buying weapons.

my guess is that although there is chinese chat, there isn't chinese names yet?

did you bother reading my full post or are you just trolling for comments or what?

1. at least two of them, whom i talked to, are NOT sweatshop managers. i like to ask what you based your "all of them are..." statements on.

2. as previously mentioned, i see anglicized chinese named (chinese pronounciation spelled in english) as well as korean characters. it could just be that chinese can't be used in names yet.

3 - 5. err -- i actually sold a crystalline sword... it was pretty much a give-away. i think the buyer is a guy / gal in taiwan (not mainland china).

6. doh-duh -- if you had read my post, you would have noticed that i translated the chinese with english phonem based spelling as well.

7. you talked to a bot? what did it say? "Hi, I am a bot script?" The people i talked to actually replied "hi", one guy did a /wave. that doesn't sounds like bots to me.

8. so how do you know the guys in LA D1 are not biz people? after all, they could be buying the weapons in AR IntD1 and selling in LA D1 and the extra gold they then sell on ebay?

[/QUOTE]did you bother reading my full post or are you just trolling for comments or what?

1. at least two of them, whom i talked to, are NOT sweatshop managers. i like to ask what you based your "all of them are..." statements on.

2. as previously mentioned, i see anglicized chinese named (chinese pronounciation spelled in english) as well as korean characters. it could just be that chinese can't be used in names yet.

3 - 5. err -- i actually sold a crystalline sword... it was pretty much a give-away. i think the buyer is a guy / gal in taiwan (not mainland china).

6. doh-duh -- if you had read my post, you would have noticed that i translated the chinese with english phonem based spelling as well.

7. you talked to a bot? what did it say? "Hi, I am a bot script?" The people i talked to actually replied "hi", one guy did a /wave. that doesn't sounds like bots to me.

8. so how do you know the guys in LA D1 are not biz people? after all, they could be buying the weapons in AR IntD1 and selling in LA D1 and the extra gold they then sell on ebay?[/QUOTE]

my post based on the fact that I am a Chinese American who can speak and type Chinese and I talk with them on instant messager group chat everyday. I often get price infomation from them since they are pros in selling/buying. I myself am totally against game money for real money thing. All my transactions are not involved in real money.BTW, my post did not point to your posts, just in general clarifying some misunderstanding about them. no need to get so personal.

Here is the beginning of a story which will appear in tomorrow's New York Times.

FUZHOU, China - One of China's newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. Posters of World of Warcraft and Magic Land hang above a corps of young people glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards in the latest hustle for money.

The people working at this clandestine locale are "gold farmers." Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they "play" computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash.

That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them.

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day."

_____________________

It seems like ANet could put a stop to this. I mean, do you think every worker in these sweatshops is working from a registered version of the game?