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Exploiting for fun and profit

Posted: October 16, 2002, 1:15 pm
by pyrella
Saw this on Slashdot of all places. People basically macro farming pp and such, devaluing our virtual economy, blah blah


http://player2player.net/modules.php?op ... le&sid=724

Posted: October 16, 2002, 1:28 pm
by Bubba Grizz
Hrmm if I were an ambitious man I would think about picking up a few accounts to do this. Good thing I am too lazy.

Posted: October 16, 2002, 1:34 pm
by Voronwë
IF it is really possible, i'm sure those of us who have normal jobs and don't make $6k a month are intrigued by this :P

the problem is of course the value of pp on ebay will always go down, and the more attention this gets the more likely it is to be fixed/nerfed.

Posted: October 16, 2002, 2:12 pm
by Neost
According to Hackersquest, this has already resulted in mass bannings and been nerfed.

It involved a program available from sourceforge called macroquest and fletching. Some people claim to have made up to 34k per hour. There was a lot of whining and moaning about this becoming "public" and all the fletching vendors where it worked being loaded with macro users.

Reading a bit on Hackersquest, apparently the right combinations now result in a net loss of 5-8pp per sale.

EDIT: Well, after reading this, it seems like the macro users have found yet another tradeskill related profit pool. I guess I should've read the link BEFORE I posted. However, if you are interested you can go to http://www.hackersquest.com, hit the forums and read about the fletching macro too. I'm too lazy to go find it and post the link.

Posted: October 16, 2002, 2:27 pm
by Skunki
there was a motd when i logged on the other day that said macro programs will result in bannings etc.

Posted: October 16, 2002, 2:51 pm
by Neost
Doesn't surprise me. Supposedly when using these macros there would be a flurry of vendor responses every 1-3 minutes. GM's started checking those vendors for that and if they didn't recieve a response from the player for a period of time do one of several things:

1. Kill the player by summoning into water or a nearby mob.
2. Remove equipment from the players character.
3. Insta-ban if it was a repeat offender.

Don't know if all of these are possible, but stripping a character would be funny.