What's up with the level 1 bot clerics flying around Arch?

It's clearly a bot but as to what it's doing I can only guess.

Some possibilities:

1) searching for mispriced items
2) searching for items being sold cheaper than what other shops are buying at.
3) building a searchable database of catshops for convenience
4) tracking market prices of items to automate buy/sell repricing

pwi will nerf catshop prices to 1 coin b:chuckle

LuckingFoco - Raging Tide wrote: »

And people wonder why accounts get ****. 3rd party website...no thanks

You don't need to register there, all main functions are available in guest status. It's really very convenient and saves a lot of time b:thanks

what is this website? cant find anything thru google, that or i'm using wrong search term

Evryn - Morai wrote: »

PWI does provide a similar service but it's not free (Consignment shop). Since they're losing income by this third party bot/shopservice I suppose they'll eventually slap a banhammer on it. Tbh, they should just have done away with catshops and use the consignment shop for everything. A lot more convenient and it generates a lot less load on their system since those damn cats don't need to be logged in all the time.

Consigment shop has nothing to do with catshops database and it's not service, it's just a list of cats and items they sell/buy for faster search (while main advantage of consigment shop is offline trading). It doesn't harm pwe in any way. Only makes players' life easier.

NRGLG - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Can't you tell by the language usage of the people who know of the site, that they don't want anyone else to know. They keep using words like "there" and "a website." Obviously they think the website is giving them an (unfair) edge and are thus going to attempt to keep it a secret.

No secrets. But it's not english, that's why not too popular here.

Marengo - Lost City wrote: »

No secrets. But it's not english, that's why not too popular here.

Linky then?

There is at least one on Morai as well.
Never heard of a website listing the items for Morai though and I don't really see what the owner would earn with this kind of website.
Some of Asterelle's assumptions sound more interesting.

Yup, those bots are active on lc server for years too.

I also saw at least 9 JoJ dig bots last week (at perfect grinding machine of city of lost).

The botters know very well that nothing will ever happen to them and acted very offensive
(they were all in same faction, all on anniversary mount, most of them had a "x" at start of their names... ==> this person did even not try to hide).

I thought about reporting them. But well.. I reported bots so often over the last 6-7 years and it was never successful (even when 1st replies of the GMs were written manually, the later ones were just "copy and paste" nonsense).

I suppose we just have to be glad that dq items have zero value now. This killed at least the smelly fishes.

If a GM would pm me, I could tell the names + faction.

Marengo - Lost City wrote: »

Why do they need this link then? Less people know about it, less "harm" it does

Nope. If a select group of people know about it, they have an advantage over other players. And then it does harm. If everyone knows about it, it will get abused massively and then the devs/GMs will be forced to step in. Often the only way to get this **** the attention it deserves... sad truth.

Everything in the open. Level the playing field. If that destroys the game, so be it. But equality is fairness.

+1 Marengo

I kinda already regret that I said something in the first place.

Marengo - Lost City wrote: »

Let me make an example: there is a wonderful site http://pwdatabase.com/ which is usually ignored by many ppl because "too long, lazy to retype address", "i don't know how to search there" and "what is it?" and many other reasons. Do you consider it as an "unfair advantage"? In the times when there was no ingame encyclopedia or autopath pwdatabase also worked as "****" providing info about mobs and drops you was supposed to find manually in game. Here it's the same story. No abusing, but if you are against "hacks", check cats manually. No one forces anyone to use "3d party websites".

Comparison doesn't hold. If I know that "pwdatabase.com" exists/existed and was too lazy to check there, then it is my choice to not go there. But I have that choice, just as other players who do go there. Now, my example, combined with yours:
10 people play the game and want to grind some mobs for a specific drop. 5 of them know of pwdatabase.com - 3 of them look up which mob is best to farm. 2 are too lazy and just start bashing baddies. The other 5 don't know of pwdatabase and, even though 3 of them too want to be efficient, can't do anything but to grind manually.
Result? 3 players are ahead of the curve and finish a lot faster. 2 of them could have been faster but chose not to. 5 of them did not have any choice and are left behind in respect to the first 3.

THAT is what I consider unfair, and why I want the existance of such sites to be public knowledge.

As for the clientless cats - risky to use them, as it's childs play to program in a "client ident" function at any given time and post those in an update - then have the server detect and automatically close accounts that make use of such cats. Modified clients/custom clients aren't safe. Ever.

Evryn - Morai wrote: »

As for the clientless cats - risky to use them, as it's childs play to program in a "client ident" function at any given time and post those in an update - then have the server detect and automatically close accounts that make use of such cats. Modified clients/custom clients aren't safe. Ever.

PWE has not the staff to do anything. I bet the staff members are underpaid and unmotivated. And at least some of those even unskilled and unqualified (which does demotivate the skilled and qualified staff even more).

They can be glad when they have the enough people to update the servers every week and enough for book keeping.

If a (real) in-game disaster happens, they normally don't understand it. They killed several times rewards which took legit players years to obtain. Without even recognizing the problem. They also obviously never read in forum.

I bet they didn't hire software developers (to expensive). Maybe most of the staff members are even not gamers. For (at least some) pwe employees the games of the company are "just games". All complains are just nerd rages of overreacting childs in their eyes. But that's not true. Games like pwi are not "just games". They are time-consuming and/or expensive hobbies, just like most other hobbies too.

They also have obviously too many games to monitor. If you tell them that you sold a rank9-releated item to a npc by accident, they just think "and? buy another one little stupid kid, don't annoy me".

If you tell them that there are grinding bots around for years, always at same game location, 24h per day, they just have no clue what this means.

I bet if you would ask the staff, which is responsible for the pwi, what an "advanced grinding machine" or a BH100 is, most couldn't not tell you.

It's the same as everywhere. Staff members which are quiet and cheap are wanted, staff members which don't wake up/bother their superiors. If you show that you have knowledge, education and motivation, you are dangerous.
Greetings from Germany b:bye

You can also **** with the bots, and keep moving your catshop with artificially low or raised prices so the flying bot goes to them and uses your rigged prices so others use the bad numbers. That way you don't have to go to the website, and you still benefit from it while **** over everyone trying to keep it secret. It's like an all around win situation for you, just make sure nobody can buy any artificially lowered prices.

laikiraski wrote: »

LoL , yea sure Russians are the problem here , our server had clientless catshop bots since years already or you forgot them ?Pm me i will remind you with names then .
As for the site it spares huge amount of time if you are looking for something and evryone can use it -at least for morai version- and most of people do.

I don't care if the Pope himself benefits from these bots. If they are doing something that goes against the ToS, something that the rest of us would get banned for if someone wanted to put in a ticket, then they should be banned/stopped/eradicated from all of the servers.
-snip-