The sandbox MMO ArcheAge offers a bounty on bots. Players can gain an advantage in the game by successfully reporting bots.
A player receives 25 labor points for reporting a bot that is confirmed to be a bot. However, reporting also costs 25 labor points, as Trion Worlds seems to want to prevent players from recklessly shooting around in light of the bounty. Upon a successful report, players get their 25 points back and receive an additional 25. In the case of a false report, the points used are lost. Labor points are a type of “energy” in the game, primarily used for crafting activities, and they regenerate slowly.
Bots are the scourge of modern MMOs. At the launch of the last two major pay-to-play titles, WildStar and The Elder Scrolls Online, both MMOs struggled with a flood of bots. They not only directly negatively affect the gameplay of players by camping mobs or harvesting resources but can also disrupt the important in-game economy. In some severe cases, they ruin PvP by signing up for battlegrounds where they become a liability for their team. Moreover, bots have a negative impact on the morale of “honest” players.
In a free-to-play MMO that relies heavily on the economy like ArcheAge, the threat posed by bots is even greater than in WildStar, The Elder Scrolls Online, or World of Warcraft. In the alpha of ArcheAge, 16,000 accounts were already banned for spamming and botting – access to the alpha was linked to the purchase of an expensive founder’s package. However, it seems that most of the bot accounts gained access using stolen credit cards.
During the last beta phase, Trion Worlds indicated that it was primarily used to test mechanisms that would later be used for detecting and eliminating bots.
