A Glance At Magic World Online “New” Feature

One of the main feature that has been highlighted and claimed to be differentiated among other MMORPGs by Magic World Online: BOT feature.  When I first heard about that, I’m asking myself, “Do they realize what they have done to ruin their own games?”.

A couple years ago, I was among people who quit games because the invasion of bots in MMORPG.  Here’s some reasons why I don’t like bot:

1. No one to talk with.  The beauty of playing MMORPG is because I can met many people and enjoy the game together.  But how can I do that if I just say hello and that character just teleport right away?  Later, it become worst because there are no strict rule to overcome this problem.  I say hello and the bot character would reply, “Get lost noobs, I am bot!”

2. No honor in reaching high level.  One of my purposes in playing MMORPG is to reach high level.  There is honor and I can be proud even though I am not reaching the level as quick as many other players, because my job won’t allow me to play as much as them.  But can you imagine when I have reach the highest level of the game and proudly announced it to my friends, they just reply, “Oh that’s great, how many days have you bot your character?”  When I said that I play it for months, they just can’t believe it, because it is very common to bot your character in that game.  I imagined it would be a very different case if I said that I have reached such level in WoW.

3. No balance in the game anymore.  Imagine how shocked I am when I want to buy a really rare items, and the price already gone high up to 5 more times compare to a week before!  That’s because the bot has made everybody rich, and can afford to buy the items easily.  And as the demand goes high with that new rich people, the price of the items can go high.  On the contrary, the not so rare items that usually have a good price, are now dropping like they are not worth more than sh*t.  No balance of economy at all.  Not to mention that a “normally played” won’t be able to compete with all that “botted player” to conquer castles.

So this bot feature of MWO really make me wondering, will they succeed.  However, it seems like time has change.  And it is a very different case when a game that prohibit player to use bot fail to prevent bot, with a game that ALREADY provide players with bot system.

When I download this game, I’ve already expected that I won’t have a good conversation and help from other players.  And I know I won’t be proud when reaching high level in this game.  But these “expected” conditions actually make me not getting bothered by this bot feature.  And to my surprise, I can still find friends in there.  I said to myself, “Hey, this is not so bad.”  I said that not because I never try to use bot.  I have try some bot program just to let me know how it feels, but I eventually quit using them because of second reason that I have mentioned before.  Even if I have to compare this MWO feature with previous bot, the MWO’s bot is quite primitive in terms of capability.  When I tried modkore, I can set up so many things and the program really gone well, while in MWO, I can not specify which monster to attack and not to.  So when I said that this is not so bad, I am not talking about the feeling of using bot, but I am talking about the game conditions.

Well, I can’t say that this feature is a good strategy, because it won’t catch all normal players who want to get honor by spending so many hours of playing.  But for some people, maybe they will be hooked by this feature, especially if they are busy people who still want to have a high level character without playing it.  And to overcome my first reason of quitting fully botted game, I think developers who want to put bot in their game need to innovate some more features.  That features must force players at certain times, to play without bot.  So they can interact each other and found the real meaning of MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER online role playing game.