Amazon Game Studios’ New World has been plagued by a number of issues since the MMORPG launched in September, from incredibly simple exploits to repeated pauses in its economy due to cheaters. The game’s latest confounding issue comes in a deluge of high-level farming bots that are stripping the natural world bare and sending resource prices plummeting.
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From the official New World forums to the game’s subreddit, numerous players are complaining about bots endlessly mining for supplies like some sort of mindless colonizers. This includes things like fish, with some bots apparently camping hotspots in Restless for weeks. Meanwhile, other bots are apparently farming azoth water, leather, and other materials, which players report is tanking the prices of in-game resources and causing significant disruptions to New World’s economy. One player notes the bots are so prolific that they’re “artificially inflating server population numbers.”
Over on Reddit, player breezystroo reported that bots are ruining their desire to play New World, noting that they are not only hogging all the resources but also “killing the market for epic materials.” Others, like MoxGoat and osrs_turtle, posted photos of huge clusters of bots chilling in popular fishing spots. If there’s a minor upside to the infestation, at least the bots sometimes glitch and drop huge stacks of leather and such for lucky players to stumble upon. At least they make mining easy, sometimes.
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Some YouTubers, like Gladd and KK Plays Live, have been making a game out of spotting New World bots. In the video below, KK Plays Live noticed a few bots farming one area for days. They seem to always be there, waiting around to mine for materials, regardless of the time of day.
Bots plaguing MMORPGs is not a new occurrence, but when they get this out of hand it can be a real problem. Collecting resources is vital to the genre, but bots gathering them 24/7 not only impacts the playing experience but also has adverse effects on the economy.
[h/t: PC Gamer]
Update 11/30/2021 3:45 p.m. ET: An Amazon Game Studios spokesperson commented:
We’re aware of player reports about increased bot activity in New World. Bots pose a persistent challenge for MMOs, and our team has deployed dedicated resources and tooling to identify and combat them. We are committed to continuous improvement in our fight against bots, and yesterday alone, we banned over 7,700 accounts for using bots. Our goal is to ensure New World is fun and fair for all players. We’ll post updates to the New World forums and Twitter as we have them.