If you were on the forums on Blizzard's site last night at all, than you might have seen my post about botting diablo 3 and both sides to the argument. Somehow posting an opposing view point to the ToU (which I explained several times that this is illegal) gets your conversation deleted. Hopefully by posting my view on this website instead of one moderated by Blizzard employees, this will reach people who might enjoy reading my ideas and not be so hasty to judge me and delete my post.

Botting in D2 was terrible. Especially now, if any of you still play for old time's sake. There are a constant stream of lvl 1 people logging in and out of any public game that spam 10-15 messages, then leave, clogging your entire screen with non-stop bullshit about d2legit.com and other illegitimate websites. It's annoying as hell! It definitely degrades the gaming experience for the rest of us. D3 has fixed that small problem by putting a chat box in the bottom of the screen. It still sucks if I have to scroll through a bunch of spam just to see what a friend is trying to tell me, but it doesn't effect the rest of the screen.

Another argument against botting is the gathering of materials. If any of you play WoW at all (idk why you would after Cata, lawl) you know the frustration of farming for ore all day then having the damn Chineese gold farmers to fly in and steal the last node of Pyrite. Well in D3, all the crafting materials are gained from salvaging Magic, Rare, Legendary, or Set items to get the required materials to craft good end of game content. Furthermore, those items are dropped on an individual basis, based off of the amount of Magic Find (MF) that you have. So my mage in beta with 58% MF will have more magic items drop for me than someone with a lower percent. These bots will not get the items that I have drop for me. So even if a bot is farming in my game, it doesn't stop me from getting the required items to get the end of game gear that I want to craft. So does botting effect me negatively in this aspect? No.

The main reason against botting is the RMAH. Ah finally the meat and potatoes of the botting argument. Yes, if more people are playing and farming for hours on end, there is going to be a surplus of items on the AH. This will create a buyers market. Huge supply and a normal demand from players are going to drive prices down. Does this effect the community negatively? Yes and no. Not for buyers but for sellers. Now that day of farming to get that nice stack of Fiery Brimstone to put on the RMAH is going to be worth less than normal. But for those of us that will be buying more than selling, this is a great thing. We can afford those nice gloves to complete my set, or that amulet that will put my dps over 9000 (lol), and not have to put out a second mortgage on our house (I'm sure our significant others will appreciate that). Not to mention that Blizzard is a company. And every company's main goal in life, no matter how humble they may seem, is to put money in their share holder's pockets. Blizzard has a fee for you to transfer your profits in game to your paypal account. So Blizzard is getting a little slice of every transaction every day. That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Hello nice dividend check! So from Blizzard's point of view, why not bot?

Now I express these view points and ideas for the main reason of spurring conversation. I do not endorse, support, or participate in botting and I will not participate, especially in a games series I have loved since I was 7. Botting is illegal, and against the Terms of Use. This thread is just food for thought, take it as you will. See you all in Sanctuary.

-MassFragg