Update (November 30, 2021, 6:12 PM Eastern Time) - Amazon has provided a statement via e-mail regarding the situation with New World bots, noting that it banned 7,700 yesterday.
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.
Our original story continues below.
Several players have reported that New World bots have become a serious problem -- and a handful of them have figured out a clever way to fight back.
New World is an MMORPG and the first truly successful game from Amazon Game Studios. That's pretty great news for the future of the company, but that's to say it hasn't had more than its fair share of problems; a gold exploit and then a second gold exploit were discovered earlier this month, ultimately resulting in Amazon banning over 1,000 accounts. And the problems didn't end there, either -- another new gold exploit was discovered just last week.
As any freshman economics student can tell you, flooding the market with money is pretty bad for the stability of the in-game market. An equally bad issue would be flooding the market with goods, and that's happening, too, thanks to a continuing plague of New World bots camping out several resource locations.
The Problem With New World Bots
Some of the more recent issues with New World bots were highlighted by PC Gamer earlier today; a number of players sounded off with their frustrations. Some players, it seems, have given up on trying to farm crafting resources at all.
"Over the last week I have seen a huge influx of bots on my server again," read a Reddit submission from /u/JustDaveInTheLBC. "But they're all higher level now, 20's & 30's. They're out harvesting and mining in full effect."
New bot accounts aren't the only problem, either; some players are saying that they're seeing the same bot accounts day after day despite the accounts being reported multiple times.
"On Mag Mell, it is impossible for ocean fish in Restless because literally every hotspot has a bot that has been camping it for weeks, and I have reported them daily," read a comment from ralisti on the game's official forums. "What I cannot figure out is why AGS lied to the players saying bots are being banned in a dev post, when players obviously see the same bots running the same circuits, and being reported multiple times daily. Do they think that the players are so stupid as believe bots are being [dealt] with, when the players can see they are not?"
While some players are frustrated at Amazon Game Studios' apparent lack of action, others are finding a more creative solution through the classic MMO move of "training aggro" -- getting an enemy NPC to follow you with the goal of having it attack another player. In one case, a player lures a wolf to a fishing bot. In another instance, a player used a Black Boar to kill a bot.
Bots have always been a problem with MMOs and it looks like the situation with New World bots is no different; hopefully, Amazon Game Studios will figure out a way to better combat this problem. If you haven't yet jumped into this game, you can buy New World for PC via its official website starting at $29.99 or your regional equivalent -- a 25% discount that probably won't be around too much longer.
Have you had any problems with New World bots? What do you think Amazon Game Studios should do to fix the problem? Let us know in the comments below!
