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Originally Posted by Dreamsmith
You said you were half-serious, so I'll post the fully-serious problem: it's ridiculously easy to write bots for games with a telnet interface. Sure, people write them anyway for graphical games, but the difference in difficulty is significant.
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As a long retired bot-maker (and mud wizard), I'd say that this is the _best_ education that one can give to youngsters. People who I mentored as creators and wizards in many muds went on to be very accomplished software developers... many of them with superior written communication.
It seems that guild wars is primarily a 2D world, and while it may not nicely fit a 24x80 character screen it probably isn't that far away. The eye candy is nice... but for the most part, it should be (and probably will be when some college sophmore decides to flunk a few semesters and reverse-engineer the wire protocol) very scriptable.
My opinion about 'bots' is realistic -- people will use them. Augmenters (that run formations, skill timing, and all sorts of 'automagic') will be used eventually. Arena.Net should package up their client API as a DLL, and create the .NET Java or whatnot wrappers so that people can write their own clients -- and they should charge for the "developer" library. They can even then have competition for the best bots, and bot wars. This in no way will decrease the pleasure of the game -- it will remain very competitive and fun.
Make it so you can write your own NPC henchman! Or, even, 2-3 years down the line, write your own 'module' for Guild Wars. This does something very serious -- it would transform Arena.Net from a 'game' to a 'marketplace'. People would start buying/selling modules, robots, etc. And guess who gets a royalty everytime someone wants to write a game and add it? That's right, Arena.Net Think of it as a mini-tax levied. The more modules (even third-party ones) made, the greater the value in G.W., therefore the more people who will play, making more third-party modules economically viable, making more material, causing even more people to play. It's a virtuous cycle. Even at the very worst, G.W. gets 'formal' ways of contacting new content developers (read: bot makers).
Why fight something like this? Embrace and extend!
