@Iryont I know what you mean, however.
If you take a look at Classic WoW, you see that die hard fans are the most devoted and is the ones you want to keep happy as customers.
Because they're aren't hard to please and value their nostalgia more than others, also most of them are adults with jobs which means a 10$ donation isn't really anything to them.
Making custom content isn't bad, at all.
I enjoyed small bits and pieces of it, but when it shifted too greatly, that was when I decided to put my time elsewhere.
Personally I play OTs to get a trip down memory lane, otherwise I could just play RL Tibia.
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On the point of Medivia having a lot of botters, sure. But there were still much more life then than it is now and that is due to the changes.
I've had that discussion with a close friend of mine that I play with and both our opinion on why we quit was that it strayed too much from what it was.
There isn't a game and/or OT in the world that doesn't have cheaters.
The only thing you can really do to reduce botting is make it as annoying as possible to bot.
Active GMs, IP Bans (MAC would be nice, don't know if its possible), Stamina/Soul system was good implementations.
Anti AFK scripts etc. (IP Bans are great, while they can spoof their IP, they still have to put more effort into it than it is to type "/b <charactername>")
Botters are lazy, make it hard to be lazy and keep at it.
The war against botters is a war of attrition.
Experienced GMs are the most valuable since they know a botter when they see one and can act on it.
They are the elite soldiers of the team, they should be used in great numbers.
There is a lot of oldschool veterans on these forums that are more than adequate for that.
Botters are only good for one thing, that is to increase the active player count which makes the server more appealing to serious players.
Retrocores is a good example, sure it may have a lot of botters, but the high player count intrigues me.
I never had much problem as a player with rune farms, it ment more stuff for me when I killed them.
The real problem was the aim botters and auto healers, they are the cancer of OT.
Players that lack skill and can't bother to learn just go get some temporary gratification is a mystery to me.
They more than likely suffer from forms of depression and crushing players with cheats is a way for them to validate their existance.
If economy getting out of control is an issue, then have planned resets.
People don't mind as long as it isn't sudden.
Diablo 3's Season system is a good example of working resets.
Even if the game is
compared to D2.