Force activities in a month time between July 25 and August 27, 2007. Approximately 2.6 billion gil were removed from the in-game economy.
A general statement concluded the number of in-game spammers has decreased while low level gil botters have been reported more often. Detailed chart made up of all the activities that violate the user agreement was given.
Interestingly, 7% of all incidents reported were gold farmers' spam:
1.9% spam email
2.5% RMT sites
2.6% spam shouts
Farmer's activities were accounted for the other 86%:
6% use of Auction House for RMT
9.1% suspicious groups' activities
10.1% Use of illegal program
14.3% Characters suspected to be involved in RMT
15.4% Hunters
25.1% Use of cheats to automatically repeat particular actions
Another interesting note was that there were increasing numbers of character leveling up. However, Square Enix has yet to act against this since it is not considered as agreement violation.
As a result, over 6,500 accounts were banned and almost 400 accounts were suspended.
While most operators are against RMT, a discussion in Virtual Economy suggested that having efficient RMT activities can be good for the MMORPG. That is up to a certain level, RMT actually promotes welfare of the MMORPG population.
Lastly, we have a follow up interview with the ex-employee of ArenaNet who would be talking in more details about the rumors in Guild Wars.
