If you dip into any online discussion about Throne and Liberty, especially in regard to its population, it invariably shifts toward discussing the purported bot problem in the game. As I type this, the MMORPG saw a peak of 336K concurrent players on Steam earlier this month and is still peaking around 70% of those on the platform. We don’t have a comparable number for console, but Amazon and NCsoft said the game saw 3M total players in its first few days.
But how many of them are legitimate players vs. bots? That’s the question MMO players keep asking, given their experience with other free-to-play import titles, Lost Ark especially. A sampling of the threads on the T&L Reddit about this in the last few days:
- Bots are getting out of hand…
- It’s already full of bots: What are they farming?
- Throne & Liberty of bots
- Running into a massive bot farm
- The bot problem
- The Japanese server Alexia is taken over by a bot farm guild.
Well, we don’t know exactly how many bots there really are, but we do know it’s enough – or the perception is enough – that Amazon is publicly acting on it.
“Today, we enacted a set of bans against accounts suspected of operating bots within Throne and Liberty,” the team posted to Twitter late last night. “We will continue to monitor activity and take action against any bad actors intent on negatively impacting the experience of our players. Maintaining a fair and equal playing environment for all players is our top priority. We appreciate your understanding and support as we work to uphold the integrity of our games.”
The thread erupted into cheers from legit players, and Reddit has started popping corks in a thread called “Bot purge has begun.” And “has begun” is probably a fair way to put it: No game, especially a F2P game, ever really gets rid of bots until the day it sunsets, as long as people are willing to buy what the bots are selling. The studios must waste their time, every day, bailing out the boat.
Today, we enacted a set of bans against accounts suspected of operating bots within Throne and Liberty.
We will continue to monitor activity and take action against any bad actors intent on negatively impacting the experience of our players.
Maintaining a fair and equal…
— THRONE AND LIBERTY Game Status (@TLGameStatus) October 16, 2024
