Ambrosia Dance Club

The Douchbags over at Dance Island are up to their old tricks, pushing their numbers back up steadily from the low 40,000′s back up to over 60,000. Let’s see, to recap, they went from having “campers” on dance pads right out in the open, to creating a fake club filled with bots, to No bots and normal traffic, and now suddenly they are creeping back up on the list.

How is it done. Well very subtly. Here we see their fake store filled with bogus animations that no one really wants. Except for the bots who are “trying them out” 24/7.

How about this butt-ugly midget who is modeling the latest in noob fashion – The Dance Island outfit! Wow, this will be the SL fashion statement of the year. I can see why they would choose this paragon of avatar beauty to show off this amazing creation. So as you can see, it is still easy to cheat at gaming the traffic rating. You just have to be a little more creative! Thanks, Linden Lab for that great “SL Model Bot” loophole.

There are fewer bots on the grid for sure. The numbers for traffic ratings for clubs have dropped dramatically. Whereas traffic ratings over 100000 were once commonplace, it is now unusual for a club to surpass 75000. Some venues, however, continue to pad their numbers though the use of scripted entities. They are just getting more clever about it. Some are just blatent. Today I would like to feature an example of both; a place called ZAPP club.

Well, the bikini-clad babe is certainly fetching. They advertise themselves as “THE ZAPP CLUB ..WHERE REAL LIFE Djs PLAY DON’T SETTLE FOR SECOND BEST.” Ok Great. So, if you are so great why is your entire sim filled with scripted agents? (Bots) As you can see by the visitor counter, there were 411 visitors for the day. That should yield a traffic rating of about 15000. Todays traffic rating – 49,186. How is it possible?

They fill the Store with bots who sit there day after day without moving. They dont rez since they are manipulated by a software program. They don’t even bother to call them models.

These tactics are so blatent and out in the open. As far as I can tell, the Lindens just overlook it. Its obvious to anyone that this is Traffic Gaming. These are not real avatars enjoying the grid. This is a drain on server resources. How would you like to be one of the other 3 estate owners sharing space on a server with this? On the other hand, bots are much less of a burden on the servers than real people since they don’t do anything but sit around all day and bring up the traffic numbers so the venue goes higher in the search places ranking.

According to the MiniMap there were 44 avatars in the sim but I could only count 32. Where are the other 12? The answer lies 3500 meters above the club. I zoomed right past it the first time because, well the box that they are hiding in is really invisible. This is quite a piece of work since it totally blends in to the sky completely masking the subterfuge contained within. No match for the Bot hunter however. A quick right click and edit reveals that it is called a “Hide A Box 15″ with a dozen bots inside.

Will the Lindens take action against this? Who knows. It is just irritating when the staff at Ambrosia and other legitimate clubs work so hard to generate genuine traffic and cheaters like this are rewarded with high traffic ratings. I suppose life would get boring for the Bot Hunter if they all went away. So, raise your glass up high and let’s give a hearty FU to the cheating dooshbags at ZAPP Club. Maybe you can even tell the Lindens with an abuse report what you think of clubs that use Bots to lure in newcomers.

By Phil F. Kearny

I have not done a report on bots in quite a while so i decided to go out in the world and see how the usual suspects are doing. I took a visit to an old favourite, Party Like a Rockstar. Wow things have certainly changed here! We have gone from traffic of the high 20,000s down to a more realistic 258.

Is it possible that the Lindens gave them the smackdown? In any case I guess those people fishing in the back and the bots up in the skybox really do help to get you more traffic!

Looks like they will have to work a little bit harder to make it to that donation goal. Die Bots Die! I just feel bad for the designers who saw that inflated traffic figure and leased useless space in mall that no one visits.

Bots and Campers steal resources that could be used by real avatars. If your simulator shares a server with a bot farmer your performance suffers! Is this fair? Is it fair to the content creators who are looking for real traffic to sell their products to? Is it fair for newcomers who come into the game looking to see what Second Life is all about to be confronted by non-speaking non-moving scripted entities? It’s more fun to watch corn grow.

Death to Bots.

The Lindens love bots of course. They inflate their own numbers and make it look like the world is actually more populated than it really is. But its all a counterproductive sham. I would bet there are only really a couple of hundred thousand hard core residents who actually are here and make the world an interesting place to be in. Why do we even need bot armies? To unfairly increase traffic ratings of course. And of course the Lindens left a loophole by saying most bots and campers are bad and will not be tolerated, but some bots like models and group inviters are ok. So now we have this situation.

I took a visit to a clothing designer who has a higher traffic rating than clubs with 24/7 entertainment. How is this possible? Are there 25 plus avatars in the sim constantly shopping? Of course not. The answer of course is the “Model Bot”

Is this really necessary? Having bots model clothes? Why not a mannequin? Surely this must be possible. Supposedly, the Lindens are going to provide a method for a Clothing designer such as this to self identify their bots so they don’t show up in traffic. That would be great. As if the cheaters are going to self identify themselves. What a laugh. I will bet you if that if this is enforced , suddenly these designers will have a change of heart and decide that they don’t really really need model bots anymore. They will vanish quicker than a stack of singles in a strip club.

Something smells fishy here!

I can rant and rave all i want but i cannot change a thing. SO i figured if you can’t beat em, join them. I made myself a little platform and picture and stood around for a while. It was fun to hang out there amongst the living dead and greet people as they walked passed.