Ambrosia Dance Club

I hate bots. Plain and simple. And I love to educate others on what they are. Many people are unaware that many of those green dots that appear on the map in a sim are not actually real people but owner created avatars that sit around and create a higher ranking in traffic for them. Is it legal or ethical? No, it is against the Terms of Service (TOS) of Linden Labs and cheating. Complaining to the Lindens about it it both pointless and fruitless so its much more productive to educate Ambrosians as to what to look for.

How much does this suck?

This is what people normally expect to see when there are campers and bots in a sim. The owner will set out a bunch of dance pads and then park his bots on top of them to lure in unsuspecting noobs. The Noob concludes that Second Life sucks and leaves the world to go play Scrabble.

That was a good example of a flagrant TOS violation but at least the owner made a public service by placing his bot Campers in obvious view so this cesspool of mediocrity can be avoided. But what if the owner is much more shrewd and cunning. Here we see a typical commercial island.

In this case the owner is selling shoes and accessories. It is a beautiful build filled with appears to be high quality items for sale. Typing the word “Music” into Search Places shows that this place has a traffic of 29998. For the same period Ambrosia has a traffic of 24575. Could it be from the kick-ass club that is adjacent to the shoe store? Highly unlikely!

Is this mic on?

How is it that a shoe store has higher traffic than a club? The answer is easy my friends. Freakin Bots!

I saw this science fiction movie...where humans were stored in closets.

But not just ordinary bots. No no. Here is the latest way around the unenforced Bot Fatwa. You put in a time clock and call your bots “models” and store them in closets in a sky box a few thousand meters up in the air. Voila, a legitimate use of bots that is not gaming traffic in anyway. After all, they are being paid right? BullS#$t!

The Bot Hunter confronted the owner of this Sim about her use of bots and was rewarded with a quick ejection and banning and a threat to report The Bot Hunter to the Lindens. Go ahead, make my day!

Time to check in to work. Best job in Sl!

If you go to the Linden Blogs you can read the latest economic report where Linden Labs claims that the number of concurrent users is reduced due to the implementation of their bot removal policy which took place in April.  Well, I for one certainly don’t see it.  It seems to me that the prime offenders are still at it and are literally thumbing their noses at the policy.  But the Bot Hunter is ever vigilant and loves to show you exactly how these people who are gaming traffic with fake avatars do their dirty deeds.  Lets call them what they are…f#$@ing cheaters who fool people into thinking that they have a kick-ass club by planting hordes of bots in an attempt to get a higher traffic rating in search so unsuspecting noobs can buy their worthless crap.

Here we have the infamous Dance Island .  Today’s traffic is an astonishing 84534.  You can tell where the bots are by just looking at the mini map. On the left side is the club itself with a group of green dots. The other large cluster of dots is pictured above. It is a club just to hold dancing campers, ummm let’s just call the what they are. F#@%ing BOTS. But why even have any pretense anymore.  Just put your traffic gaming campers out in the open.

In your face, Linden Labs! This is a Linden Labs Showcase venue after all and is proudly listed as a great place for newcomers to go.

The Scofflaws at The Rock are still at it clocking in at a number one with their amazing  99000 traffic rating.  Get close to the warmth produced by the campmaster device everyone – ahhhhh.

Feel the Linden goodness.  Up yours Mark Linden!

Lets see…Phat Cats. Well they should have super high traffic because the romance and twirl-a-girl places always do.  But what is this?

Oh dear its a Model, in fact I count about 17 of them. Well the idea of models is really neat.  But the reality is we know they are not for modeling clothes .  They exist to artificially raise the traffic rating of the sim.  Period.  Soooo, Phat Cat Owners, you are running bots to raise your traffic. You suck!
Or maybe I am totally wrong and you are hiring real people to model the clothes in all of the stores. Yeah , right.

Well, what the hell, that certainly helps out with todays 72633 rating enabling you to stay even with dreaded rival Sweethearts.  Sorry, but they beat you with a 73843 traffic rating with what I suspect to be genuine traffic.

People always like to shout out that their favourite club in SL is the “best club” and indeed it’s heard quite often at Ambrosia. Since the word best is so subjective the only way to to really tell which is the most popular club is by its traffic rating. By typing the word “CLUB” in search places it is possible to see who is currently in the number 1 spot for traffic. This week in the number 1 spot, overtaking those pale hosers at Dance Island is the Black Rain Club – Biker Sim. I decided to check it out.

Upon arrival I found myself surrounded by a healthy number of avatars. However, some of them were not fully rendered. Hmm, kind of like bots.

Lets give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they are all really waiting around for the random money giver to regurgitate lindens into their upturned beaks.

Here we can see this avatar waiting patiently for her payout!. But alas, it pays out ‘AFantasy Color Change Shoes’ to one of the bots. Sorry!!! No cash for you!!
Let’s wait 19 minutes for the next payout.

Over the air crackled the commanding voice of a live dj barking something in German accompanied by a driving techno beat.

Here is a new arrival – A pig headed person spewing pink particles. And i thought things were going to be boring.

Ahhh, here are some more green dots in the sim. Let’s go find out if this is where the real party is. Wow, it’s a veritable United Nations of people clustered around a CampMaster 2.0 paying out 1 L every 30 min! As I sat there among the undead i could hear the words of Jack Linden,

“We recently posted a new policy explaining that the use of Bots to unfairly inflate the traffic score (and therefore Search ranking) for a venue would be considered a violation. Whether a landowner uses Bots or Camping Chairs, or Camping Chairs with Bots in them, the effect is the same – the traffic score for that parcel is inflated unfairly”

Hmmm.

But what of the actual club? Well here it is!

Lets go inside.

Well, the Stuka dive bomber is certainly cool. Not a bad looking club either. I count 19 people. They are in voice chat speaking in German. So lets add it up. 19 people in the club. 97 in the sim. Could it be that this Number 1 venue is unfairly using campers and bots to game traffic scores? Why do they feel that they have to do this? The club that they have would be a whole lot better for the real people that use it if they did not have to contend with the massive lag caused by the 78 extraneous avatars.

Since the club members are mostly European we can assume that there is a slack time when very few real people would actually visit the club. Therefore this club should have a respectable traffic rating or around 12000 not 87403. But thanks to its number 1 ranking in Places people teleport in regularly because it is at the top of the list.

Is this an example of gaming traffic? You be the judge.