Interesting observation

Riner

I tend to play very late night or early morning depending on your prospective and have been going to the Void Pool on Atlantic sense vary close to the beginning. When I first arrived there were two huge clusters of BOTs one at the beginning spawn area, the second deep in the cave close to the last spawn area. This wasn't unusual just annoying.Over time I've watched as these groups slowly decreased. I don't know the cause of this but hope it's from something Board Sword has been doing. Either way playing from 2:00 am on has taken on a drastic switch for strategy. And to those responible I'd like to say thank you.

JackFlashUk

the Bot owners have amassed huge amounts of artifacts and would prob have moved onto some other scheme

keven2002

Yea I tend to agree with Jack on this. 

As I mentioned very early on in this event, the rewards list is lacking with half of the rewards being repeat and the other half only being 6 items with varying usage. We are now 2 months into the event with scripters going 23/7 so at this point they've amassed what they need to make their profits. There is a very low demand on hats with the supply being so high on hats/rewards floating around.... I bought a Balron chest the other day for 10m. There are likely other things that can be scripted (ie the roof or splinter weaps or pvp jewelry) that are going to be more lucrative at this point for those that know how. That being said if you go there with spirit speak (like I do), you will probably see a lot more toons there as ghost. I chalk that up to the low-mid level scripter who kinda just sets their toon up before they leave for work/school and come back the next morning to rez, turn in the hats they auto-insured, and repeat. Most of the people with the complex scripts to self heal and stay alive have moved on (at least that's my theory).

This is very similar to Blackthorn's dungeon or the high seas before additional items were added with patch 117. When the rewards are limited/fixed for X period (or indefinitely) there is no reason to keep farming and people will find other things to do/farm.

shootgun

I had 8 of my accounts banned permanently. Let me explain what's going on. Just to remind you, all of these accounts were 2 to 3 months old. All of them are created to farm void pool 24/7.

First of all, the policy about banning accounts has changed for void pool. Previously, you would get 1st strike, 2nd strike, then a permanent ban. Right now at void pool it is first strike, then a permanent ban.

The other thing is that, a lot of scripters have more than enough items to last them a lifetime. Even if we count each drop at 100 K, I am sitting on more than 10 platinum of artifacts right now. At this point, for most of the scripters it does not make any logical sense to keep forming the void pool. You can easily make more gold at other parts of the game and then use the gold from that to buy hats from other people.

I won't get into its details but there are 2 things. One most scripters already found a way around the GM's watching void pool. So if they wanted they could swarm void pool again. But as I mentioned the drops from void pool are not as lucrative as some of the other parts of the game anymore. Two this action against scripters is only limited to void pool and nowhere else in the game. Nobody wants to risk their accounts because once your account is banned permanently spinning up the new one and leveling 6 characters in the new account takes 2 to 3 weeks. So a lot of people are making more gold at other parts of the game without risking their accounts and buying hats to buy more artifacts to sell back to the market in couple years.

As for me I'm just adding the following screenshot where I explained my guild mates about how I feel.

I can easily create another 10+ accounts and recover my losses in the next month but I decided to focus on my business for the next 2-3 years. I was playing UO for relaxing but then I started scripting because nobody was stopping @nonono even though he was using exploit to place houses in the game for more than a year. At this point I accept that something else is going on. @nonono is ToS enforcement immune and fighting this battle against him does not interest me anymore. 

I know for a fact that 2 people I regularly play with decided to switch to the most commonly played free shard because of this selective ban policy where few players, for reasons unknown, are immune to ban. In couple years, I may join them at the free shard, or I may come back to OSI. Not sure yet.

Lord_Nythrax