Quote Originally Posted by Jojoya View Post
Did the timer completely stopped flipping? No, but it is far, far less than what had been going on. A player now has a chance to buy a house direct from the game at the intended prices instead of going through a flipper for several times the price set by SE. That wasn't true on the NA worlds for all of 4.0 and 4.1. If you wanted to buy a house then, it was pay the flipper price or go without.
Oh I agree that things were pretty bad back then, and SE definitely needed to do something. This just wasn't it. What we have now is a bot developer making a killing selling a bot he developed to players who are desperate but don't want to sit for hours at a placard clicking. We have people using that bot (or others) to click their way to a plot, and then flip it on the market for anywhere from 40 to 150 million. And there's a pair of alts from a most infamous botter on one server that ward scan faster than any human realistically could, relocate to mediums and larges that demo (usually before anyone else even knows they are there) and then sells them as relocations by hopping to a new, open, small plot.

So really, it's not much better at all than what it used to be. Flippers and resellers just adapted, their operations continue unabated and players are still willing to pay their outrageous prices just to finally have a house of their own.

That said, SE could kill all of this by simply releasing more wards. Not just the 2 or 3 they tend to release at a time, but just drop something large like... 100 on us finally. It'll take some time to fill up, and it won't kill the market entirely, people will still have desired plots they want that will undoubtedly sell out faster than others. But at least this desperation I'm witnessing will stop, and the maker of the bot software's business will dry up. (Bonus: They add in two more subdivisions, too. Man a person can dream right?)

But, something something-- hardware-- something. Ok, not a feasible option probably. So let's go with something SE could use as a bandaid at least to staunch the bleed from botters and flippers.

Continued in the next post because I am wordy and went over the 3000 character limit.