Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Online: Home of the Scammers, Cheaters and Bot Farmers

Most online games have problems with scammers, cheaters and automated (scripted) bot farmers and The Elder Scrolls Online is no different. But, one of the main differences is that according Zenimax, some of this activity is not actually against their Terms of Service (ToS). 

One of the most valuable things a player can acquire in the game, second only to experience points, is gold. Gold equals wealth and wealth can get you just about anything in this game. As of the Summerset release, ESO wealth can even buy you items from Crown Store for about 100g per crown.

That's right, now the mostly aesthetic items (mounts, pets, costumes, etc.) that you would have had to pay real cash in the form of crown exchanges, can be purchased with gold. Gold that you can honestly acquired in the game or gold which can be purchased from nefarious sites that run bot farms to harvest and sell resources to get gold to sell for real world cash. I wouldn't recommend the second source of gold, as that can lead to a ban, described below.

And Zenimax does nothing to stop this, because selling gold for cash, nor bot farming is not in violation the ToS. But, do you know what does violate the ToS? If you go buy gold from one of these websites, or directly buy resources from a Bot Farmer, this is considered a violation of the ToS and can lead to your account being banned, known as ZOS dropping the Ban Hammer; something they are infamous for.

Let me explain bot farmers to you in case you don't get the concept.

A person creates multiple Xbox accounts, a relatively simple task.

This person then creates multiple TESO accounts using their Xbox accounts.

This person then uses an official Xbox emulator for Windows, from Microsoft (yes Microsoft actually released an unlicensed tool to the public that allows for this exploit to happen), to run multiple instances of the game on one computer, say ten or twenty instances (whatever the PC is able to handle) in small windows.

This person then trains their bots to run nodes in a given area, or sets them up to farm a known location (Bear Farm, Tiger Farm, Dolmens (for XP), etc.) The farmer sets their bots up to run individually for resource nodes in different instances, or as a group for various animal farms as running animals farms as a group gets a  higher hide drop rate.

The sell their items for gold, then sell the gold for real money through their websites.

So that is how the bot farmers work; basically speaking.

How big is the problem? Well, the problem and its impact are both huge.

Bot Farmers are the reason Hide Scraps and Dreugh Wax are up to the 50% cheaper than their black smith and woodworking counterparts. And this really, from a basic economics perspective, should not be the case. Woodworking materials have a very limited use; make bows, shields or staves. The most any one character would need of these would be two items (two bows, two staves, two shields), one for each the front and back bars while the clothing materials (cloth and leathers) can be used to make chests, head, shoulders, hands, legs, and feet.

This means that for each character, there is a 3 to 1 ratio between what the demand for clothing and woodworking materials should be. Looking at this, again from an economics point of view clothing materials, like leathers, should be 3 times higher in price than woodworking.

And guess what; Ancestor Silk is nearly 2x much more expensive over woodworking and yet hide scraps are not. See, until recently bot farmers had not figured out how to farm resource nodes so they weren't flooding the ESO marketplace with Ancestor silk, which is why it remains between 18k and 22k a stack. But they have been farming bears, tigers, wolves and other animal farms for years. Which is why Leather materials are nearly half the price of their cloth counterparts. And while bot farmers had not figured out how to farm resource nodes in the past, they have now, in just the last few months, so the market place is about to change, drastically over time; and, you may already be seeing that change.

For the past three months, bot farmers have been figuring out how and where to farm resource nodes and they have fine tuned this ability. As a result, they are beginning to devalue the entire marketplace. Ore, Wood, Runestones and even clothing materials are beginning to drop in value, some of them rapidly; Bugloss, once the creme of the crop in the market place, 300g to 400g each, is now down to 200g each and falling right along with other alchemy materials.

I wish fixing this issue was as easy as everyone stopping their buying from Bot Farmers, but Bot Farmers are everywhere. They are online, they are wandering advertising insanely low prices in the different realms, they are even in guild stores; yes, guild stores.

And I'm not talking about one off guilds that are out in the middle of Nowhere, Tamriel. No, I am talking about guild stores in Daggerfall, Wayrest, Mournhold, Craiglorn and yes, even in Elden Root. I have seen these bot farmer's account myself, first hand, in some of the biggest and best known guild traders.

The thing is, guild traders aren't motivated to boot the bots either. They have received assurances from ZOS that they won't be punished for providing bots a channel to sell in and the bots, with their sales, bring money to the guild bank via the house cuts and dues. But the guild traders who allow bots in their guilds are hurting their members and the community as a whole. That needs to sink in to the minds of the Guild Owners across Tamriel. Your acceptance of bots into your guilds is hurting the game, the community and your members. Please consider that.

And while Zenimax couldn't give two spits about this, this BOT activity is against Microsoft's ToS and while reporting it to Zenimax won't produce any results, I have seen evidence that reporting it to Microsoft will. I was watching a certain, very unique bot farmer, who ran around with Kallopi's Essence on, making the bot wearing it nearly invisible. I followed this bot for a short while across multiple days, and watched the patterns of a resource bot (mentioned below). I reported the bot to Microsoft and the very next day the bot was not there. And the bot has not been back to my farm location since. I have been successful reporting these bots to Microsoft with multiple bots in the location with the same outcome... a day later I never see that particular bot again.

Here is what to look for with BOTS before reporting every Tom, Dick and Jane in the game.

1. Most bots will have simple names; XVNIIW. And groups of bots, like the animal farm bot-clusters, will have similar names within the cluster; XVNIIW, XVNIIX, XVNIIZ.
2. Resource bots will look very similar; they will be within the 4-7 level range character wearing prisoners garb. This is 90% of the time, as I have found a few bots that were slightly higher levels, or slightly differently dressed, or in the case of one them, invisible.
3. Animal bots will all look the same, Lightning Form, flame staff and in large numbers (ten or more) all casting the same skills, having the same pets up, and in some cases all moving in the same directions at the same time.
4. Resource bots will farm in areas with low NPC enemy counts and high resource node counts; think beginner areas. 
5. Animal bots will be where there is a large quantity of animals (bears, tigers, durzogs, etc.) that re-spawn rapidly.
6. Resource bots important detail; the resource bots are running off a script, so that means they will run to a specific location a resource is known to be at, even if it isn't there, in an attempt to farm said node. Follow them for a minute and you will definitely see this pattern and so can Microsoft if you report them.
7. When you see this pattern bring up the radial dial, like you are going to trade with or report them to Zenimax, and instead look at their gamer card, like you are going to friend them. This will show you an abbreviated Xbox Profile... and look at their G Score. The G score represents their achievements and a score of zero means that they have never gotten a single achievement, in any game, ever. And G Score of 5 means they got the only achievement of getting out of the first area. Combine that information with the fact that they know where every resource node in the game is, even when it's not available, and this pattern screams BOT.
8. From this same screen, the gamer card, you can report them Microsoft, put a comment in the report, Bot Farmer, and submit.

Again, Zenimax won't do anything about this. You have to report them to Microsoft. It takes a few seconds to do this, but if we all address this, as a community, when we see them, we can begin policing the lawless land Zenimax abandoned long ago.

Scams are everywhere and yes they are here in Tamriel as well. Nobody likes to be ripped off so here is my advise to prevent and address scams and scammers.

Before you trade anything with anyone in the game; get an agreement between you and the other player via in game TEXT chat; "this item for this much gold, do you agree?" and wait for their response in text chat. Not voice chat, not a message via Xbox Live, but in game TEXT chat, via direct chat message to the person, a whisper. Think of the in game text chat as a written contract. If you do get scammed, Zenimax can use the text chat to confirm your side of the story and refund your gold or gear that you were scammed out of; they cannot do that via voice chat nor Xbox Live messages.

If you get scammed, do not give them a piece of your mind. Ask them to fix the situation and if they refuse, or as is usually the case, they just ignore you, go directly to report the incident to Zenimax. Capture a screenshot of the agreement you made in text chat with the person. If you have the agreement captured in the in game text chat, you will get your stuff back. Telling someone off, especially using swear words, racist statements an threats will likely mean Zenimax will punish you, instead of the other way around. Keep calm, cool and collected. This is the one area where Zenimax will actually resolve the issue.

This is especially true when dealing with paying gold for some to gift you a crown store item.

Here are some things you consider guidelines, thing I do, to protect yourself from being scammed in the first place.

1. Buy from/sell through guild traders whenever you can.
2. If the offer sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
3. Always use the C.O.D. mail system, send the item to the person with a request for gold in the same message.
4. Always check the attachments to all C.O.D.s you receive before you take the attachments, if they did not send you the item agreed upon, return the mail to sender.
5. Always verify the items they are posting in a trade screen; make sure it the right name, the right color, the right level.
6. Always count to five before you confirm a trade. Some scammers will use a quick switch trick, switching out the item just before you confirm.

Cheats in ESO come in many different flavors, but for the most part are simply players exploiting poor design by the developers. My only advise is:

DO NOT EXPLOIT THESE FLAWS IN THE GAME.

Doing so will result in the ban hammer falling on you. If you find a flaw in the game, stop exploiting it and report it to Zenimax immediately.