Originally Posted by
Midnight Man
Long long time lurker here making a first post, and a big thank you to all who've made the GW2 forums a great read and source of information! Simply cannot wait to get my hands on this game!
I agree that there will be bots in GW2, they will have some effect on the economy. Thanks, though, to some brilliant design work from ArenaNet, I think the impact of bots on your collection/gathering activities will be near none at all - this mainly from the fact that I've heard gathering nodes - a common target of botting systems - spawn for all players, not on a "first come first served" basis as in many other games.
It remains to be seen how much gathered materials, and gold coin actually "matter" in the game, to determine what effect gold farming and botting will have on the overall economy. By this, I mean that if a fair percentage of the good, high level rewards are only obtainable via currencies or points one can earn by participation (say in Dungeons or Dynamic Events), then the "value" of gold and perhaps other farmed materials is diminished, and the potential market for these items and currencies is considerably smaller. I don't know enough of the details of GW2 to understand whether or not this is the case, but I certainly hope it is!