WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! #tweetfleet #devfleet @RegnerBA #bestDevEver :)
— Fuzzysteve (@Fuzzysteve) March 11, 2014
@RegnerBA It's a shame there's no 'live' data (with a cache to stop it being perfect) but this is a very good start :)
— Fuzzysteve (@Fuzzysteve) March 11, 2014
What's Steve so excited about? CCP has opened up access to historical market data via CREST. A feature mentioned at Fanfest last year, CCP managed to get some of the functionality released before this year's event. And Steve went right to work.
https://t.co/a58Adr1enw Now with a date range filter :) And updating names. and links. #tweetfleet #devfleet just need to fix autocomplete
— Fuzzysteve (@Fuzzysteve) March 12, 2014
So what does CREST and Steve's work with market data have to do with the War On Bots™? Simple, really. When market data is available, hopefully the practice of obtaining the information through cache-scraping will go away. Cache-scraping is a practice that violates the EULA, but CCP employees years ago told players was okay anyway. I can't blame players for believing that the practice was acceptable because CCP even added objects to make the practice easier.
I've never liked cache-scaping because I never saw the difference between someone operating their account AFK with code running to mine ore in an asteroid belt for hours at a time and someone operating their account AFK with code running to mine information from the market interface for hours at a time. But once people at CCP woke up to what was going on, the practice had gone on for years and the decision was made to allow the practice to continue as long as cache-scraping did not turn into botting.
Whenever I step back a moment, I always find the fact that some of those who cry the loudest for CCP to do something about market bots are the staunchest defenders of the practices that make developing market bots easier. Hopefully, as CREST opens up the market data that players are scraping the cache to obtain, the constituency for cache scraping will go away and CCP will have an easier time banning the bad guys. Yesterday was a good first step.
