of bots and pilots

I came upon this post on the PW messageboards:

It's a joke? I'm not laughing. Neither should any of you.

A lot of people have complained about being "hacked" and whine a lot because LU! could not fix it when it clearly shows items were traded between characters. What do you think is the root of all of that? I will tell you: Pilots.

You are responsible for the security of your account just as LU! is responsible for the security of the database. If you use pilots you violate the LU! Customer Support Policies and you expect LU! to compensate you for your own follies?

For shame.

*original post here: http://pwboards.levelupgames.ph/index.php?s=&showtopic=191&view=findpost&p=5936 *

Which is true; however, to quote from hackenslash.net:

Meanwhile, Sheila Paul, chief operating officer of Level Up!, which distributes the games Ragnarok, RF Online and ROSE Online, said their company is supporting "piloting" services in Internet cafés, not bots.

Essentially, "piloting" is when the owner of an online game character hires someone to play the game for him or her. Pilots help in upgrading the characters to a higher level. Sometimes they also harvest items or the virtual money for the current game being played.

*original article here: http://hackenslash.inquirer.net/gamingscene/index.php?story_id=80115*

So what really is the LUG policy on pilots?

It reallly boils down to how they implement their rules. Bots are clearly commonplace in RO. Many have pilots, too; yet do they do anything about it?

Then again, business is business. They'd lose a lot of customers if they enforced that rule strictly, right?

My personal stand on this is that pilots are legal, bots are not. To paraphrase (I can't remember who said this, I'll find it later), with bots you edit the game code itself. This can be considered similar to edited characters. With piloting, there's still someone behind the avatar/character, and the game code is not tweaked.

It all boils down to being responsible for your account. You should be able to completely trust the pilot--knowing each other irl is a great advantage. It's also better that the person whom youre account with has no motive to hack your account--most of those who have borrowed my account also have their own accounts with better equips and higher levels than mine that getting mine won't put them ahead.

I got hacked once (together with my first Gmail, Roseboards, and Friendster account), I have a pretty good idea who did it (since we traded accounts), and so it comes out completely my fault. I could've cleaned his account out too, but I won't stoop down to his level and do what he did. Now, my account is now in the hands of many other people; and I don't really care what happens to it.

And on a parting note, my first CM might be right about the one who was first quoted here.