Bots, Bots Everywhere

So the other day I decide to go do some Icy Dragon Sword Farming. I goto Granite Citadel American District 1 only to find an amazing number of bots. I mean it's so easy to tell they are bots. They go to the merchant, run over to the sign, twitch for 15 seconds and go out the door. Same thing with Bergen Hot Springs American District 1, littered with bots. I thought this sort of activity was not condoned by NCSoft and that accounts such as these would receive a ban? If it is so easy to get away with and nothing is to be done about perhaps I should look into a script writer so I can farm afk, heh. Please stop or atleast slow down this abuse of Guild Wars NCSoft.

IGN: Forge Runner

same thought ..

I say it in every bot thread but i'll say it again

Bots are the reason we don't have monthly fees

Care to explain your theory, or at least point me in the right direction? It would seem to me that Anet is the reason we don't have monthly fees, not the script writers who inflate the economy.

Just ignore them and go about your business.You know Monty Python really needs to do a skit on bots.

The amatures don't but the big gold selling companys do.
They buy an acount
use bot
make gold
sell it
make money
get account banned
buy account
use bot
make gold
sell it
make money
get account banned
buy account
....

Its a cycle that pumps huge amounts of money into Anet
Ever wonder why they don't IP ban bot users? - where would the money come from in that?
I'd rather not pay monthly and put up with bots than have to pay so keep it up Anet

There are a lot of bots that use free trials/stolen accounts but I'd say yes, you're most likely right Jenim.

This is just like cigerettes in the UK. The government give the impression they want rid of them completely yet won't place a full ban becuase they need the money from cigerette taxes

The theory is that Anet gets sales from the extra accounts sold to botters so that puts cash in Anet's pockets that we don't have to shell out.

From a theoretical standpoint, Anet's smartest move is to ban SOME bots on a regular basis but still leave it profitable for chinese gold farmers to bot for a bit before they get banned. This leaves a steady flow of cash to Anet as the botters have to buy new accounts every once in a while. If they get too tough, botting is no longer profitable and they lose this stream of income.

Again, theoretically, if Anet decided to do this, I'd rather they just cut out the middleman and sell gold themselves. They would make all the cash from these transactions instead of just a portion and servers become a bit less strained. They would lose the moral high ground of no gold for sale but if they kicked a bit of these proceeds into paying for devs to do free additional content like Sorrow's Furnace on a regular basis they could win the hearts of the public.

You are honestly thinking bot users buy accounts?

I would be really surprised if they actually would.

We had a player in our guild who had a monk character. He was an active member and quite a valuable contributor to our activities. A few weeks ago he stopped responding to messages. A couple of days later I saw the character in granite citadel running repeatedly between the signpost, the mesmer hench and the merchant....clearly a bot. I kicked him from the guild straight away. Last night I got a message from an unknown character, claiming he was the monk player using a new account and asking if he could join the guild again. I asked him why he was using a new character and he said he wanted to start again because he didn't like the characters he had created on his old account. I asked him if it had anything to do with downloading bot programmes and having his account stolen, to which he vehemently denied and then sent me a stream of unprintable messages. He now has a place on my ignore list.

Gold merchant companies don't buy all of their accounts, they take them from players who are stupid enough to download bot programmes. That's why we have no monthly fees....players have to buy new accounts to replace the ones they lost by having their previous accounts stolen. Why would a Gold Merchant company want to have an 'unnecessary' company expense such as buying accounts, when they can get them for free?

[edit] spelling

I've said it once, I've said it again. Who cares. Let the bots do their thing. They don't actually do anything bad except farm a stupid amount of gold... Anet's bot policy probably is hurting more legitimate players at the moment than actual botters.

Yes, I honestly think so.

Think through what would happen with password stealing. Person downloads a trojan program and gold farmer gets the password. He then changes the password on the account and starts the process of building up a monk primary character who can bot granite citadel. His new character has to get there, rank and buy the required equipment before he can start. There is a period of time before the gold farmer can start farming.

The guy who had his account stolen will see that his password is stolen the next time he logs in and will contact Anet. If the farmer doesn't change the guy's password, he's still immediately going to notice a new character in the logon screen, suspect something and change the password himself and/or contact Anet.

Look at Yol's post, sounds like a 2 week turnaround time before the guy starts botting in that instance. I'd guess it could be done in a lot less time if they had someone run the new char to granite and power rank it... but the point is that in an average case a botter could only use a stolen account for like 2 or 3 days. And Anet would have the ip address of the guy who stole the account. Go to granite and you can see lines of these guys constantly.

Yol, I'm predicting Anet would immediately change the password on the account if your friend asked from his e-mail address so let me suggest an alternate theory...

Your guildmate sold his account on ebay; a gold farmer ended up buying it. Nothing got stolen. That's why nobody complained during the 2 week turnaround time for the farmer to do the setup.

.... Im sorry to say this to you, as i dont know you, however...Its people who make comments like yours who are not helping. If you dont care, then dont post and keep your ignorant, incorrect statements to yourself.

If you don't condemn the act of botting which is clearly against the T&C of playing Guildwars, then you are by proxy condoning it. Anyone who condones botting is as bad as the botters.

AAnets bot policy does not hurt legit players.

AAnet can and should take effort to ban bots. However, the rest is up to players... for us to report bots; for us to not be stupid and want to cheat thus enabling our accounts to be stolen; and for us to not buy ingame gold with real money.

Someone mentioned ip bans.. i wondered this myself..but unfortunately because many ip's are not static, banning ips can lead to innocent people being banned. However... if i was overseaing banning of bots, i would track ips of offenders and look for matches - recurring ips should be perm banned.

Monthly fees.... the reason we dont have to pay them is because AANet have promised never to charge them. I wouldnt have ever bought each of the chapters if there was a chance of monthly fees now or in the future. That promise has no bearing on bots..... i mean come on guys heh.. you talk as if AANet made the game and built into their finance plans the potential future income gained from botters.... :P


My only beef with AANets policy is that i believe they should publish lists of names of characters banned for botting. (and/or let those who report bots, know the outcome) This would show us that they are banning themselves and all the bots that we as players report.

Give players confidence that the time they spend making reports, will result in bans...then i reckon more people will report. Do this on a large scale... botters will have a hard time.

Loot scaling has caused eBay gold prices to soar partly because of the increased demand and partly because now double, triple, X times the number of bots are required to farm said gold. It all balances out with the overall effect that:

1) All the legitimate players in the game now have an awful lot less money than they could potentially have before.

2) There is an explosion in the number of bots clogging up the servers.

Is this really what Anet wanted?

I just remember the time I was progressing along in Tyria with my monk a year and a half ago and I got to Elona reach and there were 5 districts of the mission, all of them full of Mo/W bots. It was so bad in there that I couldn't find a pickup group like I was used to doing with my monk, and had to call my guildies up to get me through. It really detracts from the enjoyment of the game if it goes unchecked and gets large. I guess you can't stop people from buying in game funds. When I played WoW there were the same kinds of problems with it.

If items/skills etc are made cheaper in game, then some of the issues we are faced with botters/gold sellers/spammers/scammers etc will be made less worse.

However i believe that it is imperitive for ANet to show that they take a strong, harsh and zero tolerance stance on botters.

I also would like to see ANet 'name and shame' accounts banned for botting. After then have banned them, there shouldnt be a problem with them naming them as they obviously have decided that they do indeed bot.
That way we can 'see' and check against our own reported bots, rather than simply believe that they banned x number of accounts this month.

Many people ignore the fact that there may be up to 30 bots in a zone at once or accept that there isnt much point spending valuable time reporting them.

I would also offer incentives to players to report bots. each bot successfully reported and then banned - 100 gold pieces bounty.

Within a week or two there would be no more bots.

The gold sellers and botters do not buy accounts. They steal them, take over other people's accounts, use stolen credit card numbers, and apparently use certain schemes in other countries that somehow allow them to get accounts without paying. All this was in a post from Gaile - not as her opinions, but as information passed on from the A-net people dealing with bots.

Anyone who thinks botters and gold merchants are going to "play by the rules" and actually buy accounts... is naive and/or delusional (JeniM, I'm looking at you).

And no players. That guild, they're all bots, gimme 5k!

Skuld has a point. How are they going to tell if they're bots? In theory, you can't really tell if one is a bot except by monitoring behavior, and just because someone does farm runs 50 times in a row nonstop, it doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a real player doing that.

You could track them down and watch their movements, but that would be rather impractical considering how many bot reportings there would be. And you can damn be sure that people are going to report more than bots so they can get money, so that will make the task that much harder.

If ArenaNet were smart, they'd record the IP of anyone banned for bots and redirect them to 'bot'-devoted servers when they log in so that they'd only be in 'bot' towns. They'd still do what they came to do, ArenaNet would get money by occasionally banning the current account with that IP address, and nobody would be lagged down.

And if they then want to play with their real characters and can't seem to join the same town as their guildies because for some strange reason there are only bots... Oops... *innocent look* Guild Wars is screwy sometimes...

Not only that....It's becoming annoying with the ammount of LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG that bot IP addies are creating.

okay. Everyone think about it. Bots not hurting anything? hmmm... Bot accounts still use bandwidth....and the reason for all the terrible lag lately.

Your idea is genuinely and properly hillarious.

Anet could just pm them saying "are you a bot?" If they say no, they aren't, if they don't respond, they are.

I'm actually shocked at how bad this problem is and how so little is being done to correct such an easy problem.

At the time of the posting of this thread about 2:45am PST there are currently at least 50 farmbots (the typical mo/w) running through "Bergen Hot Springs" American District 1, the problem has gotten so bad people now call the town "Bergen BOT Springs".

I have seen some humorous posts on this issue, and we all know it's a problem for various reasons (Lag, economy, etc etc). What sickens me about the whole thing isn't that it happens, it's more that it's "Sooo Obvious" and "So Plentiful" and still nothing has been done about it. It reminds me of the Illegal Alien issue in USA.

I could post every bot name, but I really don't believe anything would come out of it, so I won't waste my time. I know this though, It would take a single person about 10 mins atm to identify each one (about 50) and ban the accounts, not entire teams of people. Perhaps a volunteer ARK, GM group is in order, I know I'd put in a few hours everynight to correct the issue.

The only additional time that could be spent would be in checking times these bots run, and what accounts they transfer the items/money to. If I were to run one this is how I would do it.....Buy Prophecies $30 bucks new account, run it and transfer to my main account with all 3 versions, if you ban the bot, big deal out $30. Check logs and Ban them both now thier out $150+. Granted that doesn't account for those using the bots for the gold companies.

Please do something about this issue, maybe have the npc's move around every couple of minutes could help, or place npcs in such a fashion people get stuck a little easier and have to go around something, maybe require a random keystroke when you exit a town for the 1000th time in 30min, there are a multitude of ways this issue could be corrected, and their really not time consuming or difficult to do. Like I said I know there are responsible folks that could volunteer and would, myself included. A punkbuster style of program that would check for bots everytime you zone might be another idea.

Just my thoughts....

I was trying to do my duty and report an abuse...the bots where obhious, they have checkpoints and are doing the same moves, only now after the 3rd day the moves changed a bit for some of them, so when u see them all together for a moment you can be tricked, but if u whait 5mins and see how EVERYTHING REPEATS ITSELF WITH ACCURACY, YOU CAN'T BE FOULED.
These bots are smart yes, but even so, even a donkey could spot them.

What do I get in response?

A confirmation that Anet HAS NO AUTOMATED DETECTING TOOLS for bots and doesn't really give a damm about bots..I simply wasted my time sending reports, taking prinstreens etc etc.

I am whaiting for a reply, for my last update on the report but I don't expect anithing else than "Thank you for your patience, thank you for contacting Guild Wars Customer Support bla bla "

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Customer (XXXX) 06/18/2007 02:31 PM
I was farming in Rilohn Refuge at arround 11.30 GMT when I noticed menny N/A appearing and doing the same sequence of actions, acctions that didn't made much sence. I remember I saw the same sequance of actions last night but I didn't payed much attention, now I did. I attached prinstscreens with the actions/names, I found it more convenient to pack them in .rar files, the files are virus free.
I assume a player with a caracter named "XXXX" might be involved, he tryed to convince me it was him and his guild farming and there are no bots involved.
I would like to receive (if possible) a reply with what u discovered/actions taken.
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Response (GM XXXX) 06/18/2007 03:46 PM
Hello,

Thank you very much for contacting the Guild Wars Customer Support Team. We will use the information you have provided to investigate whether a violation of the rules has occurred and will take the appropriate actions.

All information related to the discovery and disciplining of an account will only be discussed between the possible violator and the customer support. If we do find any rules to be broken, you will not hear of any rulings related to the incident and the account(s) involved.

Regards,
GM XXXX

Guild Wars Customer Support
NCsoft Europe
http://www.guildwars.com
================================================
Customer (XXXX) 06/19/2007 11:13 AM
I reported yesterday the usage of bots in Rilohn Refuge -European District English 1, I think they dissapeared in the afternoon, now a new set of bots has arrived, new names same class (Necro/assasin), doing the same thing.
I don't consider it is necessary to add new printscreens, they are easy to spot, same script, same owner porbably, and they will be there for a long time.
Anet says that bot users are banned and has ways of dettecting bots, I fail to understand how the bots I reported yesterday have been able to function for at least 2 days.
This is disturbing and affects the economy of the game.
================================================
Response (GM XXXX) 06/19/2007 01:43 PM
Hello,

Thank you very much for contacting the Guild Wars Customer Support Team again. We will use this update of the information you have provided to investigate whether a violation of the rules has occurred and will take the appropriate actions.

As always, all information related to the discovery and disciplining of an account will only be discussed between the possible violator and the customer support. If we do find any rules to be broken, you will not hear of any rulings related to the incident and the account(s) involved.

Regards,
GM XXXX
Guild Wars Customer Support
NCsoft Europe
http://www.guildwars.com
================================================
Discussion Thread
Customer (XXXX) 06/20/2007 01:23 PM
I reported the usage of bots in Rilohn Refuge -European District English 1, yesterday and the day before. The bot names changed and every day there was a new set, they use the same script/macro so they are easy to spot. I was about to report that today you have 2 more but then I went to international and I saw that district is full with bots. Necro/assasin + ele/assasin, most of them using the exact script + mabe a few using a new sript, even so easy to spot.
Mabe indeed what I've heared in the forums is corret "bots are the reason why we have no monthly fees" and since you have such a slow reponse (or none since I don't know the results) everibody will create a macro so GW will be a game played by bots.
I will no longer report bots nomater how menny I see, you seem to endulge too much so I am just wasting time it seems.
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Hi Blackice8r, firstly can i say cheers for reporting the bots in the first place The more of us that do, potentially means the more that do get banned.

I would urge you to stick with it and keep reporting the bots.

I try and get as many into one screenshot as possible, to save time resizing and zipping too many screenies.

I know it is kind of a pitty that ANet wont tell us if and when they do get banned as a result of us giving up our time to help, but ive suggested this before - i think it would encourage more people to report more violations, thus making the game better for us all.

Try this... make an excel spreadsheet - just a simple one, with colum for bot name, one for district and one for date/time. Then once a day for 5 mins, go to the main bot places and note down whatever is there. report them and copy/paste to your spreadsheet.

Then over the next 2-4 weeks..see if the same names come up again or not which will give you your proof

If not.. it will imply that they are getting banned, so take heart in that.
Ive only been keeping record for a week or so, but only taken notes over a couple of days. Out of 110 bots ive spotted so far, only 1 has been a repeat.
This could be because there are so many, im not there at same time as the previous, or that they are indeed being banned.
I must say that i think there has been a reduction that ive seen in Granite Citadel which is where i reported all mine and i know others have reported hundreds too.

If you know that gold farmers exist because somebody need to buy their services as long as the cost are cheap(which is almost free due to illegal medthod) and the price is right(enjoy the real world money,your char with a beefed up state) gold farmers will not be gone.

The inscription system sure help reduce the need of work to gain what you need to play the game in a fair manner.But luxerious people still enjoy the gold sinks which help to keep the game interesting.But medthod for acquiring the items peple desired just a bit too much for somebody to work with.And that where gold farming come in.

Im sure GW is fine at the current state.It just players who gave those wink for the gold farming to work.Except that bots are taking the server badwith and make the gold renewal from players to players become minimal.

Question, I have seen areas where there are tons of mo/w and have heard them called bots. Ok I have a monk and just got taught to farm a boss an easy one anyway what keeps people from reporting me as a bot? cause when farming you just keep running from point a to point b then sell then do again
and is this what your talking about? Sorry for the noob question.

Hi Steve, best way to explain is actually if you see it for yourself. I was dubious of being able to easily tell a bot apart from a hard core farmer...but..it is easy. The only way really a human could be mistaken for a bot is if the human on purpose replicated time and time again without deviation, the same path the bot takes.

if you can, go to Granite citadel and watch the line of them (they go to point a, (needlessly in human terms) then to merch, then back to point a (again needlessly) then to point b and wait a bit, maybe spin a bit, then exit. rinse and repeat.

anyone who has seen this can not mistake a human for a bot unless that human is trying to look like a bot.

One other thing.. if you have a title, wear it. as generally speaking bots wont have completed x part of the game to actually get a title.

OK everyone must be forgetting that millions of people worldwide play GW. So to come up with a plan on how to rid of bots and keep them gone... takes a little while. ANet isn't just going to implement the first idea that pops into their head, they have to be cautious and think through every possibility of affecting millions of players down the road. Nothing is more aggravating than changing something in the game... finding out its affecting everyone... and then having to go back and fix it again.

Just chill... ANet will take care of everything.



Also another way to see the difference between a bot and a hardcore farmer.... the live person usually has a cape on. I haven't seen many bots with capes.

True bots usually quite there guild so not to be reported by guildies. I farm rilon int1 constantly, do to GW guru store stock and all the bots there are guild less and have pretty short names. (and different nationalities apparently.)

Once a while i would see the district empty from an apparent cleansing, but they usually get back on.

Now I really don't care about them but I just want to point out that a net is doing at least something.

Fot three days now...three days in a row, I am reporting bots in Rilohn Refuge, and I supported my acusations with screenshots.
Yes after each day I could see different names, but still I can easilly spot a lot of bots, a few in English 1 and loads in International. The exact pattern, and just a few with a different one.

If there have been reports and they found the reports to be true why don't they check that area from time to time?
An in the first place, is it that hard to to create an automated tool? If number of played hours > 12 run a check on the inputs coming from that account. If for 12 hours they fallow the exact same parth what are the chances for that to be a bot??
(I suggested to check for >12 hours so they won't put too much load on th server.)

And, I don't know if the bots I reported have been placed somewhere else, if they have been temporarely suspended or banned.
It makes you thing that what u do is kindoff pointless.
Worst thing is that they will probably nefert the farming place instead of taking it on the bots. I wouldn't mind too much because I consider it an exploit, but I farm there to relax.

I donno, I feal dissapointed, I won't have time for this game for a while and these things really "help" me to put it away.


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Ok now as a joke, since ANet doesn't have a realibe automated tool for bot detection, why don't they make a new title?

BOT HUNTER - they would have loads of bot hunters, eyes everyhere and a serious one would spend the time necessary on bringing reliable data.

An now serious, would it hurt them to tell you "thank you, the information you provided was usefull for us and the players found guilty have been punished" ????

The problem is so simple to solve and yet aNet does nothing. What's the simple solution? It's not hard to monitor that a character has done something repetitive as anyone who has triggered aNet's stupid anti-farming crap knows. How do tell if they are a bot? Ask them a question that a bot can't answer. Literally millions of web sites do this to prevent bots from creating accounts, attacking passwords, etc. The question could simply involve typing back the characters that are displayed in a stealthy manner somewhere on the page.

I'm sure there are many other ways to determine if there is a bot there or not. Personally I'm now of the opinion that aNet really doesn't care. Even without automated bot detection, they could easily spot the bots running the more common places such as Granite Citadel. Whether this lack of care is because of hidden financial benefit aNet gets from the bot community or whether it is simply because they don't give a woot doesn't really matter. It screws up the game economy, penalizes the real farmers, and makes aNet look like a sham.

-tl

I think the solution is even easier than suggested. The majority of bots are 55'ing. Add an enchantment stripper to each melee mob and presto! Problem solved. People can 55 UW but a bot can't becuase you need to pick routes according to mobs, same applies to botted area's. Either that or randomly dot those pesky little dying nightmares on the routes. An alert human will easily be able to respond accordingly so they don't die... ie, a high hp weapon set change and quick dropping of a couple of ench's. That way, you keep the 55 crowd somewhat happy by not nerfing them into oblivion. They'll just need to think a little now, like a solo UW 55 Mo/W does.

[edit: elaborated more]

One way I have found to tell a bot from a real player is; (this happened yesterday 7/3/2007) I politelely PMd someone that was spamming in open chat wanting to sell something(instead of using trade chat)(there must be sellbots too) to please use the trade chat. I immediately got a join group request and a PM with same spam being put in open chat, moments later i got a trade invite from that character(obviously a bot) which i immediately declined only to have trade request opened again, which again I declined, this went on about 5 times at which point it was given up and it(the bot) went on spamming its desire to sell something in open chat. I then asked again in PM for him/her/it to please use the trade tab with same result as before, after it(the bot) went back to spamming in open chat again I spammed it in PM to please use the trade tab, after i spammed it(the bot) for ohhhhhhhh i guess 10min I was placed on ignore. The bots are DEFINITLEY getting smarter.

yup the bots get smater but i don't care no more about those imbeciles.
they wil stop doing it if they get banned to much and the profit can be made anymore.
im mean that in the sence that the lose more money then they can earn,
for buying GW accounts
but like i heard before in this thread they just keeping fatting up the game.
i they buy and get banned they just buy again
And for people who hack account, i only say don't let me get one in my hands.

greetzz sparda

Sparda you should see all the Mo/W and Mo/Me bots in Bergen Hot Springs(aka; Bergen Bot Springs) and Granite Citadel right now, thank god you can walk through other players otherwise you wouldn't be able to move in those towns. LOL

yea that's true, bergen is packed with bots like a can of sardines in a sailors fridge =)....but i recently saw some in NF too, i think it was in bassalt grotto. Theay were like 3 f***ing bots around storage.

I haven't seen a bot(or one that could clearly be known as one) in NF, not to say there isn't, I just haven't noticed one yet.

Arborstone is being invaded by the botscum as we speak

I say leave the bots, then we can just ignore them and do away with Loot scaling so everyone can make their own gold. The botters would need less bots so no server strain and less people would have to buy gold because they could farm their own.