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.