New botting location? :(

Hey

Was in The Marketplace and spotted a large mob of Mo/Me's with very plain looking appearances and the usual ridiculous style names of just random letters or random words stringer together.

This was in "Common-1" (European). Is the same true of the US servers?

Edit: Added screenshot. Tried to show how the names are random without actually showing the full name. This was just what was clustered around the merchant.

Sheesh Jo, look around some more. Bots have invaded marketplace forever >>

And then there's Altrum Ruins, which last I checked, made the marketplace look tame. Also, does anyone find it strange that they're still all wearing tattoo armour, even though you can achieve the same effect with any type of armor and usually for less with other types, these days?

Edit: And honestly, I don't get why Arenanet can't spot bots so easily just by their name. I mean, who's REALLY gonna call their tattoo clad female monk "Fff Ggh" ?

I thought bot use 3rd party programs? Isn't that reason enough to ban?

1. not new...they've been there for a while
2. they need more evidence of botting activity to ban than just the fact that they are wearing tattoo armor, have a name made of random characters, and are guildless.
3. Using a third party program is against the EULA....so in this case if they can prove they are using such a program they can easily ban.
4. Anet knows all the major botting locations and bans like 300 per day..this has been stated by Gaile...they just keep acquiring accounts either by buying them or by stealing them (less likely).

so what who cares...The only time bots affect a real player's gameplay is when some one complains about them and anet does something drastic that has bad effects on players and no real effect on bots.

This place has been botted forever.
along with:

Altrumm Ruins
Granite Citadel
Droknar's Forge Int1
Rilhon Refuge
(for a time) Maatu Keep
The Astralarium

I've begun to start to see a couple in:

St. Anjeka's
SS Great Hall

I'm curious, someone told me this, but I don't know how much stock I put into it. so correct me if I'm wrong (probably am)
They told me that if you hit certain 'flagged' locations i.e., botting spots, within a certain amount of times within a day, you're flagged. Too many flags and ANet regards you as a bot?
My friend was E/A farming Rilhon for roughly 2 days straight and then they gave him a ban for botting. He fought it, though, and won.

If you're showing bot-like behavior then yeah you'll probably get flagged for being a bot. If you're running around like a human then you'll probably be fine. Simply farming in the same location as bots is not enough to get banned...I farmed the jades outside marketplace for a few days and didn't have any problems.

Chebhek Village should also be added to the list...Necros there like crazy now...almost constant leveling up to 2 by the bots.

Typically I don't even pay attention. The bots really have no effect on my play style. However, it does kind of bug me at certain times. Back when Elona Reach was big for them it was rather "humerous" to watch the single file line smash into and drag across the wall. I've watched them once or twice in the other known outposts before, but I have never seen a bot flood like I witnessed yesterday in Altrumm Ruins. Drok's in it's hay-day wasn't even close to this. It truly was a spectacle and much worse than the last time I stopped in there. It's like someone holding a large bucket of bots at one end and slowly pouring them into the outpost for them to stream out the other end... 5-6 at a time up the stairs toward the portal with 5-6 just 10' behind them constantly.

That is if you run a 3rd part program.The Astralarium
does not have bots running around as they don't farm in hard mode and that is the only way to farm there just like Bergon Botsprings.It is about the only place to farm as well as few other places.

Afaik the flagging system works like so.

Repetetive key-hits and same-like behaviour for an extended period of time, you are "flagged". More flags accumulate, and when you hit XX flags, your account is banned.

Flags can be removed, cos come on everyone farms every now and then and of course it's gonna look samey, by doing regular stuff, questing, missions, capping, avicara-tea-parties.

And wow I really didn't know so many botting spots existed. Knew about Droks, Granite and Marketplace, but SS Great Hall? Ouch.

Would be totally eradicated if shortcuts to select nearest ally and nearest object were removed whilst inside an outpost because then how would they run to the merchant, target the sign for the exit, or whatever?

But clearly that idea is too stupid for anet to even reply to the ticket (I sent it about 8 months ago when Elona Reach was heavily botted).

Wrong. Since loot scaling bots primarily farm hard mode to sell unid golds which turns out to be far more profitable than merching all the trash like they used to.
They don't farm out of Astralarium because it's inefficient compared to other spots.

How do you know they farm hard mode as most have never beat any campaign.That is what you need to play HM in and they don't bother to finesh the game.I never seen any go through THK to get to Emberlight Camp infact I never seen a bot at Marhans Grotto I wonder why.How do you think they can beat Shiro in both camps and to get run through all the hard missions in RoT would be very expensive to them no matter how much they earned through farming?I would tend to say them only farm in normal mode.

There are a lot of stolen accounts from people who HAVE beaten the game... that's how they can farm in HM.

KANE

And one also has to realise that it is not against the EULA to pay some really small amount (by our standards) to a bunch of Chinesse near slave to play the game. Many here call that "botting" but in reality it is someone playing the game and it isn't banned nor should they - if Anet only needs you to have a strange name and play too many hours they will ban MANY that are 100% legitimate. The only way they could get banned is if they actually participated in selling the gold.

I've been accused of being a bot in Bergin Hot Springs before and I most assuredly am not - I just ran to the sign and walked the same path out that a bot does. I ignored them and was told I was "reported" - I found it quite amusing. Of course, the fact that my farm was to basically vanquish the cursed land and was only run once or twice a day Anet knew good and well I wasn't a bot. But the legendary detective work of not liking my name and the path a walked would have gotten me a ban if that were all that was used. That being said most probably *are* bots, however you need server logs to check.

I've added some to my friends list from time to time and it is amusing to note that a few of them have "regular" times they are online and offline - one of the Necro's in Chabek Village has done that now for a few weeks. Never tried to send them a whisper, just sorta find the whole thing strange - why would a human name their character that and act that way, yet why would a bot only play for a few hours a day at around (but not exactly) the same time? *shrug* dunno, but I do know I would love to see server logs and where that train of necro's go and what they do. In fact I would really like to see what area the person in my friends list was in (not just for this, but also in general).

I'm so glad that loot scaling fixed botting and didn't hurt the casual player!

so what do these bots do, run outside and hack and slash, then automatically cash out?

Probably - though unless you get the information from someone who runs one it is hard to say. I know in the past I have written automated testing harnesses for graphical applications that were "bots" (though it wasn't a game and was part of our development process) and they could get quite sophisticated in how they worked. They can even recognize what is going on by what is in the video buffer and use the mouse to click buttons, move windows, rotate the camera, etc. However, the more things they have to recognize and do the harder and harder they become.

Anything that is repeatable for a human can be botted. The smaller the set of situations they have to deal with the easier - that is why they generally are in places that they can simply walk to a sign, move in a specific pattern to exit, kill the forst group of mobs, map back to town, sell items, repeat.

Places like Bergin Hot Springs where you spawn in the same spot, have one exit, and an easy group to kill right outside of the portal are about as perfect as you can get - there is no need to even bother with "seeing" what is going on on-screen, just press the same combination of keystrokes every time. The number of situations and the amount of awareness that a bot would have to have to travel to the Cursed lands and then clear it would be...very high. In fact, high enough that someone would most likely get a PhD from it. They also would generally have a "tender" that watches quite a number of them in case the bot gets stuck in a situation it doesn't know how to handle.

I've never understood why they didn't just make the map markers unclickable and have you spawn at random points in the towns - while it would still be bottable that would do as much (and probably more) to stop them than anything else they could do. It would GREATLY decrease the amount of bots a single person could deal with and GREATLY increase the difficulty of simply getting a bot to the merchant and out the portal. While I do use the map markers to go to a portal it would be a very very small inconvenience (if they were just a different text color alt+panning around would still find the exit in a crowded area with several portals - which is the main reason I use them).

Pretty much yeah, they zone, kill the first mob with SoJ and Arcane Echo I would say. Then maybe the second mob, collect the items that drop and sell to the merch or keep the unided gold to sell to players (Still don't think that happens to much).

Oh Rinse and repeate

Add Bergen Hot Springs to the list, I was watching a bot parade the other night.

It's not some chinese guy playing a game. It's a chinese guy in Manchuria running the botting client 8 times at once. The bot merchs all the non-gold stuff, sell the gold stuff as unided, and then takes the plat he's earned, and contributes it to the company, which in turn sells the plat to unscrupulous individuals for a fine profit.

They actually play the game if they're gold farming in WoW; here it's easier to bot it.

I Was Farming Experience In The Market Place On My Low Level Monk There Yesterday. I Logged On To Guild Wars To Hear That I Have Been Permanently Banned. Anet really needs to look at the people before banning like they should just go into a place and ban everybody that meets certain terms they need to do each case individually.

There have been documented cases where people are playing/farming in that method - if the search worked better here one could probably find it. I remember a few threads where someone whispered a "bot" and went along with them and talked to the individual in question for some time. There have also been a few articles in gaming magazines about this type of farming - there are many areas in poorer countries that it is cheaper per gold unit earned to simply pay someone to farm, especially given that you no longer have the hassle of getting accounts to replace the banned ones.

The fact is - you or I do not know what is going on simply from looking at the in game toons. Someone named afd adfda with no guild may actually be a person playing, it may be a gold farmer, it may be a bot. While it is very unlikely to be a "legit" player (someone playing for enjoyment) you can't just ban on the name, no guild, and running to a sign.

You're right. Pretty bad over-simplication/generalization on my part.