More Bots in game it seems?

I noticed that there alot more bots in-game than there was a few weeks ago. I do JQ regularly and i always see the same bots which has been a few months already. Plus theres the same bots advertising their website in GtoB and seems they never are banned. Does a-net or whoever ever do anything about bots or leechers?

I think they do, but it's not visible.

And I think other players report them for botting, but it's not visible.

there's also some kind of monk bots that farm orr emblems, unid golds, lockpicks and dust. they then sell that stuff for under market price.

does it really matter ?

Someone finds a way to use a build that exploits game mechanics and farms items, that's ok even though its against the spirit of the game.
Then they write some code and hey presto the computer farms for them.

Prices tumble so what ?

If your after those items it makes it easier for you, its only tough luck on someone trying to get rich farming but not botting.

Would it spoil my enjoyment of the game if all materials were available for 1 gold, I doubt it I would still play the game the same way.

won't bother me until somehow bots actually effect the parts of the game that actually matter.

i.e. not some pve jq crap. it's not a big deal, there's bots in every game. no point in getting worked up over something that doesn't matter at all.

Don't think you get the point. A bot is an automated thing that does that at a much faster rate than humans. It's not illegal for players to use builds in a certain way to beat the mechanics. It's the botting itself that is illegal, regardless of what the bot is doing.

Monk/Mesmers out of Bergen Hot Springs. They have been there for more than 2 years.

The same companies that bot also hack large numbers of accounts, responsible for the recent huge upsurge in hacks.
One person, upon recovering their hacked account, found their one remaining character in 55 monk gear at Bergen...

So does this mean the drunkard bot which I know thousands upon thousands of people have used to max drunkard is illegal? Even though they said its fine, as long as your sitting at your computer?

You can't ban/completely stop the bots. You just have to deal with it. And in many ways its not doing anything faster then a human, its just doing the work for us. Most of the times the bots are slower, and if they encounter a problem, they are fubar'd and can't get the job done

And you know this how? Are you working at 1 of these companies? If you aren't, then don't spread slander, and word of mouth is exactly a precise way of saying the truth.

It's illegal if it performs actions that requires no human input. And they never said it was fine. Nice try though.

It is entirely possible for A.net to ban botters. There really are no more than a dozen at a time, atm. It's not impossible. During HFFF days, they did in fact put in a half-baked effort to ban people, including myself and a few friends. The fact is A.net really just don't care.

Slander only matters if actually hurts the person you are talking about. Botters/hackers don't give a crap what you think, tbh.

Then why aren't people getting banned for using it, or textmod? Both are 3rd party programs that Anet seems to be fine with. When was the last time you honestly saw someone get banned for drunk bot/textmod?


I'm pretty sure there are more then a dozen at a time in the game at any given moment. It may be possible but they won't ban any of the botters. Yes it will be a waste of their time, and they can't really afford to ban them as if they pull their focus off of pleasing the people who play this game, they will lose more players. I mean do they have people QQing about Shadow Form non-stop, why would they bother with Bots? They are a low rung on their ladder to deal with.

I bet those companies who sell gold would beg to differ. Publicity is still publicity, whether it be good or bad. But would you want someone spreading bad crap about you around? I assure you that you wouldn't, and I'm positive those companies are the same.

If you want to see Bots, just go to the Bergen Bot Springs outpost, home of the everlasting Monk-Conga-Line ™©.

As for anyone saying botting is illegal, or people wont get banned for botting (Especially the one comment about drunk bots).

Point 1. Botting is NOT Illegal, but it is against Anets EULA. Meaning. If you bot, then you will definitely not be running the risk of any prison or financial fine. What you WILL be risking is getting a suspension or a ban for the account in question as the game and any character or item on the account is still property of Anet.

Point 2. Bots that change part of the game (be it client, Memory or Gameserver side... especially gameserver side) can be detected by Anet. Just because a client running a bot has not been banned does not mean that you are immune for ever. It just means that either Anet have not thought of detecting that particular bot or they are currently not interested in banning for that particular bot at the moment. If Anet wanted to, they would be allowed to ban at any time (See point 1). it is then up to the disgression of Anet to un-ban you if you are friendly enough to the Support service person (remember; "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" fits really well in such a situation).
Just ask any System administrator what can be detected in an active network(If you are playing GW, then you are part of the network) ona client machine.

Point 3. Text mod is not a bot, it is a mod. it changes the graphics display of your game, not the soft and sometimes annoying part of the system that is needed to play the game (aka the Wetware). Bots make the player obsolete. The programs automatically play the game without human interaction. This also includes any Drunk-bots.

Point 4. Grey areas do exist. Software Drunkbots are not permitted by the EULA, but Hardware bots, such as the programmable keys on Some Keyboards, are allowed and this has been publicly stated on GWG by the CRM at the time (Gaile Grey.. sorry if I misspelt the name). I can theoretically make a perfect drunk bot with my G11 Keyboard as I can include mouse commands and fixed intervals between commands and then set it to an infinitely repeating sequence. I wouldnt risk it though as it can easily be mistaken fro a software drunkbot. The same is true for any other farming type bot (if I had enough time and would want to, then a Bergens Bot would be easily possible).

When they are 100% sure that someone is a bot, they perma ban that account. But the bot's are only brought to the attention of anet if they are reported by players if you ask me. I seriously doubt that there is someone's whose job it is to soley seek out bots. Also, you must keep in mind the small size of anet staff dedicated to GW and how hard it would be to keep up with 100's of bots. Especially when they have to make detailed observations to ensure they are not just banning someone who just plays really hard-core.

That is funny stuff right there. Apply for a copywrite immediately before some comedian on tv rips you off. Hurry!!!

lolwut?

companies would be stupid to invest money in a dying game. A dying game in which the economy is so screwed, that it would be pointless to profit from it. Anybody can make an easy 50-100k a day. If you need to resort to buying gold, your doing something wrong,

I can work minimum wage for an hour, buy 2 prophecies accounts and then sell them for 1200k gold. Or when XTH comes back up, I can just keep the account and make even more than that. If you are advising people to "work" for gold (e.g. farm) YOU are doing something wrong.

PS: texmod is NOT a bot, since it doesn't change the need for human input.

[quote]The fact that people don't get banned for it does not change the fact that it is "illegal" (e.g. not in accord with the EULA). A.net has stated drunk botting is in fact illegal, but you probably won't get banned for it. No one is arguing against the fact that A.net doesn't care. It's a simple risk-benefit analysis. If you're already done with everything except for drunkard title, you could drunk bot and probably get away with it.

lol?

The victim posted here about it.

Dunno about the drunk bot but I said stuff about TM in another thread as to why anet cannot, will not and never will ever be able to do anything about texmod unless they literally REQUIRE you to install a punkbuster type software when playing GW that disables GW.exe if texmod.exe is running but it is HIGHLY unlikely. And the reason that makes TM different from a bot program is that they don't DETECT these applications/processes running, they detect your robot like movements in game, I'm serious about that. If they find you doing the same stuff over and over again they will assume you are using a bot program (aka the excuse to ban you for '3rd party' usage, since bot software is 3rd party)

My Quote about texmod:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...30&postcount=5
Towards the bottom.

It's rather unfortunate that a lot of people on here don't know some of this stuff, but so be it. I've been using texmod for maybe 2-3 years now and I have done crazy stuff with texmod. TM's mods are temporary because they don't make modifications to the dat, just the textures running in your PC's memory.

Lmao, I bet too...but the funny thing is we are the safe ones, while they do shit that gets them closer and closer to serving a 5-10-15 year sentence in a nice federal prison for identity theft. They hack your game account ILLEGALLY, while putting ILLEGAL keyloggers on your computer ILLEGALLY. And some ILLEGALLY steal your credit card info and screw you over. Not all are like that, but MOST are. It's all about the money, not your customers. If you can hack your latest customer's acct info and make 5 times the amount they paid for their gold, in gold you farm and advertise in game its a go and theres too many suckers playing GW that'd fall for it.

So we'll say all we want about em' and couldn't care any less what they think, I love seeing them get angry.

Not at all I completely get the point, what I am saying is that if something is against the game rules then that's not for us to worry about its up to anet.

But as a player why should it matter to me.
Suppose bots take over the game as I said prices would tumble and botters would eventually find it no longer worth while.
By that time those running the bots would own every item of value in the game many times over and have every set of elite armour etc.

Does this affect me or any other player I really don't think it does unless I think having game stuff makes me someone important and now they are more important than me.
Fortunately I don't think that, and of course it was left to a pvp player to sum it up.

Its pve so who cares, well i'm a pve player and I don't care either.
Anet makes the rules anet enforces the rules I just play the game when and how I want.
If I ever find myself on a party with bots I will start to worry.

Not all those "conga line" monks at Bergen Hot Springs are bots. I've been farming decayed orr emblems like crazy getting ready for the holidays. I'm probably using a build similar to what the bots are using but I'm clicking, picking and zoning ad nauseum.

The problem is that the ones using bots cheat by using bots. The game should be played by people in order for the people to amuse themselves, not by bots made by some gold selling company that wants to get irl rich.

You are all Missing the point...

GW Game cards for a complete copy of prophecies can be purchased for $12-$19 at any 7-11 World wide, and even if that account is banned within 72 hours that is enough time to "Bot" farm several Thousands of Platinum per game account.
"Profit" more than makes up for buying 5 or 6 more game cards to bot on the same computer at the same time. I can even run 6 separate accounts linked or separate on my 6 year old laptop. so the profit even with accounts being banned and new key's being used every 3 days is more than enough to keep up with 50 Anet employees working full time 24/7 just bot hunting.

The Real Banning Effectiveness is Deleting Buyers on personal accounts who purchase High End Miniatures and Tonics from Botting Companies. A Net should track "High End" Items and Bann the Buyer's of those items.

I feel that if ANet can ban (they claim) 5000 illegal gold trades per week? (I believe i I saw that quote on the in-game log in screen a few weeks back), that they could catch "bots" just as easily.

With all the people reporting, and (from what I've noticed) very rapid response to direct questions to NCSoft Guild Wars technical, game, and customer service support staff, there should be a high number of accounts getting banned for botting.

However, I'm going to also point something out as food for thought: I used to farm Luxon Faction day after day (with me at the keyboard) using a technique called HFFF (hero/henchmen fast faction farming. ) This was done quite easily once I got the hang of it, and the pattern or techniques of placing your heroes and henchmen using flagging in the correct spots on the mini map along with timing skill use (such as running/or other skills) were not always the same each round I would farm.

HFFF in the Luxon area that I would farm was later fully blocked - as they changed the spawning points of kurzik attack teams to random locations (as opposed to the consistent places they would always spawn.)

They used the excuse: "Farming in this area is used primarily by botters."
Even though I was no pre-programmed automated program farming with the intent of accumulating gold to sell for cash outside of the GW's game, the repetitive nature (back to back to back runs for faction) and the very similar appearing hero flagging and skill use of my team could very easily be mistaken for an automated program.

I protested via several channels, and finally came to the conclusion that the 7-10 minutes it would take for a clear the mission and start afresh, was really not so much a botting issue with NCSoft as it was an issue of being "to easy" to rack up faction using this methodology. I later learned that the kurzik equivalent of the luxon mission I had been doing took between 1-3 minutes to accomplish!

I guess if I were trying to make a point it would be this: They catch the gold sellers/buyers all the time. If bots are operating in the game (and IF in all truth it's not a live human just doing something over and over again) they are going to catch the gold sellers/buyers much more easily than stopping automated programs that have somehow cracked the game, hacked into the Guild Wars servers and are able to slip in automated software to accumulate products and/or gold to provide for the demand of the underground economy.

Like any society there is going to be sufficient motive by some individuals or groups to attempt to break the rules.

My experience with the game has shown me (personally) how tight the security department is in regard to this game. I have been terminated (not banned) for using my girlfriend's pre-paid debit card to buy an 8 dollar xunlai chest slot - later resolved after several days by proving without doubt that I was authorized to make the purchase, and security's relatively quick investigation of the matter. I even received an apology / “we were just protecting the game” response which was a nice addition.

I don't think botting is really the problem people think that it is, but solo players that are farming and doing something over and over again can be easily mistaken for some software exploit of the game.

I was very upset that they banned my Hero Fast Faction Farming, but understood that probably the main reason they did it was similar to reasons they have stopped farming using the eye of the north guy with the powder kegs. It was simply to easy and to fast to accumulate items, gold, or (in my case) faction- and hence the modification to game mechanics (nerf) to prevent it.

I wouldn't worry about bots as much as praising one of the only MMO's that actually gives a care about preventing exploitation of the game by people that have enough real world cash to buy in game gold, and the problems of griefing, changing the market prices, and general destabilization of the game economy.

If you want to see how devastating rampant uncontrolled gold buying and selling effects a game, I encourage you (if you have the money and time) to buy yourself World of Warcraft- and just TRY to keep up with the other players based on ONLY the time you play, and your natural skill and talent level. (And good luck to you.) You will never feel satisfied having accomplished your goals in World of Warcraft, because they are always adding new standards/ raising the bar higher and higher each time: creating something new you have to do in order to keep up with everyone else. No time to enjoy personal accomplishment or satisfaction with that accomplishment – just people trying to keep up with, or get ahead of everyone else.

Again just my opinion and 2 cents for what it's worth

-RL

Report them on the wiki. It's all you can do.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_..._Gray/Botwatch