Petition To Demand A Response From Anet On RMT Botters and Exploiters

First off, this thread discusses two different, but similar problems.

I'm sure many of you have had the opportunity to stroll through the PvP aspect of the game recently and notice an interupt bot-free environment. Now how many of you have looked through the PvE section?

I'll save you all the trouble and tell you what you will find. Anet has not stopped botting in the slightest. If you believe RMTers have stopped botting due to widespread bans on those using GWCA, you have been fooled.

Anet was able to ban most people using injected dlls (aka GWCA) due to a packet file in the GW dat that checks for injection. From this they were able to compile an extensive list of those who were injected, or were in close contact with those who were from sometime between March through May.

From this, Anet sorted through this mass of data and determined those who they thought botted and flagged them for the mass ban on May 26th. For this reason it is logical to conclude that there were more than a small handful of those who were falsely banned due to the injection based nature of Anet's conclusion. It's quite reasonable to assume that some 3rd party apps such as KSmod or Texmod produced a false positive based on injection, which to Anet meant they must be botting. While I'm sure Anet was diligent with their research, with over 3700 accounts banned some margin of error had to have been made. In addition, part of Anet's bot detection lies with monitoring "packets". You see, as you play GW your client side emites packets which are sent to the server side, this is normal and is part of how the game works. When you bot, your client sends over more packets then normal and sets off alarms on the server side.

Depending on the script you run, you may or may not send large quantities of packets to the server side. The PacketFaker script is a great example, it sends reverse packets to the client side only - which trick your client into thinking you are recieving packets from the server side. This allows a bunch of possibilites, such as spamming r15 hero emotes, and r12 zaishen.

For the majority of bots, the packets go relatively unnoticed by Anet (or so we thought) because the actual number being sent to the server side was not much different from what it would normally be. (unless you did somthing weird like send a zillion packets to the server side to auto-make your toon lvl 20 or something)

The problem is, neither injection nor packet checkers work with exploiters nor botters using interface based bots.

Now with that background info in hand, let me present you with my main point. Anet's main detection of bots relied on their ability to utilize a .dll injection finder. However, most RMTers use their own botting scripts and methods such as Pixel Detection/FFTB/TT6/AHK the list goes on forever...

Suffice to say these people, the people who are actually "evil" and sell their gold for real money are not banned at all.

Anet has not stopped the botting problem, they have only stopped those who used .dll injection (which mainly served for complicated bot scripts that were more for title bots, and interupt bots and soforth - not farm botting).This week Anet can detect injection, but what about next week? Will Anet actually fix the problem?

So I'd like to know, does Anet care about the RMT bots? Is Anet going to do anything about them? Will we even know for another 6 months?


Note that this following exposition is written with sarcasm, but conveys an important message.

As many of you are aware. Exploits have always been a serious issue in GW. Video games like GW are large and often prone to being exploited. A simple programming faux paw could lead players to "not playing the game the way it was intended to be played. It garners people undeserved and unearned rewards." - Gaile Gray

As would a simple error in programming allow people to inject .dll files into the GW client. (aka botting)

In the past, exploiters have been dealt with, and punishments given out accordingly.

However, in recent months Anet has been less than swift in dealing with people who cheat and exploit. The Duncan exploit was a prime example. People knew that abusing this feature gave them unfair advantages over those who didn't. These evil people cheated their rep title and built up massive amounts of gold, rare greens, and items. They were so bold as to brag about it in several sections of Guru and they most likely sold this money online for real cash too. They are no different from botters, they are all cheaters and deserve permenant bans, no matter what exploit/bot they used or if they did it on purpose or not.

-End of sarcasm

Now exploiting has escalated to a point to that until recently, was on par with botting. People are using an error in the conditions for enemies to spawn in certain missions in EotN to rapidly exploit their rep titles, gain gold and experience, and even charge others for this service known as "speedbooking"

While there are many other exploits in game right now, I will refrain from detailing them here on Guru for obvious reasons.

Anet, if you can't or won't do anything, tell us. And if you can do something about it, do it

From my standpoint Anet would have alot to gain from telling us about their standpoint on exploits. It often seems Anet's standpoint has been a double edged sword. While Anet banned those involved with the Mallyx exploit they also did so swiftly, and fixed the problem before it could become widespread. On the other hand, Anet did not ban those abusing the Duncan exploit, but also fixed it rather quickly.

For me it would seem to be in the benefit for everyone to know Anet's position. If Anet told us today that "speedbooking" would not be tolerated, I'm positive the majority would stop speedbooking. If Anet waited several months then banned all those who speedbooked on the grounds that it gave players an unfair advantage I personally see that as a tragedy more than anything. It also wouldn't solve the problem, for months people would have been affected and mass bans would not undo what might have been solved by taking action earlier. It's clear this may be an allusion to botting, but regardless, this thread is not a QQ thread for botters to complain about getting banned nor a QQ thread for bot haters to poke fun at those who did get banned.

The majority of botters got involved only recently. Although this is not an excuse, I think people should know that as a whole, most botters are not bad people. People started botting as both a reaction to Anet not taking action, and due to others gaining advantage over those who didn't bot. Alot of people I knew ran PvP bots because they thought that if they didn't, others would.. and sadly that was the truth. As for PvE, all the repeated nerfs to PvE farm builds and SC's left alot of people feeling botting was their only option. (if this doesn't apply to you that's FINE, I don't care) The vast majority of GW players are stuck in a niche situation after playing through all the campaigns a few times and find themselves with no real good way of getting the last money for their consumable titles, or getting that Mini Zippy or Dhumm for their HoM that they always wanted.

I don't expect any of you to feel bad for those who got banned, but I hope you will all recognize that the people who were banned were not Chinese gold farmers, they were not hackers who stole other's account.. but they were real players who I'm sure many of you knew. They were real player's who until maybe 5 months ago didn't even know how to set up a bot, and they were real players who had something to lose.

I just hope you guys will stop and consider what Anet did for a minute. As the days go by and more names of those who got banned are released you will notice familar names, and when you notice them, think back to how they acted and who they were. If you have any respect for them then please don't gloat about not getting banned, or laugh at those who did. The asshole mesmer who bragged about his interupting in RA, or the cool guy who stood in Kamadan while he ran 50 accounts for his gold site are the rare exceptions. Those who do this for RL money aren't going to stop.

The question is are we even going to do anything about them? Are we going to let this happen again? Can we do better? How does Anet plan to take care of cheaters who use methods other than dll injectors?

ANet stated they have hired several people to work on this issue.
It's not over till the fat lady sings.
Patience, it is after all a holiday week end here in the states.

i'm not sure of the majority, but i do believe that at least there were more than a handful that weren't justified. it wouldn't be so bad if support would be able to rectify the situation, but nothing has been done thus far.

I'll sign, but what do you think these bans are?

It's MASS MARKETING! They have no clue about what they're doing, they just needed a nice article about their awesome bot detection mechanisms to attract the mass on their upcoming release.
Well I just checked eBay and the price of ectos didn't raise, it's still thousands of ecto's for about 220EUR/1000, just like it was all those months ago )

ArenaNet will not reply to this, it's 'not good for business'

P.S.: This is of course just my opinion

To this

This

As far as Anet getting to a ban on further bots, we can rest assured they aren't paying the new staffers to stand around and pat each other on the backs for this one ban. Having re-introduced people to ways of reporting was a clear indicator that they still need player input, of which i am more then willing to give. Rather then a lengthy petition, lets start using the paths clearest to helping this situation, report, report, report. Think we all know how fast this will break down toa "botters are evil" " non botters are jealous" war...

oops forgot about these types of responses too...

oh and
buying ectos online isn't much better then botting.... but hey, guess i'm a stiff suit.......

Anet won't reply to this thread like they never replied to the other petition.
I'm sure any ideas or information on botting preventions would be much appreciated by them though.

pretty sure you are not supposed to mention the G program on this site.

Also ANET never has stated that the recent bans would STOP botting. However this puts people on notice that the banning has commenced and that ANET is not ignoring the issue. They said nothing until they were ready to act on this issue.

You seem to be very aware of the RMT botters I suggest you report them.

ANET's decision who to ban for what, ANETs Game ANETs rules. Glad they are all banned permanentaly, and I hope many more will follow.

/not signed btw

Yup! Anet doesn't gain anything if they ban the azn botters. They will just hack more accounts and Anet will have another crisis all over again. If they take out all the botters who actually play the game 90% of the time they can appease the public for awhile and force all those banned to buy new accounts.

Regardless of if ya'll believe in conspiricy theories, and whether or not Anet intended for this, it's just the truth!

So you are perfectly content with Anet banning the players who might have just loaded up a small bot infrequently. But you don't care about the people who exploit or bot for real money?

No offense but you are either an obvious hypocrite, or you are a dirty exploiter

Sorry but I have reported a lot of Xkgkgiiinfn Obfgb kind of 'players' that were running to signposts in town to the area to be farmed, and never replied to my whispers when I friendly asked if I could 'have their build' and such.

They're still there, and you're buying ectos/Z-Keys from them on eBay or other RMT sites!

EDIT:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/bots-in-zos-chivros-t10420026.html.

What crisis? If you mean that the economy is ruined. Well, botting is/was not the main prob of that.

Shadow Form says hello
Ursan says hello

People who bot for real money are also an problem ofc. But an rupt bot is WAY worse then some dude that sells money. Because you can't buy skill in this game. You can only get visual stuff. Nobody cares about that. (eccept you). So yes, i'm against RMT botters, but I'm HAPPY they got the REAL cheaters, the pvp bots!

Where do you get your vast knowledge of botting, gold sellers, and ANET's detection of botting exactly? I was never aware ANET released how they catch botters.

I noticed a bunch of people bragging on other forums that their bots are still undetected. Terminating 3700 accounts was nice but in fact they banned less then 1000 people, so i can't see a bot free environment.

The " I just used Texmod and KSMod" is just an excuse, the bans are deserved.
And also isn't Peace and Harmony a guild of botters?

If you see the botters, report them.

by the way, botters don't play the game they cheat

OIC what this petition is about.

Based on the timeframe I aquired from those who had been running bots for a long time, but remain unbanned, and from those who had set up very recent accounts (1~ week prior mass ban) that remain unbanned. I deduced that the timeframe from which Anet spent the bulk of their time investigating had to have been between the two timeframes given. As for their method of detection, I was more curious. After doing some investigative work I noticed a pattern that could not be mere coincidence. On nearly every account, those who ran bot that did not require the use of .dll injection remain unbanned. Those who used injected .dlls obviously were. After closer examination of the GW.dat I found a particular packet that upon closer inspection brought me to the conclusion that Anet's super secret method of detection relied on checking if a .dll was injected or not. Of course those who had their main account banned, which they may have never botted were on the same IP adress and had close contact with the bots, which is most likely where Anet spent the bulk of their time reviewing if the accounts in connection to the bots were to be banned or not.

I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers that less than 1000 people were banned. While nobody except Anet really knows for sure, I'd be willing to bet money that those Anet banned were largely individual users, with only the minority being exceptions.

As for Texmod and KSmod being excuses.. I'm not even going to go there because Anet specifically mentioned that these were not against the rules. The fact alone that they can modify the GW.dat makes it obvious that Anet might have messed up and cought some of these people in the crossfire.

And Peace And Harmony? lol that was a 1 man gold-trim guild that I ran before that account was banned last wednesday. That account never ran a bot and I rarely logged on it so you are obviously delusional.

I think/hope the banning will be an ongoing process. And they will get the ones you pointed out.
As you pointed out how they are detecting bots. Can you show the link where Anet gave the specifics of their methods?

sour grapes? /notsigned

Yeah this sounds more like a argument for personal sakes rather than for players as a whole that being said I doubt this will grow into an actual petition enough to get anet to actually look at this thread.

Sign me up, I'd really like to hear what they have to say.

as most would like to know what anet is really doing on this subject who is to say that they aren't keeping it on the down low just like their last approach. obviously the best attack is when it is unknown

Methinks these personal vendetta posts are getting a bit out of hand, I haven't gone through a thread lately without seeing someone whos mad they were caught calling for the blood of others. I think its time these folks move on to better things, knowing you can no longer play, i assume you desire to see anyone else banned, either for personal satisfaction, or for maybe a bit of revenge. regardless, there are reporting options, new staff specifically designated to this task. we all have a responsibility to clean up the game when we see a bot. leave this to those of us that DIDN'T bot and get banned, little good you will do sitting on the outside of a game.

And to any other banned botter who has been posting or responding to this drivel in other threads , perhaps if you put as much effort into the game, you wouldn't have needed the bots to begin with

Uh... Texmod doesn't use injection.

/signed

Its been like a week and I'm still pissed at ANet for banning my two main accounts even after they haven't given me a good drop in five years and over 7k hours -_-"

*Note* Used a multi-gw client so I could play + trade that used injection, gg on my part.

Ah, this has degenerated into yet another banned botter thread about them deserving their accounts back, because surely other botters are worse... lets be real about this shall we? I think we all know where the majority of the community stands on this topic. at this point you are all outed as botters, how much fun do you actually believe it will be knowing that you are watched day and night like a hawk? that people will most likely shun and ridicule you? That people will wait to see if you give even the slightest hint of reportable action? is this what you really want? Apparently it is. To boot, most of you claimed to bot out of boredom, or a desire to compete with people who actually earned what they had and perhaps were at a higher skill level then you.Doesn't sound like you would be any less bored when you come back. Besides assuming you get these accounts back, what do you think will be the chances you would get anything that was on them back, such as items, armors, titles? i would imagine 0. These little rage posts are showing a lot more then just poorly thought decisions in game, they are showing poorly thought decisions out of it as well.

Actually, that's exactly what you're trying to get at, beneath all that smoke screen above it. If it wasn't about any position on the bannings, there would be no need to state that position at all. However, that position ties into everything, especially the motivation for even writing the post.

Anet never claimed to have stopped botting. They've always remained relatively consistant in saying you can't prevent it 100%. That was made clear again in Wednesday's statement:

Whatever made you believe that we, the community, thought Anet stopped botting for good, was not very accurate. None of us were fooled into thinking this was the end of botting in Tyria. There isn't a game out there that I'm aware of in the online world that is 100% free of exploits and/or bots. Not even the almighty Blizzard can stop them all in its powerhouse, World of Warcraft.


As for the punishments handed out; Players have been around long enough to know by now that it's pretty much standard policy in games: Don't use bots. It's about as close to common sense in online gaming as you can get. Whether you experimented for 5 minutes, or 5 months, the punishments were justified. Guild Wars is 5 years old now and the policy hasn't changed. Over those 5 years, we've been warned time and time again about taking advantage of exploits, using bots, and other methods of cheating. Unless we're all running the IQ's of 3 year old toddlers, we should have gotten the message by now.

How many times do we need to be told, "Don't Do It!" ? How many times do we need to be warned? How many mass bannings do we need, such as the hidden outpost exploit in DoA, before it sinks into everyone's brain about how you should stay the hell away from cheats and exploits? It shouldn't be more than once. Most of us are at the age in our lives where we don't need to be told to stay away from something more than just once. Some don't learn though. Whether it's with cheating, or offensive character names, they keep doing it and, like always, when they're caught, it's everyone elses fault.


Those that used the bots made that decision on their own. The consequence has now been given. It is my firm belief that Wednesday was just the first focused wave, which seemed to target PvP primarily. I fully expect a second, third, and fourth so that everyone finally gets the message loud and clear. Minus those that got caught, this first wave has been received with positive feedback by a majority of the community, both here and in game.

Anet laid their trap perfectly and executed it perfectly, leading the cheaters believing that Anet didn't give a damn anymore. Afterall, silence must mean they're not paying attention, right? You can bet they won't respond to this petition thread, just like they didn't respond to the other.




/notsigned.

If i had the equipment i would have your babies... I think you summed that up perfectly, lets see if they listen to it...

I doubt they would listen or even care, they have all our money already so who cares if some of us are POed, right?

I doubt they care how anyone feels, it's all a business.

The OP is assuming one of two absolutes: That a 100% fix for RMT botters can be made or that they just can't do anything.

RMT botters have vast resources, and having accounts banned means nothing since they buy them by the truckload. And some of them aren't botters, but Chinese kept in a tight room forced to work like bots.

Secondly, just because we can't ban EVERYBODY doesn't mean you botters can get away scott-free. That's like saying since the police can't catch a murderer you're justified to go kill someone too. The OP's logic is scary.

EDIT: You guys BOTTED. See the EULA. Get on with your lives, you don't deserve leniency.
You don't deserve to be PO'd if you're guilty. Anything beyond that is null and void.

Anet cant win for loosing first people fuss about all the bots in guild wars and get mad with Anet for not doing anything then when the do, do something about the get fussed at for that. I for one would like to thank Anet for at least trying to do something about the bots. We leave in a imperfect world so for those who have not figured that out yet nothing is perfect.

*cough*
I do have the equipment, but I'm too old.
<3 Sonata, whenever he pops in with an opinion...it's usualy point on.
Like I said, all the bannings aren't over...they JUST hired a staff to handle the PROBLEM.

On a side note:
I feel horrible to lose MANY new friends I had made in my alliance, I will miss them all...they were top notch when they weren't farm botting.
I can only be thankful that many more of my in game guildmates, and PvP buddies, hadn't joined the legions of the botters/exploiters...I would have a problem enjoying myself in this game if they had.

So, think of what you may have done to your friends when you activated that bot...ok?

I LOLed when the OP declared the banned bots as minor offenders. This shows that the OP is well biased in pitching her questions and only has interest in relaxing the stance or one of their own accounts.

Fail topic - petition not signed.

The bots RMTers use are used because they are virtually undetectable by any game that doesn't start scanning what processes you are running and what those processes are doing. Assuming they actually DID that much (which anti-virus programs would have a field day blocking), they'd still likely be able to get around them. This is the reason why virtually every MMO has RMTers with bots running. The only possible way to stop RMTers is for the company itself to sell gold/items cheaper than a bot company can afford (which would be such a case of inflation in the game that there could essentially be no economy, everyone would have everything).

So unless you come up with some rather ingenious method of bot detection (which every MMO company would pay you ridiculous amounts to come up with, and similarly RMT companies would pay you so they could crack it, which they would do) most companies can only do so much to stop bots, and to expect ANet to do much more than ban accounts as they are reported on a game as old as GW is rather unlikely.

Yet again, someone saying cheaters shouldn't be banned.

If you cheat in a university course, you are given an automatic F, and typically, expelled from the university. Cheating is unfair, it's wrong, and it's evil.

If you cheat, you should be perma banned, PERIOD. There really is no middle ground here. I agree that RMT bots should also be banned, as should exploiters, permanently.

Those who were banned (excluding any bans that were truly a mistake) deserved to be perma banned. Again, they should have been MAC/IP banned, but apparently ANET isn't quite as harsh as most of us would like them to be.

/NOT SIGNED

@Jinkies: If we have been fooled into thinking that it's not going on then they all deserve perma-bans as a deterrent. If you don't set a precedent by setting examples of cheaters, you don't get the desired effect which is keeping these cheaters out of our game world. They cheated. They knew the consequences. The ones that didn't have no excuse either as ignorance is not a plea. If you don't respond to my post then I will take it that you agree with me being right.

I won't speak of RMT botting and why ArenaNet will never be able to stop it, but I am very curious as to what sort of effects banning spawn exploiters would cause. Speedbooking is HFFF 2.0, and I think it's safe to say (given what happened to the Factions version of the trick) ArenaNet does not approve of that sort of behavior at all. It's obviously not something they believe people should be banned for, but it's certainly not an intended method of content completion, and can most definitely be classified as exploiting.

inb4 a hundred replies bitching at you for saying the May 26th bans weren't 100% perfect while ignoring everything else contained in your post.

geeeeeeez.
You didn't /sign..or /notsign.
But now I'm curious as well....

TexMod does NOT "modify the GW.dat" nor does it employ any DLL injection. I don't know where you got that idea.

From what I can tell, TexMod hooks into the DirectX graphics API and "intercepts" the graphics data, replacing the texture before it reaches the display. If it helps you to envision it, one might allegorically say that TexMod runs on the wire between your PC and Monitor

I am totally non technical and have no idea what an injection dll is but I do use a multi gw client to pass items between my 2 accounts. Does that put me in danger of a ban?

I was apparently banned for payment fraud. Is this related to the recent botting ban thingy or whatever? I've never used a bot or any exploit that I know of. And as far as I know of, I've never committed payment fraud.

Completely unrelated. Send in a support ticket and relax, things should work out just fine.

The ones that bot prob just buy a new account and start over.
But the people that got unrightfully banned just what happened to me dont think they will buy a ncsoft game ever again.

1. For those of you who don't know jinkies, he's pretty much guild wars' biggest fan. He's easily poured hundreds of dollars and 1000s of hours into this game. He's not alone either. Anet did not discriminate between those that injected 5min and those that injected 5000min, those that used it to buy feathers from the trader and those that used it to farm millions of feathers. Needless to say, they've turned some of their greatest fans and biggest supporters since day 1 into haters.

2. Anet slacked on the botting issue. BIG TIME. No two ways about it. This stuff has been out publicly since ~September. It may not have been apparent until December (umm frosty tonics??, rupts bots, snowball bots - yes many of the top players used pickup bots). All the players knew about it. Apparently, having your account on and doing repetitive content for 100s of hours doesn't raise any red flags??? And for your information, it still doesn't. Anet turned a blind eye.

3. Anet figured they'd make the best of a bad situation, and turned this whole mess into a marketing masterpiece. "3700+ accounts banned! Botters are never safe! Long live guild wars!" If they stopped the issue back in September, it would have only been a measly 10+ accounts. If they actually consistently banned people for botting, and posted warning messages when you login during prime bot times (event weekends, double points weekends). They never would have been able to accumulate more than 100 bots at once. Most of the people banned today, would never have botted. But that's not their problem. With no checks in place for 9 months, it's not surprising it got this bad.

4. Anet has won today's battle against bots, but has done little to combat RMTs. The ecto's aren't always accumulated through botting. It can also be hacking, scamming, exploiting, duping or heck, it can be legitimate methods. Often the guys on high end are also selling ectos for real money on another site. Some guys even use their main characters name as their account name to sell gold, and they also used to win halls a lot during euro hours. If you haven't lived under a rock in ascalon, you know exactly who I'm talking about. Anyone with half a brain could catch these guys.

But hey, publicly, it's not a problem besides seeing spammers for gold sites in kamadan. There's only a few dozen gold sellers at any given time. There's no great marketing piece they can make on it, so why bother, right?