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

As someone said up-topic "Anet won't "go back further to game history" to ban bots. I expect that is true, but not because they don't want to, BUT BECAUSE THEY CAN'T.

As I tried to say earlier, GW does not seem to generate and/or retain log files with sufficient information content to allow them to look back in time. If they did it would be relatively easy to address gold sellers.

Example: Anet goes online and buys gold from someone, doing a real money transaction. A char run by Anet then meets with the gold selling char and sees their name. Then just trace back where all the stuff the gold seller had came from, follow the wealth backwards, eventually you will get to the farmers (human or bot). Then follow the money back down that pathway and find all of the other player chars who also ended up with gold from that pool of farmers. Then ban the lot of them.

This isn't rocket science. But it takes LOG FILES. Detailed log files kept for more than a day or two. If gold sellers are a problem, then such log files don't exist. Anet needs to add them for GW2. THAT is the real lesson from all this.

Well..if that's the case with the gold sellers, they might be a little more wary when they try to steal another account,
or purchase another to up load their bot(s) to...
from here on out, it's going to be 'at your own risk'.

It isn't for 'normal' players to question the 'time in history', or what 'days, months, or even years' they (ANet/NCSoft) are going back to..it isn't OUR business..it's ANet's/NCSoft.

So are you legit?.

Say i'm farming Orr Emblems out of Bergan,
and because i'm also munching on a sandwich and thus playing one handed (*bows* thankyou thankyou)
and click-moving and I choose not to reply to your pm.
Or even i choose to act like a dick and ignore you all together,
you're going to report me?

Nice Methods.

Moral of the story:

People who report based on your style of "friendly whispers" should be banscythed.

/signed.

I agree with this on almost all counts actually, except one:

If a GM PMs you with special colored text, you best be answering . If not, you are a moron, and deserve to be banned for being a fool. Players though, yeh, I ignore tons of PMs, especially when I'm guild-less.

You do not munch on a sandwich for 10+ hours, now do you?
Doing the farm over and over (every 2minutes in town), the same way in town for 10hours or more is indeed suspicious to me, /report, sorry.

What and you spend the whole 10+ hours watching them before you /report?

hehe when I have to study for 10+ hours a day, yes

What's wrong with playing one handed? Does NCsoft discriminate against one handed people?

Besides, I'm sure there could have been things other than eating a sandwich that could have kept his other hand busy... but for ten hours? Maybe he needs to send a medical certificate from his doctor explaining that he suffers from anejaculation and just didn't know when to stop

I'd hate to be the support staffer that gets that note...

I'd hate to be the support staffer that gets that note handwritten in the mail.

/notsigned.

They should ban all the rest as well if they can. I do not see ANET as being obliged to act on all bot cases in the same time. I would not be surprised if there will be banning bat coming once a while for a different bot or exploit.

Gold sellers are a problem in pretty much every MMO. Are you saying no MMOs have log files? And, if so, doesn't that suggest that creating, storing, and searching those log files would be a bit more difficult than you suggest? If not, then why are gold sellers a problem in other MMOs?

Gold sellers are a problem because of the wage differential between developing and developed countries. Bots are just the most efficient way of exploiting that differential.

Petitions don't magically solve PvE bots. Gluck on thy honourable quest against ye scoundrels and vermin.

~Tru

If it was like you have depicted I would just mean that both gold sellers and ANET are just a band of morons. I can already tell you it is not the case.

I can also tell you THEY DO KEEP THE LOGS and they are detailed. Few hundred accounts are banned every day. There are scripts checking ongoing transactions and there are people verifying them. Account is used for one transaction and gets almost immediate block and then ban and same happens to the one it got its resources from.

The gold they sell mostly is not from farming but from hacking. So what that ANET banns the account if it was actually a hacked account? The only way to stop RMT in GW is:

1. People stop buying gold and items online
2. People pay more attention to their account security.

ANET cannot do much with that. What they can do I think they do ok.

damn this almost went away...

Martin hit the nail on the head above. It will always be an issue for any MMO.

/close +1

The OP makes a lot of valid points, almost to an extent that I wish he/she would take a job at Anet if there is such a solid understanding of the problem.

One thing that caught my eye was: If I met people who later used bots, and I didn't report them myself, could I really register complaints as to how Anet has taken action? Shouldn't we all be reporting anyone who is a known botter, regardless of how "nice" of people they are? If there are any exceptions to the rule, it's tainted. A botter is a botter. It's nothing personal, just an observation.

A-Net is playing a rotten game, by banning innocent players without giving them a chance to defend theirselves, automated responses and not even trying to react in person is childish and cowardly for an institute grown as big as it is by their buyers.

Why are these qq I got banned for botting threads still open?

/close +1

Runescape was a botfest. About 3/4 years ago, Jagex (Creator, our Anet if you will) pulled out some major efforts against the botting community. Now don't get mistaken, just because Runescape is a browser game (which since a couple of years it isn't anymore) doesn't make botting it easier.

Pretty much everyone botted for real world gold, heck, even I made a couple 100 bucks simply by having 1 bot run overnight for a couple of weeks. (With a self made script on top of that)
Then they started adding checks like Anet did (It's not about having an arms race with the botters, it's about grabbing them with the balls and simply not letting go), and in less than a year, botting easily went down by what ~99%?

However, not only did they tackle botting by adding various in-game counters (randoms as they are calling in the Runescape-scene), they also destroyed the real world trading scene.
They put in trade-limits, trade checks, buddy loan systems and so much more. All-in-all, it did take them alot of updates and reverts, but they RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOin nailed it: The game is still very playable (despite what many people on "black" sites claim) and real world trading is next to impossible. (You simply can't trade such masses of gold)

It did however came at several costs, which in my eyes are only part of the solution to another problem anyways, those being the fact that trading became very, very strict.

Merchanting, the only real way to make big money in Runescape, died. (Now they implemented a global market so people can still amass large quantities of gold simply by playing the "stockmarket") But concidering merchanting is based buying an item cheap, and selling it high, I myself concider it no more than a legal form of scamming, and so I couldn't care less about that.

Point of this nice story: MMO's can be kept clean from bots and RWT's. It does however come at a certain cost. That cost being freedom (To trade, merchant and scam) and a slight effort from the devs. But concidering there is plenty of good implemented ideas in Runescape, all Anet would have to do is copy/paste them. (Obviously, I'm talking about GW2 here)

they shouldnt have a chance to defend themselves. they break rules they get banned its as easy as that. if you think the game is rotten then dont play it also as simple as that

And a direct reply to the OP:

I get your main points, but I don't really know what you're asking here. Ok, you've specifically asked about the RWT's, but to what extend does it matter?

Any person RWT'ing knows he can get banned, and any person not doing so shouldn't care.


However, I would like to reply specifically to the issue of people abusing exploits. These exploits (Duncan, dual modding of green weapons, speedbooking) are borderline cheating, and really do need a stance from Anet so people know what to expect.

However, I personally would like a direct in-game reply (Like the yellow message we get now), and not some half-baked PR person saying what is allowed and whatnot. Gaile has already screwed over myself and some other people this way. (By saying a certain exploit was not banable, yet they still banned me/us)

Speedbookers, dual modders, exploiters in general are all walking that line on which Anet can, if they please, ban them. It's just so frustrating for me, as a player who tries to abide by the rules, when you see other people making 500+ ectos from these exploits (dual modded greens sold for alot), and you're stuck with no real way of making money. We haven't even started on the "speed title-ing" then...

And the most frustrating part about all this is, is that when they finally fix it, all the exploiters walk free. I agree that to an extend, there needs to be some tolerance (Not everyone abusing it deserve a perm ban/acount strip), but when noone even gets touched, that is pretty "red engine" up.

All this does is leave people with that feeling in their gut wishing they had abused the exploit when they had the chance, and solely promotes further abuse of exploits.

The recent dual modding (or current speedbooking) is the perfect example. Certain people, who go unnamed , made over 500 ectos in just a couple of hours by selling health +60 axes to unknowing people. Not only did they gain direct profit from an exploit, they are also scamming people because that simply isn't the real value of these items.

If you then see noone got banned, yet some people kept their redicilous profits, you wish you had abused the exploit when you had the chance. Unless offcourse you have a moral issue what that, but that's completely besides the point.

The problem is that I (and I assume tons of other people) are always being faced with the hard choice of "to exploit or not to exploit" because we simply have no clue what Anet will do. And we are getting peer pressured into choosing, because not abusing the exploit will only mean you'll be missing out on alot of title points/gold. (As the recent exploits illustrated)

Yes, Borat, you can kill the bots if you kill the in-game economy. It's the only way short of balancing out wage rates across the world. Unfortunately, ANet wants to sell accounts to hardcore farmers and the people that sit in Kamadan too.

Yes, ANet's position on exploits is absurd. I've raged about it before. It's ethnocentric; Gaile's "common sense" test fails hard because morality and cultural standards vary sharply (especially in business dealings) from place to place. It forces us all to live with the risk of permabans; success at the highest levels of PvP and PvE fundamentally revolves around exploiting game mechanics for advantage, but we can only know ex post whether a given exploit is perfectly acceptable or bannable.

But Gaile's spoken on that matter too, and she provided valid reasons for not providing a list. What ANet needs is a consistent policy that can be communicated clearly and applied consistently, then stick to that policy come hell or agonized forum screaming.

Agreed.
The only thing I'd disagree with is that despite having Gaile's valid reasons, that list does need to be made and kept accessible to the community. When there are valid reasons on both sides and one side has all the power, it is the defenseless side that needs protection.

In other MMOs around 4k+ accounts are banned after weekly inspections. In gw, 3700+ accounts were banned after 6 months of hard-core botting and in 5 years I didn't rly see any huge bot/goldtrader bans. As for they said "xxxx bots are banned every day" is a hoax. Ecto's price hasn't changed for a few years that's why we cannot take it that daily bans serious.

In the most MMOs there is a program called hack-shield or any other program against hacks/bots. These programs simply kick you if a bot/hack (injected dll) is detected so it makes impossible to use it. And if u actually have a program to bypass hack-shield or other hack protection THEN you are banned. Even pixelbots are detected.

It's 2010, I've never seen any games which allows you to freely inject anything without a kick by their anti-hack prog. GW is one, and they were so confused to ban 3700 accounts without distinction by the rule of "inject = ban" which they think was a "deep analysis".

Btw nothing can be done against file injection to a game BUT to have a program which kicks you after is solved in every single game. And this is what they should have done instead of banning everyone.

Ok so how do you see those bans in other games? Sorry but saying "I did not see it so it did not happen" is a bit lame. Regarding your argument on ecto prices mine is: if there were no daily bans the ecto prices would be 500g and not stable around 7k. Now prove I am wrong.

In ecto price I was talking about ebay and other RMT sites. Not in game LOL.
In other games u can see it, u can browse in ban list where names are exposed, u can check that gold price is changing on RMT's sites after every ban depending on how many of their accs were caught. So after a ban wave less goldfarmers are in (for a few days).
In GW nothing happened, they "banned xx accs daily" but still RMT and all other bots were around.

You seem to be such an expert on MMOs anti bot methods (through direct experience?) perhaps you should have paid for and implemented it for ANET.

Do you really think that it is cost effective for a game without a monthly fee that was released in April of 2005 to have 2010 anti-hack measures? You seem to be insinuating it is ANET's fault that people were banned since they did not update their game with the current 2010 anti-bot measues.

Move on.

/close +1,000,000,000,000

I dont understand why ppl are against the bannings. Either the violators didnt care about/read the ToS or dont have common sense to know its wrong or by using any third party program could potentially get u banned. I think a lot of the botters were trying to call anets bluff and lost. Also this isnt wow, gws doesnt have 11 million players to sift thru weekly and ban. Also if u want an anti hack program that kicks for botting expect to pay a monthly fee bc ppl will try to bypass this via hacking and anet will have to spend a lot more money and time dealing with this problem just as blizzard does.

Every Free-MMOs has anti-hack too, not only the monthly fee ones...

Name one from 2005......

maple story, alongside gameguard, has relatively active gms that police the game.

diablo 2, although not an mmo, was released in 2000 and still got a patch this year which fixed certain cheats.

Then Kiky should go play that instead of GW since the game has the security features he/she is looking for.

Diablo has been fighting this battle forever, on the flip side of that blizzard has replaced toilet paper with money at their offices.

I got banned from diablo way back when, learned the bot/3rd party program lesson back then. Ahhh Maphack

And, as you well know, so does ANet.

And just like every other company's measures, they're not perfect.

But good enough against some hacks. As you well know.

Personally, i don't get why people are acting that it is not hard to figure out what exploits are bannable and which are not. I can only think of two incidents which do not follow this conclusion.
You only get perma banned if the exploit is seeded with a third party program, otherwise anet views it as their own fault for not fixing it. The 3700 was dll injection, someone in the 117 used a hack to get to the Testing Area in DoA then ferried everyone else. Borat was banned for a tome in pre which used a 3rd party program to get there. And i find it funny when you posted your screen, you claimed it was because of a bug in the "Rites of Remembrance" quest.
The only situation outside 3rd party programs were duping (any sane person agrees this must have been done) and match manipulation, but only after Regina posted that it was a exploit on her journal and the people banned for it only got 3 day bans the day after the post as a warning.

What about the 2006 mass perma-ban? Many of those were shown to have been picked up by the automated system as idling in the Guild Hall and wrongfully perma-banned for it.

I agree with the conclusion that post-2006 bans have been (comparatively) well-administered, but we have ample evidence that ANet makes mistakes.

Was the 2006 mass ban before factions, cause unfortunately I was not playing at the time? I unfortunately don't know its detail of that event.

No, it was shortly after Factions released. If I remember right, it hit right after Dragon Festival, which would put it at July 2006.

Bumping the topic.

So, the bots are back in JQ again. Out numbering the human players on the Luxon side once again. The [Pet] guild is back (all bots) and when I /report, I get no confirmation that "insert name here" has been reported for botting.

So are we just back to stage 1, where the botters can just get away with this?

What do you expect, an instant recognition and ban system? Give it time - Anet will ban them eventually.

Oh, and don't forget - they never get away with it - they need a new account.