Will guild wars have hackers like diablo did since its a no pay game?

I played diablo for 3 years, when it first started it didnt have many hacks but as i played on it got worse and worse till i left, the whole game was ruined because of hacks. Im just wondering if guildwars economy will be ruined with hacks like diablo?

there will always be those who try and hack but wit the streaming technology by arenanet tey will be abl to catch any hack almost instantly.

Just because its free monthly doesnt mean noone cares about hacks. When infact these guys probably have the best ideas to date.

Yeah, I doubt there will be any hackers.

Yeah. It's amazing how people get paranoid when something doesn't cost as much as another similiar product. Monthly fees will have nothing to do with getting hacks. It's all about the technology the game uses, in this case streaming which is a very good thing, and how much information is stored on your computer and how much is server based.

I don't know that streaming alone protects you from all cheating. I'm sure someone out there has already hooked up a packet sniffer and is looking at how the state of the world is sent back to the client. And even without the streaming technology as long as all rules are enforced at the server there's alot of cheats that can be prevented.

I have a request though, on any game when someone is cheating please don't call them hackers. At best they are just script kiddies who have no skill so the only way they can hope to compete is to cheat...

Yeah, I'm still not sure if the streaming technology alone will mean an absolute protection from hacking. Just look at CS:Source(at least they're finally having a vac to wipe out every *cheat* with it's user). With Counterstrike having so many issues with cheaters I'm not sure even with streaming technology if the game will be essentially immune to cheats. On the other hand Guild Wars' streaming tech is a different setup than CS so I'm going to remain optimistic that ArenaNet will be able to handle any cheating issues.

Diablo's problem with cheaters had nothing to do with the fact that it was free. It had everything to do with the fact that character information and anything else important was stored on the user's computer, not Blizzard's servers. With all of that in easy reach, it was very simple for people to hack it.

There's no such thing as complete protection from cheaters, but here's the best way to look at it: Guild Wars is probably better prepared than any other online game on the market to deal with them. Not only is all of the important data being stored server-side, but their streaming technology allows them to deal with cheats immediately, without even taking the game down, rather than having to put together a patch.

I have no doubt that people will create cheats for GW. The question is, how aggressively will the GW people combat the cheats?

Diablo 2 turned to rubbish because Blizzard didn't care if people cheated. In fact they awarded prizes to the players (i.e. cheaters) who got to lvl 99 first. Blizzard only reacted to cheating that was catastrophic.

and hopefully if we report those that we have reason to believe are cheating, hopefully the people at arena net will take care of it.

To my knowledge, ArenaNet will be the first company ever to keep hackers out constantly! They've already stated that the way the game plays will keep people from camping and all the other gay stuff that killed the fun times in Diablo and other games...

One of the big selling points of the game is the small 96k or 128k client. Not alot of files to work with on your system if the information is in play, constantly inside the network control with an insane amount and number of verifications. I don't know the horsepower of the Arena.net host but I am sure the bit count on the prime seed is so high an amd 64 would be crunching for at least 3 years to reveal it.

Uh, the client *installer* is only 62k or whatever, but you do actually store a lot of content on your machine.
My Guild Wars folder is currently 232MB and I haven't even played in a BWE yet.

Expect over 2 gigs; my folder at 1.4 currently.

Well if Blizzard didn't want hackers in D2 there wouldn't be any, Neverwinter Nights had all the character informations on your computer too and I've seen several servers with a "Character-Ban-Function" if the characters stats were unrealistic, same for the weapons/armor. I think Blizzard just didn't really care about hacks and cheats on Diablo and I bet ArenaNet will do everything against that!

EDIT: This is ArenaNet's very first game, they'll want it to run PERFECT so people will want to buy their next games too!

CS:Source doesn't have streaming technology... At best there is one update a week, and even then it doesn't ever stop hacks (just exploits or glitches).

Quite frankly I hope that they did a better job on ArenaNet than they did on battle.net because there were too many exploits. I am sure there will be tons of BOTS for this game tho. Especially because of that technology that was being used on Diablo 2 where it didnt send packets direct, it physically moved your mouse. I don't see how those could be stopped since they are pretty undetectable. Bots are really what ruined Diablo 2 because of the influx of rare items which caused a breakdown of the trade economy (once the bots went mainstream). Also their fix to this which put an end to "baal runs" was pretty destructive as well. (I am referring to when they cut the amout of games you could make in succession)

I think bots could be a problem for Guild Wars too since there's no way to find the botters and report them, they're just botting in their own quest-map...maybe ANet will find a way....then I'd love them even more than I already do

Well here is the thing. Some bots are way easier to detect than othres. Many of the Diablo 2 bots use some kind of hack/exploit/whatever to send packets are a much faster rate than normal. They cut casting delays to essentially zero and added whole GUIs to the game. These would be easier to detect becuase of the sheer rate at which the packets are sent.

Other bots use a client-side program that works with a specific resolution and moves the pointer to designated locations. They detect enemies by putting color boxes over them and when there are no more boxes it means the enemies are dead. The thing about these is they have IDENTICAL movements when reaching a specific location (e.g. it could be detected by the fact that you are always sending packets for an identical location).

Still more bots use logarithmic randomizers that make it so identical packets are not sent to the server. Combine these randomizers with the afformentioned technology of moving the mouse point rather than sending packets direct and you have yourself a pretty undetectable bot. Hopefully they can come up with a better system of cutting out bots, but since I just got the preorder box I have not seen how the game works so I have no clue how it would go.

if anyone can bot the quests ive been on in GW, ill take my hat off to them.. i dont see it happening.

To be honest,

I really do not think that 'bot'ers are going to be a big problem. Getting exp by just killing mobs is much slower than doing the quests and missions-so, that rules out getting exp by botting. Don't get me wrong, I am sure theres going to be those people using macro type programs to collect items; I hope they may have some way to detect that but for getting exp It simply is not worth the time. The person going out to hunt using a macro or any other bot type program is simply going to be left in the dust while other people are questing and doing missions. I hope botters just stay away from Guildwars, but- theres a lot of people out there.

I had made a suggestion one time (in a totally different game) that It would not bother me if I had to type in a random four letter or four numbers when zoning in or out of somewhere. Much like you have to do for almost all forums now to prevent auto signup scripts. Just a randomized 'are you a real person?' check would keep a majority of scripting fools and tools out of the game. Since I sent it to the game developers and never got a response... what do you guys think?

since items are crafted only for the user and cant be traded or sold on ebay that will cut down on economy problems a lot

u are saying items cannot be traded??/

only if it was created for you it cannnot be traded, if you crafted a peice of armor at the armor crafter it cannot be trqaded, same if you upgrade your weapon

anything as a raw material can be

anything made for you armor for instance will only fit you

salvage it but nor trade your super armor or give it to a friend they have to get their own and have it crafted to fit them

edit

weapons runes etc you pick up can be sold traded etc

as soon as you customize it to you thats it

Hackers/Cheaters/Botters?

*looks around wildly and starts shooting at anything that moves*

I think GW has less reasons to cheat/hack. First of all, it's really easy to reach the lvl cap. Second, there aren't that much special/godly equip or armor to chose from. The only reason I can imagine, is the one mentioned by Zfactor: speed-bots etc.

And for those of you complaining about D2, you should try ConquerOnline/Priston Tales or the Mother of Haxx0rz: MU online

As for bots.Far as I have seen while playing is that there are no respawns while you are out in a zone.It would be difficult for a bot program to beable to find mobs and eventually the zone will run out of mobs.Definately no bots in pvp or on the missions.I don't think it could even work.So I think bots will not be an issue as it is in other games.Looks to me that arenanet has it covered But it was always fun getting the bots killed when the player was afk in L2.I made it a mission of mine to get all bots killed.

Someone said it already, but evidently it needs to be stressed. The level cap is 20... so why would you need to use a bot? Pick up items? Sheesh.. When I was in high school, I would hex edit my Diablo 2 character (but I didn't play multiplayer... it was a horrible MP in my opinion), but I've a feeling that none of the data will be stored on our computer except the maps/cinematics. The only thing I'd be worried about is if the monsters are stored on the computer (i.e. edit the monster drops). But once again, they are small bits of data and I would personally have the drops randomly figured on the server side (which I bet they do). So there really is no point in using a bot script to level your character up, since you essentially get nothing (i.e. the whole game is plot and character build-up, not level grinding) and miss everything.

Lansing Kai Don

Someting I forgot to mention in my other post, but "no pay game" doesn't matter, there are cheats for everquest. Unless they change the way the state of the world is sent to the client (which obviously they have the technology to do) I could imagine someone writing a sniffer utility to report on the locations/hps/mana/buffs, maybe even skills of the opposing team and possibly even suggest targets/counter spells. This is impossible to detect, but easy to counter since any change to the client/server protocol would break the cheat.

I see alot of people saying since the level cap is 20 there is no use for a bot, or since most of the XP comes from quests etc. The thing is bots were not used as levelers (towards the end of D2's reign anyway), the main function of a bot is collecting items. If you could turn a bot on for like 10 hours while you sleep or are away in an area where there is low risk of death, when you come back you would have all of these items. This is what ruined the economy of Diablo 2.

Not all of the people who botted were script kiddies. There were some very complex bots out there that didnt even need to be programmed specially... You just entered in your information and the bot handled the rest in real-time. And this is only the public bots. Many private bots were even more complex than that.

Like I said I have not seen the game in a BWE yet nor do I know what kind of economy will spawn. But from the looks of it, there are some pretty good items for crafting and other that are out there for your collecting pleasure. That is what the bots would be used for.

All I can hope for is if a trading system does emerge that it does not get ruined like it has been in many other games. And this is not even limited to D2, because the same sources I found out about all of this (how bots work and where to get them) had bots out for WoW 3 days after the official release. Same for FFXII and pretty much any MMORPG where item collecting bots were even slightly advantageous.

Note: I do not mean to undermine anybody's intelligence by this post. Just tossing in my 2 cents about the possibilities

Your not demeaning anybody, knowledge is always helpful. Maybe bots have evolved since I've seen them, but don't they just control your character i.e. via control/search&destroy functions? Like I said, it's been awhile if it has changed. So the character in question would have to go into a map, start the bot, the bot then would take over and kill everything living and pick up the drops, exit the map, go back in again? That seems to have a pattern, and everything that has a pattern can be detected. But then again, it's been awhile.

Lansing Kai Don

Well the thing is that most of the latest bots make it so hard to tell the difference between them and people doing the same thing. If you or I went into a game and just killed off all the monsters, picked the drops up, and repeated the same thing then obviously we would not click in identical locations every time. But the bots now have randomizers that make it so they don't either.

Furthermore, the bots are able to go back to towns, buy supplies, and use them. They can even sell items that you do not tell them to keep. They can cast protective spells and there were even "Chickens" that made the player instantly drop from a game if the health got too low.

They are able to detect monster types (staying away from monsters that the character can't kill) and identify the drops and compare them to a database the user sets (to decide whether or not to pick it up and sell/keep).

For all intensive purposes, most of the bots are indistinguishable in action to you or me playing. The difference is that these smart-bots have to send packets without action (e.g. the mouse never moves, it just send packets saying the mouse clicked somewhere), and that would be the only way I know of to detect the bots (if even that).

Ultimately the question comes down to one thing: Are the items worth the bots. I don't mean to try to instill panic in saying that 3 days after the public release we will be overrun with bots, but any skilled programmer who finds a need to harvest items and who has the time can make the bot. Something as simple as a code randomizer that makes you enter in a 3 or 4 digit code to start a game (as previously mentioned) would drastically reduce the viability of bots. But even then alot the hackers (the people behind the bots) were tossing this around about D2 and coming up with ideas on how to circumvent it.

From what you all have said about how the game works, I do not suspect that bots will become as widespread as they did in D2 (since that is the extreme example), but I definately see a possibility for some private bots.


EDIT- I just realized I say "well, the thing is" way too much

True. But IMO (I only played last BWE, so pls correct me if I'm wrong) there isn't a lot to buy. Except for some nice +8 energy things or something, it's mostly the same. Get a lvl 20 armor and runes and that's it. Unlike most games, where you could get the super armor with +100 stats and sockets for skills gems etc. etc., it seems to me that it's a bit nerfed (in a good way). So farming (getting a lot of money) would be less tempting then in other games.

I don't feel offended or so. Seems like we all are having a nice talk here now

LOL, I say let them. If they feel the need to not experience the game and instead let a bot experience for it, then that is their business. Then they could even sell the uber-weapons on ebay, and I wouldn't care. No wait, I'd feel sorry for the people who bought off of ebay, for not truly experiencing the game either. If you ask me, why did they buy the game in the first place. Then again, I'm a PvE player (who picks his companions) and those weapons, if used, could screw with the PvP.

Lansing Kai Don

P.S. With the map downloaded on your computer and you running it locally, why would it need to send packets to the server for a character moving?

I think the only reason for a bot would to be get lots of gold to sell illegally.I think when large amounts of gold or a lot of items are being traded it should be monitored in some way,maybe by a gm to make sure it's legit.Could be an amount cap that can be traded.I think that would help with any probs with people using illegal bots.But still I don't think bots will be much of a prob at all.I bet arenanet has this figgured already so I'm not worried.

But that's my point exactly! Are there really super godly items in this game? Do you really need to have 100 mil. gold? Because I believe both things don't play a great part in the game.

I do not know how the structure of ArenaNet works, and I do not suspect they would be willing to release that information (less they risk widespread hacks) but in order for it to be multiplayer, the server has to register where you are and where you are moving to. Othwerwise you would not be able to interact with other users. The server constantly sends packets back and forth with information like "There is a monster here" so it appears on your screen. Then you would send a packing saying "attack with sword" for the server to know you are doing that and to show it to everybody in the room (obv the packets are just data, not phrases :P )

So if you are standing in a room in the game, and your friend walks across, that is because s/he clicked to do so on his/her computer, and the game sent a packet to the server saying "I am going over here." The server in turn keeps a check on every action. If you send an illogical packet then it would dismiss it, or drop you. So you couldn't send a packet saying "I killed everybody in the game" or "I did 100 damage to player X." This also stops people from editing maps say to put 1,000 gold on the ground and picking it up. The reason being is if you tried this (letting go of all reason and saying you editied the map to do this), you would have to send a packet saying you picked up the gold, to which the server would say "there is no gold there"

Essentially, packets are the medium by which the server displays every action from every player and monster that goes on. (Tossed that in in case my poor explanation was incomprehensible)

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Addition: I saw a couple of posts of people posting some rares they found in BWE. These are the things bots would seek out- high quality rares like weapons and whatnot found from drops. If the rares' attributes are calculated by a roll of the dice (so to speak) then the more time you spend finding them the more likely you are to find that one godly rare.

But like everybody seems to agree on, if the rares turn out to be useless, then there will be less bots, and it would be confined to the private realm. In which case we won't have to worry about it. That is what I am hoping for

There will always be a reason for people to run bots..
No, the rares & Uniques are not godly powerful, but they do provide a slight edge for the character, but also don't forget that even though the level cap is 20, you continue to gain skill points beyond that, which for people who have created characters exclusively to get all the skills available to a class... well, their gonna need alot of skill points.

I think its safe to say that people will try to hack GW's systems, even if its just to prove that they can, but with their streaming technology and (from what I can tell) top-notch team they'll be able to stop most attempts, and if they do fail that they'll be able to fix everything with minimal fuss...

Just as a side-note, I'm sure alot of you remember when Starwars Galaxies got hacked and how much of a mess that whole situation was, it was kind of funny from my standpoint, but alot of people got pretty mad about the whole thing. (It was funny because it happened while I was using that free 2-week pass deal they had running... God am I glad I didn't pay money to play that game =) )

Arena.Net has commented on cheating and hacking and exploiting countless times. No. There will bo no cheats, hacks, exploits, or any other form of unfair victories in Guild Wars.

I would like to think that people would be decent enough to not go out and try to cheat their way through the game, but obviously that's not a realistic expectation, and people will try it. The streaming technology will not make the game "uncheatable," but like others have said, Arenanet will be able to handle the problem with much more speed and easiness than any other game that's on the market right now can do. I'll be sure to report anything suspicious I see in the way of bots and such (if I can notice them, the way Zfactor described some of the more advanced bots it will be difficult), but I'll do what I can.

Here it is people True there is a level cap of 20 but you can still gain experience after lvl 20 to get stat points. So thers one way a bot can work. Gold is very useful and theres many way a *cheater* can ruin the economy. One they can make gold worth nothing and thats not good.I realy want to know what guildwars is doing to stop all this im very curious.