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

This game is made nearly Perfect, and in my mind, it is Perfect... Level cap of 20 means, everyone will be a nice max lvl before long anyways... bots for exp are useless. And if they have a bot to find some items... kudo's to them, but they still won't be "Godlike", besides... most of the skills and such that are elite, are gonna come from hidden places, and hard bosses, in which you have to be there to get it... so really, they'll just have a tiny edge over the competition, and if they're willing to work that hard on a useless bot... then let them, i don't see a way of this game being "ruined" at all.

Edit :: Reading the last post, i have to say something, ... The economy is going to be Incredibly hard to keep going even without cheaters... it's one of the hardest things for online games to keep up and running, so expect things to be changing anyways... it seems like the people at guild wars are waiting for the release more then we are... it actually seems like they're a company that wants to give the public what WE want... ive seen tons of changes based on the feedback from people, let alone something i wanted... so i know even my little voice was heard, along with anyone who thinks the same... i really think this company is going to be topline. Just the way i thought of blizzard games, over sony games... now arenanet will be the new leaders in my mind.

do you mean SKILL points instead of stat points?

yes i do mean skill and also i think the people making guildwars are very smart in making this game, there are no flaws in my opinion. The only flaw was the hackign and cheating that could happen but you guys brought me to believe there will be very little.

But really how is botting going to help someone? so they can reach the low lvl cap faster? ok then they will be in the higher pvp arenas...so what.
To get better weapons? sure but anyone could find those at random and the weapon is only part of the characters offensive. Its about the skills. every class will be able to counter another so the bots will not be all powerful. These facts alone prove the pointlessness of botting.

Actually, your half right, if your in a group then theoretically it would be easy to implement a shared multiplayer map (meaning one computer hosts), this would take the load off of the servers. Don't tell me some people don't have the Bandwidth, I know, but there are several easy ways to detect a connection's bandwidth and you choose the largest to do the hosting (don't need a fast computer just a large bandwidth). This puts no packets to the server minus the initial phases of map construction (monster placement and weapon drops).
Also, packets are alot smaller than your making them out to be, if your using the TCP/IP protocol the largest default packet size is 1500 bytes (your MTU) minus headers and checksums it doesn't give you all that much room to work with per packet. I guess it matters how your fragmentation is setup on your system. But let's say there is 1500 bytes in the transmission portion, that leaves you with 750 "words. I don't want to go any further in depth... unless you want me to

Lansing Kai Don

P.S. My point was in the first paragraph, it could be easily hosted from any computer per map (except if solo, it's gotta be yours of course).

P.P.S. Oh and to get back on track I agree with Pershiko in the manner that the game was built for skills. They can gather gold and make gold worthless (how?), by giving it away? Then ANet, just makes the gold a different multiple, not that difficult as they've shown in the last BWE.

Unrelated to the topic...is this game already out? I saw an Xfire signature and some guy had 119 hours on Guild Wars...

Did you see this as all time or as this week?

If it is this week:

I would think that:

1. That person has the guildwars client left open for whatever reason. I do not know for sure if this will trick xfire into think he's actually in game.

2. That person is also some kind of alpha tester/dev or privledged individual that simply needs to give me his login and password so I can play .......

If its all time it is perfectly normal as there have been beta weekend events where people that pre-orded the game can get in and have a taste. With the pre-order key.

The game is not out yet and is set to be released as of the 28th of this month. But you may want to keep your eyes on the official site. http://www.guildwars.com just in case.

I checked it out myself and if you just open the client and let it sit there, X-Fire does register it as playing the game. The person you saw is probably either an Alpha tester (assuming the Alpha client shows up on X-Fire), or has had their Guild Wars beta client running at the login screen for 119 hours.

Make no mistake, bots can be used in GW. As people have suggested, the main draw is to acrue items and wealth. As long as there exists a secondary market - your Ebay, your IGE, and anywhere else where real game items will be traded for real world cash - then there's an incentive for people to figure out the best way of grinding out items and gold. And what better way is there than to have a program do it for you?

Bots can be made, bots have been made, to farm in GW. As long as there's at least the perception that it takes time to get the equipment or the money that you need, then they'll continue to be used. The instanced system doesn't prevent this at all, if anything it makes it easier. There's no one in your instance to report you to a GM. There's no one to interfere with your bot. There's no one to steal kills from or anything else that normally gives bots a bad names. No, bots can quietly and quickly farm and pile up massive amounts of loot. And what that does, as has been said, is to wreck the ecconomy. If some people, those who can run or who can obtain the benefit of running bots, can pile up gold piece after gold piece while you have to grind them out then pretty soon, gold becomes meaningless. The work you'd have to put into getting the gold to actually trade for something of value is insanely high and your only reasonable recourse is to run a bot yourself or to run to an online auction store. The same goes for items as long. As the game includes any sort of scarcity and rarity to give those items value - if you can't just get anything you want right away - then there's going to be a desire for a shortcut. Think about how often gold dropped last BWE, think about how much a full set of max armor would cost you, then think about whether or not you'd be willing to use a program that let you get that gold in a fraction of the time. That's where bots come from.

If you think that's it's impossible or that it hasn't happened, you're wrong. Alphas have made, tested, bots and, indeed, have been encouraged to by the developers so that defenses could be made agaisnt such things. You might remember that at one point there was a hotkey to "target nearest item", a key you could press that selected the closest drop or something along those lines. There's another hotkey to pick up that item. Such things made developing a bot to collect drops a fairly simple matter. Remember that GW has been designed to run as a window or alt-tabbed out of so that people can run things like IRC or Instant Messanger or Ventrillo in the background more easily as they play, using "3rd party" software with GW isn't a big deal in the first place, all you have to know is a bit about how to program such things. The select nearest item hotkey was subsequently removed from the game along with a lot of other changes. But that's only made the job of Botters or people who'll come up with programs that will, say, let you toggle the function of holding down CTRL during PvP or programs that will ping every taget on your mini-map or help you scan for Monks or whatever else you might think of just a little bit harder. No system's perfect, certainly not one as open and accessable as the interface for GW, there'll always be flaws and gaps that people can exploit.

I know, without doubt, that some alphas, some guilds have run such bots and used them to gain an advantage. This was long ago, there's little need for such things now, but once the game is released, there will be again. Items are a significant part of your character. Gold is valuable and used to purchase your skills and armor. Don't believe for one second that farming well can't lead to success. War Machine won their Top 5 prize largely due to the fact that they had a few members already in the alpha who used the time leading up to the ladder competition to farm like mad. I've even heard fairly viscious, though I'll stress unsubstantiated, rumors to the effect that they were running bots in order to do so. It can happen, it does happen, and it will happen, if there's any advantage to be drawn from botting and other "hacks". As of now, it looks like there's going to be significant advantage to be drawn from such things, despite ANet's best efforts. The best to hope for is that they'll be quick to respond and eliminate the problems as they occur because it's getting a bit late to deal with the fundamental underlying causes and attack the problem from the demand side rather than the supply side.

The only reason I didnt cut this post up is because it upholds what I stated in my poll thread about ' stopping it before it happens'. All I was trying to suggest is some way to keep the botters from being able to:
loot and get back to town to sell. loot get back to town to sell and so on and so forth. I find it hard to believe that there is some kind of macro bot out there that has the ability to decipher a random picture with numbers on it. I am not saying it doesnt exist, but that would be one powerful OCR type botting program which could be dealt with by putting the numbers on a dark background in a flash type environment to make it even harder for the bot to find the picture. I am not saying its going to be impossible to bot in GW. I am saying that it is totally easy for you to do what I suggested could be done in this thread:

Macro programs are easy to come by .. and all you have to do is run through the sequence once, start the macro -go to work / school / out and let the bot feed your pockets.

I don't think there will be any hackers/bots/cheaters in guild wars. Because if any surface I personaly will find their address and beat them down with a led pipe.

But sieriously if any bots do surface I am pretty sure AreaNet will deal with them before long. And If a botter does get a godly item it will go like this...

botter "Ha, ha, I will beat you down with my godly weapon. Unfortunatly I have let my botting program run for so long I have not learned any skill in this game so you will most likely masacure me with your knowledge of this game."

Hopefully you and every other tester is doing his best to alert us to abuses and help us solve the problem and get the best possible handle on potential abuse. I'll be honest -- I find your post depressing, for it seems to reek of fatalism, as if to say they are present and cannot be stopped. I disagree. As long as there are bright and motivated testers, players, fans, and students of the game who disagree with such practices, there will be people working against such things. I hope you'll always choose to take an active role, to be one of many in the community who will do his best to keep Guild Wars cheats, hack and exploit free -- or to help us quickly find resolutions to problems when they arise.

And your telling us to be like sheep and just believe it won't happen? Even you must have some common sense to believe that someone in this world that wants to play this game can somehow figure out a way to do one of those and not be completely caught with their pants down. I doubt there's a single RPG game that hasn't been hacked or something like that.

You're right, Xellos, there probably have been few if any games that were not hacked or exploited. But you know, the hacking or exploiting attempt isn't really the problem. The problem is how the company deals with the situations after they arise. Do they have solid technology that allows them to trace the possible exploit and slam it shut? Do they have thorough protection against the predictable cheats, and a team dedicated to predicting the unpredictable cheats? People will try to hack a game, and they might even succeed in the short term. But a team with an active and watchful team can make sure that when problems arise, they're quickly resolved before they impact upon the game in a major sense.

When I was following a certain popular title a few years ago, there was a desparate need for a patch, to close exploits and put an end to cheating and hacks. The economy was delicate, and it imploded, in part because the dev team delayed taking the matter in hand and waited 18 months to make a half-baked attempt to solve the multitude of major problems. By that time, the damage was irreversible.

I believe that Guild Wars will not be like that. Clilent/server tech will provide protection that cannot be given in a peer-to-peer game. And with our streaming technology, when a bug, glitch, or yes, a cheat arises, we can mend it quickly, maybe in 18 hours rather than 18 months.

I really think that there is a matter of well-placed faith here.

hehe very nice! If anything you can make it painful enough that it won't be fun for them to keep putting out the cheats...

If people think there is no way that any company can stay one step ahead of hackers, you should research what directtv did to pirates a few years back.

They chose a technical solution rather than just suing everyone and thousands of people who had paid a flat fee to unlock all of directtv suddenly found themselves with a $200-$300 paper weight...

Yeah, I think the whole thing with it being their first game was that their combination with NCSOFT helped them learn a bit about keeping playing equal for everyone. Lineage had the problem with stealing kills, CoH had the problems with "Milking" missions, and the Winter Lord Event. When the Winter Lord Event came up you could go from lvl 1 to atleast 25 within a week or two, depending on the time you spent hunting Winter Lords which caused there to be noobs not knowing how to do anything yet being lvl 50. GW I think eliminates all, if not MOST of the problems that Lineage and CoH has/had.

I believe Guild Wars will not have too many problems with bot or hacks, because if the hacks became known publicly, surely some Guild Wars fan would post about what they have heard and have seen on these or any other forums. Once they post about it on Forums, it is only a matter of time before Gaile or any other ArenaNet employee sees the posts and pounces on the problem like a tiger pounces on its prey. If the other companies were as dedicated to the community as Guild Wars is when it comes to reading forum posts and emails, then maybe the Wall Hacks and Aimbots in Counter-Strike, the Map Hacking and Item Duping and God Modes in Diablo, the Extra Money Hacking and Aim Bots in Gunbound, and other hacks would have been stopped quicker before the entire community was destroyed.
If I remember correctly, Half-Life 2 almost didn't come out because a hacker got a hold of their codes leaked out a lot of information about the game. Then the Half-Life 2 guys fought back by tracking them down through forums and websites and caught him, which allowed the game to become a success.

why do people assum since thiers no montly fee its more hackable? what makes a p2p game less hacker friendly?

I typed that out like I did because I thought you were asking more what packets are/work on the basic level, so sorry for the unnecessary fluff--just a simple misunderstanding of the question. But as per this statement, I don't see how it would be legal to host servers/maps on user's computers thereby making them a server against their will. While it may be true that people can OPT to host their own mods or whatever (like they allowed in D2, and assuming that guildwars allows this), forcing users to foot the bandwith necessary to host maps on their own PCs is totally outrageous IMO, even if they could TECHNICALLY do so. I just don't see a way they could do this without risk of lawsuite (unless they slap on a term in the TOS but then again if you are footing the bandwith you dont have to follow the TOS and could technically tinker around and figure out ways to do nasty stuff).

I keep seeing a lot of people saying that there is no benefit from a bot, or that the level cap of 20 makes a bot moot, or that botting for levels is pointless. But consider the following (if you have the time to read it all).

Setting aside all glitches, exploits, hacks, and cracks that can easily be fixed once discovered by the "streaming technology," I want to delve into how destructive bots can really be.

In diablo 2 somebody made a tool that allowed you to run two or more clients at the same time. All you needed was a second CD key. When I say two clients at the same time, I mean on the same computer. In fact, the better your computer, the more clients you could run on it. That means that a person could get a character strong enough to bot, then start that character botting immediately and start playing on the other account. A group of such people were even worse because they used eachother to outfit their bots with elite equipments and "rush" that character to high levels within days. Heck, acting alone I was able to get a character to level 70 in one day. Now, obviously the way GW works this will not be as widespread, but there is always power in numbers. Furthermore, the small price of a second CD key is easily cut out by the profit of selling the *Technically* legitimate items on secondary markets.

Setting aside the possibility of these mutli-client "hacks" and assuming somebody could only run one bot at a time, think about how much stuff this bot could accumulate in twenty four hours of PURE gold harvesting. The player would be able to play the game and "learn the ropes" (which I dare say a lot of you are making out harder than it is) and during offtime be botting and getting the items to back it. ArenaNet would not be able to stop them from playing 24/7 unless they put a time restriction on the game, at which point they would piss off alot of players who like to play alot on vacations or whatever. So let's assume it is possible and unrestricted to play all day every day.

Combine the time with the smarts of the real hackers who were (quite easily I might add) able to make bots that identify item stats and compare them against a database (user defined) to decide what to keep and what to toss. What you get is a recipe for disaster to the economy of the game. Every MMORPG that has trading has an economy. Many of you seem to idolize GW so much that you think it is immune to any economy shocks due to item flooding. But the fact remains that the value of an item is based solely on its scarcity, and bots reduce that scarcity. So unless Arenanet decides to randomly delete items to keep the stockpiles down, bots will flood the market. Now, to what extent is left up to users like us. If a bot goes public it is our responsibility not to use it. But lets be frank about it, most people would.

Even if GW could cut out bots that go public (somehow) there are still bots and groups that will not go public. Think about it, all the best bots for D2 were private. In Diablo 2 I can garuntee you there were Travincal bots out there that were harvesting high level runes from the council (like ber and jah for those of you familiar with D2) but you would be lucky to find one (well, one that was not going to put a trojan on your computer and steal your account information). Up until d2jsp was cracked by somebody it was the absolute top bot that you had to pay money for to use. But it was virtually undetectable and extremely smart (and probably still is now since Blizzard basically gave up on battle.net).

Of course there are probably many simple solutions to cutting out bots. Like the random generated passcode. But that would really only cut bots out of public hands, because when somebody does eventually cracks it they are not going to hand out the technology to everybody. Hopefully ArenaNet will use their "streaming technology" to toss in so many curveballs on botting that it will make the usefullness of a bot be very short time periods. But only time will tell how bad it is going to get. Of course this would require the constant attention and work by the folks running ArenaNet.

Players acting as servers would only open the doors to hacks.

GW server/client architecture based on the principle that the servers sends to the client only the data that it necessarily needs and nothing more. So it doesn't send you what skills other players have, not how much energy they have and nothing at all about players (and mobs and item and...) that are beyond radar range.

Furthermore, all calculations are done on the server. When you use a skill on an opponent the client just tells the server "I'm using this skill on that player" and the server responds "ok, you were able to cast that spell and did so much damage". The same goes for other actions like moving or attacking, so speedhacks and the like are not possible (this is also the main cause for the warping, because sometimes the server and the client don't agree on your position and then the server puts you back into the right spot).

Zfactor- one other thing to consider about botting differences between GW and D2 is that GW is not designed to play solo. The characters that can solo Riverside Province when controlled by a skilled human player are very few- and that's just where you can begin to start getting good item drops. Most bots don't play at the same level as a skilled human, or anywhere remotely close. D2 had problems with botting because once you got a character to a certain level with good equipment and such, a bot could wipe things out quite easily without ever having risks- and they were made to farm relatively easy areas(pindleskin, mephisto- not Baal, Pits, etc). In GW, most areas where you have a chance at getting decent drops are difficult to get to, and the areas are difficult enough for a full group of players.

The things I can possibly see being botted is low-level areas for gold and salvage materials, and possibly minor runes- the difficulty of the first few missions for a solo level 20 character wouldn't be outside of the ability of a bot. This could be a slight problem due to devaluation of the value of hides, cloth, iron, wood, and gold, but it's not going to be game-breaking. Before you can tell me you'll have a bot farm for high-level weapons, find me some place that you can get high-level weapons by soloing, without having a very difficult time doing it with human thought behind the actions...

Exactly, I'm not trying to take anything away from Anet. Streaming technology theoritically can do anything. But streaming is a very messy matter. What makes streaming special? Is it the fact that you can instantly change the game? Then how come we need to exit for builds? Is it so that we can input a bunch of bone dragons into town? Then how come games like WoW can do that too?

The point being, while it is a matter of well-placed faith, it's also up to the company or the developers to show that their the real deal. It would be awesome, for the final BWE, to do something (I have no idea of the streaming technologies' capabilities), that would ensure everyone's safety. Just like a demo. If your saying that the past BWE's have shown streaming technology, then it's by far a weak presentation, since there are clearly many people who still are doubtful. Until you make that big bang and show us what your special technology can do that other games can't do, it's just a name for some of us.

It'd also be nice, if someone /bugged you, that you fix it immediately, and if possible "stream" it, then without exiting the game, PM the guy and say "hey try it again, I think we fixed it". You realize how big of an impact that would make provided that your streaming technology even works that well?

Faith is most likely the game here. But for me, I don't believe until I see. So far in all the BWEs, nothing was truely special. Congo dance, dragons, gwen burninating, it shows nothing special that other MMORPGs can't do (though they may do it differently, presentation matters). A game like WoW, which is supposedly using a weaker engine, weaker technology then GW, can perform nearly everything GW can do so far. Instancing, persistant servers, random ugly things popping up outta nowhere. Where's Guild Wars thunder?

Instancing is another issue with Guild Wars, and although it's very nice, it didn't live up to the hype, at least for me. All that advertising about being able to change the world, yet not a single brick from the guild hall can break or the vine bridges fall or nothing. But that's a different issue.

Conclusion is, that Guild Wars is by far in most of our minds, the best game that has ever come out so far in todays standards. But the key word is todays standards. Personally, when I first got interest in this, all the hype basically told me this will do what starcraft did, and take games to a new standard. So far, it hasn't shown that, nor am I sure it can. But don't take this offensively, the game is by far the best there is in 2005 and probably for the next couple of years to come, at least PVP wise.

Well like I said I have not played GW yet, but I am just tossing things out into the mix about how bots work and how they are much smarter than a lot of people seem to think. Also I hope they never figure out how to break casting delays, then bots would probably have no problem in the areas.

Actually, from the trend bots are going at, it's absolutely possible for people to bot in this game. Just that it would be very minor. Not script kiddies, or whatever. But the real genius that does it themself. It would be too much effort to waste it by sharing with other people, but it would definately be possible for some one.

This is true, and it's a very hard thing to stop. There's just not much you can do in the way of stopping even the simplest lvl20 bot steamrolling the critters in an area designed for lvl 3s. The only real solution I can see is to link drops to cLvl, the same way xp is. If you're more than 5 levels above a monster, it won't drop anything. As you've pointed out, missions are designed in such a way that, without a signifigant lvl advantage, when going solo, you're not going to get very far with a human at the controls, let alone a bot.

First Zealot in Riverside, and most of the lone groups of justicars along the way. The second two Zealots are generally too hard for a bot to navigate to, but the first Zealot is probably doable, albeit not with 100% success rate. I'm not exactly sure what base items that Zealot can/can't drop, but he's lvl24, so he can drop superior runes and perfect weapon mods, on a fairly regular basis. Dropping some more Archers/Priests/Sycophants in with the roaming Justicar groups along the way would make that almost impossible though. Groups like that are a nightmare for a solo player, and pretty much impossible for a bot to deal with.

Goooo Riverside farming. It already is done by players, why not bots?

Aww, ive been too involved with the wonderfull pvp, and not needing good items to care about farming : (

There are some specific builds that requires farming like it or not. And for extreme competitive playing, farming is still a must. But for casual players though, no not really.

I am not as worried about bots as I am about PvP hacks. Botting is somewhat preventable anyway, and the economy and item dependence is much less than other RPGs, in addition to the fact that the low and attainable level cap makes grinding rather pointless.

The competitive online games (CS, DoD etc...) all have varieties of aimbot, wall hack and so on developed. What wories me is that people will develop tools that display what everyone is currently casting, highlight those you have selected as being worth countering or automatically targetting and countering spells (imagine as a mesmer if before combat you said "automatically counter the following spells") and so on. It depends partly on how much information is sent to the clients - many games send way more info than the player needs, allowing them to write hacks that display the players that aren't yet visible, lock in on them, display their names and health and so on, possibly their gear and such. Because the client is told "he is in plate mail of the whale" and then draws the armour on to match the inventory description you end up with a game that is easily hacked. I don't know how GW is handling this stuff, but broadcasting what a player actually has in order to prompt the client side to draw it seems foolish, as does sending the player all the opponen'ts moves and letting it decide whether something is visible or not. Same thing occurred with the maphack - since it sent the entire map when you loaded in the info was there for the taking - since GW doesn't have random layouts this isn't a concern, but there is a real question of what information a player needs to know, and limiting what is presented to them to what they should know, not allowing the client to know everything and edit the information for presentation to the player.

that would be awsome except for the fact each of the clients can be running at a different resolution, the server would need to track that to figure out how exactly to generate a seperate world view for each of the clients. So instead of the server generating the world view and sending it to 16 people, it generates the world view, customizes to the view display of each of the 16 people and sends that out. So they need a server that runs 20x faster just to break even.

I say change the way the state of the world looks to clients very often. They have full control over the server and clients, isolate/randomize the code that sends/receives those packets so that any sniffer would be obsolete by the time it could actually be distributed.

Please read what I wrote a few post higher
The client knows only what it realy has to know, nothing more.

IMO, there are bound to be hacks of some sorts floating around. i want to know how they're going to affect my playing experience. I can't see where PvE would be a problem at all but PvP could be a disaster just like it is on Diablo. I can only hope hacks are detected quickly and irradicated even quicker.

i still don't know what will keep them wanting to keep the hacks away, its just like diablo after the expack was released they wont get money anymore from this game since its not pay to play the can't afford to keep hacks away, i dunno that just seems to be the way of the world. Even though they are a gaming company they are here to make money.

1. Zfactor and IcedBear:Sheesh, I said it was theoretically possible to implement, not that they should. And I WOULD, if I designed a game... but that game would be free too . If you want to cry over your bandwidth, then you don't have to play the game (I would make it painfully obvious on how the game works). And what are you talking about opening to hacks? There is literally zero difference (besides origination of data transfer) between hosting on your computer than a server's if done right.

2. TO summarize why I don't think botting would ruin the GW economy is by thinking it through.

Someone bots, someone gets tremendous amounts of gold and this someone has the following two options:
A) Buy better stuff that everyone else can buy eventually (and after hard work where it makes it so much better when you get it), just a lil sooner.
B) Give the gold away freely to everyone this someone sees

A--> Person has slight advantage (not major due to design of GW there are really no uber weapons) over other players till the game balances out and everyone has their specific builds made.
B--> Everyone has more gold, so ANet raises the prices of everything accordingly and/or lowers gold drop amounts.

Someone bots, someone gets tremendous amount or rare items and this someone has the same two options keep for advantage or give away, and they follow the same rules. Let's face it, bots would be EXTREMELY powerful in the opening days of GW as everyone is rushing to lvl 20. After that, this game that goes off of skill, will probably not have super-duper-uber-rare items that are one in a million. In essence, you will be able to get the item after hard work... no since in crying over someone else taking the easy way out. I don't care if people use bots, but I seriously doubt it would ruin the game. Sorry for anyone who disagrees with me, I hate bots and what they stand for (laziness and an uncaring feeling towards the game and its developers).

Lansing Kai Don

P.S. Just as a side project, I'm thinking of ways to prevent ppl from using bots (not for GW, but for any program in general). I.e. I'm going to try and develop a third-party software that will prevent users to be able to use bots on the program with it installed on. Any ideas, besides the random number generator, I'm looking for something less intrusive. Right now I'm working on a way of isolating the program itself, where it's not possible for a third party program to communicate with the victim program (in short it will act like a firewall does for your network connection).

And they won't make much money if they don't prevent hacks. Do you really think they're aiming for just one expansion?

every reference on the GW site is plural chapters to maintain cash flow
also stated is intent to add between chapters as well

QUOTE
there are no hidden fees. You will not have to pay for the streaming updates that will take place on a regular basis, nor for additional content that we will provide between the chapters of Guild Wars.
QUOTE

What you would term fatalism, I would term realism. After all, for a team of bright and motivated people to have something to work against there must also be a team nearly as equal and motivated creating that thing against which they strive, wouldn't there? Bots happen. Hacks happen. Yes, they're horrible, yes they shouldn't happen but neither should speeding and I think you'll find that as much as some of us would rather it not happen and as much evidence has been mounted against it being a good idea (Speeding is directly related to increases in traffic accidents, fatalities, the resulting impact on the health care system, as well as being highly inefficient and wasteful in terms of the energy and gasoline spent to achieve such speeds - gas mileage and therefore energy consumption is much lower when cars stick to the posted speed limits) that keeping everyone and anyone from speeding, ever is an unrealistic if not impossible goal.

As long as there's any sort of disparity between the items and wealth between one player and another then people will resort to shortcuts to those items and to that wealth. And some of those people will resort to running farming bots. As long as there's competitive play people will try to gain whatever advantage they can. And some of those people will resort to cheats, scripts, hacks, and bots. It's a given unless you'd like to redesign the game to be devoid of any progression, any accumulation, any discovery, and any diversity - you don't need an aimbot in chess, after all, but that's not the game we're going to play. As you've said, the real isue is what happens with those who cheat, hack, and bot. And, if you ask me, I thought my post was rather optimistic about the steps taken by GW and ANet in the past.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways I can see of dealing with such a problem. Firstly, there's the demand side. As I stated earlier, as long as there's a desire for the things such nefarious practices can give us there'll always be those who want to partake in them. As long as people have something to take a shortcut for, human nature being what it is, some of them will take it. This is addressed by elminating, shifting, or quenching that desire and here, the game has done quite well. There aren't many levels to grind through, there aren't ridiculously overpowered weapons, gold is rare but not impossible to get, skills are easy to find, there's instancing so resources aren't finite, and on and on and on. The game's been designed from the bottom up to do away with alot of the reasons and causes behind such things. The architechture alone eliminates most blatant problems. But nothing's perfect, there are still cracks and holes for botters and hackers to slip into, it's just a matter of them gaining an advantage versus them tipping things into chaos.

Then, there's the supply side. Where there's demand there's supply. Where there's supply there's demand. Botters wouldn't bot if there weren't people to use bots but without people to use bots there wouldn't be any botters. To tackle the supply side what's needed is to eliminate as much of the presence and impact of such activities as possible. If attacking demand is treatment then attacking the supply is policing. Gaps in the code need to be patched, hackers need to be identified, accounts need to be closed, and all the rest. Here we're in unknown territory. ANet has made nice statements and grandiose claims about what they intend to do but the game's not released so we just don't know how they'll act or even if they'll act to staunch the bleeding when it will inevitably occur.

The closest example that comes to mind is again what occured during the Top 5 ladder competition. There a few guilds used an exploit - creating and challenging "dummy" guilds - to increase their guild rating until they were in the running for the alpha spots. This was identified and dealt with in short order and those guilds that used such techniques weren't the ones that eventually won. However, it's not exactly the most encouraging of moves on ANet's part as it's argueable whether those guilds were merely exploiting the existing conditions in the game or actively abusing something unfairly. There's a difference between slipping over the speed limit because you're not paying attention to the accelerator and blazing down the highway at 100mph while doing a handstand on the steering wheel, of course, it's largely one of degrees but it's an important one to draw. There were no warnings, no rules, no EULA posted, no code of conduct that those entering the competition had to abide by, the object was simply to get to the top of the ladder and remain there until the BWE ended. Those guilds did so not by using anything from outside of the game but by utilizing a loop hole in the system. After the fact, they and the rest of us were informed that such behavior was, in fact, an abuse in ANet's eyes - and since they're the ones with their fingers on the power button, theirs are the only eyes that really matter in such a decision - and that it went against the intended spirit of the contest.

Now, such an action on ANet's part was most likely the proper one. They'd intended to hold a contest to find guilds that could be competitive and, by and large, under the revised rules, were successful. But, it was an arbitrary and retroactive decision. Why toss out those guilds and let a guild that exploited item or skill disparity in? What's fair and what's not, especially when there were not guiding principles stated for the contest? Not the best foundation for a system of justice or punishment. So, enforcing the sorts of rules that will make botters and hackers' jobs much more difficult can be done but to be done well it's going to take a lot of time, effort, and communication on ANet's part. They'll need to make clear what is and what isn't acceptable from the start - they'll need an EULA, documentation, warnings, and all the rest. They'll need to police things to make sure that what's unacceptable isn't allowed - whether that's coders working to refine things or "GMs" to report abuses. And they'll need to do so while still allowing the vast majority of us who are, essentially "law-abiding" to go about our daily gaming and have a fun time of it. It's a tall order. But, it's one that, from the sounds of it, the developers are prepared and willing to accept. That's a good sign but we just don't know how things will play out.

In short, eliminating botting, hacking and other forms of cheating is impossible. It's limiting them - either limiting their impact or their use - that's the way to deal with them. There are encouraging signs and discouraging signs but the developers are human and the system they've made had been built by human hands. There will be flaws, there will be successes, and it would take a better person than I to say for sure what will happen in the future. The possibility for failure exists, though, but by acknowledging it exists it can be guarded against. It's when we blindfold ourselves, when we tell ourselves that all is right and all is well, that all will be right and all will be well and nothing could ever possibly go wrong, that we run into the lamp-post.

lol nowadays rex i think that realism and fatalism are interchangable. i know that anet will have some trouble with hackers, but i belive that they will be "on the ball" so to speak. you gotta have faith and know that these guys will be working there arses off.

That's giving credit before it's due. They should earn their faith.