The March of the Bots

The irony is that the game is advertised in interviews and such that they said there would be no real desire for bots, because it's a "balanced playing field". Ouch.

I think that was more the case in beta, when drops were plentiful and there wasn't a real reason or need to invest such large amounts of time into the mix.

The balanced playing field, that is.

Large amounts, too, is compartively speaking.

Huh, yeah?

Well I think that to unbalance a "balanced playing field" one should need bots, cause even though grind isn't the basis of this game, they would of course give you advantages or at least make you competitive faster.
Which actually would show that IS a balanced playing field.
Which actually makes me wonder what does that "ouch" at the end of your sentence mean.

Got a headache maybe?

No the persons ivolved couldn't be held accountably under any law even though they might have a really bad e-bay rating. They never said that the item was goint to be permanent. They traded the item and the other person got the item just fine. I think that ANet should just go and buy all the auction gold (This costs like $12 american and the game cost $50 american guildwars pockets $38 american) then ban whatever account delivers the gold or just put a watcher bot on their account and ban any person who receives 100K from then (or whatever the amount is) no warnings just the ban. Put the watchers on the sellers and get all the buyers. If you scare away the buyers then the sellers will have no market.

Imagine all the WTF: I was banned for no reason posts on the forums.

As for the execution that would be great. But make it so that people get to bid on who gets to kill the offender. Like a player actually I mean not a monster. Or a guild could bid. Imagine 50 We Gamers wailing on a dude at once with a constant res on him for like 5 miniutes and then a giant @$$ bolt of lighting stirkes the dude and a message appears "This is why you follow the rules." Or assign the spots so that only the top 100 guilds can bid thus getting their name out there. Make it so that for every time that you kill the dude (he's resed with no DP) in the 5 miniutes you gain a point. 10 points equals x item(s) as the prize 20 points = x more item(s) ( the more points the better the item or items. Also give a regular prize to the guild with the most kills in the time frame. Now you either mkae every character on guildwars at the moment see these matches when they occur (or better yet advetises them in advance and make people pay to see them) make it so it isn't bloody or gruesome enough to rais the rating and this would be great.

selling items or gold is against the rules of conduct - even the attempt to do so is worth a perma-ban.

now, if we look at it from ebay's side: the auctions for gold and items are all fraudulent: first of all the seller does NOT own the gold or item, second the trade was forbidden by the legal owner (anet) ::: to me it seems like anet could indeed shut down ALL ebay auctions. if someone is stupid enough to give out his character name in the description of his auction they can ban his gw-account too... (if not given we could try to ask them about it and then report them when they revealed themselves that's no cheating; just tricking them into making a mistake)

anyway: i am sure anet is working on it - and those who are still allowed to bot may be the bait to get a hold on the master accounts behind... the ones that horde the gold for the actual trade.

Beautiful Woman and Maomao Mao are doing it right now

Looks like Arena Net hammered a few yesterday.


They'll get the rest.

omfg ur right just constant stream going out all arena net has to do is stand there and ount the ppl who leave more than 5 consecutive times in under 5 minutes

lol well i went outside seekers passage to take a look, but i dont see any wreckages, just a bunch of monsters?

This post doesn't make any sence to me.

If someone can get an unfair competitive advantage using bots, than that same person can also get that advantage without bots if they invested enough time. This means that there is, in fact, no "balanced playing field", but instead a playing field based primarily on time played, which goes against everything that the developers have advertised for their game.

So, in other words, if the statement (from the game's box) "You'll prove your worth with every battle as skill, not hours played, decides your fate." is true, than bots would give no advantage, because (and I think that we can both agree on this) bots give a time advantage and not a skill advantage.

So if the playing field is as the developers had intended, and I can only assume that their advertisements denote their intentions, then these players would not waste their time with bots, but instead, they use that time to gain more skill in the game.

HI all

This is the first few who I wish to shame out of the game, in the space of 1 hours in seekers I spotted 7 bots or bot users. Names are as follows:

Dande Heid [DaAI]
Gaoqing Da
Beautiful Woman [we]
Ye Yatou
Sky Abcd [we]
Liou Liou [CWCN]
Maomao Mao [we]

I'm beginging to suspect [we] guild farm in Seekers Passage with bots far to much.

Anyway all these accounts have been reported to a.net as suspected bot accounts or users, with times and dates.

If possible can this thread me made sticky so tthe genuine players can name and shame any bot activity. I have been sat here 2 hours watching the rythmical pattern of these bots. If you are goign to report a bot you shoudl observe the characters movments over a 1 hour period, try whispering them and talking to them.

Turn left when you get out of town and hold ALT, there's two that you can just sprint to easily. I tried those runs myself and after about five runs ended up with just 350g. I guess with a bot running it for hours on end it would be profitable but it's just a waste of time for me.

Where's Seekers Passage at again? :]

I just reported 7 bots and started a name them and shame them thread. it would be great if the mods can make it sticky so we can all report bot abuse.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=25703

North west area of the Crystal Desert

I've seen some of these names in the other bot thread, and other users have confirmed that they are bots. However, I suggest that in the future you include screenshots (or better yet, a short video) with your claims to add credebility.

I have merged the name-and-shame thread with this one.

Their would be a lot of screen shots, and how do you show bot activity and the same path following in screen shots, you owuld need to film them doing it for about 2 hours. The only thing we can do is name them and hopefull Arena Net can log them and watch their activities.

I would say the easiest way to see what we are talking about is to go to Seekers Passage and watch for about 30 mins. You will see what I mean. If I do get fottage or screenshots I'll send them to A.net rather than take up bandwidth here.

how about this one:
let the chests be guarded by mobs, but increase the worth of the content.

Anyone have some IGNs or pics for the record? Not only for us on the forum, but for the devs as well. I wish their was a /report function.

What do you want pic's of the people leaving Seekers? or the wreckage?

you can't get pics of people leaving the wreckage... it's in a private instance...

It's in a private Instance

well i took a left and sprinted quite a bit till i reached a collector and found a wreckage. When i tried again it seemed to have changed positions slightly, perhaps its anet's way of tryin to mess with bots.

I think the bots work on a method of detecting the mouseover link which you get when you hold down ALT, that way even if the wreckage moves it can still be detected by the bot doing a 360 rotation.

The bot script would run like this... (not actualscript but you get the idea)

Leave Seekers Passage (Detect and run to Sign post, then run south east)
wait for 5 seconds
Run forward for 3 seconds turn to face North east, run until detect Wreckage
run to wreckage detect items and collect.

then simple commands to get the next few things, ad in a use sprint every 20 seconds, an identify and sell option and every 30 min or so a dump money in storage.

Their would be timesed so after a time limit the bot would jump back to seekers and start again. This means that even if the bot is blocked dies or is stuck then it will just bounce back. Even if the bot cannot control the map screen all it needs to do is log off and log back on again and it will be back in seekers.

If they Use the log off method for bots then visual verification style loging would stop them. If their are no keyboard shortcuts for the map and they have to log and re login to get back to seekers then this would stop the bots dead.

A lot can be done to stop bots by shoring up the security of the map code and a visual verificatin system on login.

If they can stop the bots from getting around it will mke the programmin of the harder as they have to navigate back to town.

Another method to ger rid of bots is to stop reading keyboard imputs from the buffer and read them directly form the keyboard interface. I would think it's harder to fake signals form the keyboard interface than it is to the keyboard buffer. Better still bypass the windows keyboard buffer and use one from withing the GW client. That way the client can run a verification every 100 key strokes.

Sadly the biggest exploit on any game is the keyboard buffer, as any muppet with an ounce of grey matter can poke key sequences to the keyboard buffer.

i cant.
i could, in BASIC. but nowadays.... i dont even qualify as any muppet with an ounce of gray matter. its so sad

I didn't really mean it for this specific instance, but rather for a more general suggestion.

IE: If you are going to accuse someone of something, be it botting, hacking, or whatever, it is best to have proof to give your claim credibility. This way you won't have people coming into the forum and claiming someones main character is a bot just to have that character shunned by the community.

As for this specific instance, I agree with whoever posted that the OP should get a 5-minute video of the bots in question repeatedly entering the outpost and then immediately leaving it.

Great suggestion originating from another thread: make chests only pop up after a certain linked group of enemies has been killed, thus turning them into the rewards they were designed as. Bots will have a very tough time trying to automatically kill groups, and if they're capable of that, chests are the least of ArenaNet's problems...

Hey now, just because someone's going in and out of a portal doesn't mean they're a bot 'eh...

I will admit, I personally am fond of...dare I say...THE LOST STRONGBOX.

*gasp*

PieXags: you're doing that hour after hour, huh?

On a happier note, I just noticed that Maomao Mao and Beautiful Woman has inexplicably gone offline after a week of being constantly online.

Botting and GRIND is connected 99% of the time. You wouldn't bot if you were not required to repeat things over and over. The fact that botting exists basically points out that GW DO HAVE GRIND equal to other MMORPGs.

Simply put, kill the grind and you kill the bot. Sure everyone got their reasons for botting, but in the end it all comes down to a single aspect : REPEATING AN ACTION LEADS TO REWARDS.

I'm not going to suggest ways to fix things, because well GW will require a major revamp to change this aspect. Clearly a large portion of the game FORCES you to repeat things. I wouldnt be suprised if someone scripted a bot that do mission+bonus for the sake of taking players through the game to unlock skills........

Hehe, well actually it might be beneficial for Anet to ban botters, because if they ban the botters gamekey, the botter would have to buy a new copy of the game to continue his activity

Sorry but I don't agree with that at all. There are a lot of reasons folks bot. Curiosity to see what it's like. Making mundane tasks (such as picking an item up off the ground) easier. Even some that have found a wreckage outside a town that doesn't require you kill anything to get to it and they just zone in and out of the city to make things easier. I do NOT believe that Grind is the single motivating factor behind it all.

I won't be surprised if it already existed. As a matter of fact I KNOW there is a bot macro for the run from Beacon's Perch to the Forage. It's actually quite obvious when you get folks that bot this run. They don't say a thing to you once the run starts until it's time to collect.

edit for spelling

I think the largest problem bots could cause is the simple money farming for selling on eBay. Even if the bots get banned after a few weeks, if they earned enough gold to sell for $100, buying a new key for $50 isn't an issue then. This also causes problems with introducing pure gold into the economy without introducing trade goods at the same time, simply causing inflation to speed up.

The longest I've done it is 3 hours straight. Usually it's for an hour or two while I'm bored and just talking to guild members on TS.

Though, I guess there is proof that I'm innocent...a bot couldn't get passed the insane ambush that waits...THE LOST STRONGBOX.

I just want to differentiate between "bots" that play the game FOR you and
"macros" that AID you while you play. A script that auto-heals a partymember, or a script that continiously recast an enchantment is not what i'm talking about. Im referring to the scenario where you go to bed and letting your bot play the game, THAT is imho 99% GRIND related. Any other "macro" which only works combined with you being at the keyboard is a different story.

I played MUDs for a long time, there were a huge difference between bots that would raise grind related crafting skills [i.e. mining] while the user are not there and "triggers" which would automate for example a certain well-used PvP tactic [i.e. if person casts spell X, then cast Spell Y to remove X] . It borders on cheating yes, but the game allowed it.

It's still going on today:

Bots on the run
Recorded using FRAPS, 15 megs, Xvid Codec

Hopefully these people will get banned soon.

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25789

some stuff goin on here

Dude, I can't believe you!!? You're actually going to come in here and say you think that kind of bot is justified but a farming one is not? Are you smoking the good stuff? Have you lost your mucking find?

Easy there, Captain Ego. That's so self-serving you know that right? It's people with flexible morals and wanting things this way and that way and RIGHT NOW! that make such things exist. Of COURSE that won't stop cheating. Cheaters cheat, it's what they do. Bot coders code bots... and they like anti-cheat methods. If it were easy they'd have no bragging rights. Any monkey who knows basic C and simple API calls could code it.
The macro playback "bots" we're talking about are written by the brain damaged monkeys being they are super-easy to code.

Definitely smoking the good stuff. It's cheating, don't delude yourself. Those caught should and will be permabanned. And don't confuse "allowed" with "can't really do much about it yet". Bots ruin games. Period.

You know what? I find fighting Tombs tedious, and I'm sick of not getting to HoH everytime. I'll code a dxhook AIDbot that scans all targets and auto-interrupts the dangerous casts, and I'll make a module that does the same for teammates, healing and removing hexes and conditions instantly. I'll add a runawayrunaway module that monitors radar and constantly moves the monks so no enemies are in their aggro circle. I'll add a target priortizer module that keeps track of what enemies cast what spells to know where their skill points are and what counters will be most effective... wait... nevermind, someone beat me to it. You can download it here.

[[ CHEAT LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN! ]]

What? What's the big deal? It's not a farmer bot, it just aids players.
Monkey is sad now.

How do you know those are bots? The information on that run is so widely available that I am sure ALOT of what you are seeing is, in fact, REAL PEOPLE.

I spent about 30 minutes running the Divinity Coast spot and I know that I must have looked like a bot when seen running to the exit every 70 seconds.

Did you conduct a Turing Test on them to see if they were bots or people? Hopefully ANet can sort out the botters from the bored players and only ban the botters.

Funny video anywayz