Guild Wars News: Bots Banned

And about time too.

Hmmm....is 1% of the accounts a significant enough amount to have made much of a dent in the problem? Has activity in notorious farming places like Elonas, Augury, Talus Chute, etc been noticably reduced?

I haven't been to those locations in quite some time.

Still, 1,000 is still a lot when it comes to purchased copies.

Droknar's had dropped dramaticaly in the last week!

Maybe, but in the end its all about the bottom line...$$.
Anet bans 1000 accounts for botting, so they whom have been banned, have to buy 1000 copies. Next thing we will hear is another PR BS message about how much GW sales have increased.

Well... *tips her mug* heres to keeping it up Anet.

Banning botters is an asset in two ways. For one it keeps the economy somewhat stable and two, those guys have to buy new copies to continue botting, so profit for them.

I was wondering why Elona's was relatively empty... O-o

You're point?It says in your user agreement that you will not use any illegal programs with GuildWars.They broke the agreement, they get kicked out of the game.

Nowhere did he say they shouldn't have been banned. He simply stated that Anet's underlying motivation for banning them wasn't to uphold the EULA or maintain a standard in their game, but instead to simply try to drive up GW sales. Whether he's right or not, that's what he said and your reply to him is completely unrelated to what he said.

GuildWars sold over 1 million copies in 1st 5months last year
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guild...ml?sid=6134127

1% of 1 million is 10,000


any progess sounds great !

I have a Mo/W cause i like how monks heal when themselves while holding hammers ^_^;


Besides, i believe Gaile mentioned before that even if they see bots, they dont ban right away, because they want to see the whole network the bot is connected to. Yes they do uphold the EULA, but why ban a bot right away when you can wait for the seller and the bank holder and ultimately the manager and ban them all in one swoop.

not true

what we will have are more posts from .............who find it impossible to not twist something Anet does

yells to ban bots?

they do but it is just to get more money.

red engine that up your caboose

I dont understand the problem here. They banned some bots, sounds like a win/win situation to me. We dont have to see so many bots running around, some prices may come down a bit, and Anet turns a little extra well deserved profit.

We banned the bot users strictly to protect the game. I am not even sure that people who were banned for bot use would buy a second copy and restart. If they rely on bots to get anywhere, and they know we're actively pursuing bot users...

The "resale to bot users" was never part of our discussions about doing this. Our interest--pure and simple--is keeping the economy good, and keeping bad people out of Profiteer Corner--at your expense!

Sometimes companies do things with all the right reasons, and the outcome is completely good. Sometimes there is not a conspiracy to theorize about.

But speculation is so much fun!

I play like a boot O.O i will banned?

I wouldn't worry too much about the comments, Gaile. Sometimes people say meaningful things and sometimes people say stupid things. Those people who believe that you only ban bots to supplement income are just red engine'ing to red engine :-) Good for you for banning them. Realistically, we know they are like peckerroaches (filter wouldn't lemme use the real name for the insect lol) and will always come back for more, so I truly hope that they do throw more money your way. That way we (players) win and you win, while the bot farmers still lose (for a while, anyways) :-)

Darn now I won't be able to have fun with the bots in Elona any more

Just kidding, nice job ANet

No, but you might get kicked

yay, good job anet!

I found that ironic and funny.

Good for Anet on catching them. Hope they keep at it - I've been rather happy with many of the things they'v been changing and doing of late: this being another one.

Please, let's not hi-jack this thread with a discussion on professions and skills. Thanks

what does affect economy more ?
A. bot users farming troll shit
or
B. increased droprate for superior absorption, you can buy it for 4k now instead of 60-100k

So, are the programs in the downloads section of this site, such as MapMark and GWfreaks counted as third-party programs that would warrant being banned? I always assumed since they are hosted on this site for download that they would be safe, but I still haven't tried them for fear of either account theft or a ban.

Someone's mad because he lost alot of money?

well, from the announcement I believe that Sup Vigors were increased along with Sup Absorb. They, however, have been doing rather well lately (compared to Absorb). I think it has more to do with demand. There are a shitload of Ritualists and Assassins with the new release trying out th enew classes, therefore demand for Absorb has gone down for now (I suspect will will rise a bit someday when the newness wears off, though maybe not to previous levels). You should've investd in Major Vigors, which were cheap and have gone up considerably since release. I know quite a few ppl that realized that and made a small fortune..

How do you determin how to ban someone? Seeing the same movement over the next couple of hours? Because you can target the innocent just farming a bit. And how is it even possible to detect a third party program out of millions?

omg. wo!

three cheers for Anet!!!

No, because they do not attempt to link to your guildwars account and modify the information being sent to the server. They are 3rd party apps, yes, but they don't affect what guildwars does when it is run.

It could've been over the past ~6,480 hours or 1000 hours or 100 hours. It doesn't have to be just a few hours.. As far as the second part, a person doesn't have to detect one out of millions, rather a computer does (which, however they did it, was probably trivial). They just have to check the ones that came back positive and weed those out.

I think this helps clear up both the question and the reply:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=third%20party

Neither of those programs are involved in the transaction between you (via your game client) and arenanet (via their server). It would be kind of like the Guru database today. 10% of the time it is a 3rd party app (it passes our responses on to the website's responses for others to view), and 90% of the time it is not (appearing to do nothing but give an error) a 3rd party app. :-)

You have to start somewhere....
I applaud the effort, and the first step...

Gaile could you autograph my ass?

Oh, and the bot killing is fantastic and such.

SO my question is HOW are they going to keep the bot-ers from buying new copies and starting over again (seeing as it was a pretty good business for them in the first place, dont see how having to purchase a few more copies is going to kill business-cut profits yes, kill business no).....ne1?

A copy of guild wars for a company is around 10-15 bucks at most. They will buy them in bulk, for a bulk discount. It takes less then 3 hours for a player to get a pve character to level 20. Now, if they make 5k/h they simply need 40 hours to make 200k to recover the lost gold. Now lets say arena net banned every bot today. Tomorow the prices will be skyrocketing for gold to even it out. The market's price for rare items will lower down some, and it will even out. This is the reality of the situation.

I completly understand ArenaNets position in banning bot accounts. They have alot of players asking for a solution, and they don't want there games economics distroyed like IGE did to EQ. What very few people fail to grasp is that the 1000 is split over 100 company's. Average out to 10 accounts at 10 bucks per, $100 dollars plus whatever the account had. Of course it still means 10k in profits for the ban for Arenanet, which is not going to sweat 10k, as they just put in the man hours to hunt these guys down that cost them about as much....

So forgive me if i sound cynical, However how many of you have seen this before? Each game try's this, each game loses. Unfortantly it's either distroy your own economy, or make fedal attemps.

The last thing i have to say, and i'm sure you could care less, is that these 3rd party bot programs are not running silent. They are injecting the server itself with false information. Otherwise it would be unable to detect. For instance, if you use an action program that sends the correct sequence of button press's the only way to figure out the difference is manuel observation. No, ArenaNet cannot tell the difference between a command comming from your keyboard, or from a binary command. So basicly those 1k accounts where all hacking attemps of either idiot kids or companys that plan to gain alot more then 5k/H. Thus, it would most likely only take a few hours to get the money to replace the accounts.

So in short, Well congrats on your Victory. Tomorow things will remain the same. To be honest though, factions was your best invention for the stoping of farming as that game can't be farmed without a living group. You might as well change back some of the farming to reflect that style of groups. Yes, if every farming spot had a mez, there would be no more 55 farming, and a stance breaker, for w/mo farming, and you raised your economy and stoped 1 man farming completely....Till someone figures a new way.

Shadex... don't take this the wrong way, but you don't know as much about detecting bots as you think you do.

Really and truly, you can farm and bot anything in GW. The spawns arent human and they cant adapt or change builds/armors etc,

Botters will stop when they arent making money. Simple.

This is wholly up to the community. Anet can only kill so many bots.

Hooray for Bot Banning, I say. Has anyone but me noticed the drop in prices at the rune trader? The only one I'll never be able to afford now is the superior Vigor, and most of the others have dropped below 1k. Anyone have any idea if this is because of the bot banning?

I thought something was up when i went to ToA to buy ecto, not one single chinese spammer to buy from.
I'd like to see 1000 bots banned everyday, might stop the eBay madness in guildwars, seems everyone is stinking rich.

Great job on the current bannings anyway, better some bans than none i supose.