Guild Wars 2

Buttercup.5871:

Darkspirit, you are only concerned that your own tool becomes illegal. By your own words, when commenting on gold wars 2:

“I don’t mind much when people started undercutting (or should I say overcut?) my buy orders because I can simply cancel and re-issue another buy order with a higher price without penalty. I even have a program that monitors and automatically notifies me whenever any of my buy orders are undercut by someone.”

At least now I know it’s not (only?) bots, but programs such as these that ruin the TP experience for everyone.

Don’t mistake this response for envy, anger or anything negatively reflecting upon you. I admire your creative skills and your drive to make intelligent tools. I just don’t agree that such tools should be able to exist in the first place.

This is NOT my tool, it is Zircore’s. I have not released my tools because of the backlash many tool authors receive from the community after their hard work. For example, this one.

I don’t agree that anyone should be able to convert real money into in-game gold either but is that my call? In the same way, it is not your call to determine what is allowed and what is not allowed in this game too. It is ArenaNet’s call.

The owner of gw2spidy claimed that he has already gotten clearance from ArenaNet to do what he does. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, such a method is legit simply because ArenaNet allows it. So feel free to take the effort to learn and write such programs if you choose to, just as those who have taken the effort to read up fan sites/watch youtube videos to have gained an advantage over others.

DarkSpirit.7046:

There are other ways to get that session key besides searching for it in the process space. You can grab it from the GW2 cookie store or you can grab it from fiddler (even though that would be a manual process but you can go through the hassle of writing a fiddler plugin). It is just that looking for it in the process space is probably the most reliable and simplest means of achieving the goal. The code is also published as open source to prove that there is no misdeed.

I looked for the part in the EULA where it said “scanning our app’s memory is forbidden, unless of course you could have gotten the same information from cookies or fiddler, in which case, scan away!” I didn’t find it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

The fact that there is a gem store itself to convert real life money into in-game gold is already a more blatant advantage than this little program.

Again with ‘advantage’. This is a statement of opinion, unlike the statement of fact concerning what is and isn’t permissible under the current EULA. Your ‘reasoning’ seems to be that the existence of a gem store makes any imaginable trading post software fair game for use. I doubt ArenaNet will find this convincing.

As far as “you can use the gw2spidy data provider” … yes. Are we really talking about gw2spidy / zicore configured to use gw2spidy? As you said, as far as we know, it has ArenaNet’s blessing. I thought I was pretty specific about what aspect of zicore is problematic.

And yes, it is up to ArenaNet to make the determination of what is and is not permissible, this seems fairly obvious. I’m simply pointing out that (a) they’ve already made that determination, and (b) there exist some apps which do things (at least in certain configurations) that are clearly not permissible right now, and zicore is one of them.

Kintari.4172:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There are other ways to get that session key besides searching for it in the process space. You can grab it from the GW2 cookie store or you can grab it from fiddler (even though that would be a manual process but you can go through the hassle of writing a fiddler plugin). It is just that looking for it in the process space is probably the most reliable and simplest means of achieving the goal. The code is also published as open source to prove that there is no misdeed.

I looked for the part in the EULA where it said “scanning our app’s memory is forbidden, unless of course you could have gotten the same information from cookies or fiddler, in which case, scan away!” I didn’t find it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

The fact that there is a gem store itself to convert real life money into in-game gold is already a more blatant advantage than this little program.

Again with ‘advantage’. This is a statement of opinion, unlike the statement of fact concerning what is and isn’t permissible under the current EULA. Your ‘reasoning’ seems to be that the existence of a gem store makes any imaginable trading post software fair game for use. I doubt ArenaNet will find this convincing.

As far as “you can use the gw2spidy data provider” … yes. Are we really talking about gw2spidy / zicore configured to use gw2spidy? As you said, as far as we know, it has ArenaNet’s blessing. I thought I was pretty specific about what aspect of zicore is problematic.

And yes, it is up to ArenaNet to make the determination of what is and is not permissible, this seems fairly obvious. I’m simply pointing out that (a) they’ve already made that determination, and (b) there exist some apps which do things (at least in certain configurations) that are clearly not permissible right now, and zicore is one of them.

Again, unless the owner of gw2spidy lied, he has already received permission from ArenaNet to do so. A special permission from ArenaNet trumps the EULA or TOS as the company owns the EULA and not the other way round. Besides EULA are usually written in a way that is as general as possible to further the power of the company for which it serves. It is the official word from ArenaNet that is more important than your (no offense) or my interpretation of the EULA or ToS.

I have already demonstrated that BOTH Zircore’s program and gw2spidy use the in-game session key by scanning the process memory. What further concerns do you have when BOTH use the same mechanisms?

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kintari.4172:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There are other ways to get that session key besides searching for it in the process space. You can grab it from the GW2 cookie store or you can grab it from fiddler (even though that would be a manual process but you can go through the hassle of writing a fiddler plugin). It is just that looking for it in the process space is probably the most reliable and simplest means of achieving the goal. The code is also published as open source to prove that there is no misdeed.

I looked for the part in the EULA where it said “scanning our app’s memory is forbidden, unless of course you could have gotten the same information from cookies or fiddler, in which case, scan away!” I didn’t find it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

The fact that there is a gem store itself to convert real life money into in-game gold is already a more blatant advantage than this little program.

Again with ‘advantage’. This is a statement of opinion, unlike the statement of fact concerning what is and isn’t permissible under the current EULA. Your ‘reasoning’ seems to be that the existence of a gem store makes any imaginable trading post software fair game for use. I doubt ArenaNet will find this convincing.

As far as “you can use the gw2spidy data provider” … yes. Are we really talking about gw2spidy / zicore configured to use gw2spidy? As you said, as far as we know, it has ArenaNet’s blessing. I thought I was pretty specific about what aspect of zicore is problematic.

And yes, it is up to ArenaNet to make the determination of what is and is not permissible, this seems fairly obvious. I’m simply pointing out that (a) they’ve already made that determination, and (b) there exist some apps which do things (at least in certain configurations) that are clearly not permissible right now, and zicore is one of them.

Again, unless the owner of gw2spidy lied, he has already received permission from ArenaNet to do so. A special permission from ArenaNet trumps the EULA or TOS as the company owns the EULA and not the other way round. Besides EULA are usually written in a way that is as general as possible to further the power of the company for which it serves. It is the official word from ArenaNet that is more important than your (no offense) or my interpretation of the EULA or ToS.

I think you need to go back and re-read what I posted, because this post makes it pretty clear that you didn’t understand it. Here’s a hint: gw2spidy is OK.

Kintari.4172:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kintari.4172:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There are other ways to get that session key besides searching for it in the process space. You can grab it from the GW2 cookie store or you can grab it from fiddler (even though that would be a manual process but you can go through the hassle of writing a fiddler plugin). It is just that looking for it in the process space is probably the most reliable and simplest means of achieving the goal. The code is also published as open source to prove that there is no misdeed.

I looked for the part in the EULA where it said “scanning our app’s memory is forbidden, unless of course you could have gotten the same information from cookies or fiddler, in which case, scan away!” I didn’t find it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

The fact that there is a gem store itself to convert real life money into in-game gold is already a more blatant advantage than this little program.

Again with ‘advantage’. This is a statement of opinion, unlike the statement of fact concerning what is and isn’t permissible under the current EULA. Your ‘reasoning’ seems to be that the existence of a gem store makes any imaginable trading post software fair game for use. I doubt ArenaNet will find this convincing.

As far as “you can use the gw2spidy data provider” … yes. Are we really talking about gw2spidy / zicore configured to use gw2spidy? As you said, as far as we know, it has ArenaNet’s blessing. I thought I was pretty specific about what aspect of zicore is problematic.

And yes, it is up to ArenaNet to make the determination of what is and is not permissible, this seems fairly obvious. I’m simply pointing out that (a) they’ve already made that determination, and (b) there exist some apps which do things (at least in certain configurations) that are clearly not permissible right now, and zicore is one of them.

Again, unless the owner of gw2spidy lied, he has already received permission from ArenaNet to do so. A special permission from ArenaNet trumps the EULA or TOS as the company owns the EULA and not the other way round. Besides EULA are usually written in a way that is as general as possible to further the power of the company for which it serves. It is the official word from ArenaNet that is more important than your (no offense) or my interpretation of the EULA or ToS.

I think you need to go back and re-read what I posted, because this post makes it pretty clear that you didn’t understand it. Here’s a hint: gw2spidy is OK.

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server. Unless you are saying that only the gw2spidy owner has a special under-the-table approval, which can’t be the case.

If you still feel uncomfortable about the ToS/EULA whatever, then you can use it in the default setting of going through the gw2spidy api. And gw2spidy does the same thing in their back end.

How do I know that they are both using the same mechanisms to access the trading post server? Because the gw2spidy server code is already published open source, as is Zircore’s code: https://github.com/rubensayshi/gw2spidy

DarkSpirit.7046:

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server.

Same mechanism but COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GOAL/END RESULT IN MIND.

If ANET do nothing about this their reputation is going to further decline and given the amount of distrust towards them it’s not something they are going to be able to afford.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kintari.4172:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kintari.4172:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There are other ways to get that session key besides searching for it in the process space. You can grab it from the GW2 cookie store or you can grab it from fiddler (even though that would be a manual process but you can go through the hassle of writing a fiddler plugin). It is just that looking for it in the process space is probably the most reliable and simplest means of achieving the goal. The code is also published as open source to prove that there is no misdeed.

I looked for the part in the EULA where it said “scanning our app’s memory is forbidden, unless of course you could have gotten the same information from cookies or fiddler, in which case, scan away!” I didn’t find it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

The fact that there is a gem store itself to convert real life money into in-game gold is already a more blatant advantage than this little program.

Again with ‘advantage’. This is a statement of opinion, unlike the statement of fact concerning what is and isn’t permissible under the current EULA. Your ‘reasoning’ seems to be that the existence of a gem store makes any imaginable trading post software fair game for use. I doubt ArenaNet will find this convincing.

As far as “you can use the gw2spidy data provider” … yes. Are we really talking about gw2spidy / zicore configured to use gw2spidy? As you said, as far as we know, it has ArenaNet’s blessing. I thought I was pretty specific about what aspect of zicore is problematic.

And yes, it is up to ArenaNet to make the determination of what is and is not permissible, this seems fairly obvious. I’m simply pointing out that (a) they’ve already made that determination, and (b) there exist some apps which do things (at least in certain configurations) that are clearly not permissible right now, and zicore is one of them.

Again, unless the owner of gw2spidy lied, he has already received permission from ArenaNet to do so. A special permission from ArenaNet trumps the EULA or TOS as the company owns the EULA and not the other way round. Besides EULA are usually written in a way that is as general as possible to further the power of the company for which it serves. It is the official word from ArenaNet that is more important than your (no offense) or my interpretation of the EULA or ToS.

I think you need to go back and re-read what I posted, because this post makes it pretty clear that you didn’t understand it. Here’s a hint: gw2spidy is OK.

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server. Unless you are saying that only the gw2spidy owner has a special under-the-table approval, which can’t be the case.

If you still feel uncomfortable about the ToS/EULA whatever, then you can use it in the default setting of going through the gw2spidy api. And gw2spidy does the same thing in their back end.

How do I know that they are both using the same mechanisms to access the trading post server? Because the gw2spidy server code is already published open source, as is Zircore’s code: https://github.com/rubensayshi/gw2spidy

You’re making this more complicated than it really is. If you read/write the memory of a process making up GW2, and you do not have special permission from ArenaNet to do so, it is technically in violation.

I honestly don’t know what kind of agreement GW2Spidy has with ArenaNet, and I don’t care, because the relevant question for this thread is, “Does Zicore (when configured to scan memory) have permission from ArenaNet to do this?”

But just to humor your fixation with GW2Spidy, I’ll point out that according to the page you linked, GW2Spidy doesn’t actually scan process memory:

You can intercept the session_key by either using Fiddle2r to intercept the HTTPS trafic or using some custom tools to grab the URLs from share memory …
I’ve added a table to the database named gw2session and a form on /admin/session to insert the ingame session_key, it requires you to also fill in a ‘secret’ which is equal to what you configure in the config or not required on dev envs
…
I do have a small tool (provided by someone else) that quickly grabs the session_key (by seaching for it in shared memory) without much hassle, I won’t be sharing it publicly but you could consider joining the IRC channel and asking for it

In other words, the GW2Spidy admin backend will let you manually enter a session key, and here are a couple of ways to find it, including this nifty tool that isn’t actually part of GW2Spidy and wasn’t written by us that will scan for it. Interesting huh?

Protoavis.9107:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server.

Same mechanism but COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GOAL/END RESULT IN MIND.

If ANET do nothing about this their reputation is going to further decline and given the amount of distrust towards them it’s not something they are going to be able to afford.

How do you figure? Both gw2spidy and Zicore’s notifier do nothing beyond tracking market data and providing that information in real-time. Sounds like the same goal to me.

Blueshield.6291:

Protoavis.9107:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server.

Same mechanism but COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GOAL/END RESULT IN MIND.

If ANET do nothing about this their reputation is going to further decline and given the amount of distrust towards them it’s not something they are going to be able to afford.

How do you figure? Both gw2spidy and Zicore’s notifier do nothing beyond tracking market data and providing that information in real-time. Sounds like the same goal to me.

GW2Spidy isn’t real time, it’s in 1 hour intervals…

GW2Spidy just tracks and records data, it’s purpose isn’t to notify in real time.

To all you “lawyers” and “judges”, who offers your own free interpretation of someone else’s EULA/ToS (and some even added their own stipulations), I suggest you come down from your high chair and find out what ArenaNet really thinks.

If it is a violation then why did ArenaNet allow it? As far as I am concerned if ArenaNet allows it, it is legit, case closed. Too bad if it affects your personal gains in the TP.

And gw2spidy does scan process memory to obtain their session keys, that code wasn’t released because it was provided by someone else. But the docs admitted to it.

But have they? ANET haven’t said anything about this program (as this isn’t GW2Spidy), so you might want to avoid jumping the gun.

Protoavis.9107:

But have they? ANET haven’t said anything about this program (as this isn’t GW2Spidy), so you might want to avoid jumping the gun.

Then ban me, since I have obviously used his program or ran my own! But if I am not banned then it is approved.

It doesn’t make sense to me that one customer (gw2spidy owner) should be favored over another customer who uses the same method to access the TP.

Protoavis.9107:

Blueshield.6291:

Protoavis.9107:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server.

Same mechanism but COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GOAL/END RESULT IN MIND.

If ANET do nothing about this their reputation is going to further decline and given the amount of distrust towards them it’s not something they are going to be able to afford.

How do you figure? Both gw2spidy and Zicore’s notifier do nothing beyond tracking market data and providing that information in real-time. Sounds like the same goal to me.

GW2Spidy isn’t real time, it’s in 1 hour intervals…

GW2Spidy just tracks and records data, it’s purpose isn’t to notify in real time.

Spidy’s graphs render in 1 hour intervals, but its market data is accurate in real-time. Evidence of this is that Zicore’s notifier can use gw2spidy’s data to run its notification functions.

DarkSpirit.7046:

To all you “lawyers” and “judges”, who offers your own free interpretation of someone else’s EULA/ToS (and some even added their own stipulations), I suggest you come down from your high chair and find out what ArenaNet really thinks.

If it is a violation then why did ArenaNet allow it? As far as I am concerned if ArenaNet allows it, it is legit, case closed. Too bad if it affects your personal gains in the TP.

Exactly, ANet’s actions (or lack of actions) speak loudly in this case. A thread announcing and dedicated to Zicore’s notifier has been bouncing around the first page of this forum section for something like a week now. When threads discuss, propose, or glorify EULA/TOS violations, the mods tend to lock them down quite rapidly.

DarkSpirit.7046:

To all you “lawyers” and “judges”, who offers your own free interpretation of someone else’s EULA/ToS (and some even added their own stipulations), I suggest you come down from your high chair and find out what ArenaNet really thinks.

If it is a violation then why did ArenaNet allow it? As far as I am concerned if ArenaNet allows it, it is legit, case closed. Too bad if it affects your personal gains in the TP.

What ArenaNet thinks is already very plainly spelled out, at least on the specific point of tools scanning client memory. Why do they allow it? They don’t. Things exist before they get removed / disabled / banned. This doesn’t make them ‘allowed’.

As far as the larger question of what kind of game this is and what degree of external TP access (or even automation) is acceptable to ArenaNet, I think a lot of players would like to know AN’s stance on this.

Blueshield.6291:

Exactly, ANet’s actions (or lack of actions) speak loudly in this case. A thread announcing and dedicated to Zicore’s notifier has been bouncing around the first page of this forum section for something like a week now. When threads discuss, propose, or glorify EULA/TOS violations, the mods tend to lock them down quite rapidly.

I’d like to agree but AN haven’t really shown themselves to be prompt on quite a lot of things, given the number of exploits that have existed since release and aren’t handled until they have already gotten out of control and no word from AN til after the fact. Bot bans happen in waves (rather than when it’s detected) only after the effects are extremely obvious on the TP. Cultural weapon skins on karma vendors they shouldn’t since launch (and only fixed last month), etc. It’s hit and miss with AN.

Without completely redesigning the TP, I don’t think it matters what ArenaNet’s stance on it would be. They can’t tell the difference between an in-game TP request and a mimicked one. The only thing they could do is check timestamps, assuming they’re logging, to check the amount of requests per second, to see if it’s humanly possible.

Redesigning the TP would of course cost them, which they probably wouldn’t do anyways.

GW2Spidy and Zicore’s are on the cleaner side of things. There’s much more advanced programs out there. Did you know you can do everything you could in-game, except selling, along with data analysis all from your phone? I havn’t looked into “Gold Wars 2” much, but from what I’ve seen from the screenshots, it’s not worth a fee. I also assume their realtime data statement is false and actually using the cached data from ArenaNet, since I highly doubt they’re making 40k requests per minute.

Healix.5819:

GW2Spidy and Zicore’s are on the cleaner side of things. There’s much more advanced programs out there. Did you know you can do everything you could in-game, except selling, along with data analysis all from your phone? I havn’t looked into “Gold Wars 2” much, but from what I’ve seen from the screenshots, it’s not worth a fee. I also assume their realtime data statement is false and actually using the cached data from ArenaNet, since I highly doubt they’re making 40k requests per minute.

Right, and ArenaNet would have to draw the line. There are a lot of things you can do in the game if you hack the client. But this is not what Zircore’s tool does and as far as I know, it doesn’t do anything that the gw2spidy back end isn’t already doing. It reads the process memory, and only opens the process with read permission (like a virus scanner), and doesn’t modify the process at all, unlike many hacks.

I suspect ArenaNet purposefully made their TP API web based to encourage websites like gw2spidy and tools like this one. Afterall they have other encrypted communication channels to their servers besides the TP web channel. The current TP phone apps, which also provide item pricing notifications, would not have been possible without sites like gw2spidy and they want a phone presence. It doesn’t do them any good to alienate developers who want to support them.

But they have not disclosed their future plans on their api, and they can change it at any time since they have not published it.

Due to the inflammatory tone and the topic having gone completely off-topic, this topic is closed.