chopping wood one day, dropped a piece,
all I could say was, “…fell…foot…”
(edited by Fellfoot.8156)
A guild mate and I were standing in LA right after the update today. There was an Anet tag standing there motionless near the Mystic Forge. My guild mate was asking it questions in say chat. I tried to explain to my guild mate that it was just a “placeholder”, you know, a Dev Bot there to record what people are map chatting about the latest update. As I was trying to explain this to my guild mate… it MOVED! and it SPOKE!
I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised. It interacted my guild mate a few moments, gave a sort of scripted response to a question that was asked, then I had to leave and go pick up my kids from school.
This leaves me with only two conclusions:
1) my belief that those Anet tags are only recording bots has been myth busted, they are actual people!
2) Anet has some really awesome interactive bots
…either way… my mind is blown, gg Anet gg….
(edited by Fellfoot.8156)
Why do they need to use a bot to record? They can just pull out their server logs.
I don’t recall any of that being a myth other than was the Dev playing Thief? I’ve even played with random ones in Spvp/PvP/WvW (some as commanders) but little to no ones ever seen one as a Thief. :P Most often Rangers and Necros it seems.
You should have seen them when HoT had freshly launched. They were in the jungle getting it in with the rest of us. Most of the Anet players I’ve come across were actually good at playing/survival. It’s nice to see employees that not only develop but understand how to play their product well.
Excellent observation Doggie
Edit: Not sure about the thief thing; I got a couple screen shots I’ll take a closer look at.
(edited by Fellfoot.8156)
ArenaNet doesn’t have any bots and I’ve never heard of such. They don’t need bots to record chat since they can pull all chat logs out of their servers (this is how they verify reports – they even pull up whisper conversations for such).
When you see an Anet tag it’s a dev playing an actual account, and if they’re not moving then they’re just afk – nothing fancy about it.
You should have seen them when HoT had freshly launched. They were in the jungle getting it in with the rest of us. Most of the Anet players I’ve come across were actually good at playing/survival. It’s nice to see employees that not only develop but understand how to play their product well.
Awww, I’ve been looking for a Dev in game since the original preweekend. I’ve never seen one other than the afk ones. I did see an Anet flame ram(?) on wurm gate once upon a time.
I’ve been playing since the first public beta and I’ve never heard anyone claim characters with Anet tags are bots before.
As someone else said they don’t need to have a character (bot or real person) standing in the map to see or record what’s being said in chat. They can pull up the chat log for any area (except possibly whispers?) any time they want. I’m not sure how long they keep it on file but they can definitely go a little way back in order to investigate claims of verbal abuse, gold selling etc.
When you see an Anet tag on a character that means it’s someone who works for the company who is representing their staff guild. Whenever I’ve seen it they’re getting bombarded with questions in say, map and by whisper so it’s not surprising they can sometimes be slow to respond. (Which actually would indicate they’re NOT a bot. Back when I played Ultima Online they did have bots to answer common questions and you could tell they weren’t real people because they’d produce a long response, properly formatted, almost instantly.)
What I find interesting is that they can turn the tag on and off at will (by switching guilds) so unless you know all their character names you can never be sure whether someone from Anet is around or not. They seem to only turn it on when they want to be recognised and are prepared for loads of questions. Or when they want to distract an entire enemy zerg in WvW.
You should have seen them when HoT had freshly launched. They were in the jungle getting it in with the rest of us. Most of the Anet players I’ve come across were actually good at playing/survival. It’s nice to see employees that not only develop but understand how to play their product well.
Whenever I saw an ANet tag on a player it was usually a staff guardian in open world events.
I’ve run into one ANet person a few times, one of which they were killing the Gerent with us.
I’ve been in PVP matches with Anet devs before. If they are bots they are really, really good bots.
I played with 2 anet employees in pvp over the last couple of days. One match I was against them (ow. watched my teammates go absolutely stupid) and one I was teamed with them. They’s just people. (With super shiny, mind altering tags apparently)
They’re not that unusual to see in the PvP lobby (waiting for queues to pop I guess. ^^). That’s the spot I’ve seen them most frequently.
I don’t see the tags often, but might be due to when I play more than anything else. I’ve seen a couple in DR previously too. Generally speaking, I don’t typically explicitly pay attention to whether they are around or not.
They’re much more common on NA servers than EU ones, which might affect how often different people see them.
And I’ve just remembered one instance where they were standing in maps just to see what people said – when Heart of Thorns was announced. Quite a few players who couldn’t be there in person got together in-game to listen to the announcement and some gatherings had Anet staff show up.
Of course they all knew what was going to happen, but I bet they enjoyed watching.
iluminarty cunfirmd
I have never seen any anet staff player in GW2 EU servers and I have around 3.5k hours playtime.
They mainly play on the US servers I have seen them from time to time. As for them being some type of monitoring bot that’s just dumb. Thisis the first I have ever herd of this myth and yes there is a real person playing if you see a charature with the Anet tag above their head.
A guild mate and I were standing in LA right after the update today. There was an Anet tag standing there motionless near the Mystic Forge. My guild mate was asking it questions in say chat. I tried to explain to my guild mate that it was just a “placeholder”, you know, a Dev Bot there to record what people are map chatting about the latest update. As I was trying to explain this to my guild mate… it MOVED! and it SPOKE!
I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised. It interacted my guild mate a few moments, gave a sort of scripted response to a question that was asked, then I had to leave and go pick up my kids from school.
This leaves me with only two conclusions:
1) my belief that those Anet tags are only recording bots has been myth busted, they are actual people!
2) Anet has some really awesome interactive bots…either way… my mind is blown, gg Anet gg….
The Anet tag isnt a marker of a bot. It’s the tag of the actual Arenanet GW2 guild. You know, the one that employees are encouraged to join if they happen to play the game on their, I believe, personal accounts.
I have never seen any anet staff player in GW2 EU servers and I have around 3.5k hours playtime.
2.7k hours played, all on EU servers (Desolation specifically, before they merged them) and I’ve seen them at least 5 times. Twice just standing in towns chatting, once doing the Flame and Frost dungeon, once at the HoT announcement and once in a zerg in WvW. There might be more I don’t remember.
They seem to log in and/or display the tag most often on patch days, presumably it’s the people who worked on the release logging in to check it out. (That was definitely the case with the one doing the dungeon because she told us.)
At first I was thinking maybe you’re new to the game, but sounds like you’ve been around for the 3 years…
This is the first time I’ve heard about something like anet recording bots in game…
They have chat logs, they don’t need actual recording bots…
Why would Anet need Anet tagged recording bots when they have a world full of npcs to do the same thing?…
The Anet tag is an actual guild tag for the anet guild…
Anet employees are not required to wear the anet tag, many of them are members of regular guilds…
My mind is also blown, from this thread…
I was just playing with an ANet staff on Dragon Stand XD
I even added one *ded
I never even knew that this was a rumor. Why would people think this? If ANet wants to record any chat, they don’t need a character model in the game to do it. GMs, for example, can operate in the game without any character model. Secondly, if they wanted to see for themselves how a map chat was doing, wouldn’t the map chat act more naturally without a developer?
I’ve been in PVP matches and PVE WB events where ArenaNet players show up. It is really awesome to see people from ArenaNet show up and actually play with their tags on.
We had someone with the Anet tag in our WvW squad once. He/she seemed really good, too. They definitely do actually play the game.
The Devs even announce when and where they will be playing (with their ArenaNet tags), sometimes.
Not sure why anyone would think the tag denoted a bot, considering the above.
Why would you assume they’d put a visible character with an arenanet tag to carry out surveillance on botting?
That’s absolutely the worst way to collect information. It’s like putting a uniformed officer on a streetcorner for a prostitution sting. You can monitor servers retroactively via logs, or in real time with completely invisible observers.
Players with the arenanet tags are just that, players, Anet staff are given the option of joining a special guild that displays that tag when they represent it. Those are their live server characters in most cases, and don’t have any kind of dev console abilities. it’s just a way for them to “declare” themselves as anet staff if they choose to while they play.
I’ve had a few on my friends lists in the past, and you’d be suprised how often you’re playing with untagged anet staff, as people tend to bother/whisper them when they show their tags. When you see an anet tag just standing around, they’re usually replying to like nine billion whispers because they put on the tag and people assume they run everything and can answer every question imaginable.
Confirmed: We play our game.
Personally, I play every day after work and on weekend, too. (I did a lot of Toypocalypse over the holidays — man I love that as much as Dragon’s Nest in Guild Wars!) Anyway, when I’m online I see many of my fellow Anet folks online, too! We’re an active bunch.
As others have pointed out, for tracking or chat recording or other purposes, we don’t need bots. As the saying goes, “We have the technology.” (Bonus points for knowing the source. )
Confirmed: We play our game.
“We have the technology.” (Bonus points for knowing the source.
)
Six million dollar man.
Can I spend those points any way I want?
Confirmed: We play our game.
Personally, I play every day after work and on weekend, too. (I did a lot of Toypocalypse over the holidays — man I love that as much as Dragon’s Nest in Guild Wars!) Anyway, when I’m online I see many of my fellow Anet folks online, too! We’re an active bunch.
As others have pointed out, for tracking or chat recording or other purposes, we don’t need bots. As the saying goes, “We have the technology.” (Bonus points for knowing the source.
)
Dating myself, but..
Six Million Dollar Man.
…boy, inflation would blow that cost out of the water. XD
Dating myself, but..
Six Million Dollar Man.
…boy, inflation would blow that cost out of the water. XD
Beat ya to it.
“We can rebuild him. We have the technology.”
If only I was a bit faster. All those bonus points. T.T
Something can’t be a myth if you’re the only person who knows of it and/or has heard of it.
While I can’t prove from the screenshot that this is an ANet player, the reason I took the shot was because an ANet person agreed to run a dungeon with me and other guildies (it was a very long time ago, the image file is from Feb 2013 so details are hazy, I think s/he was a pug from the dungeon entrance) and was the one to start the instance. I particularly liked his/her using the ANet colors on the armor.
Confirmed: We play our game.
Personally, I play every day after work and on weekend, too. (I did a lot of Toypocalypse over the holidays — man I love that as much as Dragon’s Nest in Guild Wars!) Anyway, when I’m online I see many of my fellow Anet folks online, too! We’re an active bunch.
As others have pointed out, for tracking or chat recording or other purposes, we don’t need bots. As the saying goes, “We have the technology.” (Bonus points for knowing the source.
)
^^^^
I have seen Gaile Gray play a million times She is often seen in LA near the MF. Just chillin… :p I remember around halloween this past year i was chatting to her, and I told her something like pretty please make some cute butterfly crystal looking weapons to go with my fab butterfly wings, and presto not even a few weeks later they were there in the BlackLions Specialist Weapons and I was so thrilled to see them in display
I was like yaaaaiiii Gaile listened to me :p (that or they had already had an idea such as the one i gave her…) still that was the best day ever
They can pull up the chat log for any area (except possibly whispers?) any time they want.
For the record, they absolutely can (and have) pulled up whisper logs. Nothing you say on ArenaNet’s servers is truly private.
Confirmed: We play our game.
Personally, I play every day after work and on weekend, too. (I did a lot of Toypocalypse over the holidays — man I love that as much as Dragon’s Nest in Guild Wars!) Anyway, when I’m online I see many of my fellow Anet folks online, too! We’re an active bunch.
As others have pointed out, for tracking or chat recording or other purposes, we don’t need bots. As the saying goes, “We have the technology.” (Bonus points for knowing the source.
)
^^^^
I have seen Gaile Gray play a million times
She is often seen in LA near the MF. Just chillin… :p I remember around halloween this past year i was chatting to her, and I told her something like pretty please make some cute butterfly crystal looking weapons to go with my fab butterfly wings, and presto not even a few weeks later they were there in the BlackLions Specialist Weapons and I was so thrilled to see them in display
I was like yaaaaiiii Gaile listened to me :p (that or they had already had an idea such as the one i gave her…) still that was the best day ever
Yep. I’ve chatted with Gaile in LA as well.
I tagged and released several devs I spotted during the HoT launch. Still get messages when they log in and out of the game.
….(Bonus points for knowing the source.
)
Sorry, I cant resist….
Ida says… everybody can know the source
Honestly we probably see a lot more devs in game than we realize. They just don’t have their ANet tags on.
They’re much more common on NA servers than EU ones, which might affect how often different people see them.
And I’ve just remembered one instance where they were standing in maps just to see what people said – when Heart of Thorns was announced. Quite a few players who couldn’t be there in person got together in-game to listen to the announcement and some gatherings had Anet staff show up.
Of course they all knew what was going to happen, but I bet they enjoyed watching.
Hahaha, Kelvei. Man I hated him when I found out he was in GW2’s Q&A.
How old was this screenshot again? Last I spoke to Kelvei he wasn’t in Anet anymore.
Confirmed: We play our game.
Personally, I play every day after work and on weekend, too. (I did a lot of Toypocalypse over the holidays — man I love that as much as Dragon’s Nest in Guild Wars!) Anyway, when I’m online I see many of my fellow Anet folks online, too! We’re an active bunch.
As others have pointed out, for tracking or chat recording or other purposes, we don’t need bots. As the saying goes, “We have the technology.” (Bonus points for knowing the source.
)
And for those of you who say “pictures or it didn’t happen…” I have the proof!
There was no myth except in the OPs head. who on earth would think IF there was a recording bot, that they would place a flipping anet tag on the top of it!! Seriously…….
Confirmed: We play our game.
Personally, I play every day after work and on weekend, too. (I did a lot of Toypocalypse over the holidays — man I love that as much as Dragon’s Nest in Guild Wars!) Anyway, when I’m online I see many of my fellow Anet folks online, too! We’re an active bunch.
As others have pointed out, for tracking or chat recording or other purposes, we don’t need bots. As the saying goes, “We have the technology.” (Bonus points for knowing the source.
)
^^^^
I have seen Gaile Gray play a million times
She is often seen in LA near the MF. Just chillin… :p I remember around halloween this past year i was chatting to her, and I told her something like pretty please make some cute butterfly crystal looking weapons to go with my fab butterfly wings, and presto not even a few weeks later they were there in the BlackLions Specialist Weapons and I was so thrilled to see them in display
I was like yaaaaiiii Gaile listened to me :p (that or they had already had an idea such as the one i gave her…) still that was the best day ever
Oh gosh, while I would love to be the "ask and ye shall receive* Wonder Woman™, the fact is, those were in the works, I’m sure, because things like that take quite a bit of time to create, including art, animation, sometimes sound, programming, etc.
So thanks for the nod, but I must humbly decline to take credit here.
Edit to add: RouterGeeks — George will be so chuffed that he is also pictured in that image. He’s incredibly proud that he bears the ArenaNet tag.
(edited by Gaile Gray.6029)
A guild mate and I were standing in LA right after the update today. There was an Anet tag standing there motionless near the Mystic Forge. My guild mate was asking it questions in say chat. I tried to explain to my guild mate that it was just a “placeholder”, you know, a Dev Bot there to record what people are map chatting about the latest update. As I was trying to explain this to my guild mate… it MOVED! and it SPOKE!
I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised. It interacted my guild mate a few moments, gave a sort of scripted response to a question that was asked, then I had to leave and go pick up my kids from school.
This leaves me with only two conclusions:
1) my belief that those Anet tags are only recording bots has been myth busted, they are actual people!
2) Anet has some really awesome interactive bots…either way… my mind is blown, gg Anet gg….
anet staff plays gw2, the logo at their name is guild tag actually… some choose to show it, some not~
They’re much more common on NA servers than EU ones, which might affect how often different people see them.
And I’ve just remembered one instance where they were standing in maps just to see what people said – when Heart of Thorns was announced. Quite a few players who couldn’t be there in person got together in-game to listen to the announcement and some gatherings had Anet staff show up.
Of course they all knew what was going to happen, but I bet they enjoyed watching.
Hahaha, Kelvei. Man I hated him when I found out he was in GW2’s Q&A.
How old was this screenshot again? Last I spoke to Kelvei he wasn’t in Anet anymore.
The screenshot is from the HoT announcement. I don’t tend to talk to devs unless it’s part of a conversation at the time, I especially don’t make any attempt to keep track of what they’re doing, so I have no idea if he’s still at Anet or not.
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