Guild Wars 2

Neoeve.5461:

i havent seen bot trains indeed…but i have seen something else
a player gathering a tree\node\herb then disappears, then appears near another to gather then disappears again and so on
I dunno if this is a bug, exploit, new hack or me becoming crazy…i’ve seen it more than once though.

I noticed this too.

Hello all,

ANet used the best weapon to fight bots: the price of gems is so high in gold that whomever needs gold just buy gems from ANet and trade for gold in-game.

Bots can not beat that..:)

Thanks and best regards,

Red

There was a dev post about this a while ago where they were remarkably honest about how the process works. They don’t spend much effort banning individual botters because they are mostly stolen accounts anyhow. Instead they work to figure out the newest bot and then change the code to stop the bot working.

This leads to crests and falls in the bot population. When a new bot comes out the bot population swells until Anet figures out how to break the bot and then the population crashses until a new bot comes out. This cycle repeats itself.

The new bots use teleportation, so you don’t see them around as much. They are still there, and the bot population will continue to climb for a few weeks until anet disables this particular bot.

Bots are still here, it’s just that your not seeing them, I’ve seen them under bridges in caves, they just got cleverer and hide out of sight.

I aghree arenanet is awesome! Thanks guys!

Caedmon.6798:

Raine.1394:

You will only be able to congratulate them on getting rid of bots when 3rd party sites no longer exist because they no longer have gold to sell. So, it’s a bit premature to congratulate them as the sites are still bustling and there will be no positive impact on the economy though anything they have done to date.

What the hell ? I hope you are’nt serious.Do you realize its not anets job to take down those sites,nor is it in their power ?.Those sites are legal to exist.Anet certainly deserves to be praised how they handled the bot situation,they sure are still here,but not in the massive amounts i used to see them and they were quick with handling it.

Perfectly serious and my logic is pretty straightforward. It would be pretty silly to expect Anet to take down the 3rd party sites and that is why I didn’t suggest it, nor condemn Anet for their presence. I’ll make it real simple for you: as long as their is gold to sell on the 3rd party market it means their are bots collecting it in the game. They don’t have millions of Chinese laborers farming gold, they use bots to farm gold in the game.

Unlike subscription games, you can rely on Anet to do everything within their power to control botting and gold sellers. These people/organizations are in direct competition with them. It will probably never disappear altogether, but not from a lack of effort on Anet’s part.

xiv.7136:

Something which doesn’t get mentioned often enough.

Anet has done something which no other MMO appears to do properly: takes exploiters and botters seriously and ban them. The big trains are completely gone. This is a major achievement.

Even in WoW there are constantly bots in BGs making your team lose, bots farming gold, exploiters everywhere, even at the top of the arena ladders. Blizzard has failed to ban them and continues to allow bots to impact on other players.

So here’s from me:

A kudos to ArenaNet for doing something that is very important for legitimate players, thanks for banning all those bots that plague the MMO and general online gaming world.

This must be your first mmo because Anet isn’t the first and not only that has taken extremely long to do so and there are still many boters. And do research first please because Blizzard has done this for a long time and actually has done a way better job than Anet. You will ALWAYS have bots and gold farmers but WoW controls them a lot better. I only get friend requests now for gold. I haven’t been spammed for gold in a long time.

Blythepiper.6874:

Unlike subscription games, you can rely on Anet to do everything within their power to control botting and gold sellers. These people/organizations are in direct competition with them. It will probably never disappear altogether, but not from a lack of effort on Anet’s part.

I agree, they have no vested interest in keeping a bot “subscribed” either for a monthly fee or to inflate their subscription numbers.

They’ve done a great job in getting rid of the bots and with what Chris just said on Reddit:

I totally get what you are saying and we are working very hard on not only addressing the bugs in the game, but building on new areas and trying to ensure that new content is as bug free as possible. This is very big ticket item for all of us, so in the same way as the work we did on bots you can expect to see big improvements soon.

I am looking forward to spectacular things from this game

Yes one of the things I love is their response time on this and their detection system. This is GREAT. I am so glad you guys got that new code into the game.

One of the reasons why I was not looking for an announcement on this was to throw off the bots and gold farmers from trying to code around their detection system.

I like it never see these guys in the world anymore on tarnished coast and only very rarely get an email from a level 1 toon.

I am still seeing the odd teleport bot. I notice them because they appear at a mining node, act erratically, then dissapear before I can get the report dialogue up.

ArenaNet don’t get the credit they deserve when it comes to this issue. Everyone was overreacting about bots when the game launched, I saw a few bots in my time but all I did was report them and move on.

I haven’t seen a bot in a long time, all the people who were vehemently complaining aren’t expressing the same magnitude of expression in terms of gratefulness now.

So thanks ArenaNet, keep up the good work.

bojangles.6912:

This must be your first mmo because Anet isn’t the first and not only that has taken extremely long to do so and there are still many boters. And do research first please because Blizzard has done this for a long time and actually has done a way better job than Anet. You will ALWAYS have bots and gold farmers but WoW controls them a lot better. I only get friend requests now for gold. I haven’t been spammed for gold in a long time.

I have played WoW more than you have.

WoW is plagued with bots even today, and has been for years. Blizzard does nothing about them, if anything they are one of the worst companies at dealing with bots. They can’t even prevent rampant exploiting on top of their laughable arena ladders. Even right now, the battlegrounds are full of bots, making your team lose. Many other MMOs like Rift were better at dealing with bots.

But ArenaNet have been the best at it, they have literally massacred bots week on week. Mad props to them for that.

botters are now on less popular servers, thats y u dont see them. geez

Vain.7643:

They don’t deserve to be praised when 1000 of accounts are being hacked while they can’t do anything about it.

Accounts getting hacked it’s not just a.net responsibility !
Ultimately the majority of the blame lies between the computer and the chair !
use unique passwords and use the kitten (yes I wrote kitten) authenticator and I assure you 99% of the accounts with proper security measures do not get hacked at all !

I guess it’s easier for people to blame a.net instead of making proper passwords and using the security tools at your disposal to prevent something that in the end no matter what misguided ideas you might have is your own fault !

Latinkuro.9420:

…
I guess it’s easier for people to blame a.net instead of making proper passwords and using the security tools at your disposal to prevent something that in the end no matter what misguided ideas you might have is your own fault !

Thats’ really not the point.

There are (real) players buying gold from gold selling sites and there are (real) players using exploits to take a shortcut.

Eliminate these from the equation and there will be no more bots, no gold selling spam, ….

It’s not some evil guys hacking into the game from a remote place but your next door neighbour who creates the problem.

At the beginning I reported at least one of every bot train I came across, but after a while I saw them basically everywhere and stopped reporting because I don’t play GW2 to mainly report bots… After the recent bannings I still see bot trains in the night from time to time and I bother to report them again in good hopes.

Vain.7643:

They don’t deserve to be praised when 1000 of accounts are being hacked while they can’t do anything about it.

I’m sorry, but account security is up to the player. Reusing email addresses and/or passwords from other games or other internet sites for something that should be kept secure is not a good idea. Using simple passwords for something that should be secure is not a good idea. These are not under the control of ArenaNet, they are the full responsibility of the player. When players take their own security seriously, ensure they are using unique usernames and passwords, as well as ensuring their machines are kept free of viruses/malware/keyloggers, then we will see the theft of accounts reduced.

Accounts being hacked are usually because of poor security on the users end… not because of security breaches on Anets end. When that does happen, they are required by law to tell people. In fact, in terms of security, Anet should be praised on their email confirmation system which have saved countless accounts.

Don’t forget the many innocents that get swept up in the bannings.

What some people don’t understand is that people that create Bots and hacks as well as people that use them can be sued in real life for those activities by the gaming companies. Sites that host the bots and hacks are liable for the content on their sites even if they have disclaimers stating otherwise. These sites can be forced to give up user information of people that have used the site to download these programs

Creating the bots and hacks isn’t illegal, the use or distribution of them is illegal. It violates both national and international copyright laws. That being said, just because a person that is using, making, or distributing these illegal programs may not live in the United States, they can still be extradited and prosecuted under international laws.

Some gaming companies have started to sue makers and users of bots and hacks already.

As for people getting their accounts hacked (compromised), the fault for this usually the user, rarely is it anything else.

Aye Arenanet, this is fantastic ^^ keep up the good work.

This is problem one of the biggest reasons why I’ll be sticking around here You guys actually do things about cheaters.

Hahahahahahahaha….

taking exploiting serious….I’ll have to dig up some quotes sometime…but pretty sure you’d cry so…

I was ecstatic when I found out they banned a lot of exploiters only to retract it and reinstate them…apparently letting them keep the items/currency they gained via the exploits… I recall someone from ArenaNet responding with “and if they kept those items, then shame on them!”

now we have new bots that port from node to node

bojangles.6912:

xiv.7136:

Something which doesn’t get mentioned often enough.

Anet has done something which no other MMO appears to do properly: takes exploiters and botters seriously and ban them. The big trains are completely gone. This is a major achievement.

Even in WoW there are constantly bots in BGs making your team lose, bots farming gold, exploiters everywhere, even at the top of the arena ladders. Blizzard has failed to ban them and continues to allow bots to impact on other players.

So here’s from me:

A kudos to ArenaNet for doing something that is very important for legitimate players, thanks for banning all those bots that plague the MMO and general online gaming world.

This must be your first mmo because Anet isn’t the first and not only that has taken extremely long to do so and there are still many boters. And do research first please because Blizzard has done this for a long time and actually has done a way better job than Anet. You will ALWAYS have bots and gold farmers but WoW controls them a lot better. I only get friend requests now for gold. I haven’t been spammed for gold in a long time.

This must be your first MMO, I played WoW from the end of lich king to shortly after cataclysm and their were bots everyday in the main city of the alliance spelling out stuff. Not to mention the ones actually out in the world grinding I saw. Rift? SWTOR? all way less compared to WoW. As for gw2 i havent seen any but ive been in low level areas or Heart of the Mists.

So sense most seem to disagree with you maybe you should do some research, Blizzard has had and continue to has the worst botting problems.

From soneone who knows cats …. It’s really hard to tell that there is no cat in the room!

ANet did a great job of eliminating the known bots (e. g. Kessex Hills bridge), but there are and always will be new bots using other exploits …

… as long as people are stupid or unsporty enough to buy gold from them.

After reporting many many bots, i realized now that i miss them.
So i would really gz anet team for removing bots , only if i didnt think that they did it only with goal of making money on gem store.
Well cant have it all, gz anet for bots wipe…..
Goodbye T6 mats, and wb pay to be “legendary”.

Obviously, the less bots flood the market the higher the prices.
But you (the player) will also sell for more.
I very much appreciate a market that is controlled by real players and not by bots.

Thing is , anet made “some” stuff highly grindable, and with higher prices, your best choice, if you dont wish to waste months on farming, is gem shop. I dont really like that, coz, if someone can spend tons rl money , he can go on and enjoy game, wile i, cant pay and if i wish to get the same , have to waste months on grinding that is not fun.

Surgery succeeded in botting, economy died in the process.

Vain.7643:

They don’t deserve to be praised when 1000 of accounts are being hacked while they can’t do anything about it.

If your account was hacked, report it. Their security is indeed a bit low. You can set phone confirmation for your gmail and even WoW, but not for this game yet and indeed I’ve known people who had it hacked once, however if you message Anet they are very professional about it and will get you your account back.

99% of hacked account are from ppl who are, or were trying to, use some of the hack tools, hack guides, bots, etc. That is not at all anet fault.

Raine.1394:

You will only be able to congratulate them on getting rid of bots when 3rd party sites no longer exist because they no longer have gold to sell. So, it’s a bit premature to congratulate them as the sites are still bustling and there will be no positive impact on the economy though anything they have done to date.

Sorry , but even if botting, hacking and cheating was 100% impossible these sites would still exist.

Their main way of getting gold would be actually buying it from players, not earning it themselves.

They buy gold at $5 for 10G and sell it at $10 for 10G. If you just dropped a legendary precursor, you could sell it on the trade post, then sell the gold to the gold sellers for $150.

The last game I played botters made up more than +30% of most BG’s I played, they were everywhere tagging quest mobs which made it difficult. And they were still there and still are years later.

meanwhile Anet cleaned them out in only a few months. nice work.

Bots used for gold farming is becoming passe they have evolved into entire guilds that farm dungeons its where the money is and they can do this totally anomously also guild leaders selling guild gold is also being utilized as well. To combat bot dungeon farming there needs to be lockouts.

kiranslee.4829:

99% of hacked account are from ppl who are, or were trying to, use some of the hack tools, hack guides, bots, etc. That is not at all anet fault.

not really. Without extra security measures all people need to do to get into your account is hack your email, therefore putting extra security on your email is a good idea. Gmail gets hacked a lot

So, how many players (friends, guild buddies, ….) do you know that have used exploits or bought gold from gold sellings sites and you did NOT report?

See, here is the problem. A market without demand will obviously collapse.