Guild Wars 2

Regarding botting and reporting botters, it has proven difficult to do so. In a previous thread on the subject a moderator stated that bots need to be reported individually via the in-game reporting tool. However, I’ve found this difficult to do, as the most egregious offenses I’ve seen have been multiple bots abusing exploits to teleport on the game map, making targeting them to report difficult, if not impossible, as when they teleport they become untargeted again, and they are teleporting around often at a rate of every 2 or 3 seconds at times.

I’ve done my best to report them individually, but it’s difficult to individually report 8+ botters who teleport before you can right click their profile to report.

Just a heads up on the issue, and probably hence the original post’s “bot frustration.”

Its to Anet’s advantage to ban them. Free $60. They’ll get to it eventually.

I reported enough of them today… I think over 30 in less than a day.

I’m seeing a rise in bots that use a blipping around method that stands out quickly in a field of real players. They don’t run anywhere, they just teleport from point A to point B.

There’s also some bots on a fixed path that’s repeated over and over, stopping whenever they encounter a mob. The ones I saw had a very short route, making it easy to spot. In Queensdale, there are several using the same route and stacking on top of each other, making it painfully obvious.

I report each one that I see, but I also put them on my contact list so I can rejoice when they’re MIA. At least, that’s my optimistic hope! ^.^

Catbriar,

I can understand being curious as to when those “contacts” disappear, but I’m not sure putting them on your contact list is the best move … for yourself or for ANet. I say this because I saw a post from a GM at one point commenting that something they do is check the contact lists on “recovered” accounts to get some insight as to the networks the hackers have established in game. You may skew that effort, or even come under suspicion if your name is connected to them as a contact.

Well, huh… I didn’t know there was any notice taken of contacts. My only concern was being “friended” by the bot as I’d appear in their “follower” list, but since they’re not really at the keyboard, I doubted the person running the program would ever notice.

I appreciate the cautionary advice, Debsylvania. I’ll remove them from my list since I don’t want to interfere in any investigations that might take place. As for falling under suspicion, I would hope that’d be improbable as I’m the one reporting each and every bot that I’ve got on my list. :}

It was mildly depressing, anyhoo. The vast majority I’ve reported are still green, constantly online, and going strong.

Thanks for the head’s up!

I do not put bots on my ignore contact list because it is full already with gold selling spammer and mail spammer. What I am doing is :

Create a guild named i.e “Reported Bots” or “Bots I have reported” and invite them to this guild. You can quickly invite them and after that report them individually from the guild panel. Its faster to click invite than report on the fly with the popup window. . Of course they will ignore your invitation but at least this will generated an extremely large list of bots in one place to track along with details like levels account names, servers they are on, locations, and more.

When you gather lets say 10 or 50 on your list make a screen shot and send a report to anet here: http://en.support.guildwars2.com/

And report them each day you see them botting on the game field.

Just switch them from your contact list to your block list. That way you can still track but it won’t appear suspicious.

Lilianna, won’t that prevent you from joining an actual guild?

Tomkatt.1684:

Lilianna, won’t that prevent you from joining an actual guild?

You can have up to 4 guilds (at this time temporarily limited to 4 guild- they are working on it to make it back to infinite guilds ) at the same time .
You simply switch guilds by pressing buttons “represent” or “stand down”.

Tomkatt, the block list is a super place to put’em. I guess I had mentally categorized blocking for the insistent gold sellers cluttering chat, but it’s also a great catch-all for the bots.

Thanks for suggesting it!

I agree. The reporting tools in this game suck donkey. You have zero opportunity to add a comment, like “hey, this bot is teleporting around and is obviously grossly abusing the game such that a 2 year old can see something is wrong, so why can’t you people DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?!”

You also can’t just report something – only via right click on a portrait or email. It’s like they DON’T want stuff reported.

It’s also difficult to report the bots that camp resource nodes since they just log in, tap, logout, and if you’re not able to report them within 5 seconds they’re gone.

One of my biggest disappointments with this game is just how badly both players and 3rd parties have been able to abuse the heck out of the game. ANet aren’t rookies and overlooking and/or failing to anticipate this stuff is very negligent.

shizniticus.7864:

Its to Anet’s advantage to ban them. Free $60. They’ll get to it eventually.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that a lot of players do not take steps to secure their computers or accounts, many bots are just hacked characters tasked to botting.

You can spot more and more bots coming each day with their account names like fsgfs.1234 , eerfsrf.4321

These are obviously not stolen accounts.

Its not the existence of bots that aggravate me, it is the apparent lack of action on anets part that bothers me.
How hard is it to detect ten rangers with names like (ILoveYou1…ILoveYou10), that have been at the same event for over 24 hours attacking, with each account sitting at 50+ reports of botting?
Botting is mechanically easy in this game, Anet should at least try and curb the problem through application of their ToS.

Having bots in game must be profitable for Ncsoft.

Otherwise they would deal with botters immediately.
Like they did with legit players farming dungeons for gold.