As far back as the early days of MMOs when companies were all still new at this, and even later with the release of WoW, it was possible to page a GM, discuss a problem with them, and see a resolution within a matter of hours if not minutes.
For three days now I have seen (and reported in-game) the same teleport-bot farming the same patch of land on my server. She’s doing it in a very public area and I know for a fact that I am not the only person who has reported her. Worse, she is clearly using a legitimate character in a real guild, and thus likely has stolen the account of some poor player.
And yet, for three days now she has been at it non-stop in the Harathi Hinterlands, Wynchona Woods region on the Tarnished Coast server. Catching her in the act is an simple as going to her location and using the eyeballs we were all born with. Every time I pass by that area I spot her, within seconds, teleporting to and fro between mobs (and vendors) – for three days now.
Meanwhile, when I first posted about her on the forum I received an infraction for my thread within hours of creating it. I didn’t use her name, or screenshots showing her, or any personal information that we are often warned about.. I just posted her whereabouts in the game in the hopes that something would be done about it. I feel like there is a failing in priorities when I am being dealt with infinitely more quickly than the bot-account-thief who is actually doing harm to this game and the players in it.
In a follow-up PM I was even advised to submit evidence of her botting in a screenshot, which seemed like ridiculous advice.. because what exactly am I going to show in that screenshot? Do I provide a screenshot of a character fighting mobs at one location and then another screenshot of that same character fighting mobs at a different location? Useless, as that pretty much describes every character in the game. I get a recommendation like this and I feel like the help is on auto-pilot here.
Why is it taking days/weeks to remove these individual hackers and exploiters from the game when other MMOs can get it done so much more quickly? I read the recent War on Bots article and honestly couldn’t disagree more with the proud claims of progress being made. Removing scores of bots well after they have had all the time in the world to do their damage is not a victory. I would define progress as a massive reduction in ArenaNet’s response time to bot reports. 3+ days is too long. Really, 1 day is too long.
I will probably get in trouble for making this thread, while the real problem continues to bot-away in the game for days to come. I just don’t get it.
And, for the record, I wanted to post this in the existing bot-feedback-sticky-thread (as we have been repeatedly instructed to do) but it’s locked down.