Guild Wars 2

I’m pleased to see the devs acknowledge the problems we currently have with hacking and cheating in WvW (and probably PvP as well, I wouldn’t know, I only play WvW). Hacking orbs out of garrisons is only the very tip of the iceberg, cheaters are everywhere in this game.

However, we’re not seeing any progress being made toward a solution. Here is some information for the GW2 devs that I hope they will find useful in stopping cheats. Please discuss, agree, disagree, whatever.

Having most of the interaction client-side is a design choice I guess, and while it does offer a lot of performance benefits, it also allows for the sorts of hacks we have been seeing for the past few weeks. Personally, if I was developing an online game, I would have all player movements and interactions run through the server, which would automatically reject anything “illegal”. That said, the game is out now and massive changes like that are not really possible.

Clearly, the devs have “trusted” the player and client far, far too much. I can easily run the game in a VM and modify variables in memory on the fly to allow me to speedhack, teleport, go invisible and much, much more. I almost feel it’s insulting to real hackers calling it hacking, it’s so easy.

Tip 1: Get some security people in to show you how to encrypt your variables and randomise your memory locations, just for a start. Real hackers will get around these measures, sure, but lets not lay the whole game out totally un-encrypted in RAM on a plate for script kiddies to go and mess with.

Cheating is nothing new, it has been a problem in online games for over a decade and, in fact, the problem has been solved many, many times, even for client-side games like GW2.

Tip 2: Implement “Punkbuster”, or a variant thereof. The makers of Punkbuster, Evenbalance, are a company who specialise in defeating cheaters, they might be on an exclusive contract to EA at this point, I don’t know, but I’m sure they can at least offer consultancy & advice.

The basic premise is that on all of your servers, you have a punkbuster client connected at all times. This client monitors the movements and actions of players, and flags people for ban who it detects as cheating.

Even the most basic of this type of system would be able to detect some of the hacks we are currently seeing in WvW. As you developed it further and further, cheaters would eventually be severely restricted in what they can do.

Good luck in the battle against cheats!