Curse

Nisha · Aug 02, 2005, 03:18 PM // 15:18

Quote: "but I see a problem with this quote."

Well, that really was just a bit of wishful thinking on my part, I wasn't serious about saying that they'd give it up or that we could force people to give up spending real cash for fake cash. It was just a "wouldn't it be nice if..."
I was serious about reporting listings to Ebay though, and I've done it before, it's just that, because they don't give you follow up reports beyond the first, "we've received your report" you have to go find out yourself if anything has been done...

SOT · Aug 02, 2005, 03:25 PM // 15:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silmor

As long as you can play the game, you can write a bot/macro to do the clicking for you. I sincerely doubt the current bots go anywhere beyond simple macro'ing, and this method is hard to distinguish from a regular player playing the game - someone suggested making sure actual keys were pressed checking keyboard interrupts, but I'm not sure this is a good idea considering the rise of alternative interface devices these days.

Play lineage II for 2 weeks, then we'll talk. LMAO.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silmor

I think a better bet is to check for repetitive behavioural patterns rather than technical aspects since this would be a far lower-tech approach to stopping botting.

Which is the exact reason botting is so rampant in games. People want a Aol-easy-cheese solution to the botters, rather than annihilate the asshats at their source.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fatalis

I find your ignorance very curious.

I find your offhand comment to be devoid of importance.

Ignorance of what?
Before that, your meaningless existence.

Consider me educated, and you ignored

Quote:

Originally Posted by GW Monkey

But you're missing the point: These bots are not hacking GW code. They don't even touch it. There is no legal violation, it's an EULA violation. They are dxhook'ing, they basically "watch" the video and playback scripted keypresses / mouse movement based on what they "see". (FRAPS kinda works this way, as do many FPS aimbots.) There is nothing ANet can do about it, and I can get a bagfull of cheap EFF council to prove it.

Either you really are not sure what you speak of, or you simply want to start an argument.

A bot is a robot account character. It connects to the game. It farms gold, it kills people (in other games) who attempt to get gains where it sets up shop. It WILL NOT respond to chatter to it. It will not even respond to being ATTACKED in most cases.

If a bot is not accessing in-game, server-sode code, then the person controlling the bot is actively farming for 12 hours on end to sell on ebay and make all our gaming lives harder than they should be.

No, you missed the point, the phenomena as it occurs, and the overal purpose of my post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stev0

Yeah ... his idea is called essentially 'PUNKBUSTER' and if anyone here has ever played old school Halflife before Steam or are currently playing Battlefield 1942 . They will understand that punkbuster is not only USELESS but hurts the honest player by lagging their system with a 3rd party program.

Your statement, lumping what I posted alongside punkbuster is one of 2 things, both meaningless and useless:

1) Bot-supportive propoganda designed to make people think the problem cannot be solved with software-based protections, thus removing vital interest and killing the development of said item in the womb. This is not what I think you meant. But then again, your last part of the quoted text is a blanket statement from hell, so who knows.

or

2) You have absolutely NO idea how punk buster functions with games like Quake II and onward (the half-life era was not the first incarnation). I believe this is your area and not #1.

You see, bunk buster does not access games resident in memory, it has a couple of HMTL documents in the game folder, that you must manually download and update on your own. These files contain code that connect to a central server for pb. You are on the wrong foot, but I understand your reasoning, but no.

My intention was to show that anet could, if it so desired, code this implementation INTO THE GAME, not a 3rd party add-on.

Listen, then open your mouth.

Fatalis · Aug 02, 2005, 05:24 PM // 17:24

oh noes, soembody hsa upset teh troll!! its liek drama!!

Nisha · Aug 02, 2005, 07:16 PM // 19:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fatalis

Ah, but you're wrong to think that real world monetary systems have some underpinned substance, because the real world money is virtual too. The bills and coins are not made of gold, they're made of cheap metal and paper, and their value is simply a result of an agreement in the society. So the gold in GW is no more intangible than, say, dollars or euros. It is clearly a money object by definition, even though a one that exists in a virtual persistent-state world and does not have an objective value, unlike regular cash.

That's really abstracting the point though...it's like saying I could take 1plat from GW and buy food for myself in real life with it, If we were to look at the bigger philosophical picture...You're right to say that "real world money" only has the value we give it and I do agree with that. However, my "wishful thinking" wasn't based on whether or not "real cash" had "real substance" the way humans used to trade milk for pigs. (oh lordy, overdoing the ""

) It was based on the fact that unless the world were to turn topsy turvy tomorrow, regular cash has value while GW cash does not and because it has value, our gaming experience is marred by those who feed off people who think "real world" value is GW value. My point was that it would be nice (wishful thinking) if they realised that it is not...

Riceboi · Aug 02, 2005, 08:27 PM // 20:27

Why doesn't Arena Net have a few employees buy gold of of eBay, and when they do the trade in game, just ban that account? Selling stuff on ebay is an auto ban, isn't is against the EULA. I know they can't get all of them because there is too many, but one ban can be up to 4 bots possibly. Have a nice day!

SIMPLE

Stev0 · Aug 02, 2005, 10:29 PM // 22:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by SOT

Your statement, lumping what I posted alongside punkbuster is one of 2 things, both meaningless and useless:

1) Bot-supportive propoganda designed to make people think the problem cannot be solved with software-based protections, thus removing vital interest and killing the development of said item in the womb. This is not what I think you meant. But then again, your last part of the quoted text is a blanket statement from hell, so who knows.

or

2) You have absolutely NO idea how punk buster functions with games like Quake II and onward (the half-life era was not the first incarnation). I believe this is your area and not #1.

You see, bunk buster does not access games resident in memory, it has a couple of HMTL documents in the game folder, that you must manually download and update on your own. These files contain code that connect to a central server for pb. You are on the wrong foot, but I understand your reasoning, but no.

My intention was to show that anet could, if it so desired, code this implementation INTO THE GAME, not a 3rd party add-on.

Listen, then open your mouth.

If PB had ANYTHING to do with Quake 2 before Halflife then it was a matter of hours or days before it was available to HL.

As for your smartass seemingly-know-it-all-ness you may or may not know that as soon as a cheat detection package has been updated from ONE source there are NUMEROUS sources right there to get around it. Same idea behind chain-mail to counteract swords, arrows beat chainmail so platemail was made to counter arrows. Except the swords and arrows are coming from many directions.

You seriously do not play any of these games to see what cheat detection does to them. again... I will spell it out for you in simple terms for your simple one track mind to understand.

Putting extra software in will slow the system for everyone including HONEST players. People who can get around the system will do just that meaning the HONEST players have to suffer through the cheat detection software.

Since it seems you do NOT play BF1942 I will again retell the story so your slowness will understand that as well. I and several friends as of 1942's patch 1.61 (includes PB and related changes) cannot play several mods because the system has been cripled. Yes PB has crippled somewhat the game. It's not uncommon on a 32 player server to see in 30mins 10+ people being kicked for PBCL issues and even I have been kicked for the same only to be able to play somewhere else.

Try reading all of the statement instead of what you want to read out of it.

Stev0 · Aug 02, 2005, 10:32 PM // 22:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riceboi

Why doesn't Arena Net have a few employees buy gold of of eBay, and when they do the trade in game, just ban that account? Selling stuff on ebay is an auto ban, isn't is against the EULA. I know they can't get all of them because there is too many, but one ban can be up to 4 bots possibly. Have a nice day!

SIMPLE

It requires a non-automated process which seems to go against everything I have witnessed from ANet.

MSecorsky · Aug 02, 2005, 10:35 PM // 22:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stev0

It requires a non-automated process which seems to go against everything I have witnessed from ANet.

Actually, a modicum of thought will reveal that it requires ANet actually transferring money to the botters long before they can find out the account and take action. Every one shut down would come at a cost in real money to ANet.

Orochim4ru · Aug 02, 2005, 10:50 PM // 22:50

Quote:

No, those works were copyrighted, but the items in GW are not

Incorrect: the copywrite was enacted on the basis that intellectual property from the studios was being sold without their compensation. The case has ONLY been made post licensing in foreign contries. meaning that if i take your work and do stuff with it, its fine unless i'm undercutting you directly. Since bots essentially destroy the game, they risk ruining A.Net's future revenue by destroying player bases now.

Thus the intellectual property of a party is being used for the monetary benefit of another to the detriment of the first. That precedent is what caused copywrite law to come into existance, but doesn't mean that you need a specific copywrite on something you own to prevent it from being abused, especially if its against the EULA. If you violate the EULA, technically you shouldn't have access to any of the software that ANet gives you to play GW on. Oh, note, none of you own guild wars: you own a license to use it. You aren't allowed to decompile the program because it isn't yours.

Tactical-Dillusions · Aug 02, 2005, 10:50 PM // 22:50

Gaile, it's really great to see you posting in one of my threads

I have an interesting thought for you...
Would it be possible to somehow have a different loot table for the players you identify as not being a botter?

I mean, a botter gets banned but a farmer is left alone to carry on his merry way and to continue to collect the poor loot too. Which just makes things less exciting and strung-out as we search longer and longer for those fun things.
Wouldn't it reflect better on ArenaNets methods if you could actually benefit the genuine players once identified, aswell as punishing the bad apples?

It wouldn't apply to the rest of the non-farmers because according to ArenaNets own statements, people who play the game in its "normal" linear fashion actually get good drops anyway (Which i can concur).

It just seems a tad unfair that genuine players (such as myself) continue to get the white items and stacks of minotaur horns instead of the "fun" stuff which we got a month ago or more.

"OK, he's clean, send him the un-nerf patch." Is this a feasible proposal?

Fatalis · Aug 02, 2005, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nisha

That's really abstracting the point though...it's like saying I could take 1plat from GW and buy food for myself in real life with it, If we were to look at the bigger philosophical picture...You're right to say that "real world money" only has the value we give it and I do agree with that. However, my "wishful thinking" wasn't based on whether or not "real cash" had "real substance" the way humans used to trade milk for pigs. (oh lordy, overdoing the ""

) It was based on the fact that unless the world were to turn topsy turvy tomorrow, regular cash has value while GW cash does not and because it has value, our gaming experience is marred by those who feed off people who think "real world" value is GW value. My point was that it would be nice (wishful thinking) if they realised that it is not...

I'm not saying what you're say I'm saying at all.

It is the real world currency that holds an objective value, and Guild Wars gold with a value particular only to a given person. Which doesn't make it (the value) any less real.

Also, I would like to ask you how exactly do you think our experience is "marred" by these sellers?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riceboi

Why doesn't Arena Net have a few employees buy gold of of eBay, and when they do the trade in game, just ban that account?

Why don't they create a non-grind environment by not nerfing everything they can find instead? It's particulary unfair for the newer players who have never had an access to easy farming areas. All they have done by nerfing is supported elitism and created a resentment among those who missed the chance. Selling gold and items on eBay is an another side of the same problem.

In fact, nerfing in Guild Wars does not make sense at all, as this is not a game with a monthly subscription fee that would benefit from creating a time-consuming grind environment. All it achieves is increasing the personal wealth of the already rich players. So why is it that getting gold and items has been made so hard? Why are my level 20 characters almost like dead slots because I can't afford the time it takes to make them PvP-ready? Sure, they've introduced faction points which are easily farmable, but it doesn't make my PvE character more useful. I need perfect items to gain that all-important edge in PvP, and they cost more money than I've made in all my 400 hours of gameplay. They could at least free the slot for a new character after I've finished the game, so I wouldn't have the temptation to delete it along with the 100% explored Tyria map.

After all, I bought this game to compete with skill, not my ability to waste time.

And as for all the hypocrites that can't stand other players making money from Guild Wars: blame A.Net for deliberately making gold this scarce instead, if you must. The sellers are just satisfying a demand, not scamming others. Stop trying to enforce your gaming style on people who aren't as grindfest-loving as you, and spare us your zeal and intolerance. It's not even in A.Net's interests to ban them, because it would hurt the future sales.

Note that I have never used eBay or any other similar service except for Amazon.com in my life, and I don't intend to in the near future. So this is not an justification to buying gold from farmbotters or sweatshop workers, it's just a protest against the stupid groupthink in these forums.

Fatalis · Aug 02, 2005, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Incorrect: the copywrite was enacted on the basis that intellectual property from the studios was being sold without their compensation. The case has ONLY been made post licensing in foreign contries. meaning that if i take your work and do stuff with it, its fine unless i'm undercutting you directly. Since bots essentially destroy the game, they risk ruining A.Net's future revenue by destroying player bases now.

Thus the intellectual property of a party is being used for the monetary benefit of another to the detriment of the first. That precedent is what caused copywrite law to come into existance, but doesn't mean that you need a specific copywrite on something you own to prevent it from being abused, especially if its against the EULA. If you violate the EULA, technically you shouldn't have access to any of the software that ANet gives you to play GW on. Oh, note, none of you own guild wars: you own a license to use it. You aren't allowed to decompile the program because it isn't yours.

I believe it is called copyrights.

Yeah, and what you're saying is true, it's a breach of the EULA, but probably not copyright laws per se. Of course, IANAL. I don't even know wether a software license can be used as a basis to sue you where I live.

Orochim4ru · Aug 03, 2005, 12:02 AM // 00:02

Quote:

I believe it is called copyrights

Never again will the spellcheck be left unwatched O_o.

Hate · Aug 03, 2005, 12:35 AM // 00:35

This thread has gotten big in NO time, wow.

hydrak · Aug 03, 2005, 02:04 AM // 02:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ilya Khan

I have an idea...
Go to Ember Light Camp district 1 - You should be able to spot at least 8 bots.

Go to Riverside mission district 1 - at least 10 bots.

Their names usually start with Pt.

"Where does this idiotic notion that all Chinese people are bots come from? This is all just some mass fear of another culture. The same way you act with the Koreans. The same way alot of people did durring the Cold War."

You must not be too bright, are you?
Log on at any time to see 1 person in the same place going over and over and over again saying the same thing in Mandarin Chinese. And I have no idea what this has to do with the Cold War. It is as if someone speaks Nicaraguan and also cheats, you accuse us of fearing them from some random event in the early 1900's.

If you are doing some illegal activities, would you be telling the world your name and address?

If I were botting, I wouldn't spam english phrases.

Phades · Aug 03, 2005, 02:52 AM // 02:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hate

This thread has gotten big in NO time, wow.

Religion with religious groups gets big, abortion among religious versus non-religious groups gets big, and so on. You are just seeing the backlash of what people are passionate about and percieve being trampled by real or imagined forces. The ensuing dialogue is more of an effort to feel more than just a victim of circumstance and sometimes can lead to change.

SOT · Aug 03, 2005, 04:13 AM // 04:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

Religion with religious groups gets big, abortion among religious versus non-religious groups gets big, and so on. You are just seeing the backlash of what people are passionate about and percieve being trampled by real or imagined forces. The ensuing dialogue is more of an effort to feel more than just a victim of circumstance and sometimes can lead to change.

Not on here it won't but I admire your wisdom, nonetheless

Mimi Miyagi · Aug 03, 2005, 04:22 AM // 04:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

I'd like to make it very clear that ArenaNet most decidedly does not have an anti-farming policy. We most decidedly do have an anti-bot policy. Sometimes the two impact upon one another. But we do not address any problems with a specific area in order to tamper with farmers, but only with those who are botting.

Again, there is often a spill-over effect, and sometimes the areas being botted are the same areas being farmed. In those cases, naturally we must act, even if it might appear that we're acting against farmers. But we are not, honestly. We are acting on bots, a continuing and perhaps even growing problem. We will continue to exercise whatever means we can to hinder the use of bots in Guild Wars. If this affect farmers, we apologize and will continue to explain via multiple means (perhaps you can help us get the word out?) that we truly regret any ripple effect, but must take the risk of such in the effort to keep the bots at bay.

Farmers do not have a major negative impact upon the game. Bots do. So we're going to continue to work against bots while doing our best to avoid impacting those who prefer to play the game in a way that's really perfectly fine!

Oh, and we act upon bots regularly; we don't necessarily post about it, but we take action on bots often, as we take action on offensive behavior, scamming, and even offensive names.

Then why oh why for weeks have we seen CONSTANT bot behavior at Ember Light Camp? When is ANet going to address this blatantly obvious botting behavior?

Doesn't anyone at ANet PLAY this game, even once in a while? All you have to do is stand in Ember Light Camp for 20 seconds to see it.

Orochim4ru · Aug 03, 2005, 05:48 AM // 05:48

Yeah, the activities at emberlight are VERY obvious. The fact that every suspicious player stops and offers money for random trades, for example, is indicative of bot like behavior.

Also, i offered a bot 1 gold and it gave me a hundred in return. Very suspicious indeed.

Veripisara · Aug 03, 2005, 07:30 AM // 07:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by SOT

Correct me if I am wrong, but after nearly a decade and a half of programming experience, I am faily certain Anet has the ultimate solution to bots:

Hard-code into the game engine itself, their implementation tools, their live client support applications, and their network (server side and client) framework a block that prevents ANY applications whatsoever from accessing Guild Wars executable while it is resident in the user's system memory.

Now I want to ask: Why have they not done this for every single GOD DAMN MMO out there?

And I answer:

They refuse. It seems to support diversity and reasons for doing major things like nerfs (which I have not yet SEEN much of, despite all the screaming about it).

I mean seriously. These guys are coding guru's (hehe) and they have the ability, resources, tools and staff to program such an amazingly complex game world, keep it running live, and maintain all the bells and whistles, why can they not seem to figure out that bot programs only work as spoofers, which seek out the game client they are specifically written for, and null their access to the program as a whole, even with it NOT running? It makes so much sense, and yet no one has bothered to say this out loud, and I have kept silent about it for months. It simply is a shame.

Cmon you coding badasses, kill the bots in the womb, so we can end the tirelessly stale debate!

Yeah, mail this to support !!