-EXCESSIVE- Botting at Ember Light Camp

You know...

Normally, i'm not one to point fingers if I see a single person do something dubious on occasion, as I figure that it achieves nothing other than frustrate me, and cause grief in general - and besides, the damage isn't that great.

This case is different - Ember Light camp is absolutely -INFESTED- with Bots at any given time - all running out of town, and returning shortly thereafter, spouting some kind of gibberish that is only seen in poorly written Spam E-mails.

I have screenshots, and I -know- what they're botting. And it -has- to stop. It's simply -beyond- par for the occasional exploiter. Has anyone else seen this at Ember Light as well? If not, I encourage you to check for yourself.

To clarify as to what the 'Gibberish' is, it will be sets of words from the same -pool- of words. An Example:

"I want sell songs to furious mad laughter" -

then they pop out of town, return 30 seconds later with:

"I sell want songs to mad furious laughter"

I've just watched about a -dozen- different people doing this for the past hour - and it's been going on for -days-. I -hope- something is done.


- Best Regards,
TheMarvin

I believe the jibberish you are referring to is Korean. I may be wrong, but it is a language.

Certainly not - it's not Korean. One may argue that i'm not the most worldy of fellows, but what they do is utilize a script to generate random strings of words together; yet out of a pool of 10-20 words, in the hopes that the server won't pick up on the repetition.

Apparently, ANet must automatically flag perpetual rezoning and repitition in action - they think that by scripting messages to the chat channel, they'll get around it. I hope they're wrong.

Well, here's a transcript of what I am seeing in chat:

wo ri
zhi li feng jing hao a
ni yao huang jing zhuang bei ma
ni hao

Seems to me if they were going to use random words they would at least use English on the American servers.

You should drop a line to [email protected].

Actually though, I believe that there is some hardcore botting going on there. If you watch closely, there are certain people who run through all the time, yet every time they get to the bridge to the exit, they have a hard time getting on to it.

I've also been whispering to people I think may be bots, and so far only 1 has answered. Not that that proves the rest are bots, but you gotta wonder...

There's no doubt that they're bots. As of an hour ago, it was english - but last night I saw the "ni yao huang jing zhuang bei ma" type stuff too.

Last night there were about a -dozen- of them... Unbelievable. I'll drop a line to Anet about it - I hope others do too so I don't look like i'm insane. If you have any doubts, just -watch- for more than 10 minutes - you'll see a parade of scripted fun.

Edit:

Now i'm seeing the SAME type of botting happening at Droknar's - heading into Witman's Folly from town. There are people scripting both in English and Korean - same technique. Run out of town, return a minute later, randomly generated text from the same pool of words, then disappear again.

It seems possible to me that they're all using (or paid for) the same script. :P

The lag at the Ember Light Camp has also becomes shocking... to the point where trying to move about is impossible.

If you see anyone botting, copy their names down, take a screen shot and report them. They will be banned.

This is only going to stop if everyone helps to put them to an end.

All botters must burn.

Report!

It is not jibberish, it's Mandarin Chinese spelled phonetically in Roman characters for English reading. Pinyin. Ni hui jiang yingyu ma?

Dont report me. I am not a bot lol

I farm perdition rock a lot. So going in and out is common enough for me

As far as I know, theres no chest/wreckage immediately outside the Camp, so what could be the reason of botting?
Damn, pls dont nerf my favorite farming spot now :O

Well, if you smacked it into a chinese word processor, like I did, they come out at exact words. Here they are, but I don't know if they're correct.

我日
至理風景好啊
你要皇經裝備媽
你好

(In the same order you posted them in)

Doesn't seem like a random language to me, mind you I don't bot ...

I don't see any harm in reporting it. If there bots, then A-Net can deal with it. If not then who cares.

Yep, Calendae. They'll look at it and, if it seems like bot activity, they'll close the loophole. If it's not and it's just people talking in Chinese or Korean or whatever, they'll just leave it alone.

The lag is TERRIBLE at Ember Light. I hope they -do- do something about that.

Same thing goes on at Riverside Province, a constant stream of monks entering and exiting the area. The infamous [good] farm/bot guild and a few others, I'm pretty sure there is a farming consortium set up to take advantage of selling gold the constant stream of people who dont / cant reply or act in strange manners is a certain give away.

Makes you wonder howcome chinese/korean botters go to a US server, doesn't it?

Like GW Monkey said, it is indeed Pinyin. kaheiyeh's translations aren't accurate because Chinese Pinyin uses pitch, not expressed in standard English letters.
I doubt it's all gibberish, it sounds more like farmers (not necessarily botters) conversing amongst themselves.

I'll translate those phrases that were mentioned:
wo ri (this is too short for me to make sense out of. Again, the pitches aren't expressed, so I can't really tell what it's saying.)
zhi li feng jing hao a (it should be "zhe li feng jing hao a") - ah, the scenery here is good
ni yao huang jing zhuang bei ma - do you want gold armor?
ni hao - hello

At seeker's passage, about a month ago, I met some people talking in Pinyin, and I spoke back to them. We had a short conversation, so it leads me to believe not all of the farmers are bots (either that, or they're actually talking through the bot programs.)

That's why I put a transcript up - it didn't seem to me like random gibberish. I figured someone on here would know what language it is, thanks.

Either way, as my mother used to say: "There's something fishy in Denmark." Now WHAT exactly that means, is up to you.

Seriously though, the fact that the same phrases are repeating over and over and people are running in and out of town excessively, leads one to suspect bot activity. I hope GW takes a look.

If botters used the words "WTS GODLY FIRE 16-28 DAMAGE AXE WITH 15%>50% FOR 50K" then people would never know they were bots.