Bots a new form of server attack

Tiller

Every update it seems more and more bots are replacing player spots. Normally after an update you see around 200k players playing on average, within a day or so that jumps up of 700k-800k and pushes queue wait to over 10k. Once you get into the game you see them running around everywhere like cockroaches, kill stealing ect. 

This seems to be mostly a Western version issue. It's pissing folks off, including me who are on the verge of hanging up the game; but perhaps this is on purpose. Maybe it's not just all necessarily just a money making scheme so much as it is a directed and coordinated attack. Like they are trying purposely to bring the game down, at the same time farm farm away for profit.

Sure we could blame poor coding, f2p, p2w ect, but I have feeling that even if they just decided one day to take the p2w out, the bot attacks would continue until Amazon and Smilegate throw in the towel. Just my opinion.

Mendel

To my shame, I reloaded LA.  I got in and ran one of my low level alts.  Sure enough, bots were everywhere, mostly standing by important NPCs (Thirain, especially).  This kind of bot assault is terrible.

I wonder how much of the notorious queue saturation problems have been magnified by bots?

Tiller

Mendel said:

To my shame, I reloaded LA.  I got in and ran one of my low level alts.  Sure enough, bots were everywhere, mostly standing by important NPCs (Thirain, especially).  This kind of bot assault is terrible.

I wonder how much of the notorious queue saturation problems have been magnified by bots?

That's why the queues are so long. I also think Valve can claim partial responsibility on their platform since it allows so many fake accounts to proliferate. Also 2FA should not be allowed to be shut off for anyone since botnets take full advantage of stolen accounts.

Dattelis

I've seen massive bot trains every time I've decided to pop on to mess around on my sorc, even when they did a 'big' ban wave a couple of months ago. I dont really play the game seriously atm (hopefully that will change when arcanist is out next month), but it does feel bad knowing the issue still plagues the game that many people like.

Iselin

Blizzard's doing it... just a theory

Kyleran

Mendel said:

To my shame, I reloaded LA.  I got in and ran one of my low level alts.  Sure enough, bots were everywhere, mostly standing by important NPCs (Thirain, especially).  This kind of bot assault is terrible.

I wonder how much of the notorious queue saturation problems have been magnified by bots?

I can attest on my US East server I just stood by Thiran for 10 mins and watched an endless stream of zerkers trailing a white rabbit run up to him and the port away.

Scot

Tiller said:

Every update it seems more and more bots are replacing player spots. Normally after an update you see around 200k players playing on average, within a day or so that jumps up of 700k-800k and pushes queue wait to over 10k. Once you get into the game you see them running around everywhere like cockroaches, kill stealing ect. 

This seems to be mostly a Western version issue. It's pissing folks off, including me who are on the verge of hanging up the game; but perhaps this is on purpose. Maybe it's not just all necessarily just a money making scheme so much as it is a directed and coordinated attack. Like they are trying purposely to bring the game down, at the same time farm farm away for profit.

Sure we could blame poor coding, f2p, p2w ect, but I have feeling that even if they just decided one day to take the p2w out, the bot attacks would continue until Amazon and Smilegate throw in the towel. Just my opinion.

I can't understand how these bots are mainly a problem in the West, are gamers here greedier bastards or something? Or did the localization add loads of backdoors (not seriously) but it is odd. 

Akulas

Just make your computer lag on purpose then keep accepting quest rewards and the button keeps getting pressed and you keep getting the quest rewards forever. Unlimited xp.