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Guild Wars 2: On the War Against Bots

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
in News & Features Discussion

The Guild Wars 2 site has been updated with a new post from ArenaNet's Mike Lewis. In it, Lewis details the ongoing war against bots in the game including the news that in November alone, over 34,000 accounts were terminated for running bot programs.

Over time, we have heavily reinforced our initiatives to eliminate botting from Guild Wars 2. We have been seriously pursuing the botting issue since the launch of the game, and the results of our ongoing efforts are palpable.

In the month of November, we terminated over 34,000 accounts for operating bots in Guild Wars 2. Moreover, we have observed a serious decrease in the population of bots in the game – and so have you, our players. The number of bots reported every hour worldwide has dropped from more than 2,000 in October to a much healthier 20 as of this writing.

Read the full post on the Guild Wars 2 site.

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


Comments

  • Harbinger1975Harbinger1975 Member UncommonPosts: 244

    I'm glad to see ArenaNet taking a hard stance against botting.  Yeah yeah I know, it's basically a true free to play game, you can never fully stop botters.  And why should anyone care when they can just make another account (unless it's IP blocked).

     

    I never understood the need for botting.  Why play a game when you aren't actually...you know...playing it? 

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  • teotiusteotius Member UncommonPosts: 100
    Originally posted by ScorpionOne

    I'm glad to see ArenaNet taking a hard stance against botting.  Yeah yeah I know, it's basically a true free to play game, you can never fully stop botters.  And why should anyone care when they can just make another account (unless it's IP blocked).

     

    I never understood the need for botting.  Why play a game when you aren't actually...you know...playing it? 

    You know they make their living out of that? I mean like selling gold. 

     

  • RyowulfRyowulf Member UncommonPosts: 664
    Congrats ArenaNet. You have not ignore the problem and made a real difference.
  • TillerTiller Member LegendaryPosts: 11,485
    I haven't seen any bot trains for weeks now. I still get one gold sales email every few weeks, but their prices have gone up so I imagine supply has been cut.
    SWG Bloodfin vet
    Elder Jedi/Elder Bounty Hunter
     
  • Harbinger1975Harbinger1975 Member UncommonPosts: 244
    Originally posted by teotius
    Originally posted by ScorpionOne

    I'm glad to see ArenaNet taking a hard stance against botting.  Yeah yeah I know, it's basically a true free to play game, you can never fully stop botters.  And why should anyone care when they can just make another account (unless it's IP blocked).

     

    I never understood the need for botting.  Why play a game when you aren't actually...you know...playing it? 

    You know they make their living out of that? I mean like selling gold. 

     

    No I knew the answer already.  It was a rhetorical question.  But still.  I mean you can by gems, and in turn convert it to gold.  The conversion from gems to gold is getting up there.  So why support some gold farming puke and not the company that actually made the game? 

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  • NailzzzNailzzz Member UncommonPosts: 515
    While it may be true that anet might actually be making progress in terms of discouraging botters, as a player who isn't spending their time in fotm with 90% of the rest of the playerbase, I've noticed the bots using a much more careful and harder to report tactic. It seem's they are resorting to making gold off gathering rather than killing mobs.

    I keep running into quickly disappearing gatherer's all over various worldmaps. By the time I realize its a gathering bot, it quickly dissapears. Given the bot names its harder to report bots when you can't target them.

    Another big reason for the drop off in bot reporting may have les to do with there being less bots and more to do with the fact that since the introduction of the fotm dungeon, there are fewer players in the rest of the game to do any bot reporting.
  • nuttobnuttob Member Posts: 291
    Originally posted by Nailzzz
    While it may be true that anet might actually be making progress in terms of discouraging botters, as a player who isn't spending their time in fotm with 90% of the rest of the playerbase, I've noticed the bots using a much more careful and harder to report tactic. It seem's they are resorting to making gold off gathering rather than killing mobs.

    I keep running into quickly disappearing gatherer's all over various worldmaps. By the time I realize its a gathering bot, it quickly dissapears. Given the bot names its harder to report bots when you can't target them.

    Another big reason for the drop off in bot reporting may have les to do with there being less bots and more to do with the fact that since the introduction of the fotm dungeon, there are fewer players in the rest of the game to do any bot reporting.

    I happen to be a real player and I occasionally park my hi lev toons at a good gathering point.  While I am leveling a lower level toon I will log in the higher level toon to gather a few items and log back out.  I would be careful about assuming that activity is always a bot.  Of course if you do report a real player they will be able to figure it out, but then you run the risk of being an abusive reporter if you do it too often and it ends up being false alarm after false alarm.

  • SirFubarSirFubar Member Posts: 397
    Originally posted by ScorpionOne
    Originally posted by teotius
    Originally posted by ScorpionOne

    I'm glad to see ArenaNet taking a hard stance against botting.  Yeah yeah I know, it's basically a true free to play game, you can never fully stop botters.  And why should anyone care when they can just make another account (unless it's IP blocked).

     

    I never understood the need for botting.  Why play a game when you aren't actually...you know...playing it? 

    You know they make their living out of that? I mean like selling gold. 

     

    No I knew the answer already.  It was a rhetorical question.  But still.  I mean you can by gems, and in turn convert it to gold.  The conversion from gems to gold is getting up there.  So why support some gold farming puke and not the company that actually made the game? 

    Maybe because you get a lot of golds for cheap from gold farmers compared to buying gems and turn them into gold?

  • eye_meye_m Member UncommonPosts: 3,317
    I am so glad to contribute my gaming dollars to a company that actively supports their playerbase without gouging them through a subscription. 

    All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.

    I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.

    I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.

    I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.

  • botrytisbotrytis Member RarePosts: 3,363
    Originally posted by Nailzzz
    While it may be true that anet might actually be making progress in terms of discouraging botters, as a player who isn't spending their time in fotm with 90% of the rest of the playerbase, I've noticed the bots using a much more careful and harder to report tactic. It seem's they are resorting to making gold off gathering rather than killing mobs.

    I keep running into quickly disappearing gatherer's all over various worldmaps. By the time I realize its a gathering bot, it quickly dissapears. Given the bot names its harder to report bots when you can't target them.

    Another big reason for the drop off in bot reporting may have les to do with there being less bots and more to do with the fact that since the introduction of the fotm dungeon, there are fewer players in the rest of the game to do any bot reporting.

    Nope - the bots are using the blink bot build but I haven't seen one in 2 weeks. As far as lower reporting - nope - I switched to Crystal Desert server and I see people in many areas that my lower toons are in.

    Easy to target - just click when the appear - right click report - done.

     

     


  • NailzzzNailzzz Member UncommonPosts: 515
    Most real players don't name there toons auseidjkyufeydh. Cmon now. Do we really have to pretend that everyone is too stupid to know the difference betwe a player gathering and logging out vs. A bot teleporting from node to node? If I assumed the audience was so stupid they needed to be warned about the consequences of said stupidity, I wouldn't bother with explaining anything.
  • NailzzzNailzzz Member UncommonPosts: 515
    Your server may not have a lot of bots in it. But since the broker is gamewide instead of serverwide, your server will still suffer from bots ruining the economy. I saw several of these bots on sorrows furnace using that blink bot program you mention, last night. I suspect since my server doesn't have a lot of open world players and I do tend to do a lot of gathering myself, I'm more likely to run into them a lot. I suspect some of the gold selling sites may have figured out which servers are more populated in what area's and assighned bots appropriately. To sell gold they don't even need to be on the same server as the buyer so it makes sense.
  • nuttobnuttob Member Posts: 291
    Originally posted by Nailzzz
    Most real players don't name there toons auseidjkyufeydh. Cmon now. Do we really have to pretend that everyone is too stupid to know the difference betwe a player gathering and logging out vs. A bot teleporting from node to node? If I assumed the audience was so stupid they needed to be warned about the consequences of said stupidity, I wouldn't bother with explaining anything.

    I never assume anything, and you left out certain details in the first post that are now in this one that would enable me to acertain that I didn't need to post what I thought was just friendly advice.  I apologize if you feel I insulted your intelligence... 

  • InFlamestwoInFlamestwo Member Posts: 662
    We need a name for the botters, like The Bear Invaders.

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  • frestonfreston Member UncommonPosts: 503
    I keep seeing bots but they appear much less frequently and they are less blatant. They dont use randomly generated names, they dont train (they usually go in pairs , not those groups of 5-6 bots they used to favor) and they dont roam, they stay in a single spot, usually one with a high mob spawn rate (there are a lot in sparkfly swamp, for instance) The juvenile brown bear always remains, however. Some things never change.
  • BereKinBereKin Member Posts: 287
    Well, Anet is at lest trying to put stop to bots.
  • cippalippacippalippa Member UncommonPosts: 108
    the war against bots is fought mainly by PR stunts and closing threads about  presence and the work of ANet about this problem on their forums, just lol

    https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Job-well-done-with-the-bot-problem/first/

    And yes, this is guerrilla counter-information, close a thread and i will post in 10 other places :)

  • daltaniousdaltanious Member UncommonPosts: 2,381
    Originally posted by ScorpionOne

    I'm glad to see ArenaNet taking a hard stance against botting.  Yeah yeah I know, it's basically a true free to play game, you can never fully stop botters.  And why should anyone care when they can just make another account (unless it's IP blocked).

     

    I never understood the need for botting.  Why play a game when you aren't actually...you know...playing it? 

    As I understand tech behind only problem lies in bad design of client. Instead of leaving to client to much freedom, server should be the one to check everything. This however puts much more stress on server(s) and requires more money and staff i guess. Money that usually comes from subs.

  • CoolitCoolit Member UncommonPosts: 661

    I wouldn’t hang around after you report bots -_- reported several all in the same location and within 3-4minutes (I was actually still busy reporting them), A GM AOE nuked them all and I got killed in the blast, checked the combat log and it said "unknown AOE explosion". Never seen such a fast response to a report before, well impressed even though it cost me 2 silver + repairs!

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