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Last Friday, Gamespy did an article on Guild Wars 2 and botting, something that has been on the mind of many members of the community since launch. We have seen statements from ArenaNet over the last few months about botting, but to those playing the game, we're still seeing the same names in the same popular spots in Tyria.
In response to the article and the countless of threads that get closed on a daily bases on the official forums, Colin Johanson has given a new statement:
Quote
Hey folks,
Since it has been a few weeks since we gave an update on this, just wanted to quickly update where we stand. We recently hired an entire new team of people with one mission in mind: operation bot destruction.
They’ve been getting everything in place to accomplish our goal of making botting, hacking, spamming, and malicious behavior as non-existent as possible in Gw2. In the last few weeks, over 10,000 bot accounts were banned from the game alone. Another area of massive improvement has been in account security, where our two-factor authentication as well as your password changes have led to account thefts dropping to a tiny rate. A vast majority of account thieves use those accounts to run bots and/or perform RMT transactions, so our serious beefing up of account security has led to fewer bots, and most importantly fewer stolen accounts. That being said, we have massive improvements on the way in the next couple of weeks that help us detect, verify, and remove botters.
What we don’t want to do is have someone report you as botting, we ban the account, the bot appeals, and we have no data to prove they were botting on file so we have to give them the account back. Ensuring we have 100% clear data on bots that’s incredibly easy for our GM team to quickly verify, and when an appeal is submitted verify within seconds if the person was truly botting is our most important goal. We don’t want to ban people who were not botting, and we want to keep the people who are permanently locked out.
Bottom line: We’re doing ok, but we know we can and need to do much better on this front and are putting massive resources behind ensuring we have a permanent solution to this issue. You’ll see a dramatic improvement in this area in the next few weeks as our remaining detection and bot destruction tools and staff come online.
We’ll continue to keep updating on this front as we go forward, but rest assured we are aware of issues folks are raising and take them incredibly seriously. From FOV to bots, account restoration to more awesome stuff to do at level 80 we have teams working like mad on all of these fronts. [Source]
Since it has been a few weeks since we gave an update on this, just wanted to quickly update where we stand. We recently hired an entire new team of people with one mission in mind: operation bot destruction.
They’ve been getting everything in place to accomplish our goal of making botting, hacking, spamming, and malicious behavior as non-existent as possible in Gw2. In the last few weeks, over 10,000 bot accounts were banned from the game alone. Another area of massive improvement has been in account security, where our two-factor authentication as well as your password changes have led to account thefts dropping to a tiny rate. A vast majority of account thieves use those accounts to run bots and/or perform RMT transactions, so our serious beefing up of account security has led to fewer bots, and most importantly fewer stolen accounts. That being said, we have massive improvements on the way in the next couple of weeks that help us detect, verify, and remove botters.
What we don’t want to do is have someone report you as botting, we ban the account, the bot appeals, and we have no data to prove they were botting on file so we have to give them the account back. Ensuring we have 100% clear data on bots that’s incredibly easy for our GM team to quickly verify, and when an appeal is submitted verify within seconds if the person was truly botting is our most important goal. We don’t want to ban people who were not botting, and we want to keep the people who are permanently locked out.
Bottom line: We’re doing ok, but we know we can and need to do much better on this front and are putting massive resources behind ensuring we have a permanent solution to this issue. You’ll see a dramatic improvement in this area in the next few weeks as our remaining detection and bot destruction tools and staff come online.
We’ll continue to keep updating on this front as we go forward, but rest assured we are aware of issues folks are raising and take them incredibly seriously. From FOV to bots, account restoration to more awesome stuff to do at level 80 we have teams working like mad on all of these fronts. [Source]
Comments
#1 Majic
Sylvari Specialist
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:08 PM
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
#2 dhatcher1
Technician
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:14 PM
[b]Powrlevel 0-80 $$24.00USD fast servise less than 1 hour[/b]
[/quote]I claim false advertising. No way they can deliver a 0-80 powerlevel in 1 hour.
#3 Veritus7
Fahrar Cub
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:14 PM
As for the post given, hopefully this will silence those who whine about how much anet hates them and is a greedy money mongering company.
#4 DarkGhostGizmoXx
Asuran Acolyte
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:16 PM
I haven't really had a problem with bots, but the few I have seen have been reported by me and friends, as well as (hopefully) anyone else who saw. Haven't been to Orr yet, so can't really judge on how many bots there are yet.
[quote name='Majic' timestamp='1351537733' post='2050985']
[b]!!!!WWW.HAPPYGOLD123.COM!!! 1G=$19.00USD Powrlevel 0-80 $$24.00USD fast servise less than 1 hour safe lowest price !!!!WWW.HAPPYGOLD123.COM!!![/b][/quote]
Now, come one, be serious. Everyone knows that GIMMEGOLD.COM is better...jeez!!!
#5 Paken Kai
Asuran Acolyte
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:16 PM
As for the post given, hopefully this will silence those who whine about how much anet hates them and is a greedy money mongering company.
[/quote]
It won't, but here's to hoping. *raises glass*
#6 GrandmaFunk
Vanguard Scout
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:16 PM
That being said, I haven't received gold selling spam in over 2 weeks.
#7 Torcy
Pale Tree Seedling
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:35 PM
No, there are still a metric ton of Bots, you are not doing ok
#8 Paken Kai
Asuran Acolyte
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:41 PM
[color=#111111][font=tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif][size=3][background=rgb(205, 212, 214)]"Bottom line: We’re doing ok,"[/background][/size][/font][/color]
[color=#111111][font=tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif][size=3][background=rgb(205, 212, 214)]No, there are still a metric ton of Bots, you are not doing ok[/background][/size][/font][/color]
[/quote]
Here you go:
[quote]Bottom line: We’re doing ok, but we know we [b]can and need to do much better[/b] on this front and are putting massive resources behind ensuring we have a permanent solution to this issue.[/quote]
Everything seems less like they're making excuses when you post the entire sentence.
edit:
emphasis
#9 Dosearius
Asuran Acolyte
Posted 29 October 2012 - 07:44 PM
#10 HawkofStorms
Guru's Source of Witty Banter
Posted 29 October 2012 - 09:53 PM
#11 Begur
Fahrar Cub
Posted 29 October 2012 - 10:12 PM
I still question whether all these people saying "I've never seen a botting problem this bad before" have actually played other MMOs before. This game is doing fine with bots. Not perfect. But fine.
[/quote]
I saw less bots in WoW and almost did not saw bots in GW1.
From my point of view, there is slight bot population degradation in last few weeks. But there is still many bots in game ATM. GW2 is close to LA2 bots-to-players base (IMO ofc).
#12 Doctor Overlord
If you hate MMOs....
Posted 29 October 2012 - 10:21 PM
I still question whether all these people saying "I've never seen a botting problem this bad before" have actually played other MMOs before. This game is doing fine with bots. Not perfect. But fine.
[/quote]Compared to other games, GW2 is doing well IMO.
I've only seen one ranger/bear herd and that was a few weeks ago. I still get gold spam a few times each week but it is better and the spam in chat is less as well (that seems to get shut down very quickly too).
#13 Mr_Finesse
Vanguard Scout
Posted 29 October 2012 - 10:23 PM
I saw less bots in WoW and [b]almost did not saw bots in GW1.[/b]
[/quote]
How would you see bots in an instanced game anyway?
#14 HawkofStorms
Guru's Source of Witty Banter
Posted 29 October 2012 - 10:42 PM
How would you see bots in an instanced game anyway?
[/quote]
And for that matter, he clearly never hung out in the Cyrstal Desert in the international districts in the hay day of GW1. Way worse botting problem then GW2.
#15 graverobber2
Fahrar Cub
Posted 29 October 2012 - 11:33 PM
I claim false advertising. No way they can deliver a 0-80 powerlevel in 1 hour.
[/quote]
I think you can, if you powerlvl crafting disciplines (maxing one out gives you about 13-15 lvl's)
You'll need to be very time efficient, though
OT: glad to see them working on it
They actually put a whole team on botting, just to make sure they don't ban the wrong people
#16 OldOne
Fahrar Cub
Posted 30 October 2012 - 01:07 AM
And for that matter, he clearly never hung out in the Cyrstal Desert in the international districts in the hay day of GW1. Way worse botting problem then GW2.
[/quote]Ah yes, the golden days of monk stacking at the vendors.
#17 Lafiele
Fahrar Cub
Posted 30 October 2012 - 02:56 AM
#18 Tenicord
Seraph Guardian
Posted 30 October 2012 - 04:52 AM
If A.Net isn't going to take a harsher stance then maybe everyone should just bot or use 3rd party programs to do dungeon runs and farm items for legendary weapons. *shrug*
#19 glountz
Fahrar Cub
Posted 30 October 2012 - 08:38 AM
No bots in Lotro.
Few bots in WoW.
EVE ? Everybody there is a potential bot.
In my biased scale of "which MMO deals best with bots", A-Net is not doing good (but is not the worst).
But, allowing a stupid virtual gold - real money goodies conversion through gems was a very bad move to start with.
#20 Coren
Golem Rider
Posted 30 October 2012 - 08:47 AM
I still question whether all these people saying "I've never seen a botting problem this bad before" have actually played other MMOs before. This game is doing fine with bots. Not perfect. But fine.
[/quote]
I haven't had much experience with bots, but on gandara, just before going to work, first thing I see are 4 bots going through kessex hills, first thing. I know ANet is doing all they can, but it just.. Saps your morale seeing these *redacted offensive and probably ethnic insult*.