botting
Latest
The Repopulation expands alpha and focuses on bots
Above and Beyond has published The Repopulation's end-of-November report, and it's a doozy. The studio discusses the embiggening of its alpha thus far and the addition of new servers to handle the load. The devs have also been working on housing and city locations, a new character versioning system, a new cloning system, nation deeds, facial animations, and tooltips. Perhaps of most interest to sandbox fans disillusioned with this year's sandbox drama is A&B's focus on its bot detection code. "Our philosophy with bots is that once the game launches it is not really beneficial to ban characters unless they already invested a significant amount of time into the characters, otherwise they can just create a new free account and you need to detect them all over again," the devs wrote. "So we've focused our attention on reducing the benefits of botting. In addition skill gain penalties and stoppage, botters will see their harvesting results capped in quality, and a complete shut off of loot." Capping off the dev letter are 17,356 words' worth of patch notes. We counted. Check every last one out at the official site.
Blizzard issues thousands (more) Hearthstone bot bans
Good news, Hearthstone players. If you've been using a bot to automate your gameplay, you'll log in today to find a shiny new prize! Specifically, that shiny new prize is not being able to log in because you've been banned. Your prize was being banned. Blizzard has awarded this prize to "several thousand" Hearthstone accounts using third-party tools to automate gameplay; the bans are permanent, so no need to worry about losing them at the end of the season. Players who have not been botting and violating the game's TOS will also log in to find a shiny new prize, which is a play environment with far fewer bots. Isn't that nice? The official post reminds players to report suspicious behavior by emailing the development team so that in the future another group of cheaters can wake up to find a brand-new lifetime ban locking them out of the game. Those of you who can still log in may also want to take the opportunity to vote on the next teaser for the Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Blizzard mass-bans Hearthstone cheaters
Last night, Blizzard announced that it's brought the banhammer down on cheaters in its MMOTCG, Hearthstone. "Several thousand" botter accounts have been banned for the next two months, though the studio warns it won't be so lenient next time: We've recently banned several thousand Hearthstone accounts that were associated with the use of third-party programs that automate gameplay, otherwise known as "bots" or "botting." These accounts will be banned until 2015. As we've stated, fair play is at the core of the Hearthstone experience, and cheating and botting will not be tolerated. We're committed to creating a fun and rewarding environment for our players, and we will continue to closely monitor activities within Hearthstone and take appropriate action against cheating in any form, as outlined in our Terms of Use. From this point on, accounts found to be cheating will be permanently closed without warning. Blizzard encourages players who encounter exploits to contact the hacks team; those who believe they've been wrongly banned can appeal their ban through the customer service department. [We've corrected our original story, which directed folks to the hacks team for all issues.]
Blizzard gives thousands of Hearthstone bots the boot
"Several thousand" bots have been banned from Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft recently, Blizzard revealed in a Battle.net blog. The developer found that the accounts were associated with third-party programs that automate actions within the game, and they will now be banned from the game until 2015. "As we've stated, fair play is at the core of the Hearthstone experience, and cheating and botting will not be tolerated," the developer said. "From this point on, accounts found to be cheating will be permanently closed without warning." Hearthstone players that believe they've encountered an exploitative account in the game are encouraged to report it to the developer at hacks@blizzard.com. The popular digital card game will reach Android tablets by the end of the year with Android smartphones and iPhone following in early 2015. [Image: Blizzard]
Elder Scrolls Online disables forum PMs, encourages outing gold sellers
The Elder Scrolls Online has disabled PMs... on it's official forums, at least. ZeniMax is attempting to combat gold-spammers, and it's going a step further by setting aside a portion of its Code of Conduct and encouraging players to publicly identify suspected spammers. We request that anyone who has received a private message they believe to be from a gold spammer to post the sender's username as a comment in this thread. As we have disabled PMs, you will not be able to access your inbox on the forums, but if you received an e-mail notification to alert you to the PM you received, the sender's username should be in that e-mail. Please note that our Community Code of Conduct does prohibit naming and shaming. However, in an effort to expedite the process of identifying and banning the spammers' accounts, we are making an exception for this situation. We will investigate each alleged spammer account individually to avoid false reports. [Thanks alleomurand!]
The Daily Grind: How can bots be so prevalent in a sub game?
Have you ever wondered why MMO devs do (or don't do) certain things? I have, and my latest bit of wondering concerns The Elder Scrolls Online and its bot problem. "Problem" is used somewhat subjectively here, because the infestation of AFK players in Tamriel hasn't harmed my personal play to any measurable degree, though I'm sure it's doing no favors for the long-term health of the in-game economy. But when I see a cluster of five or six AFK melee bots around every single public dungeon boss, "problem" is the only word that comes to mind. I'm not exaggerating, either, I have literally seen 24/7 bot camps in all of the public dungeons from Glenumbra to the Alik'r desert. Yeah, ZeniMax says it's aware of the problem and is doing something about it. But, let's get back to my wondering in the opening paragraph up there. What, exactly, is the company doing about it? ESO is a subscription game, which means that all of those bots entered credit card numbers that can be immediately and permanently banned. Is ZeniMax doing this? If so, why not say that instead of the nebulous devspeak in yesterday's update letter. If not, why not? I understand the futility of trying to ban bots in a F2P game where new accounts are as easy as a new Gmail address and an IP spoof, but I don't understand how so many of them can continue to exist in a game that requires a CC for access. And hey, I would ask ZeniMax myself if I thought I would get anything other than a PR non-answer. So instead, I'm asking you, Massively readers! What do you think? How can bots be so prevalent in a sub game? Bonus points if you have any relevant development insights to share in the comments. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Elder Scrolls Online's Matt Firor posts on the state of the game
Elder Scrolls Online lead developer Matt Firor has posted a state-of-the-game address on the fantasy MMO's forum. Firor says that, yes, ZeniMax sees the groups of bots clustered around the game's dungeon bosses and that yes, it is taking steps to address the problem. "We regularly ban accounts involved in spam and bot activity," Firor says, but the scope of said activity is so large that it accounts for nearly 85 percent of ESO's customer service tickets. There's also a blurb about de-synched quests as well as a brief preview of the game's first major update that ZeniMax is currently prepping for ESO's test server.
ArcheAge Russia punishes 57,955 destructive players; ArcheAge West opens forums, streams
If you're lucky enough to be playing the Russian version of ArcheAge, then you're probably pretty annoyed at the MMO's recent server downtime. It might make you feel better to know the outage was the result of Mail.ru's investigation into mass exploits plaguing the game since its soft launch last month. Not only has the company fixed those exploits and apparently banned approximately 2,000 users, but it also punished 57,955 players for various destructive behaviors, including spamming chat and botting. Mail.ru exhorts players to continue reporting exploits to customer service rather than post them publicly. Meanwhile, Trion Worlds kicked off its hype machine for the Western version of the game with brand-new forums and a livestream introducing the gameplay to the west. We've embedded the video behind the cut. [With thanks to Oskar and Balsbigbrother!]
Blizzard wins its case to shut down World of Warcraft bots
Bad news, everyone. It increasingly looks as if you're going to have to actually play World of Warcraft instead of just letting a program do all the work while reaping the benefits. After a two-year legal battle, Blizzard has emerged victorious in its case against Ceiling Fan Software, responsible for two of the most popular WoW botting applications. The company is facing a $7 million judgment and has been ordered to fully cease operations. Ceiling Fan Software issued a statement saying that the company lost its fight to allow people to play World of Warcraft as they chose (although the method of playing in question, it should be noted, involved no actual play of the game). This is the second such time that Blizzard has targeted people creating software directly contrary to the game's basic user agreements and also the second victory the company has acquired in that same arena.
Blizzard wins 2 year legal battle against WoW bot creator
Blizzard's legal team has achieved another victory in their war against botting. Ceiling Fan Software, developer of the Shadow Bot and Pocket Gnome, is now facing a $7 million judgement and have been ordered to cease all operations. After more than 2 years of legal battles with Blizzard Entertainment to both pursue our right to operate and our customer's right to play WoW as they choose, we did not prevail in the suit and have been ordered by the United States District Court in California to cease our operations. This isn't the first time Blizzard has taken a botting company to court. The infamous Glider bot was deemed to have infringed on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and was shut down. The details of that settlement were never made public other than the fact that all Glider trademarks were transferred to Blizzard. WoW bots are programs which will play the game for you automatically, and Blizzard has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to any kind of gameplay automation.
Over 6100 accounts banned for cheating in Final Fantasy XIV
It's been hard to miss the spam in Final Fantasy XIV lately. You can't walk into a major city without seeing several dozen people shouting repeatedly about selling in-game currency, which has resulted in a lot of people getting to really kick their blacklists into overtime. But Square-Enix isn't ignoring the problem, and as of today we've been informed that a lot of players are out of the game for cheating. If you can really call them "players." 6,154 accounts have been removed from the game for advertising RMT services, while another 156 have been removed for "illicit activity." The game has also undergone a bit of maintenance to help eliminate the (unspecified) methods of item use that contributed to the problem. Whether or not this will eliminate the shouting spam that plagues the major cities remains to be seen, but it's certainly worth hoping, and it's always good to see the RMT crowd get what's coming to them. [Thanks to Scott for the tip!]
EVE Online's anti-bot policy now two-strikes-and-you're-out
Are you a fan of charts and graphs? Are you curious to know how CCP's war on bots is going in EVE Online? If you answered in the affirmative to either of those questions, the latest EVE dev blog is tailor-made for your reading pleasure. In it, the firm details organization and personnel changes to the anti-botting team, and it also acknowledges the substantial amount of user feedback that frowned on the rather lenient "three strikes" enforcement policy. Effective immediately, then, EVE Online is switching to a two-strike policy wherein strike one results in a 30-day ban and strike two results in a permanent ban. Furthermore, any client modification or "involvement in RMT" will lead to a permanent ban on the first offense.
The Daily Grind: Are /follow commands taboo?
Earlier this week, World of Warcraft patched out a surprising mechanic present in the game for a very long time: the /follow command in battlegrounds. Blizzard community guru Bashiok explained that the primary goal was to curb botting in PvP, although apparently the team isn't too sad about the detrimental effect the change will have on at-the-keyboard multiboxing, either. What Blizzard doesn't appear to have anticipated was the effect the tweak would have on visually impaired players who rely on /follow commands to kick butt. World of Warcraft isn't alone in shunning the /follow command; Guild Wars 1 famously limits following, and Guild Wars 2, to the delight of some players, omits it entirely, which is sort of a pain in the butt when I need to go AFK and can't just follow on my guildies for 30 seconds as we run to the next orangie. I'm annoyed at that, so I can only imagine how upset people awesome enough to PvP blind feel at having their lifeline to fun stripped away after so many years. So what do you guys think? Is this a good change for WoW and other MMOs? Do you think the potential for harm to blind players or legitimate AFKers should outweigh the potential for harm by botters and multiboxers? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Trion tackles holiday RIFT botters
RIFT's come under siege as of late, but instead of that siege being the "vicious creatures from another planar dimension" variety, it's been the players themselves. Trion Worlds has posted that the game became infested with botters over the recent holidays, so the team has taken action. "As of today, we've already shut down a few thousand accounts over the recent rise in fishing botting, and we've begun removing gains from others in places of extreme bot use. A good number of these botters were brought in, as is often the case, on stolen credit cards and fraudulent RIFT purchases," the development team wrote. The studio said that while the situation is being dealt with, disabled gamers who use keyboard-assistance software are advised not to use these programs (but aren't forbidden from doing so, either). Trion has plans for "a more creative content solution" for the botting issue that will come in the future.
Blizzard Customer Support live Q&A recap
Yesterday, between 5pm and 6pm Pacific, Blizzard's Customer Support Team took part in a live Q&A, using some new software to answer players' questions in real time. In attendance were CS Forum Representative Vrakthris, WoW Game Support Manager Marcus Maczynski, SC2 Game Support Manager Angelo Concepcion, D3 Game Support Manager Andreas Unger, Senior CS Information Specialist Charles Areson, and CS Social Media Manager Antonio Achucarro. With players asking the questions, there was fairly high traffic for the team to deal with, Zarhym told us they received over 1,500 questions in under an hour! Not all of them could be answered, but we've been busy pulling out the key questions and responses for your delectation. Comment From legracen Are there any plans to update/change the in-game ticketing system for World of Warcraft so that the wait times for tickets can be reduced? Marcus Maczynski: Hello Legracen! We're constantly evaluating how we receive CS requests from players. Right-Click-to-Report and self-service options (such as Item Restoration) are both examples of this building in this efficiency. Updating the in-game interface to prompt players for exactly the information we need to service their requests is definitely something we want to do.
Why Blizzard isn't opening a gold shop
Last year, Blizzard started an experiment with the Guardian Cub, a pet store purchase that could be bought and sold in game with gold as well, since it was Bind on Equip. At the time, a lot of WoW players (including us) saw this as an experimental foray into Blizzard finding ways to allow people to get extra gold using real life money without directly selling gold. In part, that was because Blizzard came right out and admitted that's what it was. Since that time, we've seen no new Blizzard Store purchases that were BoE in this fashion. Since then, we've heard a lot of complaints about botters who use hacked accounts to not only steal all the gold said account possesses, but also then use it as a farming bot for as long as they can keep hold of it. Some players are even suggesting that Blizzard should simply sell gold itself, cutting out the middleman and putting gold sellers out of business. Why isn't this a good idea?
Botters, how do they work?
One of the things almost everyone in every corner of our World of Warcraft can agree upon is that we hate botters... with the possible exception of those that bot themselves. Being the inveterate forum watcher that I am, this forum thread caught my attention. Should World of Warcraft have a system built in to randomly confirm that people engaged in excessive gathering or other 'suspicious' activities are in fact not botting? Well, I hope not the one described, a kind of captcha that would pop up a window needed to be typed into with an answer. That would just ruin gameplay for me the first time I had that pop up. Similarly, I have to agree that hiring thousands of staff to simply monitor for bots wouldn't be time or cost effective. We live at a period in the game where the game has automated a great deal of its customer service, after all. What I really found interesting, however, was Takralus' takedown of a very old argument by players about Blizzard's stance on botting.
ArenaNet offers explanation for Guild Wars 2's diminishing returns mechanics
ArenaNet game designer Jon Peters has explained the reasoning behind the diminishing returns karma mechanics that many Guild Wars 2 players have complained about in recent weeks. "These systems are put in place to protect the economy from botters and exploiters. We will close exploits as quickly as we can. These thresholds help create a safety net to keep the economy safe when we aren't there to deal with the offender," Peters says in a post on the GW2 forums. Peters also says that the devs need to work out a few kinks, and that ArenaNet does not intend to put an end to legitimate farming gameplay. "We believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we'll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted," he wrote. [Thanks to Divalicious Diva for the tip!]
RuneScape puts bots on trial
Jagex has nuked them from orbit, and now, the MMO studio is going to put RuneScape's bots on trial. Coming soon to RuneScape is a brand-new area called Botany Bay. It's here that players can be the judge, jury, and executioner for convicted bots, voting on their ultimate punishment. Jagex gives two warnings to botters, after which the player is ejected from the game and his or her avatar is sent to Botany Bay for final judgment. Botters' avatars may be smooshed by a dragon, vaporized, or pelted with rotten fruit. Lead Designer Mark Ogilvie hopes this will deter players from naughty behavior: "We have wanted to do this for some time and we hope that by bringing the actions of those who cheat to the attention of the wider community, we can make a massive step towards eliminating botting from the game." You can watch a trailer for the new Botany Bay area after the jump. [Source: Jagex press release]
South Korea bans botting in online RPGs
The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is announcing a new law next month that will make botting in online RPGs illegal. According to this governmental body's calculations, 60% of all in-game items traded for real currency were obtained by automated programs. The law will also ban the listing of items in arcade games as real property that can be exchanged for cash. The maximum penalty for breaking this law will be 5 million won (approximately $4,300) and five years in jail. It is interesting to note that while the announcement states that the law's purpose is to "halt all virtual item trades," only botting is being banned in online RPGs. So WoW players who buy and sell gold will not be breaking this new law (though they do break the TOS), unless they are using bots to farm. This distinction also means that the Diablo III Real-Money Auction House will not be made illegal by this law; thus, South Korea's previous decision about the RMAH has not been negated. Since the new law will not be announced until next month, some details may change. Regardless, the government sees botting and virtual item trades as barriers to a "healthy game culture," and it is willing to use legal means to eliminate the problem.
