North Thanalan Botting

So if I've been seeing the same 4 people botting N.Than on my server since last Saturday, and have filed multiple reports on it, can I assume that's a sign they're condoning this method?

I mean, it sure would make leveling up jobs while I'm asleep, at work, or playing other things a lot easier.

They will not take action the moment you file a report. You could be wrong, they need to investigate (Also theres less then a dozen people assigned to handle such cases). They investgate a bunch and then ban in huge waves. Come back in say, two months, when they've had a chance to take action.

The instant gratification and hyperbole is strong in this OP.

Basically what Lego said. They aren't going to immediately take action against the characters right after you file a report. They have to investigate. If you're wrong and they simply took your word, then they would end up wrongly disciplining a player.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

The instant gratification and hyperbole is strong in this OP.

Basically what Lego said. They aren't going to immediately take action against the characters right after you file a report. They have to investigate. If you're wrong and they simply took your word, then they would end up wrongly disciplining a player.

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I'm not sure Saturday > Friday is "right after" really :) It's not a difficult thing to verify - 5 minutes of seeing the duplicated pathing, not to mention the time active + logged in. We're not talking a few hours/day here, they've been consistently at it day and night, no matter what time it is.

And like Croisciento said, by letting it go for a week (read: over 100 hours per bot) or more, they're only encouraging the behavior.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

The instant gratification and hyperbole is strong in this OP.

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Lord forbid rules be enforced in a timely manner. Considering the punishment only involves a temporary ban, be sure to let cheaters cap all of their classes before they receive a mandatory two week vacation.

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Originally Posted by ihatevnecks

I'm not sure Saturday > Friday is "right after" really :) It's not a difficult thing to verify - 5 minutes of seeing the duplicated pathing, not to mention the time active + logged in. We're not talking a few hours/day here, they've been consistently at it day and night, no matter what time it is.

And like Croisciento said, by letting it go for a week (read: over 100 hours per bot) or more, they're only encouraging the behavior.

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Now multiply that 5 minutes (it's actually more than that) by several thousand. That's a lot of manpower that would be necessary to ban them in a timely manner. They've got a backlog. And they ban people in large chunks every 1-2 weeks. So it's reasonable to think that if you report someone, it probably won't be for 2-4 weeks at the minimum (unless someone reported them before you).

Not to mention that XP botting is a lot, lot lower priority than other forms of botting and RMT.

Also there are a lot of automated questing bots. Yes they exist. They teleport (not the in-game teleport, actual teleport hacks letting them drop in on any designated location, i.e. in front of mobs, kill mob, then drop in front of the quest NPC to hand in the quest) everywhere and do quests and the hand-ins. They usually appear late night and come in groups of 3~4 of the same job.

Perhaps in ten or twenty more years when communications are by default encrypted with a very strong encryption that changes dynamically and still give us virtually no communications delay, the problem of bots and teleport hacks can be solved...

If they only watch one player at a time they're doing it wrong.

Recognize a bot's movement pattern is relatively simple; simple enough that you could easily watch several characters at once to see if they constantly follow a set path with no deviation.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

Lord forbid rules be enforced in a timely manner. Considering the punishment only involves a temporary ban, be sure to let cheaters cap all of their classes before they receive a mandatory two week vacation.

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And so you're ok with suddenly not being able to play because someone falsely/mistakenly reported you? I'm pretty sure the first thing you'd do (if your forum account wasn't temp banned as well) would be coming in here screaming about how you were wrongly banned.

See, the issue you have is that you don't see the big picture. Yes, it doesn't take that long to investigate a single bot. But they don't have the manpower to have GMs sitting around N.Than (and other areas) on every server 24/7. So they rely on reports... but those reports have to be verified, which takes time, especially considering they get thousands and thousands of reports.

And while I don't condone/support botting, XP bots aren't hurting you in any way. If they are merely using the bot for leveling (and not spiritbonding), then it's not hurting you or anyone else. It would be no different than if a group of friends rotated on a character so it could be played 24/7.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

And so you're ok with suddenly not being able to play because someone falsely/mistakenly reported you? I'm pretty sure the first thing you'd do (if your forum account wasn't temp banned as well) would be coming in here screaming about how you were wrongly banned.

See, the issue you have is that you don't see the big picture. Yes, it doesn't take that long to investigate a single bot. But they don't have the manpower to have GMs sitting around N.Than (and other areas) on every server 24/7. So they rely on reports... but those reports have to be verified, which takes time, especially considering they get thousands and thousands of reports.

And while I don't condone/support botting, XP bots aren't hurting you in any way. If they are merely using the bot for leveling (and not spiritbonding), then it's not hurting you or anyone else. It would be no different than if a group of friends rotated on a character so it could be played 24/7.

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except account sharing is against the rules.