Bot program ruining the game

[Brojam]

So I am seeing more and more of these gathering bots around and tonight I counted 5 in the area I was mining, 2 are out in the open and 2 under the map layer but you can see their names sometimes, the other is totally hidden I just hear him mining.
I decided to record a little of this hoping SE would see it so here goes.
http://youtu.be/r7uPs1vWfzU

[ntall1]

I was trying to farm Diremite webs the other day. In the area I was farming there are 3 main locations with clusters of diremites. A cluster of 4, 4, and 3. At each of these clusters was a player. These players did nothing but stand in the same location, and would instantly start attacking mites the second they spawned.

At first I didn't assume it was a bot. So I tried to harass the player by aggroing the mites before they did. This was very hard as they 99% of the time always beat me to cast an instant spell. They would never acknowledge that I was harassing them as I pulled their mobs away, never moved from their spot, and then when I spoke to them they would not respond. I ended up frustrated because I was unable to farm what I needed to work on my Weaving.


In that video it seems like they disappear and reappear at different node locations. How are they doing that?

[Bloodwillow]

Called hacking. Someone had an explination as stuff like this happened in WoW alot. Essentially they are sniffing the packets and grabbing the server's attention to move them around without having to do it on their own.

[Brojam]

From what I understand they are basically changing the client side location in the memory and sending the changed information to the server which then places them where they want to be. The security on this game is really lacking and they seem to trust anything the client sends them, WoW tried to battle this with Game Warden and it inspected the data looking for changed information they could then act on.
I was a long time Wow player starting in Cata and never saw bot activity this bad, a lot of what people called bots were actually multiboxing setups where someone is still in control of multiple player characters.
I wonder what else is going to be possible given enough time, will you be able to warp around in an instance to avoid all the trash?
Seems there is defiantly a problem here that needs to be addressed and discussed by SE.

A little information from you would go a long way...

[Azakiah]

SE got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one

[Twilite]

A question, why do you think this is ruining the game?

Also how are the node hackers benefiting from this. As a BTN and MIN, I see them all around me, but I am unaffected. I actually think what they are doing is pointless. If anything, all the warping around is doing is saving them a few seconds on travel time.

[EmberRaine]

Saw my first "invisible" bots today on Excalibur. Pretty hard to report a botting player/rmt when you can't even get their name.

[Twilite]

The best ones are the ones that become monkeys in south shroud and are literally up in the trees.

[ntall1]

From what I understand they are basically changing the client side location in the memory and sending the changed information to the server which then places them where they want to be. The security on this game is really lacking and they seem to trust anything the client sends them, WoW tried to battle this with Game Warden and it inspected the data looking for changed information they could then act on.
I was a long time Wow player starting in Cata and never saw bot activity this bad, a lot of what people called bots were actually multiboxing setups where someone is still in control of multiple player characters.
I wonder what else is going to be possible given enough time, will you be able to warp around in an instance to avoid all the trash?
Seems there is defiantly a problem here that needs to be addressed and discussed by SE.

A little information from you would go a long way...

The warping around the instance was happening in AION. Players could even solo instance bosses by teleporting to out of reach locations and just dpsing the boss down slowing. Being able to teleport around the world without being caught is a game breaking thing... imo.

[Sneaky-Bear]

I was trying to farm Diremite webs the other day. In the area I was farming there are 3 main locations with clusters of diremites. A cluster of 4, 4, and 3. At each of these clusters was a player. These players did nothing but stand in the same location, and would instantly start attacking mites the second they spawned.

At first I didn't assume it was a bot. So I tried to harass the player by aggroing the mites before they did. This was very hard as they 99% of the time always beat me to cast an instant spell. They would never acknowledge that I was harassing them as I pulled their mobs away, never moved from their spot, and then when I spoke to them they would not respond. I ended up frustrated because I was unable to farm what I needed to work on my Weaving.


In that video it seems like they disappear and reappear at different node locations. How are they doing that?

Whenever I see those type of botters, just run up to them and then when they are in the middle of killing a mob, send them a trade request and let the mob kill them. Sometimes it takes awhile for the mob to kill the botter, but its worth it.