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?

[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.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

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.

Does this work?

Man, I might have found my new favourite activity in the game.

[Brojam]

Does this work?

Man, I might have found my new favourite activity in the game.

I tried this on a mining bot last night and was going to try to hang him up all night just to be aggravating and it did not work, he just teleported to the next node, I'm not sure about one that is in battle.

I have an idea lets come up with a way to world pvp these guys, problem solved, hell I would pay extra to be able to go on a bot hunt

[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

[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.

[Crios]

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...

As to your WoW comment, with starting in Cata you missed a lot of the hacking when it came to gathering professions. This was the biggest in Wrath, I forget the name of the big PVP area but that is where the bots would be underground farming. They put the warden system near the end if Wrath, but it took them a long time to do it right there and they had years of that MMO under their belt after they worked through the issues at launch. I'm sure SE will eventually get it together and take care of the bots after all the initial problems with the servers and now the soon to be transfering players. This feels much the same way WoW did when it was happening but they eventually got it right and banned many many accounts.