Just had the most fascinating conversation with a GM

[Thamorian]

Yeah the in game GM's are not allowed to do anything about the bots. SE has a separate team for bot busting and bans them in waves to hinder bot creators from finding out how their bots were detected since SE uses mostly an automated system to detect bots. Having humans banning the bots one at a time while nice for optics, is not very efficient. Bots are created pretty fast and SE would need a lot of employees working to keep up, probably. RMT bots use stolen credit cards to buy the accounts so they don't care about the money/subscription lost from a banned bot.

[ICountFrom0]

Yeah the in game GM's are not allowed to do anything about the bots. SE has a separate team for bot busting and bans them in waves to hinder bot creators from finding out how their bots were detected since SE uses mostly an automated system to detect bots. Having humans banning the bots one at a time while nice for optics, is not very efficient. Bots are created pretty fast and SE would need a lot of employees working to keep up, probably. RMT bots use stolen credit cards to buy the accounts so they don't care about the money/subscription lost from a banned bot.

This wasn't normal levels of bot storm. This was enough to prevent anybody from entering the entire zone. This was intentionally disabling the game and making it unsuitable for purpose.

You want "bad optics" I'll give you bad optics, any new player, attempting the very first quest, would be told "you can't enter". The game was broken. You think anybody starting up, seeing that, is going to stay, and pay for a subscription?

[CazzT]

Yeah the in game GM's are not allowed to do anything about the bots. SE has a separate team for bot busting and bans them in waves to hinder bot creators from finding out how their bots were detected since SE uses mostly an automated system to detect bots. Having humans banning the bots one at a time while nice for optics, is not very efficient. Bots are created pretty fast and SE would need a lot of employees working to keep up, probably. RMT bots use stolen credit cards to buy the accounts so they don't care about the money/subscription lost from a banned bot.

This is exactly why the problem is growing. Bot farms know they can get away with this. And with each ban wave, it keeps them out of the game for a few hours, at best. They have a backstock of accounts that they will activate with stolen credit cards and other means. Wave banning has not been an effective solution since 2005.