So... they're really allowing botters to run free?

[Radubadu]

if you had to kill ten rats, why would you wait after it spawned before you attacked?
people throw the word bot around but i really dont think they know what it means

I'll give you that perhaps it's not a bot in the sense of it being a 3rd party software but at the VERY least the guy's using a macro'd keyboard, letting it run then stepping away for hours on end. Again, as I said before, if you (generally speaking) saw what I'm talking about and still wanted to doubt it or argue specifically how he's doing it... you need your head checked.

[Cienna]

RMT & bots get removed faster on the JP servers. RMTs I reported on the JP server were gone in under 48 hours. NA/EU reported ones- 10 days since report, still there spamming away. I have been keeping track because I heard others reporting the same thing- JP servers get the bots & RMTs dealt with faster then NA/EU. I won't speak as to why, only SE knows why, I only know that playing on the JP server is more pleasant as the RMTs & bots are taken care of pretty fast.

[Dijana]

They're not 'allowing' bots to run free. Its just there's so many and not enough staff at the moment to keep up with them. The other night I saw a bunch of characters pos hacking around the zone right outside ul'dah. The last statement I saw was that they had already banned 800+ accounts involved in RMT activity. Imagine what it's like at the moment, they're dealing with the unexpected number of players flooding the servers that werent prepared for it, while working to fix and expand game stability, they have hundreds of reports of hacked accounts with characters running around botting, spamming gil-selling in towns, sending tells to players advertising, while also dealing with the usual glitches in a new game and inevitable GM calls of players harrassing each other.

It's obvious the interest in ARR has been much bigger than SE anticipated, so it's not surprising they didnt have the staff to handle it. I imagine (at least hope) that when subs start up a good portion of the RMT and botting will stop, or at least become more subtle.

RMT & bots get removed faster on the JP servers. RMTs I reported on the JP server were gone in under 48 hours. NA/EU reported ones- 10 days since report, still there spamming away. I have been keeping track because I heard others reporting the same thing- JP servers get the bots & RMTs dealt with faster then NA/EU. I won't speak as to why, only SE knows why, I only know that playing on the JP server is more pleasant as the RMTs & bots are taken care of pretty fast.

Probably because it's a JP game, and as above, there's more JP staff.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I have heard mention of a way to fight back against these combat bots....

I have heard rumors that if you initiate a trade with them while they're being attacked they stop fighting....


Someone who isn't botting would be able to cancel the trade and continue the fight...

Someone who isn't even at their computer is at the mercy of their intended target...



*evil grin*

[LordSideKicks]

I have heard mention of a way to fight back against these combat bots....

I have heard rumors that if you initiate a trade with them while they're being attacked they stop fighting....


Someone who isn't botting would be able to cancel the trade and continue the fight...

Someone who isn't even at their computer is at the mercy of their intended target...



*evil grin*

This work with mining bots as well but does not work on teleporting bots.

[Alhanelem]

They're not "allowing" it, but there isn't an army of staff members to examine and zap every bot and every server instantly. they have to conduct investigations to make sure they don't ban people illegitimately, and so they usually end up banning people in batches, not one by one.