Tag: bot

Blizzard: Bot Bans And Court Loss


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As many as 100,000 bot accounts, possibly more, have been removed from World of Warcraft in a recent mass ban.

We’ve recently taken action against a large number of World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay, known as “bots.” We’re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft, and will continue to take action against those found in violation of our Terms of Use. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated.

In unrelated news, Blizzard recently lost a case attempting to place an injunction on a gold seller in Diablo. As reported by the Kaesler & Kollegen law firm representing the client, the Civil Division of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court overturned a previous injunction on a Diablo gold selling website. The judge has reportedly ordered Blizzard to cover the costs of the proceedings.

(Source: Blizzard)

ArcheAge Teleport Hackers Caught On Video


Need a good reason to avoid ArcheAge for the time being? Here is one, the game is filled with hackers. Not the kind of hackers that steal your account, the kind that are able to teleport throughout the game, grabbing up land as soon as it becomes available and running trade routes immediately to bring in massive amounts of gold. Bots have dominated ArcheAge since launch, and every day continue to flood the economy with gold farmed through hacks, land automatically purchased through hacks, and trader rewards achieved through hacks. You can see in the above video that there is even a bot to report people for killing other bots.

ArcheAge Update Targets Chat Spam


ARCHEAGE 2014-09-24 15-36-41-38

Today’s update to ArcheAge goes up in under an hour, followed by three to five hours of downtime. Version 1.2 build 4.11 introduces a few convenience changes to the game: The Kraken can only be damaged by siege weapons, trial chat can now only be used by participants in a trial, healer weapons are now rewarded in quests, and warehouse expansion has had its cap increased. To fight bots, Trion is introducing a level restriction for chat channels:

  • Chatting in the Faction, Shout, Trade, Need Party, and Nation chat channels is now restricted to characters that are level 15 and higher.

No, this update will not stop chat spam. The goal, and what this update will accomplish, is to put a stop to the seemingly never ending cycle of spam accounts creating a level one character, typing once in chat, and then deleting said character in order to bypass the ignore list. Of course, a chat filter would also be nice.

(Source: Trion Worlds)

Jagex Brings In The New Year With A Ban(g)


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Arenanet isn’t the only one throwing cheaters overboard tied to a cement block. In a post released yesterday, the developer announced that users of a bot script would be logging in to find themselves permanently banned, among them long-time players:

As part of our ongoing war on botting, we continue to take action against those confirmed to be using a bot script. Just yesterday we banned a large number of bot users, including a number of maximum level players.

Additionally, in the same announcement Jagex detailed bans for an exploit in the recently released God Statues update which allowed players to generate a massive quantity of experience very quickly. Aside from banning the accounts that took part in the exploit, Jagex commented that they have also banned the alternate accounts of those same players.

(Source: RuneScape)

Bots Are Choking To Death In RuneScape


It must be Christmas. No, my calendar says September. This week (hopefully) marks the reveal of Botany Bay, and on Sunday Jagex announced that they would begin silently banning bots starting Monday. Well the bans aren’t exactly silent, as players are spotting (and video taping) bots spamming gold farming websites in key areas. The bots have been recorded spamming for several minutes, before inexplicably choking and dying, presumably being banned thereafter.

This month, Jagex announced a new method of detecting and banning bots, both collection and advertising, as well as a way for players to take part in the process and sentence bots to death in a Salem-esque trial. Why the flashy, and rather unnecessary, showmanship? When you spend most of your time banning bots, sometimes you want to have fun doing it, according to a recent Q&A. The alternative goal is to give the players instant feedback that the developer is indeed taking action against bots and gold farmers.

Runescape Bot Website Steals Accounts: Surprise!


Final Fantasy XIV bots.

Security is a priority here at MMO Fallout, among our many priorities that have no static value and tend to change depending on what is making headlines. Botting, being a completely legitimate community that breaks no rules and in no way creates a seedy underbelly to a community, at no way puts the account or computer of the owner at risk. So imagine my surprise when I get people asking me to warn the Runescape community about a popular bot.

According to my sources, this very popular bot program (designed to play the game for the player) has been harvesting information including usernames and passwords, and upon the return of free trade, many players are finding themselves with their banks cleared, their passwords changed, etc. For the simple desire to sit back and watch the world burn, I won’t mention the cheat program that was compromised, although if you use it you are likely seeing its effects by now.

Moral of the story: Expect shady business from shady people. Oh, and don’t come complaining to me that I should be warning cheaters about a security breach for a game they are technically not playing.

Thirty Thousand Man March: Chinese Aion Protest


Oddly enough, those are all on one faction.

Over in China, Aion follows the suit of many other MMOs: A major bot problem. This isn’t necessarily due to NCsoft “not caring” about the gold farmers, but rather the enormous market compared to services in the West that brings in a substantial profit margin and results in a flood of input into a system that is already large enough to explode. It’s important to remember a major facet of gold farming: If there wasn’t any demand, there wouldn’t be any market for supply. But there will always be a demand, proportional to the size of the population, and legitimate players cannot be blamed for the actions of those who do buy from these services.

Players in China, however, decided that enough was enough, and staged a protest. MMOSITE estimates that there were thirty thousand people in attendance, in a protest that spanned numerous cities and lagged those areas to a slow crawl. Players created new toons adorned with names like “no bots” and “ban the bots.” Eventually, at least four servers buckled under the strain and had to be taken down for maintenance.

Of course, this inevitably received the attention of NCSoft, who attempted to disperse the crowd by spawning several Grand Chieftain Saendukals (boss), which the swarms of players quickly overtook.

You can read the entire story here: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-04-12/30000_aion_players_protest_bots_led_to_servers_down.shtml#ue_pic

Hopefully this sent a clear message to NCsoft to ramp up the anti-bot operations over in China. Here in North America/Europe, the bot problem isn’t nearly as large and NCsoft has brought in the G-Unit to bust gold farming. I’m not certain if there is a similar system in China.

More in Aion as it appears.