Interview with a tradeskill botter

[Ogrebe]

*Edit* after reading on how some of you have reacted to the post, i've have removed itI have a friend who plays eq2 who i found out tradeskill bots last time i was at his house. I got to see first hand how a tradeskill bot works, and why they are so hard to catch.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://ogrebear.com/?p=254" target="_blank">You can read about the detail on my blog.</a>I believe this might help SoE though combat tradeskill bots know how they work.I promised my friend not to reveal his character name or his server, so Don't ask

[Bemuvdar]

<p>Three questions for you:</p><p>1)  Because a person stands in one place for hours, they are bot?</p><p>2)  Because people often craft while watching tv or surfing the web and don't respond at times to tells, that makes them a bot?</p><p>3)  Next, if you are so against bots, why didn't you do the right thing and turn your friend in?</p>

[NANEEJE]

i dont think this is considered a "bot", is it? i mean, ya, he found a way to counter spells and make craftin a heck of a lot easier then i do it, but he still has to sit and watch it and buy materials and order recipes, and all that stuff. Yes its ingenious, and he found a niche in the game, but hey, at least the plat he has was "earned"? not sure about this one... i would love to have my character make stuff while i was in the bathroom, ( oh ya, i do, they just dont end up pristine... lol.)

[Calthine]

<cite>NANEEJE wrote:</cite><blockquote>i dont think this is considered a "bot", is it? </blockquote>Any third-party application that plays the game for you is a bot (as is the person using it).  It's against the EULA, and bannable.  Even farmer bots have to run back to town and sell at some point.And unfortunately, if someone has locked themselves in their house, it's impossible for us to see them and report it.

[Ogrebe]

well it a bot it control the mouse and the keyboard. they can walk out for 3 hour and come back and have crafted tons of different thing.He stay in the room while hes doing it, doing homework or watching tv, but only goes to the computer if a someone send him a tell other wise the computers doing all the work and it is a bot. Standing in one place doesn't make a person a bot. But it was the only thing i could think that would be a visual sign that someone is a bot, but ya i forgot people craft and watch tv so ya you can't use that. So ya there really no vissual sigh to if someone is a bot, and there really no way to catch them with out some type of monitoring softwear watching what going on in your computer.While i am against bot, i value my Real life friendship. Essentially i am not going to ruin a close friendship for a game.

[NANEEJE]

<cite>Calthine wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>NANEEJE wrote:</cite><blockquote>i dont think this is considered a "bot", is it? </blockquote>Any third-party application that plays the game for you is a bot (as is the person using it).  It's against the EULA, and bannable.  Even farmer bots have to run back to town and sell at some point.And unfortunately, if someone has locked themselves in their house, it's impossible for us to see them and report it.</blockquote><p>again, finding some really poor uses of ones time.... thanks for the info. The reason i left blackhawk down is because of aiming bots, where it didnt matter what direction you shot, if you anywhere near, it would "head shot" you which is instant death, very frustrating and boring. So hoping I dont find much more here, </p><p>here is a question... i had a guy ask me to group with him today, he did, we killed a lot of undead, and every time i would say something in the window, he never answered, not once, I would ask him if he wants to take a break, not even a reply, but everytime i was fighting, he was right there and doing his damage, is this some sort of a "bot"? Literally 40-50 entries in the group window , questions he never answered...can someone or has someone created a way to hit autofollow and auto attack at the same time, it wasnt just piercing damage, it was spell damage too. so he there had to be a button or two in there, let me know so i know wether to kick anyone that doesnt answer me again. it was frustrating.</p>

[Calthine]

<cite>NANEEJE wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>here is a question... i had a guy ask me to group with him today, he did, we killed a lot of undead, and every time i would say something in the window, he never answered, not once, I would ask him if he wants to take a break, not even a reply, but everytime i was fighting, he was right there and doing his damage, is this some sort of a "bot"? Literally 40-50 entries in the group window , questions he never answered...can someone or has someone created a way to hit autofollow and auto attack at the same time, it wasnt just piercing damage, it was spell damage too. so he there had to be a button or two in there, let me know so i know wether to kick anyone that doesnt answer me again. it was frustrating. </blockquote>I can think of several reasons he might not talk back...  could have the wrong window up, or not speak English, or be too busy power-pulling to type.  But I suppose it could be a bot.  The best thing to do it you're really suspicious is /report anything damning that shows in chat (/report sends the last 100 lines of your chat) and then /petition the GM's with your suspicions (reference the /report).  Let them sort it out.

[Tokam]

<cite>NANEEJE wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Calthine wrote:</cite><p>here is a question... i had a guy ask me to group with him today, he did, we killed a lot of undead, and every time i would say something in the window, he never answered, not once, I would ask him if he wants to take a break, not even a reply, but everytime i was fighting, he was right there and doing his damage, is this some sort of a "bot"? Literally 40-50 entries in the group window , questions he never answered...can someone or has someone created a way to hit autofollow and auto attack at the same time, it wasnt just piercing damage, it was spell damage too. so he there had to be a button or two in there, let me know so i know wether to kick anyone that doesnt answer me again. it was frustrating.</p></blockquote>Sometimes you just find yourself grouped with people not worth talking to...

[zaneluke]

If someone does not respond to you they might have tells off. They might be a child crafting for their parents. Or like me when i craft i keep chat down to a minimum.Person stays in tradeskill instance for 18 hours straight? I have done that too. Bored and nothing left to do, craft away.But.......using an outside program to run the character while afk, should be banned and people who know about it too.

[44Dragon]

<p>I set my chat tabs so that I have just crafting related information scrolling past in a single tab.  While I am crafting I tend to not see anything else going on around me as my view is trained on the little crafting numbers popping up (feels like it reduces lag and keeps me from looking around when I should be watching my crafting events).</p><p>As stated above, the best way to deal with it is to /report and /petition.</p>

[Rijacki]

Ogrebear, frankly you're as guilty as he is for condoning it.  In my opinion you should both be banned. You for posting the details about how it works (which could encourage others to use it) and him for actually using it.One more reason I'm glad for the upcoming reaction art changes, the bot programs will have to be redone to accommodate them and hopefully they'll be lax in doing them long enough that the real tradeskillers (those who are honest and press all their own keys and don't use a cheat program to play for them) will be the ones who shine the most in the new expansion.Bot programs are to the game what counterfeit money is in real life.  It affects a lot more people than just the ones who pass it, though they'll argue that it's only for their own benefit and doesn't really hurt anyone.

[Loranthala]

I'm insane, I craft while 2 boxing which is a lot of alt tabbing... and I rarely reply to people especially if i'm watching tv on my laptop or i'm on my conjuror mass killing stuff or questing.  Some people will stay in zone but won't be crafting, maybe taking a break so you depends on how you see teh person at teh crafting table of choice.

[Talz]

They should use that program that WoW used.  If information on your computer is so sensitive then I wonder why it's a gaming machine.  Recycle all your foil hats and get a laptop to store the top secret information that the evil corporations are out to get.

[Loranthala]

<cite>Talzar wrote:</cite><blockquote>They should use that program that WoW used.  If information on your computer is so sensitive then I wonder why it's a gaming machine.  Recycle all your foil hats and get a laptop to store the top secret information that the evil corporations are out to get. </blockquote>shhh i have 4 laptops ><

[Ogrebe]

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ogrebear, frankly you're as guilty as he is for condoning it.  In my opinion you should both be banned. You for posting the details about how it works (which could encourage others to use it) and him for actually using it.</blockquote>The people who want to bot are going to bot whether or not i posted information about how a tradeskill bot works. Thouse who are going to cheat the system already are.  Giving details on how a tradeskill bot works isn't going to make the majorty of the honest players start cheating the system.What i have done, is given SoE detailed information on how a tradeskill bot works. My hope is with this information that they can find a way to ban, and prevent this type of exploitation of the game. Maybe because of this post SoE implements softwear like WoW that check what prosses are running on your computer, so that it can ban player who run bot. Maybe SoE will take this information and do something to the UI so that it hampers tradeskill bots, like moving the tradeskill button every once and a while if you've been tradeskilling to long. While that might annoy player a tradeskill bot is expect the button to be in the same place, if it moved the tradeskill bot can not longer operate.So ya my friend should be band for using the bot! But i shouldn't be band for giving info on how a bot works as i do believe it give SoE more knowledge on how to combat bots, which is a good thing

[Rijacki]

<cite>Ogrebears@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>What i have done, is given SoE detailed information on how a tradeskill bot works. </blockquote>If you were interested in giving SOE the information, you would have sent it in a PM, not posted it pubically on some site and then draw attention to it by posting on an open board.  You posted there because you want others, not SOE to read it.  Whether to show how easy it is to use one (which encourages the less than honest) or to attempt to justify the use of one ("look see, SOE is told about them and does nothing, therefore it should be okay for everyone to use them) or whatever, is beside the point.

[Zahmekos]

<cite>Ogrebears@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Maybe because of this post SoE implements softwear like WoW that check what prosses are running on your computer, so that it can ban player who run bot. </blockquote>If they want that, they can ask their 'friends' at Sony Music how to do it^^

[Deson]

<cite>Zahmekoses wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ogrebears@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Maybe because of this post SoE implements softwear like WoW that check what prosses are running on your computer, so that it can ban player who run bot. </blockquote>If they want that, they can ask their 'friends' at Sony Music how to do it^^</blockquote>Complete with User agreement that doesn't actually tell you it's there while you try and figure out what the heck is going on with your comp. There are better ways to combat cheating than spying on your customers.

[Ogrebe]

I have decided to remove the original post.After thing about it i believe Rijacki is correct, the right thing to do would of been to PM the devs with how it works, rather than post it publicly. The goal of the post wasn't to promote, or show how easy it is to use bot, but to show how they work, and how they could be stopped. But it didn't turn out that way. So I'm sorry. I made a bad move, and if i could go back to yesterday i wouldn't have post my post.So like i've said, the original post has been remove, and i want to again say sorry to though who felt i was promoting bots.<a href="http://ogrebear.com/?p=255" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I explain in more detail why i originally posted and why i removed the post here</a>

[Rijacki]

<cite>Ogrebears@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have decided to remove the original post.After thing about it i believe Rijacki is correct, the right thing to do would of been to PM the devs with how it works, rather than post it publicly. The goal of the post wasn't to promote, or show how easy it is to use bot, but to show how they work, and how they could be stopped. But it didn't turn out that way. So I'm sorry. I made a bad move, and if i could go back to yesterday i wouldn't have post my post.So like i've said, the original post has been remove, and i want to again say sorry to though who felt i was promoting bots.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://ogrebear.com/?p=255" target="_blank">I explain in more detail why i originally posted and why i removed the post here</a></blockquote>Thank you.Others have posted things like that in the past (full descriptions of how things worked and even how to get them without spelling it out explicitly) and claimed they were jsut giving SOE information and that if SOE didn't act on that it must be okay because "anyone" can use them.Using 3rd party applications to facilitate unattended gameplay is nothing short of cheating.  It does affect others in both direct and indirect ways.I am well aware I am rather hardline on the subject. 

[Wintersheart]

<p>Hey Ogre,</p><p>Glad you removed it, hope you pm'd it to a DEV but don't believe you did anything wrong..don't let it get you down.</p><p> Wintersheart</p>