"I'd like to talk to you guys about botting, hacking, and other such things..."

• Rin wrote on 2012-09-30 06:14
  A perspective from someone who used to be a botter. Informative for anybody who likes to look from the "bad" side of an issue.
  
  

  Quote from bot_mod:

  Throwaway AMA if needed. Stay understanding. Mud-slinging is for the petty.
  
  I play GW2 legitimately and have been out of the botting scene for a while. There are so many misconceptions about botting and hacking and account stealing and all that. The ignorance is stifling.
  
  I WAS an active member of the botting/gold selling community. I made literally thousands of dollars over 6 months while botting/selling gold and working for the company that developed the bot. There was talk about creating a separate GW2 bot after our last one was finally shut down by Blizzard. However, the NDA I signed doesn't allow me to say anything more. Yeah, it was so undetectable suing us was the only way to remove us from the game.
  
  Let me break this down for you by defining a few things.
  
  How the gold selling market works
  
  This is confusing a bit. So I'm going to try and ELI5 here.
  
  There are a lot of levels to gold selling. There are the people that will spam trade chat and mail to offer their company's services to you. That represents level 1.
  
  There are people that co-ordinate the accounts that the level 1 users have access to. They do shift management, handle bans and buying new accounts, and try to avoid conflicts with other companies. This is level 1.5.
  
  There are then people who co-ordinate the distribution of gold. This has it's own intricate web. Basically the gold is stockpiled across hundreds of accounts and guild vaults with various degrees of leadership and activity. That way if one account string is banned, you don't lose everything. Legitimate players and accounts will be a part of these (through the company of course) as a back up. Think of this as level 2.
  
  Now we have the suppliers that give the gold to the distributors. This will be a separate company that has irl farmers, bots, and powerlevelers that give gold to the distributors and don't interact past that point. Power leveling itself is relatively safe with the proper precautions. Ever wonder why they only give you 200 gold when they are done? Because the rest they make is sent to their distribution network. This is level 3.
  
  Now there is the coordination and management aspects to all of these. These are the networks of websites, that control the supply of gold and services to maintain a profitable price point. All these companies are colluded to ensure they are all maxing their profits. Many of them are the same company under a different name. Now you know why when you buy gold once, you get emails for 40 other websites that have EXACTLY the same prices. But promotions at different times of the year. That's level 4.
  
  Finally there's the additional level of the management of those companies that make pacts and have their own political sub-culture. But that was never interesting enough for me to pursue.
  
  How your accounts get 'hacked'
  
  Unless you just give your information away, these companies don't personally hack your account. Real hackers go into forums, fan-sites, or anything that will ask for your e-mail address and a password. They then search for flaws in the security of the website, or back doors to give them access to the databases that store that information. Once they acquire it they will sell the information to anyone willing to pay for it. Gold selling companies, identity thieves, etc. It's more efficient to gather and sell the information than it is to try and use it for personal consumption.
  
  Differences in Service/Illegal Activities
  
  Hacking: Altering the game in a way that gives you an unfair advantage. (ex. speed hacks, attack speed hacks, teleportation, physics exploits, etc.)
  
  Botting: Automating actions in a game through the use of external programs or scripts. (ex. running a dedicate path to farm mobs, finish events, gather, finish pvp events, etc.)
  
  Account Stealing: Maliciously using someone's personal account information to be sold to large groups of gold sellers. (Usually they will strip your account of important items, give the gold to a dump or spread it around to others in their network, and then use that account to farm for them)
  
  Gold Selling: Farming gold, or acquiring it through other means to be sold to either a large company that specializes in it, or to other players directly. (Safer to sell to companies so that they assume most of the risk)
  
  Powerleveling: Paying someone to grind your characters up to a certain level or skill point. Having someone do all the "boring" parts of leveling so you can enjoy end game ASAP.
  
  The Lies
  
  

  • Botters will steal your account to wipe it clean and sell it.
    
  • Hackers have access to your personal information and should be banned so they don't steal your stuff
    
  • Gold sellers only want to steal your account
    
  • Gold sellers want to be selling gold, and will abuse whatever they can so that you can buy it
    
  • Your account information is stolen via gold selling websites (Kind of, but not really this.)
    
  • Botting companies and bots will steal your information and your account. (Real working bots and their developers will NEVER do this)
    
  • Botting is bad for the economy of the game (Not as big a lie for GW2)
    
  • Botters, hackers, gold sellers are terrible people and should all be banned, murdered, and ostracized. They clearly have no lives or morals.
    
  • Powerleveling is the best way to get my account stolen
    
  • Gold selling companies and others like them go out of their way to hack accounts (this one is fun)

  
  
  The (slightly biased) Truth
  
  

  • Botters are often personal users that get bored, or would like to spend their free time doing more than solely grinding away at a video game.
    
  • These personal botters have no use for your personal account. Most of them don't know how or where to the gold they themselves make. They are interested in their own selfish desires, not hurting you. 90% wouldn't know how to sell an account.
    
  • Gold sellers want to sell you gold, not steal your account. They make money and living selling you gold. They are not in charge.
    
  • Gold sellers do not enjoy selling gold. It's their job. They are paid to do it. It's better than working in a sweat shop to make Nike's. It's an easy, paid position, in a friendly family-like environment.

  
  
  [SIZE="2"]Rant: I have some very close friends that live in China and work as gold sellers. It's their best option. They can't afford university, and make more than enough money to live decently and have money left over for hobbies. They get a lot of shit in game, when they are trying to work. LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE. Report them and MOVE THE FUCK ON. It's rude and disrespectful to give someone shit for where they work.[/SIZE]
  
  

  • Gold selling websites, like any other websites have databases. Most people use the same email and password for everything. They will run the information in that website in an automated script to see if it works. If it does, they use it. However, they don't usually require accounts to sell you gold. They do NEED it if you buy powerleveling service. You'd be surprised by how many accounts are "hacked" after you willingly give your information to the company. Easy fix, change your shit before and after if you're going to buy the services. Or, don't fucking buy it.
    
  • If you buy a bot for personal use, the developers of this bot are spending their time making their bot marketable. That means anti-detection methods. Making sure it works with the new builds. Fixing bugs, etc. Just like any app developer. They would lose money by taking the time to steal your information and hack your account to sell gold or your account. They merely develop the bot. If they were actively selling your account information, they would be out of business in a week. Think about it.
    
  • Botting will both hurt and help the economy. Especially on games that have individual servers. Games like GW2 where the TP is across the world. You'll see a less beneficial effect. Over-supply is bad in any game. In games like WoW, it'll often mean the difference of being able to afford crafting ANYTHING on a small server and not being able to afford anything.

  
  
  [SIZE="2"]Anecdote: Playing WoW on Jaedenar, herbs and ores were over priced out the ass. Me and two friends rock up, start botting. Over the course of a few months owned just about every crafting material on the auction house. You know what happened? People could afford to craft. It wasn't limited to the 2 large guilds on the server.[/SIZE]
  
  

  • Regular botters are tired of the grind. They enjoy the game regularly. Just not all aspects. Botting isn't the answer, but it's a quick solution when it's available. Also, Botting itself is not hacking. Botting is automating gameplay, hacking is changing gameplay.
    
  • The best way to get your account stolen is to have your e-mail address and password the same on every website AND to have it registered across many forums.
    
  • I explained that one up top. So yeah. They buy the information and then they run scripts to see if it works for the games they sell gold/powerleveling services/items or whatever else for.

• Rin wrote on 2012-09-30 06:14

  Quote from bot_mod:

  Conclusion
  
  I'm not saying botting is okay. But you're angry at the wrong people.
  
  The people in game that are selling you gold are not trying to ruin your experience. They are trying to do their job. They are paid based on meeting a quota.
  
  Gold selling companies aren't the one hacking your accounts. They are the ones using rather publicly available information to gain access to them. The information can be bought or given to them through their services.
  
  Hackers and botters are not the same breed of people. Botters are looking for more efficient ways to play the game. Hackers are bored and want to see how far they can push things before they get caught.
  
  Botting can ruin economies, but can also bring them to a safer equilibrium. Reducing the amounts of over priced items, and making things affordable for the average player. Or they can drive the price down to the point it's not profitable for anyone else.

  
  
  Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10c2u0/id_like_to_talk_to_you_guys_about_botting_hacking/
• Cucurbita wrote on 2012-09-30 11:55
  And I kill people for a living. Its not my fault, its just my job to be a hitman. The guys who are paying me to do it are the murderers, not me.
• Claudia wrote on 2012-09-30 13:03
  I agree with just about everything he said.
• Chiyuri wrote on 2012-09-30 13:43

  Quote from Cucurbita;957455:

  And I kill people for a living. Its not my fault, its just my job to be a hitman. The guys who are paying me to do it are the murderers, not me.

  
  
  pretty much what I wanted to say. If your job is to ruin the game for other people, then it is a pretty bad job you are doing.
  
  Also Why do they think Bots get banned in the first place -.-
  
  
  In another mmo, I once had my acount stolen, I successfully got it back but nearly everything of value was gone. And after they stole nearly all that was valueble, I found out they used my character to grind material and sell it. Hence.. a botter stole my acount and used it for all it was worth. Through I got some money back since they left so many ores in the bank from botting and didn't have the time to sell it.. got 1/10 of my money back from selling these ores.
  getting back the items I had took so long...
• Cucurbita wrote on 2012-09-30 15:05
  His argument that bots benefit the game's economy is a huge stretch.
  
  The primary goal of all mmo devs (in the economic sense) is to figure out how to reduce the increasing pool of gold circulating in their games, and gold farmers, bots, and gold sellers are easily the biggest obstacle in that goal.
  
  I'm sorry that this guy's Chinese friends have to deal with this comfortable alternative of a job where he doesn't have to work at a sweat shop. I guess he forgot to read the part where he's playing the villain in his job description if he wasn't expecting the players to be mean to him.
  
  Telling people to stop being mean to gold farmers is like telling people to stop buying gold from gold farmers. Double standards man.
• paladin wrote on 2012-10-04 00:37
  As much i argee with him
  Your impact on the overall gaming experience is negative to the whole your basically only 1 small level above hackers
  Yes it is a job but hey drug dealers jobs are to sell drugs to make money,not like drugs do any harm(sic)
• Rin wrote on 2012-10-04 14:59
  He's not saying it isn't wrong.
  
  But he implies it's a situation of "You have to do what you have to do to, and they're not as privileged as you."
• Eotenisc wrote on 2012-10-06 06:13
  These are explicitly malicious criminal organizations and they behave accordingly. If "misunderstandings" are used against them I have no problems with that. I don't even necessarily think "due process of law" belongs in the overpopulated modern world. If rational expectations of democracy and fair judgment are flagrantly discarded in order to lynch the ever-loving **** out of anyone remotely tied to malicious organizations... well, that's already kinda what needs to happen anyway.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2012-10-06 09:42
  Completely disagree with you.
  
  Also, this isn't even illegal, outside of the hacking part which these people really have no involvement in. If they were to buy hacked accounts, then yeah, that could be illegal depending on what they're actually buying.
  
  It only becomes illegal if they try to do it again after they've been ordered by a court to stop or shut down their business. They can't actually go to jail for botting, selling gold, etc. Unless you're talking about the ones in China, I don't know how it works over there. Think it might actually be against the law there.
• Chiyuri wrote on 2012-10-06 10:22
  technicly, when you make an acount, you sign a contract that indicate you shouldn't be doing that. It's just that most people don't read said contract.
  
  Breaking that contract is illegal.
• Cucurbita wrote on 2012-10-06 10:57

  Quote from Chiyuri;960040:

  technicly, when you make an acount, you sign a contract that indicate you shouldn't be doing that. It's just that most people don't read said contract.
  
  Breaking that contract is illegal.

  
  
  Turns out, its not.
  
  The terms of service holds very little legal power in court. At its very best, its designed to defend the company from lawsuits, not the other way around.
  
  There was quite a bit of drama a few years ago about the legitimacy of what you were agreeing to in the ToS, where they might have been forcing you to agree to something illegal, so we had some law students get involved to lecture us about how it works.
• Froglord wrote on 2012-10-06 12:16
  This isn't the case with the MTS exploit in maplestory where the bots in mabinogi and across other Nexon games tended to steal everyone's nx and resell the item value of it all through dyes in mabinogi for slightly 10% more than the market price.
  
  Right now I can't imagine how much gold that bot Dyesok and/or aiiaiip in alexina has stashed away for their botting CEO's
• Eotenisc wrote on 2012-10-06 15:19
  Breaking ToS is not breaking the law.
  
  That's not what I mean when I say these are organized criminals.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2012-10-06 19:14

  Quote from Eotenisc;960096:

  Breaking ToS is not breaking the law.
  
  That's not what I mean when I say these are organized criminals.

  
  Unless you mean buying stolen accounts, what do you mean?
  

  Quote from Chiyuri;960040:

  technicly, when you make an acount, you sign a contract that indicate you shouldn't be doing that. It's just that most people don't read said contract.
  
  Breaking that contract is illegal.

  
  The ToS holds absolutely zero legal value in court. All they can do is ask you not to do it again and then it becomes illegal because you're not listening to court orders.