As a follow up to yesterdays "NCsoft bans 16000 bots" - they did another mass wave last night.
According to Ayase via twitter "@aion_ayase More than 11.000 confirmed bot accounts were banned from our servers today in a masterful slash with the blade of punishment."
This will make 27k bot accounts banned over the past 48 hours... Naysayers.... GO!
Since you need at least 5 minutes per to make sure you are banning legit,that is 27kx5 ...hmm 135k minutes how many hours of man time is that?well thanx to the microsoft calculator it is 2250 hours.24 hours a day IF anyone actually spent 24/7 on this ,more like maybe 4-6 hours a day,anyhow that is 93 days.
I would have to say they are doing a nice CON job here and are out right lying.It would REALISTICALLY take them about 150 days to ban that many players that is at 16 hours a day of investigating,then pulling up accounts to actually ban them.5 people working on the bans IF they have 5 qualified people at witch they work 8 hours a day and IF they work EVERY single minute of that day,witch again will never happen that would still take those 5 about 2 months each.
Do i believe they are paying 5 people to investigate?nope.i would say more like 2-3,anymore and they are only part timers doing other things besides actual investigating.Heck it is even possible they are all part timers on this,hard to believe they actually have hired people to look after botting,since they have NEVER shown ANY interest in this field over the past 10 years.I would say the more realistic side,is that they dedicated a few people from their regular jobs to do maybe 3-4 hours a day investigating.That would mean a realisitic 3-5 months to investigate 27k.
No matter how i look at it from ANY approach,it is quite clear to me that they are lying.All of this ONLY mentions ACTUAL bans,imagine how many accounts they would have to actually investigate,especially when cross referencing RMT trading,your looking at probably 5x that.That would be more like half a year easy to fully investigate that many accounts,it is just an unrealistic number to believe them at all.
Of course you can always check for yourself and see if all the Kinah selling sites are now out of Kinah and /or are shut down.I am pretty sure you will find that EVERY single one has been untouched,unphased.Also the price to buy Kinah would also rise drastically if that much Kinah was removed from the game.
Just did a google for buy Kinah and no mention on over ten that i checked of any Kinah problems ,as a matter of fact at less than 5 bucks a mil i would say the game is literally FLOODED with RMT kinah.
Even with your figures the game has been out about 2 month's now, so that's 2 month's time they could have been and probably were investigating the autobot commands players do. And now they are just mass banning them to make it more noticeable. Plus the fact they just hired a team of people to check out bot complaints/gold spammers.
I unsubbed after the first month because after 2 weeks the bots took over the game and pissed me off while leveling on more than 1 occasion(per night). I am now going to resub friday since they are at least making a effort, even though the effects wont be seen for a while.
did they fix the terrible melee combat in air battles?
can an assasin ambush in air? if they still can't can sorcs/sms still root in air ? did they make it so one group can't grief another group in KHQ? did they make forts vulnerable more often? did they make defending forts worth it? Did they take fort guards out of the game? Are taking forts harder? or is it just rush to end huge guardian and kill him in about 3 mins?
Can gladiators still not ankle snare in the air? did they make longer cool downs on pots so pvp fights aren't just pot wars? did they give more classes snares so people can't just fly away with ease in the abyss? did they take out guard towers in the abyss so people couldn't just run away to them every time pvp happens in the abyss? did they put in more level 50 rifts so i don't have to go to heroine to gank level 30-43's? Did they make it so more then 1 class can do viable cc?
is yes to all of the above i will return to the game.
that's really good information via tweeter!! omg!!!
"Aion is now grindless game with a godsend community and awesome air-combat. Along with these existing features, we also implemented a less metrosexual character model!!!! Our sub. count now just hits 30 billions, including those from Mars and Saturn. @ those who live on the moon, please be patient, our game are going to be distributed soon for your enjoyment!!!!, cyalter"
At this rate they'll ban their whole user base except for the 200 people that don't bot.
Yawnn... fail troll is fail....
Oh right.... my mistake.. there's actually 699,800 bot accounts and 200 real players....
why do people post to make themself look like a complete idiot? I don't understand....
You are so right, there is no way that could be true. If it was Aion wouldn't be Aion, it would be lineage 2.
NcSoft used bot bannings as PR to quiet the growing outcries by the customers in L2. This seems to be the same situation although if it wasn't how does a company known for its incompetence in the matter overcome the shadow? I personally think it won't unless they get ingame GMs, even if it is one per serve to patrol known botting areas and perma ban the accounts. The fact that most botters are given warning and temp bans show a real lack of respect for their own EULAs.
I'm surprised HGM Spam even has a job after his huge failures in L2. As a forum personality hes great but job performance is what matters isn't it? Mayeb he just looks like he isn't doing his job because higher ups won't let him.
Having users report bost and ban them by hand every now and then has it's ups ("another few thousand bots banned, hurray!") and downs (it's pretty ineffective).
Some games don't have those problems, or not as heavily. I mean there are quite some options when you design an MMO to avoid getting infested by bots. Like....
having your mmo detect and deal with bots and gold buyers automatically
have the users not depend that heavily on ingame gold
have killing mobs / harvesting nodes (simply repetetive tasks) be an ineffective method of earning gold
have mobs whichs AI can outsmart those of bots
free open world pvp so users can kill bots themselves
harsher death penalties so it's actually risky to have the bot running around since it would be very difficult to get it back in action once it dies
have a target audience for the game that is not that interested in using the services of gold vendors
And probably some others. Some of them are easy to implement, some are not, and some work only for few specific MMOs. Still, having users report bots and banning them every once and now by hand is just ineffective.
Having users report bost and ban them by hand every now and then has it's ups ("another few thousand bots banned, hurray!") and downs (it's pretty ineffective). Some games don't have those problems, or not as heavily. I mean there are quite some options when you design an MMO to avoid getting infested by bots. Like....
having your mmo detect and deal with bots and gold buyers automatically have the users not depend that heavily on ingame gold have killing mobs / harvesting nodes (simply repetetive tasks) be an ineffective method of earning gold have mobs whichs AI can outsmart those of bots free open world pvp so users can kill bots themselves harsher death penalties so it's actually risky to have the bot running around since it would be very difficult to get it back in action once it dies have a target audience for the game that is not that interested in using the services of gold vendors
And probably some others. Some of them are easy to implement, some are not, and some work only for few specific MMOs. Still, having users report bots and banning them every once and now by hand is just ineffective.
In L2 I spent days training bot groups making money off their dropped items. After a while they started to auto log when I came into the area. I had one massive group in dwarf village offer me adena to leave their bots be which I did take to only train them more. After I started to train mobs on them after the payment, I was spammed but at least 100 different zxxcasf type named characters, "Fuck You". This last so long it crashed me and continued when I relogged in.
The point is these people that bot professionally will do anything to stay in business and the only way to hurt them is to make it not profitable. Early bannings before the account can cover the cost of the new account is crucial. Hitting their supply and IP bans also hinders them. Yes, IP bans can be worked around but it still takes a bit of time for them to reset up. Time is money, so taking their stashes, quick perma bans and slowing the gold income is the way to do it outside of software protections. NcSoft has said on numerous occasions that it takes time to investigate, no it doesn't. I can pm a bot, watch him, train mobs on him and teabag his dead body in a few minutes. Investigation done.
Bear with them GMs singing but this is real and did happen in retail. They were repremanded for this but this is what games need.
You all realize that NCsoft doesnt ban botters for the legit players right? Do you think those botters go away? No they buy new accounts and come back. thus NCsoft just set themselfs up to sell another 11k copies of the game.
The question should be: why did ncsoft allow 11k bots on their servers?
How many of these bots were actually bots grinding on the maps and pwerleveling people and how many were throw away spammer characters....while keeping the account intact?
Why did they put the chat spam filter in so late? Given their past games, and Aion in asia, did they figure it wouldnt happen?
Other than insulting the enemy faction, really what use are the player shops? 99% of the player shops, that arnt spammers, are advertising the cheapest gear (much higher priced than whats in the AH), or are afk, selling junk for 99999999999.
Instead of going after the source, they appease the players by mass banning bots every 6months, then throw their hands up and say "were tying"
I know there are bots and spammers in all games, but certain games they are so in your face you gotta wonder if the distributor/developers are in on the gig.
i could swear that mmorpg.com is a site for people who hate mmos and take special pleasure in watching them fail just so they can complain that there are no mmos left to play
Good job on the bots...if they really deleted that many. There sure were a lot of bots in Aion, but not too many. I mean. after you blocked four or 5, you were good for a whole day...It seems hard to believe that that added up to 27k bots over the past few months, but hey, they're industrious little bots so maybe. They deserve the benefit of the doubt, so good job if they did. I know there has been some improvement. And I know there are a lot of complaints about the game itself and content, but if they're having to spend all their time blocking bots, I say give them a break on updates until they can get that first plague down. No one is superhuman.
That said...some of you Aion maniacs need to settle down. Your game isn't perfect and you are no better than they people you attack when you fly off the handle just because someone points out a fault in your game. If no one points out the faults, they will never get fixed (even if they get pointed out in rude ways a lot of the time). Loyalty is great and all, but dang. MMO players might not (stereotypically >.>)have live social skills, but you should at least have some on the internet. To attack someone so veraciously for disagreeing with you would be unacceptable in real life and it is on the internet too. Geez...haven't you seen those Cyber-bullying commercials with JoJo?
27,000 players banned for botting, thats £270,000 a month in revenue lost.. Now show me proof of that bans??? hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Don't be an idiot.
I'm 100 percent sure hes not. The only people that are delusional are the ones still playing Aion. Not because the game is bad but because of the track record of NCsoft in the past. let me explain
I remember when I played Lineage 2 back in Chronicles 2 im not sure if you were there or not but they posted up on official forums saying " we are banning all botters" ... " the other day we banned 29,000 bot accounts" . What you have to keep in mind here is that they might not actually be banning anything. This could be just PR spin to retain current subscribers.
If you are right I will come back in here and pubically apologize for trolling but going by NCsofts given record over the years what they claim I wouldn't hold to a huge grain of salt because we have seen the same PR spin when lineage 2 launched and look where that game is now its infested with bots.
I would give you a guest pass to SWOTR, but then I wouldn't be able to find a way to live with myself afterwards....
27,000 players banned for botting, thats £270,000 a month in revenue lost.. Now show me proof of that bans??? hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Don't be an idiot.
I'm 100 percent sure hes not. The only people that are delusional are the ones still playing Aion. Not because the game is bad but because of the track record of NCsoft in the past. let me explain
I remember when I played Lineage 2 back in Chronicles 2 im not sure if you were there or not but they posted up on official forums saying " we are banning all botters" ... " the other day we banned 29,000 bot accounts" . What you have to keep in mind here is that they might not actually be banning anything. This could be just PR spin to retain current subscribers.
If you are right I will come back in here and pubically apologize for trolling but going by NCsofts given record over the years what they claim I wouldn't hold to a huge grain of salt because we have seen the same PR spin when lineage 2 launched and look where that game is now its infested with bots.
I'm glad there's still people like you, clear minded and immune to carbage companies hype and lies.
It gives me a warm feeling to know that even I'm toxicated by this evil mindcapturing company and playing their product, you hold the beacon of truth high and are better than the rest of us. And your dedication to warn possible future users is just admirable.
I don't know where I would be if you didn't tell me that I'm playing bad game and not to mention a one where I'm the only human. Although, I have to admire all those programs that have passed the Turing-test and seem like humans.
I would like to ask you a favor, please sort these people out too. I've got a strong feeling, that their game might be a crappy one too. Please, act before their delusional souls are lost forever!
Comments
Don't be an idiot.
This ^^
Man these QQ'rs are getting more desperite with their posts on Aion failing...
what is the type of proof that you are looking for? Credit cards and account names?
geez some of the peeps here are just simply pathetic
Since you need at least 5 minutes per to make sure you are banning legit,that is 27kx5 ...hmm 135k minutes how many hours of man time is that?well thanx to the microsoft calculator it is 2250 hours.24 hours a day IF anyone actually spent 24/7 on this ,more like maybe 4-6 hours a day,anyhow that is 93 days.
I would have to say they are doing a nice CON job here and are out right lying.It would REALISTICALLY take them about 150 days to ban that many players that is at 16 hours a day of investigating,then pulling up accounts to actually ban them.5 people working on the bans IF they have 5 qualified people at witch they work 8 hours a day and IF they work EVERY single minute of that day,witch again will never happen that would still take those 5 about 2 months each.
Do i believe they are paying 5 people to investigate?nope.i would say more like 2-3,anymore and they are only part timers doing other things besides actual investigating.Heck it is even possible they are all part timers on this,hard to believe they actually have hired people to look after botting,since they have NEVER shown ANY interest in this field over the past 10 years.I would say the more realistic side,is that they dedicated a few people from their regular jobs to do maybe 3-4 hours a day investigating.That would mean a realisitic 3-5 months to investigate 27k.
No matter how i look at it from ANY approach,it is quite clear to me that they are lying.All of this ONLY mentions ACTUAL bans,imagine how many accounts they would have to actually investigate,especially when cross referencing RMT trading,your looking at probably 5x that.That would be more like half a year easy to fully investigate that many accounts,it is just an unrealistic number to believe them at all.
Of course you can always check for yourself and see if all the Kinah selling sites are now out of Kinah and /or are shut down.I am pretty sure you will find that EVERY single one has been untouched,unphased.Also the price to buy Kinah would also rise drastically if that much Kinah was removed from the game.
Just did a google for buy Kinah and no mention on over ten that i checked of any Kinah problems ,as a matter of fact at less than 5 bucks a mil i would say the game is literally FLOODED with RMT kinah.
Even with your figures the game has been out about 2 month's now, so that's 2 month's time they could have been and probably were investigating the autobot commands players do. And now they are just mass banning them to make it more noticeable. Plus the fact they just hired a team of people to check out bot complaints/gold spammers.
I unsubbed after the first month because after 2 weeks the bots took over the game and pissed me off while leveling on more than 1 occasion(per night). I am now going to resub friday since they are at least making a effort, even though the effects wont be seen for a while.
--------------------
-Currently playing FFXIV, and BDO.
I was thinking the same thing.
Within 72 hours they will be filtering back in , they cant be stopped .
did they fix the terrible melee combat in air battles?
can an assasin ambush in air? if they still can't can sorcs/sms still root in air ? did they make it so one group can't grief another group in KHQ? did they make forts vulnerable more often? did they make defending forts worth it? Did they take fort guards out of the game? Are taking forts harder? or is it just rush to end huge guardian and kill him in about 3 mins?
Can gladiators still not ankle snare in the air? did they make longer cool downs on pots so pvp fights aren't just pot wars? did they give more classes snares so people can't just fly away with ease in the abyss? did they take out guard towers in the abyss so people couldn't just run away to them every time pvp happens in the abyss? did they put in more level 50 rifts so i don't have to go to heroine to gank level 30-43's? Did they make it so more then 1 class can do viable cc?
is yes to all of the above i will return to the game.
yes but they can be severely restricted if they keep getting banned
that's really good information via tweeter!! omg!!!
"Aion is now grindless game with a godsend community and awesome air-combat. Along with these existing features, we also implemented a less metrosexual character model!!!! Our sub. count now just hits 30 billions, including those from Mars and Saturn. @ those who live on the moon, please be patient, our game are going to be distributed soon for your enjoyment!!!!, cyalter"
isn't that like half of aions population?
First impressions are everything. Aion did not give a good impression to alot of people.
That's all I'll say.
Yawnn... fail troll is fail....
Oh right.... my mistake.. there's actually 699,800 bot accounts and 200 real players....
why do people post to make themself look like a complete idiot? I don't understand....
You are so right, there is no way that could be true. If it was Aion wouldn't be Aion, it would be lineage 2.
NcSoft used bot bannings as PR to quiet the growing outcries by the customers in L2. This seems to be the same situation although if it wasn't how does a company known for its incompetence in the matter overcome the shadow? I personally think it won't unless they get ingame GMs, even if it is one per serve to patrol known botting areas and perma ban the accounts. The fact that most botters are given warning and temp bans show a real lack of respect for their own EULAs.
I'm surprised HGM Spam even has a job after his huge failures in L2. As a forum personality hes great but job performance is what matters isn't it? Mayeb he just looks like he isn't doing his job because higher ups won't let him.
Having users report bost and ban them by hand every now and then has it's ups ("another few thousand bots banned, hurray!") and downs (it's pretty ineffective).
Some games don't have those problems, or not as heavily. I mean there are quite some options when you design an MMO to avoid getting infested by bots. Like....
And probably some others. Some of them are easy to implement, some are not, and some work only for few specific MMOs. Still, having users report bots and banning them every once and now by hand is just ineffective.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
In L2 I spent days training bot groups making money off their dropped items. After a while they started to auto log when I came into the area. I had one massive group in dwarf village offer me adena to leave their bots be which I did take to only train them more. After I started to train mobs on them after the payment, I was spammed but at least 100 different zxxcasf type named characters, "Fuck You". This last so long it crashed me and continued when I relogged in.
The point is these people that bot professionally will do anything to stay in business and the only way to hurt them is to make it not profitable. Early bannings before the account can cover the cost of the new account is crucial. Hitting their supply and IP bans also hinders them. Yes, IP bans can be worked around but it still takes a bit of time for them to reset up. Time is money, so taking their stashes, quick perma bans and slowing the gold income is the way to do it outside of software protections. NcSoft has said on numerous occasions that it takes time to investigate, no it doesn't. I can pm a bot, watch him, train mobs on him and teabag his dead body in a few minutes. Investigation done.
Bear with them GMs singing but this is real and did happen in retail. They were repremanded for this but this is what games need.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKQRzfhb344&feature=PlayList&p=CA966F396E04FF86&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2
You all realize that NCsoft doesnt ban botters for the legit players right? Do you think those botters go away? No they buy new accounts and come back. thus NCsoft just set themselfs up to sell another 11k copies of the game.
The question should be: why did ncsoft allow 11k bots on their servers?
How many of these bots were actually bots grinding on the maps and pwerleveling people and how many were throw away spammer characters....while keeping the account intact?
Why did they put the chat spam filter in so late? Given their past games, and Aion in asia, did they figure it wouldnt happen?
Other than insulting the enemy faction, really what use are the player shops? 99% of the player shops, that arnt spammers, are advertising the cheapest gear (much higher priced than whats in the AH), or are afk, selling junk for 99999999999.
Instead of going after the source, they appease the players by mass banning bots every 6months, then throw their hands up and say "were tying"
I know there are bots and spammers in all games, but certain games they are so in your face you gotta wonder if the distributor/developers are in on the gig.
Meh, Stay away from games open to the Asian market and you never have to deal with gold spammers and bots.
I have never seen the point to paying a monthly fee for a game in which you are so bad at it that you must cheat to level up.
i could swear that mmorpg.com is a site for people who hate mmos and take special pleasure in watching them fail just so they can complain that there are no mmos left to play
Awesome!
Once NCsoft boots all of the botters and gold spammers there will be five people left in game on NA/Euro servers.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
Lucky WOW doesnt have any RMT, oh wait ..
Aion v3 "RELOADED" - A glimpse into the future of the MMO genre
Good job on the bots...if they really deleted that many. There sure were a lot of bots in Aion, but not too many. I mean. after you blocked four or 5, you were good for a whole day...It seems hard to believe that that added up to 27k bots over the past few months, but hey, they're industrious little bots so maybe. They deserve the benefit of the doubt, so good job if they did. I know there has been some improvement. And I know there are a lot of complaints about the game itself and content, but if they're having to spend all their time blocking bots, I say give them a break on updates until they can get that first plague down. No one is superhuman.
That said...some of you Aion maniacs need to settle down. Your game isn't perfect and you are no better than they people you attack when you fly off the handle just because someone points out a fault in your game. If no one points out the faults, they will never get fixed (even if they get pointed out in rude ways a lot of the time). Loyalty is great and all, but dang. MMO players might not (stereotypically >.>)have live social skills, but you should at least have some on the internet. To attack someone so veraciously for disagreeing with you would be unacceptable in real life and it is on the internet too. Geez...haven't you seen those Cyber-bullying commercials with JoJo?
Don't be an idiot.
I'm 100 percent sure hes not. The only people that are delusional are the ones still playing Aion. Not because the game is bad but because of the track record of NCsoft in the past. let me explain
I remember when I played Lineage 2 back in Chronicles 2 im not sure if you were there or not but they posted up on official forums saying " we are banning all botters" ... " the other day we banned 29,000 bot accounts" . What you have to keep in mind here is that they might not actually be banning anything. This could be just PR spin to retain current subscribers.
If you are right I will come back in here and pubically apologize for trolling but going by NCsofts given record over the years what they claim I wouldn't hold to a huge grain of salt because we have seen the same PR spin when lineage 2 launched and look where that game is now its infested with bots.
I would give you a guest pass to SWOTR, but then I wouldn't be able to find a way to live with myself afterwards....
im extremely pleased with ncsoft action against bot.
I feel at least i contributed to aion's success.
All you botters beware.
uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view
An interesting update on the status of the game and the current priorities.
Don't be an idiot.
I'm 100 percent sure hes not. The only people that are delusional are the ones still playing Aion. Not because the game is bad but because of the track record of NCsoft in the past. let me explain
I remember when I played Lineage 2 back in Chronicles 2 im not sure if you were there or not but they posted up on official forums saying " we are banning all botters" ... " the other day we banned 29,000 bot accounts" . What you have to keep in mind here is that they might not actually be banning anything. This could be just PR spin to retain current subscribers.
If you are right I will come back in here and pubically apologize for trolling but going by NCsofts given record over the years what they claim I wouldn't hold to a huge grain of salt because we have seen the same PR spin when lineage 2 launched and look where that game is now its infested with bots.
I'm glad there's still people like you, clear minded and immune to carbage companies hype and lies.
It gives me a warm feeling to know that even I'm toxicated by this evil mindcapturing company and playing their product, you hold the beacon of truth high and are better than the rest of us. And your dedication to warn possible future users is just admirable.
I don't know where I would be if you didn't tell me that I'm playing bad game and not to mention a one where I'm the only human. Although, I have to admire all those programs that have passed the Turing-test and seem like humans.
I would like to ask you a favor, please sort these people out too. I've got a strong feeling, that their game might be a crappy one too. Please, act before their delusional souls are lost forever!
Thank you.