Firstly this does not have anything to do with Game Guard. Even in beta we had a way to disable it (and many done this in order to get XFire working). It is, as it's always been, a useless bit of junk.
The problem with NC Soft is NC Soft. I didn't play L2 beyond the closed beta, but I've certainly heard the stories just as most of you have. Now I'm seeing it in action.
Aion, as we know, is infested with bots. The spamming itself was reduced, but the botting is as bad as ever. There were bots (and spammers) in Aion in the CLOSED BETA. Additionally, some of the bots from the Head Start are still kicking today.
Now we're seeing entire guilds of nothing but bots. Dwarven Kingdom is a small one that exists on both Yustiel and Marchutan, both started by a bot with the same character name. Then we have More, comprised of two bots at this time. Then, with 20 members / bots to its name, is Koum.
These are just off the top of my head. I'm certain that there are more, and as we see with Dwarven Kingdom these bot guilds can exist on more than one server.
This is made worse by several players in the community basically enabling the existence of bots by insulting or laughing at anyone who mentions reporting them. Then they go on to say that the bots "aren't hurting anybody" and they actively defend the bots (!!) by saying things like "if people want to bot then it's not your business" (that's actually a quote) and "if it's not affecting you directly then what's your problem with them (ed: 'them' = 'bots')?"
Of course, the ultimate enabler is NC Soft themselves. I've read stories, but a reasonable person likes to think that such stories are exaggerations created by a small group with an agenda. We see it all the time here at MMORPG.com. Now I would be foolish to not take those stories seriously; I can even understand why some conspiracy theories have formed about NC Soft being in some form of partnership with the botters.
It's like I said above, some of the bots that existed in Head Start are still active today on Yustiel. How many /AutoReportHunting repots have these bots received between Head Start and today? Yet they continue to exist and thrive. They fill the Broker (aka "Auction House") with goods (including the occasional gold item drop), they farm nodes, they farm mob vender trash for coin. Hell, as we see, they even form guilds. All of which goes toward collecting in-game currency which is used to fuel their spam-based business, which itself is known to steal credit card numbers.
Yet NC Soft does absolutely nothing about these bots, and (certainly a vocal segment of) the players in this game seem to think that the bots are perfectly okay to have around. The fact that the same bots from beta and head start exist today simply adds salt to the wound.
NC Soft's website likes to spew out positive PR about their actions, but it may as well be posted by bots. There is nothing happening in Aion to take care of the problem - they are in fact encouraging it by their stubborn inaction - and I'll admit that, in this case, I should have paid more attention to the forum comments.
Peace out.
Well..aside from Guild Wars, which I've played, the only other game I played was Lineage II, as you state, LII had massive amounts of bots, this was a few years ago, I reported them for months, they took over dungeons, told you to get out of the dungeon, if you didn't they would train you til you either left, or fought them. If you killed a few of them , of course your name would go red, if your name went red, each time you died, you would lose items on the ground. They would pick up the armor, jewellry whatever, and start selling it over the General chat.
When I played you were in constant competition with the bots, who if you killed your mob at long range, and didn't get there fast enough to pick up your loot, would saunter over and steal it off your mob. These same bots criss crossed the landscape about every 2 minutes or so, killing everything in sight, so good luck with completing a quest.
In the end I just got fed up, when you see a whole town full of bots standing waiting silently for their next run across the landscape, and you have reported all of them many times over the months with no results, and it interferes majorly with anything you are trying to do ingame. Its time to move on.
I did. I wrote a letter to them, a not so nice letter stating I wouldn't be playing any of their games ever again, I got a response from a rather smug sounding GM. I guess as some people think, perhaps NCSoft considers these game hogs, and parasites as legit customers. Thats fine they'll never get another cent of my money...after that experience. Which is why I haven't bothered to even look at screens for Aion, I knew what to expect, am already hearing reports everywhere about the botting and spamming, so yeah..no money goes in that direction.
Sat Oct 31 2009 9:26PM"if it's not affecting you directly then what's your problem with them (ed: 'them' = 'bots')?"
I get that all the time. A good response is to say "they do they make me lag" or " Why do you think there is a 7 hour queue x-x"
@Cendharia
Tell the GMs that if they can bot they can also play without playing. I know more then a handful of people who bot and hack so that they don't need to pay. Thats right, the creators of bots know how to hack effectively . Therefore the boters are not so much of customers now are they..
Sun Nov 01 2009 1:46AMI've yet to hear of a single player give a supportive comment towards bots. If they are mentioned in a public chat channel or in a forum they are hated on endlessly, with several people threatening to quit if the situation isn't soon resolved.
I'm not saying your lying, I'm just saying my experience with player reaction to bots has been very different. There is no enabling going on in the community from what I've seen.
Mon Nov 02 2009 10:03AMActually it's good to see that someone has had an experience different from my own. My point of view was getting fairly negative towards the general community.
If you look at this post:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3188136#3188136
You'll see an example of it here at MMORPG.com, which is just sad.
Mon Nov 02 2009 11:10AMIt has become so bad on Lumiel that you have a hard time finding an area/channel at any time of day where there are no macro farmers, getting quests done has become "can I kill this before that bot kill steals it," and if you find a resource and start harvesting, the harvesting bots run up and stand there and harvest the rest so fast you have no chance.
I wanted to buy one krall ration the other day to finish a quest and one of the bots we have all been reporting had 200 of them for sale - I refused.
I read the Editor's Note, "Speaking With Your Wallet" before your blog post, and you know...I think it's time to visit my Aion account page.
Fri Nov 06 2009 3:50PMI had that happen with an Aether resource node. The bot was parked on the wall so that it could easily go to and fro, and I didn't see it until it had already flown over to take the node. Meh.
I don't see how some people ignore this stuff or even accept it so easily.
Sat Nov 07 2009 8:50PMMMORPG.com writes:
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