this has been a good read, please continue.

Moto wrote:My input: It would be VERY easy to eliminate the amount of bots that there are; not stop botting completely, as that's near impossible, but significantly decrease the numbers. Will they do this? No. Why? Money.

In the past Jagex used to have awesome updates that most players looked forward to. Now, most updates are crap.

So, this is my byebye until 'Insight Venture Partners' say byebye. Guild Wars 2 - Here I fucking come.

BYEBYE!

(deleted the list to make it smaller)

I totally agree, they could reduce the botting numbers significantly, it's not really hard to do.. Even I know ways they could do it. But ofcourse, they just want the money.

About the updates; I agree again. None of the above updates have made me think.. "Oh wow, that really improved the game."

Guild wars 2 XD

I'd like to know these ways.

Well the main one would be.. Making random events TRULY random, and making them unbottable such as.;
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Other than that, It could be used as someone reports someone else, they have to fill it out if they get reported, and once you've filled it out, you can't be re-reported for 5 hours? I don't know it's up to Jagex to fix the minor detail. Yes, I know the downside of this would be that popular players such as.. Zezima will continue to be reported as botting, but there are ways to get around that such as.. "Has this person posted on the RSof in the last 24 hours?" "Yes - not botting" "No - Send that to them^"
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

(spent like 5 mins on the pictures, so they're not great I know, hopefully it shows of a way/ways to stop them.)

Hmm.. What else is there.. How about someone at Jagex employed to search for bots on each world? IP track them, ban them, ban the next account they go on. And what not.

Do something similar as to what they do at Blizzard, Authenticators. Not entirely sure how this would stop botting, but i'm sure it could be tweaked to help, even if it's just.. "Oh this account has a mobile authenticator, it's unlikely to be a bot" that's more for account security though..

Well, that's a start anyway.

Basically you just want captchas to exist again.
Alright, I don't have anything against that suggestion.

To be honest, Jagex shouldn't've brought Wilderness back. It was a stupid market scheme and I hate them.

I don't think captcha's are a very good solution myself.

Main reason is that if someone finds the captcha hard to read, it would be incredibly difficult to add the voice option through Java coding.

Bots could get past the captcha's these days as well. Using the client they use, the bot could easily do a text recognition on the text that appears and then input that into the box, plus with captcha's you only have to get 1 of the words correct.

Big no no to having to fill it out as soon as someone reports you. Imaging the crashing at Bosses from using it and the hassle it would cause legitimate players who would rather not talk during their slayer tasks and concentrate on getting them done.

IP Bans don't work. The majority of bot clients don't use the users IP or an overall server. Instead the clients are directed over anything and everything they can to try and prevent them from being traced. Not to mention that people can change their IP's and if someone was botting at university and they did happen to catch their IP address, everyone at the university would be banned from getting on. Same for normal households as well. It's the reason why they stopped giving out IP bans.

And if you ask how I know this, I have a friend at school who used to run loads of bots, I even used to try crash them on purpose to annoy him because he knew it would be me. I got him to tell me a fair bit of info on how they work and which bot busting methods were being patched by the owners.

Also, JAGEX have talked about mobile authenticators in the past, some sort of dongle that comes with a code and its USB, and after a certain number of days it asked you to reconnect it so it can put a new code in. The problem with these is that they can get lost or stolen, especially if you are a teenage kid at school and you do what most kids do and put everything from keyrings to keys to usb sticks to lighters to pens all on your keyring so you dont have to worry about them.

Sorry Owen, I'm not buying those solutions really.


I do however have one solution which I think would be pretty effective. The majority of bot owners will use email address' like "example001@hotmail.com" and "example002@hotmail.com". If say JAGEX caught 5 or so bots that all had very similar emails to log in, they could potentially estimate that there is also several other accounts with similar names and begin to investigate those accounts and try and get ahead of the creation of emails. If email providers decided to team up with JAGEX, they could also prevent certain names being created in the future with extra numbers on and help to close those email accounts being used. This would prove beneficial to the email providers because they would have more emails free for legitimate people to use if they wanted to.


The botting websites are really funny, I went through Google Search and managed to pick up a good 20 or more common sites. A few of them were the exact same botting software, I took down all the url address' and I also used Run Command on Windows to ping the url and get the IP address' of all the websites I had collected. The majority of them seem to be from the same countries and 1 in particular caught my eye because it said the server was in China, I was like hmmm...All JAGEX have to do is phone someone in the chinese government that deal with all the internet stuff like gold farming law and point it out and thats near enough a 100% garaunteed closure.

The China law doesn't stop them gold farming, there is a simple flaw in it that means that they are allowed to sell gold to other countries but just not to others in China. (I saw this awhile ago and it may have been changed, I'm not sure)

As for the authenticator, it wouldn't stop bots but it would improve security. But I don't see the need for it on Runescape because it's hard to get hacked if you use your brain while using the internet.

Not sure about anyone else, but I'm fucking tired of this thread. Whilst RuneScape does have its ups and downs, I really don't give a fuck what they do as long as I still extract my daily quota of fun from its now sagging maternal breasts. The infectious parasites that crawl their way betwixt the skin and the blood of this massive once non-converted but thrice disfigured beast can be seen beneath the surface; their cries of "Feed! Feed! Drain! Drain!" carry across the mountainous landscape of mine home. Echo, echo the sound of hope that is diminishing and as rare a sight as ever one saw but still a sight. Joyous with destiny, only then can he who travels become the cloak he wishes to wear.

Mr V wrote:I don't think captcha's are a very good solution myself.

Main reason is that if someone finds the captcha hard to read, it would be incredibly difficult to add the voice option through Java coding.

Bots could get past the captcha's these days as well. Using the client they use, the bot could easily do a text recognition on the text that appears and then input that into the box, plus with captcha's you only have to get 1 of the words correct.

Big no no to having to fill it out as soon as someone reports you. Imaging the crashing at Bosses from using it and the hassle it would cause legitimate players who would rather not talk during their slayer tasks and concentrate on getting them done.

Doesn't matter about the voice option, There's still the button "Refresh" and, there's no limit on how many times you can try? Not hard to get 1 right if you're a not a bot.

Captcha's are actually really difficult to bot, since there is so much variation, and "un-needed lines" in the text, which would at very least catch the noob-bots.

Like I said, they would have to tweak it for reports, that's not hard to do though. "Is this player in fighting a high leveled monster? (Yes) (No - send them the captcha)" They could easily program it that whatever the person is attacking is still "Theirs", so there would be no benefit of reporting someone for that purpose. They could make that work. I'm not saying it's perfect, but they could make it work.

IpBans don't work, I was saying that they could track other accounts through the same IP, pretty easy to catch Trading stuff between accounts. Which if they're goldselling, that's what I presume they do Bots -> "money" accounts -> Buyer, maybe I'm wrong on that doesn't matter. You can track from a bot, if there's any other people playing on the same IP, which there probably will be. All it would take is on the main page an article hinting at it.

You can download authenticators on your phone.

You can't really stop bots from emails though, there are hundreds of email providers, and I doubt Jagex is going to team up with them all.

And Yes invis, I am getting tired of this thread. >_>

Invisible349 wrote:Not sure about anyone else, but I'm fucking tired of this thread. Whilst RuneScape does have its ups and downs, I really don't give a fuck what they do as long as I still extract my daily quota of fun from its now sagging maternal breasts. The infectious parasites that crawl their way betwixt the skin and the blood of this massive once non-converted but thrice disfigured beast can be seen beneath the surface; their cries of "Feed! Feed! Drain! Drain!" carry across the mountainous landscape of mine home. Echo, echo the sound of hope that is diminishing and as rare a sight as ever one saw but still a sight. Joyous with destiny, only then can he who travels become the cloak he wishes to wear.

I stopped understand after "I really don't give a fuck."

Actually, the voice button does matter Owen, If you hadn't noticed, every single captcha has the option to play a voice for those who have reading problems. It would be unfair to those with slight difficulties to not be able to play the game due to the captcha's not having the functions they should have.

You also clearly don't get it. The bots these days aren't written in Visual Basic or C++ They are written in Java, there is so much more they can get past. A simple text recognition on the screen would be simple for them to do to answer the captcha's, all it would do it take a little longer for it to run through that process.

I was only using the boss fighting as one example, it would apply to anyone doing any slayer task, anyone doing any skill, duel arena the whole lot by your way of trying to implement it Owen.

Sorry Owen, Still not buying the captcha's concept. Theres no point trying to find a solution to bots if you haven't considered the problems it could cause and how to tackle those problems. Basically, you just want them to try chuck all these ideas in and hope they work without any planning.

Edit: I think JAGEX are fully aware of the various options that are open to them. The problem is they need to work out a way to not only stop the bots but stay ahead of them for a fair amount of time. They need to release some sort of mechanism which would be difficult for the bot companies to solve which would give JAGEX plenty of time to keep increasing the mechanism so they are always a few steps ahead. The big problem is working out which mechanism they should use and how they go about using it. I personally think JAGEX should download the clients for the big bot companies and begin taking apart the program to try get as much knowledge about the products as they can.


Yeah, Admittedly there are a huge number of email service providers and it would be difficult for them to team with them all but I can guarantee you that the majority of bots will use one of the following "hotmail", "yahoo", "gmail". Reason for this? Most bot users aren't terribly bright people and won't have heard of some of the more obscure email providers there are, nor would they bother looking for them. Also some of the other extensions come from hotmail and the others providers and all the companies/business' do is pay to have the extension change, the majority of the system will still direct through hotmail or whichever other provider they are using.


If you are getting tired of this thread, then stop posting on it. However, it seems to be the only main discussion that is on the forums at the moment.

The first CAPTCHAs were easily passed by bots because it was easier to fragment them into each respective character, but don't a lot of the newer ones use diagonal lines instead of distortion to foil bot programs these days?

As for the consequences of having a CAPTCHA system, I'm sure every single person on RS will complain about it either because it disrupts their playing or because they can't read what it is. The fine line between salvation and player satisfaction prevails.

The main point is, Jagex isn't trying ANYTHING. Where's the tester-bot prevention's? Why aren't they getting them past Alpha? Reason: they don't want to.

I don't actually think it would be hard to program the voice speaker for captcha, they're using voices more and more, look at Thunderous in Dungeoneering. Sure, they might have a load of work to do.. But botting is a huge problem.

I wouldn't be surprised if the gold selling companies don't have enough money stockpiled by now anyway.

And, Yes Invis, Captchas are getting more advanced, they can still be developed further. I don't think people will complain, Sure.. it might add 10-20 seconds to a few things, but if it stopped bots, nobody would care.. there's more complaining about bots on the forums than there would be about adding captchas.

The voice in Dungeoneering and such are scripted, Captchas will have to varry a lot more than 10-20 lines.

Warillusen wrote:The voice in Dungeoneering and such are scripted, Captchas will have to varry a lot more than 10-20 lines.

I know. I'm saying theoretically, it can be done.

There's no reason why they can't spell out the word? what's that.. 26 letters? If bots learn to tell which listen to the letter; they can vary the Variables with sound? Just like they do with the letters. No bot is going to be sophisticated enough to Listen to what letter it says then.

Alternative; The sound option isn't default for everyone? Why not the people who have reading problems have to tell Jagex they have reading problems to get the voice enabled? Since I doubt it's that many people.

The thing is, Runescape suffers from the same 'flaw' as other games that become popular. The updates become focused on the newer/younger/more 'casual' players instead of the older/mature/experienced/dedicated players, because, numbers wise, that's what looks better to them. Wow suffers from the same thing - things in the game becoming easier to get with less effort, and the things that take a long time to get/achieve are not sufficiently rewarded. And then the result is that the more experienced players become disgusted and leave, and only the 'gimme gimme, make it easier for me' players are left.

Owen wrote:Not quite sure what everyone has against blizzard, especially since they have..

- The most popular MMO of all time
- The best Servers in the world
- UNHACKABLE accounts
- A lack of botters in WoW.
- A Great customer support FREE phone line. (Had to call it the other day, took 5 mins)

Blizzard isn't as crappy as people say, but it's not that awesome either. If you ever play wow, you'll see that Blizzard is MUCH MORE focused on big profits than runescape. I mean, they use player subscription revenue to design buyable mounts for eg that cost ~$30 USD to buy to have on your account. Plus several 'extras' that you have to pay for to use. And to be honest, I'd be very disappointed if I started seeing this sort of tacky crap on Runescape.

Unfortunately, WoW isn't devoid of bots/botting (well i assume they're bots, or just really bored gold farmers) or gold farmers, however the impact of them is significantly less and there are many elements of the game that reduce the profits from mass farming resources, including that it's VERY easy to flood the market with one item and therefore diminish its value, and the fact that not every character can collect certain materials, and the locations and random spawning of resources make it less likely for it to be worth it to farm.

The WoW servers are ok.. idk how they compare to others (the constant crashing of Aussie servers on RS comes to mind..) but Blizzard refuse to make AUSTRALIAN SERVERS AHHH.

But yes, because of the huge push to enable everyone to have some sort of authenticator has reduced the instance of hacking A LOT. There's even apps for iphone and android for free. I know this seems small, but peace of mind is a great thing, and I would buy an RS authenticator or even app in a second even though I rarely play anymore just for the peace of mind. And to be honest, Runescape accounts are valuable, and worth stealing (or trying), so why not protect something valuable?

Also customer service probably isn't great.. a lot of people complain about it. But I think it's better than RS BUT only because the greater ability to finance it because of higher subscriptions. Wow you can get your account restored (once) after being hacked, if you mess up and lose a valuable item you can request to get it back. If you have a problem/bug in game or something goes wrong with your character, you can request a Blizz employee to actually contact you in game (mind you it can take hours of waiting). If you're in a group and something valuable drops and someone steals it, you can submit a ticket to Blizzard and they'll usually sort it out if they can. The instances of Jmods communicating with people in game is so uncommon it's screen-shot-worthy every time it does happen. I know a lot of people can say "this one time a jmod talked to me..." but, could every person say this? Could every person on the game be sure to have a direct response for any legitimate request?

I'm not saying "haha WoW is better than Runescape.." because there's still things I absolutely prefer in RS over wow, especially the fact that many achievements or accomplishments in RS actually *feel* like an accomplishment, and in most cases this isn't diminished with time. In wow, you can work to have the very best gear you can possibly get... and then the next expansion comes out and it means absolutely nothing anymore. And 2 months later people can go back and get that same gear you spent months collecting very easily. And Runescape isn't all about combat, you can get out of the game whatever you like, do different things that actually feel different, rather than in wow there's combat, and there's skills the are a means to enhance your combat...
Oh and on wow.. I CAN'T TALK TO PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN EUROPE AHHHH! Runescape you can pretty much run into anyone from anywhere in the world (if you hop worlds a bit).

I've thought a few times of coming back to rs just casually or something, but the rumours about the insanity of bots just puts me off. I'm huge about collecting resources for myself, and if that becomes impossible or just not fun because of bot competition, what's the point? And that's the main problem with the game I think, though I guess they had their reasons; the trade restrictions etc meant that all the whiney, ill-tempered kids who just wanted to kill each other and make money, and had absolutely no appreciation for the fact that not everyone else wants the same thing out of the game as them, since they don't need to collect resources or train skills, that bots are not a problem, were the ones that quit the game when trading restrictions existed, and all the mature players thought "wow, this is peaceful and a so much nicer game to play!" or even "ok, there's some things I don't like, but I can get along with this system." Yes it came with downsides, but I think it was a much better system, from my point of view, than free trade and bots ruining everything.

You know, the content arguement has been around forever. I remember back in 2006/7/8 people complaining about content in one form or another. Though this was usually about the lack of high-level content updates; which I don't know if this has been improved or not, but was, at the time, another example of developers focusing on the less experienced more casual players.

Yeah once again my really long post (and probably outdated by stuffs I dont' know) I do every few months (or half a dozen) is evidence that I"m bored
(And I like writing pretending like I know stuffs )

fuck off im not reading all that

Eshtaol wrote:
I've thought a few times of coming back to rs just casually or something, but the rumours about the insanity of bots just puts me off. I'm huge about collecting resources for myself, and if that becomes impossible or just not fun because of bot competition, what's the point? And that's the main problem with the game I think, though I guess they had their reasons; the trade restrictions etc meant that all the whiney, ill-tempered kids who just wanted to kill each other and make money, and had absolutely no appreciation for the fact that not everyone else wants the same thing out of the game as them, since they don't need to collect resources or train skills, that bots are not a problem, were the ones that quit the game when trading restrictions existed, and all the mature players thought "wow, this is peaceful and a so much nicer game to play!" or even "ok, there's some things I don't like, but I can get along with this system." Yes it came with downsides, but I think it was a much better system, from my point of view, than free trade and bots ruining everything.

It's terrible don't come back. Resource skills are impossible except for the ones that you can't steal from. Though once this one time Jagex got rid of majority of bots for 3 whole days. I woodcutted yews and it felt so great. I got 7k yew logs in that time.

I've moved onto another mmorpg.


Team Fortress 2.

i should play that some time

Fucking Hat Fortress.

Eshtaol wrote:
Also customer service probably isn't great.. a lot of people complain about it. But I think it's better than RS BUT only because the greater ability to finance it because of higher subscriptions. Wow you can get your account restored (once) after being hacked, if you mess up and lose a valuable item you can request to get it back. If you have a problem/bug in game or something goes wrong with your character, you can request a Blizz employee to actually contact you in game (mind you it can take hours of waiting). If you're in a group and something valuable drops and someone steals it, you can submit a ticket to Blizzard and they'll usually sort it out if they can. The instances of Jmods communicating with people in game is so uncommon it's screen-shot-worthy every time it does happen. I know a lot of people can say "this one time a jmod talked to me..." but, could every person say this? Could every person on the game be sure to have a direct response for any legitimate request?

The Customer service on wow is a hell of a lot better than RS though, for one Blizzard actually have call centres you can call and get help from(I had to do that when I accidentally made a new WoW account instead of adding membership to my acc [long story]) but it was all sorted in about 10 minutes.

And I agree with Waril unfortunately; RuneScape as it stands isn't worth playing. Sure, maybe it would be worth playing 30 minutes a day; but the amount of days to get something done playing 30 minutes a day just isn't worth it either.

Hat fortress!

Cyrus44 wrote:fuck off im not reading all that

At least she's on the forums again ^.^ <3

Till next month.