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https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/668861
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – November 18
• ESO Store and Account System for maintenance – November 19, 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC) - 6:00PM EST (23:00 UTC)
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https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/668861
Please help me understand bots
Yasha
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So recently I have been seeing these groups of characters- about 5 or so- that seem to all have the same preset look and wear starter gear and they all follow one character in a line whenever they move. I've have also seen other threads complaining about these as "bots" such as http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/94323/gm-needed-asap-send-gm-to-hollow-city-in-coldharbour/p1 : the pics in that thread are pretty much exactly what I have seen in game myself.
So what I don't understand is what are they - and why are they? Each of those characters represents one account right? So that is about $60 plus $15/month each. I presume they are being multiboxed by one person given how they move, but what is the point of doing that? Why would someone spend $400 or so plus a potential ongoing cost of $75 per month or more to do that?
So what I don't understand is what are they - and why are they? Each of those characters represents one account right? So that is about $60 plus $15/month each. I presume they are being multiboxed by one person given how they move, but what is the point of doing that? Why would someone spend $400 or so plus a potential ongoing cost of $75 per month or more to do that?
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Sarenia✭✭✭✭✭Some are just players without scruples using scripts and/or purchased software to bot. It's a way to get wealth and power faster for their main. Currently there are some weaknesses in the public API that are being abused to map and travel to, or warp to the static harvest nodes.
Many of them however are run by criminals using stolen credit card information to purchase burner accounts, or compromised accounts stolen from players. They automate characters to gather loot and/or harvestables, then offload these to NPC merchants in bulk. Typically the gold from this is then sold on websites.
Legality aside, some of those websites are legitimately looking to exchange gold for real money, but many others try to fish for your credit card information or account data. In the end, none of them are trustworthy.Edited by Sarenia on May 8, 2014 1:11PM[beta_group_85b_9]3 -
zaria✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭The equally equipped low level ones in groups with random character names are the one run by criminals.
Bots run by players will have decent names and gear and will just behave veird.
They will be harder to spot unless you watch them over time.Grinding just make you go in circles.
Asking ZoS for nerfs is as stupid as asking for close air support from the death star.2 -
Yasha✭✭✭✭Some are just players without scruples using scripts and/or purchased software to bot. It's a way to get wealth and power faster for their main. Currently there are some weaknesses in the public API that are being abused to map and travel to, or warp to the static harvest nodes.
Many of them however are run by criminals using stolen credit card information to purchase burner accounts, or compromised accounts stolen from players. They automate characters to gather loot and/or harvestables, then offload these to NPC merchants in bulk. Typically the gold from this is then sold on websites.
Legality aside, some of those websites are legitimately looking to exchange gold for real money, but many others try to fish for your credit card information or account data. In the end, none of them are trustworthy.
So is the former case of a player willing to spend a lot of money to gear up her main quickly considered ok (not a bannable offense), while the second case of actual "gold farmers/sellers" something that Zenimax will try to stop?
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Kililin✭✭✭✭No Goldseller company does legitimately purchase accounts, it would not be profitable.
Either its hacked accounts or paid with stolen CC Info or some other kind of fraud.
Even if the account stays only online for a few hours it generates gold, and they stay online for days atm. Just check online how much they can earn, also it is not hard to find bot descriptions and usecases on youtube.
It can be pretty profitable.1 -
Yasha✭✭✭✭The equally equipped low level ones in groups with random character names are the one run by criminals.
Bots run by players will have decent names and gear and will just behave veird.
They will be harder to spot unless you watch them over time.
That seems logical, but players who just want to gear up their main might not care what their "farmer" toons were called right?
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Sarenia✭✭✭✭✭Some are just players without scruples using scripts and/or purchased software to bot. It's a way to get wealth and power faster for their main. Currently there are some weaknesses in the public API that are being abused to map and travel to, or warp to the static harvest nodes.
Many of them however are run by criminals using stolen credit card information to purchase burner accounts, or compromised accounts stolen from players. They automate characters to gather loot and/or harvestables, then offload these to NPC merchants in bulk. Typically the gold from this is then sold on websites.
Legality aside, some of those websites are legitimately looking to exchange gold for real money, but many others try to fish for your credit card information or account data. In the end, none of them are trustworthy.
So is the former case of a player willing to spend a lot of money to gear up her main quickly considered ok (not a bannable offense), while the second case of actual "gold farmers/sellers" something that Zenimax will try to stop?Nothing involving third party scripts/programs to automate a character is considered okay. Any such abuse will get someone wabbajacked with a banhammer.[beta_group_85b_9]0 -
Yasha✭✭✭✭No Goldseller company does legitimately purchase accounts, it would not be profitable.
Either its hacked accounts or paid with stolen CC Info or some other kind of fraud.
Even if the account stays only online for a few hours it generates gold, and they stay online for days atm. Just check online how much they can earn, also it is not hard to find bot descriptions and usecases on youtube.
It can be pretty profitable.
Yes this is what mainly confused me, I thought the cost of the game+sub would be too high for farmers to make a profit on gold sales.
In terms of fraud, could there really be so many stolen accounts at this early stage though?
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zaria✭✭✭✭✭
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I would guess they will use their main to do the farming as its has best stats and not make an alt for it. If you make an caracter and name him jioisdosjdosfd you are likely to be reported as an bot so why be stupid.The equally equipped low level ones in groups with random character names are the one run by criminals.
Bots run by players will have decent names and gear and will just behave veird.
They will be harder to spot unless you watch them over time.
That seems logical, but players who just want to gear up their main might not care what their "farmer" toons were called right?
Saw some bots some days ago, they used random sentences as names probably to avoid getting trapped.
Yes on the other front ZOS uses various ways to get rid of bots, both in game GM and automated systems, probably in a combination, GM find bot spots so they can set up automated systems to trap them, this moved bots to less profitable places.Grinding just make you go in circles.
Asking ZoS for nerfs is as stupid as asking for close air support from the death star.0 -
ozgod22_eso✭✭✭So recently I have been seeing these groups of characters- about 5 or so- that seem to all have the same preset look and wear starter gear and they all follow one character in a line whenever they move. I've have also seen other threads complaining about these as "bots" such as http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/94323/gm-needed-asap-send-gm-to-hollow-city-in-coldharbour/p1 : the pics in that thread are pretty much exactly what I have seen in game myself.
So what I don't understand is what are they - and why are they? Each of those characters represents one account right? So that is about $60 plus $15/month each. I presume they are being multiboxed by one person given how they move, but what is the point of doing that? Why would someone spend $400 or so plus a potential ongoing cost of $75 per month or more to do that?
Technically a bot is a character run by an automated program, a script. Usually people will bot for a number of reasons, but usually: 1) they are gold farmers who are farming resources or items to sell; or 2) they are powerlevellers who don't want to level their own toon so pay someone to do it. Botting is basically just automating functions in game so you don't have to do it, for time reasons. Every MMO prohibits botting because you're not allowed to automate your character. Blizzard has broken some addons in WoW because they did too much automation.
There's a difference between botting and multiboxing. Multiboxing is controlling multiple toons using multiboxing software. These may not be bots but may be controlled by 1 person sending keystrokes from one toon to the other/s. I'm not sure what Zenimax's policy on multiboxing is - in WoW they allow multiboxers as long as they are not controlled by automated scripts and as long as they are from different accounts. I'm sure it's in Zenimax's EULA whether they permit multiboxing or not.
What we see in the dungeons and in ESO are multiboxed bots - multiple non-player controlled characters run by scripts to do automated things like run in predefined path killing things, or waiting at bosses for spawns. These things are 99.9% farming resources, gold or xp.
Why would people pay the money? If they are farming gold or resources the real money they get from selling gold to players is probably far in excess of that. Unfortunately, gold farming is a significant of the microeconomy of countries like China. It used to be they paid peasants 30 cents a day to do this, now they have bots that they don't have to pay at all.
And if they aren't farming gold, they are just lazy players that don't want to take the time to level their toons by themselves, or gather the gold/resources by themselves. It's a problem, and has been for MMOs everywhere.
Edited by ozgod22_eso on May 8, 2014 1:57PM1 -
Darlgon✭✭✭✭✭
✭No Goldseller company does legitimately purchase accounts, it would not be profitable.
Either its hacked accounts or paid with stolen CC Info or some other kind of fraud.
Even if the account stays only online for a few hours it generates gold, and they stay online for days atm. Just check online how much they can earn, also it is not hard to find bot descriptions and usecases on youtube.
It can be pretty profitable.
Yes this is what mainly confused me, I thought the cost of the game+sub would be too high for farmers to make a profit on gold sales.
In terms of fraud, could there really be so many stolen accounts at this early stage though?
You missed what your quoted responder said, plus what @Sarenia started out stating. I bolded for emphasis. Since the CC info is stolen, it costs the farmers nothing. But the cost to ZoS to chase them..Power level to CP160 in a week:
Where is the end game? You just played it.
Why don't I have 300+ skill points? Because you skipped content along the way.
Where is new content? Sigh.0 -
Yasha✭✭✭✭No Goldseller company does legitimately purchase accounts, it would not be profitable.
Either its hacked accounts or paid with stolen CC Info or some other kind of fraud.
Even if the account stays only online for a few hours it generates gold, and they stay online for days atm. Just check online how much they can earn, also it is not hard to find bot descriptions and usecases on youtube.
It can be pretty profitable.
Yes this is what mainly confused me, I thought the cost of the game+sub would be too high for farmers to make a profit on gold sales.
In terms of fraud, could there really be so many stolen accounts at this early stage though?
You missed what your quoted responder said, plus what @Sarenia started out stating. I bolded for emphasis. Since the CC info is stolen, it costs the farmers nothing. But the cost to ZoS to chase them..
Surely there are more profitable ways to use stolen cc info if you are a crim? But yes I did read what they said about it and don't doubt that it happens. Its very sad to think about actually.0 -
Yasha✭✭✭✭ozgod22_eso wrote: »
Technically a bot is a character run by an automated program, a script. Usually people will bot for a number of reasons, but usually: 1) they are gold farmers who are farming resources or items to sell; or 2) they are powerlevellers who don't want to level their own toon so pay someone to do it. Botting is basically just automating functions in game so you don't have to do it, for time reasons. Every MMO prohibits botting because you're not allowed to automate your character. Blizzard has broken some addons in WoW because they did too much automation.
There's a difference between botting and multiboxing. Multiboxing is controlling multiple toons using multiboxing software. These may not be bots but may be controlled by 1 person sending keystrokes from one toon to the other/s. I'm not sure what Zenimax's policy on multiboxing is - in WoW they allow multiboxers as long as they are not controlled by automated scripts and as long as they are from different accounts. I'm sure it's in Zenimax's EULA whether they permit multiboxing or not.
What we see in the dungeons and in ESO are multiboxed bots - multiple non-player controlled characters run by scripts to do automated things like run in predefined path killing things, or waiting at bosses for spawns. These things are 99.9% farming resources, gold or xp.
Why would people pay the money? If they are farming gold or resources the real money they get from selling gold to players is probably far in excess of that. Unfortunately, gold farming is a significant of the microeconomy of countries like China. It used to be they paid peasants 30 cents a day to do this, now they have bots that they don't have to pay at all.
And if they aren't farming gold, they are just lazy players that don't want to take the time to level their toons by themselves, or gather the gold/resources by themselves. It's a problem, and has been for MMOs everywhere.
Nice breakdown of this @ozgod22_eso, I have played quite a few mmos but I have never seen people running around like this with what appears to be multiboxed bots everywhere, although I usually focus on pvp so maybe that's why I missed them? Or does it seem to you (and other readers) that there is just an unusually high number of these multiboxed bots in ESO compared to other games?
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7788b14_ESO✭✭✭Just do a youtube search on gold sellers or gold farmers and see the interviews with the people who actually do it to understand what's going on.1 -
Rift was overrun by bots soon after it launched, similar to what is happening in ESO (although it was even more noticeable in Rift). So far as "boxed" bots go, it seems to me that this is far more prevalent in ESO than in any other MMO that I've played. Usually bots run solo, simply because it makes them harder to detect visually.I have played quite a few mmos but I have never seen people running around like this with what appears to be multiboxed bots everywhere, although I usually focus on pvp so maybe that's why I missed them? Or does it seem to you (and other readers) that there is just an unusually high number of these multiboxed bots in ESO compared to other games?
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mips_winnt✭✭✭I've have also seen other threads complaining about these as "bots" such as http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/94323/gm-needed-asap-send-gm-to-hollow-city-in-coldharbour/p1
I have an easy, stress-free way to deal with bots and botters...
They don't bother me so I don't bother them, works out fine for both parties.
Edited by mips_winnt on May 8, 2014 3:16PM2 -
jpp✭✭✭So recently I have been seeing these groups of characters- about 5 or so- that seem to all have the same preset look and wear starter gear and they all follow one character in a line whenever they move. I've have also seen other threads complaining about these as "bots" such as http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/94323/gm-needed-asap-send-gm-to-hollow-city-in-coldharbour/p1 : the pics in that thread are pretty much exactly what I have seen in game myself.
So what I don't understand is what are they - and why are they? Each of those characters represents one account right? So that is about $60 plus $15/month each. I presume they are being multiboxed by one person given how they move, but what is the point of doing that? Why would someone spend $400 or so plus a potential ongoing cost of $75 per month or more to do that?
There is simple explanation - some people just do not want to level up and prefer to buy leveled character. So they decide to pay for game plus they pay someone (unfortunately it is not some private person, but usually gold seller company) for leveling and making party is easier then manually leveling each character. This is actually not harmful in my opinion, but I guess this forum will not allow to discuss it.
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ozgod22_eso✭✭✭Nice breakdown of this @ozgod22_eso, I have played quite a few mmos but I have never seen people running around like this with what appears to be multiboxed bots everywhere, although I usually focus on pvp so maybe that's why I missed them? Or does it seem to you (and other readers) that there is just an unusually high number of these multiboxed bots in ESO compared to other games?
My anecdotal experience is that there's a higher amount of them in the open world than in other games I have seen. That said these days in games like WoW Blizzard are taking the levelling bots out of the equation by allowing people to buy level 90s directly from them, which removes the need to use a third party powerlevelling service for grinding quests or gold. SWTOR had very few multiboxed bots compared to ESO.
Where you will see bots in WoW is in PvP battlegrounds where they are grinding honor or in dungeons grinding justice points. Some of the WoW BGs can be half filled with bots, but they are not multiboxed usually as Blizzard removed the /follow command in battlegrounds.
There's usually a lot more bots at the launch of any game as these nefarious companies are stockpiling resources to sell on gold selling websites later on. They tend to drop down in quantity after a while. I'm sure a lot of them were taking advantage of the 30 free days of game time too.
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Yasha✭✭✭✭
Yes exactly! This is the first time I have noticed these multiboxing bots, at least in such numbers. That's what has sparked my interest to try and understand more deeply what's going on and why it is different in this game - I would have thought this game would have had less of this type of issue because of the sub+game price and also given the lack of auction house and low gold drops.beowulfsshield wrote: »
Rift was overrun by bots soon after it launched, similar to what is happening in ESO (although it was even more noticeable in Rift). So far as "boxed" bots go, it seems to me that this is far more prevalent in ESO than in any other MMO that I've played. Usually bots run solo, simply because it makes them harder to detect visually.I have played quite a few mmos but I have never seen people running around like this with what appears to be multiboxed bots everywhere, although I usually focus on pvp so maybe that's why I missed them? Or does it seem to you (and other readers) that there is just an unusually high number of these multiboxed bots in ESO compared to other games?
To clarify- in some other mmos I have seen multiboxers in battleground-type pvp and individual bots or farmers in pve, but I don't recall numerous multibox bots running around everywhere in pve like in eso.
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