If botting really had slowed down I should see the price of ISK on 3rd party web sites rise. Of course, that assumes that demand remains the same. So I put together my own index of 12 ISK sellers and 14 ISK-selling sites to begin tracking the price. Just in time because CCP Stillman had a couple of interesting tweets about CCP Pelegro.
This news just in. @CCP_Peligro is back from vacation. Botters better watch out. Quite the ban wave incoming.
— CCP Stillman (@CCP_Stillman) July 29, 2013
Seems like some botters didn't get the memo yesterday that @CCP_Peligro is back. Bannings will continue until morale improves
— CCP Stillman (@CCP_Stillman) July 30, 2013
Looking at the numbers, this week is way up there in terms of major stings we've done in the past. Will be interesting to see the impact.
— CCP Stillman (@CCP_Stillman) August 3, 2013
Doing some investigation showed that Questor users were having some issues. Apparently CCP had figured out a way to ban some of their accounts...
31 July - Questor
Gray
12 accounts down the drain. This was the funniest ban set in my botting history... Banned accounts were from a "backup" farm - i.e. newly created chars in training, ones that never have been botting actually. Each on its own proxy, paid with real money. None of my real botting accounts were touched. Ban mail says the following:ferox2552
This makes me wonder like... what the hell? Buying skill books and adding skills to queue is detectable / not safe anymore?Quote:
You were detected as using a modified client; all of your accounts were subsequently permanently banned.
http://community.eveonline.com/pnp/eula.asp
6. CONDUCT
A. Specifically Restricted Conduct
3. You may not use your own or any third-party software, macros or other stored rapid keystrokes or other patterns of play that facilitate acquisition of items, currency, objects, character attributes, rank or status at an accelerated rate when compared with ordinary Game play. You may not rewrite or modify the user interface or otherwise manipulate data in any way to acquire items, currency, objects, character attributes or beneficial actions not actually acquired or achieved in the Game.
4. You may not use the Software, or any information accessible through the System, to bypass the System login architecture or create or provide any other means through which the System may be accessed and/or the Game may be played by others, as, for example, through server emulators.
http://community.eveonline.com/pnp/terms.asp
21. You will not attempt to decipher, hack into or interfere with any transmissions to or from the EVE Online servers, nor will you try to create or use any third party add-ons, extras or tools for the game.
Same story here.. some only skilling, all down the drain. Havent figured out why yetGray
Ohh nooo... don't tell me we are returning back to manual char training :(ferox2552
I would rather think it is hardware related. Going on holidays tomorrow so will dive into it in 2 weeks :)Gray
Daaaaamn it... If it's really hardware-related (i.e. RG doesn't do its job properly), then they just ban us all during these 2 weeks1 August
SamePerson
"You were detected as using a modified client; all of your accounts were subsequently permanently banned."
Same here.ferox2552
Did anyone get banned without automated skill support to rule this out?SamePerson
Yes, I didn't use it.Gray
I'm just using my provider's IPs - thank godness, I've finally found a provider with lotsa IPs available for a funny price. Of course, someone have probably used all of them before, but this is not the case. My other toons using the IPs from the same range are alive. Some of them were registered before banned ones, others are even younger than banned ones. All banned chars were 20-25 days old. I guess CCP need some time to accumulate statistics... I just wonder WHICH statistics!Gray
So which your chars did they ban? Ones actively botting?Ganondorf
Geez, ppl who have got banned, let's compare details... so we can avoid any future bans! Because, if it's not about auto skill training, then I'm lost... how the heck can they discover chars which are not even botting yet? Pefhaps, these pricks have obtained an ability to track payment source (virtual currency wallet etc)?
Gray i think it's just the number of clients running at once, they illegally inspect your windows processes to determine how many you're running. You said you had 7 on the same pc, that will raise a flag.Gray
Then they should have banned all my botting accounts as well (because THESE are running in packs of 6 per PC) - but they didn't. Backup accounts, OTOH, are logged in one by one.2 August
SamePerson
I have a really small pack, botting in same time in same PC. Some of them is banned, some of them is alive. RG, Proxy. There was no difference between their use(banned accs was older than other on a few months). Maybe I'll get ban of the rest soon. I'll let you know if it will happen.Gray
If you make a payment for all of your lost accounts via one virtual debit card(or whatever like that), obviously they can track this.
Indeed. But there is are also other ways to pay. For example, here in .ru we can pay using such thing as Webmoney (kind of e-cash). CCP doesn't need our roubles, so they use a robot which accepts WM and sends them dollars/euro/pounds/whatever they need. Robot "knows" our account IDs, but CCP don't - so we can freely pay for any number of account using the same e-wallet. However, during the last month or two they have started to use another robot (different than before)... So I wonder: maybe the new (current) one sends them payer info as well? It would mean an epic fail for meAxleand 12 more wasted accounts in the near future...
My Jita trader was banned 2 days ago. No RMT, no macroses or bots - just RG + proxie. Just got an answer to my petition:Gray
You were detected as using a modified client; all of your accounts were subsequently permanently banned.Seems they now can detect RG in some situations.
IIRC, Ferox doesn't use RG, but rather his own module, and he was banned as well... Also, I'm using RG for all of my chars. Normally, I train 24 backup chars daily, logging them one after another. This means they were logged this way before the ban day, too - all of them. Half of them was hit, the other half did not. The only difference between them was creation date (banned ones were created between 5 Jul and 10 Jul), survived ones were younger. Go figure...Judging by the chatter something big happened right after CCP Peligro came back from vacation. I'm not sure but I don't think the botters themselves have figured it out. Maybe the devs have but I don't know.
What's the impact on the RMT trade? From past experience any major CCP sting takes about 2 weeks before we see an impact on the price of 3rd party ISK. In this case I started seeing an impact about one week after CCP Stillman's first tweet. As of the 14 ISK selling sites I'm monitoring, 8 sites raised their prices by an average of 11.7% with one site decreasing its price by 7.7%.
The story behind the site that lowered its price is interesting. One of the ISK sellers I'm tracking actually runs three sites, AvatarBank, Koala Credits and In Game Delivery. Watching these three sites usually gives me an idea when something is happening because of the price games the company plays. When ISK gets tight one or two of the sites raises the price to a point that no one would purchase ISK. I'm waiting for all three sites to raise the price, but as of last night the price of ISK on AvatarBank jumped 18.8% to $29.07/billion, Koala Credits 29.2% to $31.62/billion and In Game Delivery dropped 7.7% to $24/billion. For comparison, using the average price of a PLEX sold in Jita Saturday (542,750,000 ISK)
-->, purchasing through CCP cost $32.23/billion.
Once the dust settles I'd love to see a dev blog come out describing exactly how big this latest sting was. But if CCP Peligro is still working some leads, I'm willing to wait.
I wonder why does anyone RMT when official RMT is just 10-15% more expensive.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder why would a botter pay for his accounts.
No idea why anyone would buy ISK from a botter and take the risk, but I expect that botters are careful not to do anything in game that connects "clean" accounts to dirty ones. If they doled out plex to dozens of accounts from one that later got banned, it would probably flag the rest of them as suspicious. If you're botting for ISK, then paying for a bot account is a better return on investment than plex; if you're botting for RMT, then paying real money is just the cost of doing business and keeping your various nefarious accounts separated.
ReplyDeleteI would guess that the current wave of bannings has something to do with CCP's recent efforts to tie each account to a particular player. If you know Player X has these 7 accounts, and that Player X does botting, then you ban his 7 accounts. Or something like that.
ReplyDeleteIt would be very very interesting if CCP started attaching locations of operations and if possible, alliance affiliations, to the accounts they ban.
ReplyDeleteBut of course, that will not happen, since a pattern of who CCP targets and and who they don't might emerge.
Wouldn't you rather just not know? It would be such a shame if your paranoid ravings were proven wrong.
DeleteIt is puzzling that there are buyers with just 10% on the margins vs. PLEX.
ReplyDeleteI suspect some of the sales are made to new customers who are unaware of PLEXes.
They just assume that buying "gold" with RL money - as they did in other MMOs - is always done on black markets.
These sites sell for all MMOs, so an old WoW/Aion/whatever player who bought gold for those games might just continue to do so for ISK.
Actually, they don't expect sales at that point. When a company does that they are usually out, or nearly out of ISK. But instead of admitting they don't have product, they jack up the price so no one buys.
DeleteI really wish ccp to just send round ninjas to take out all the botters and isk sellers. They really are the total scum of the earth.
ReplyDeleteThanks for keeping us up to dated with these peoples tears