I thoroughly enjoyed the video. And then ChYph3r, who runs Evepodcasts.com, tweeted this screenshot:
Hey, these aren't EVE-related tears, but when you get right down to it, botting, hacking, and RMT tears are the best tears, no matter what the game.
Showing posts with label bot_porn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bot_porn. Show all posts
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Daybreak And H1Z1 Hackers
I haven't felt well all week and planned to not blog today. Then somone sent me a video from Daybreak Games (formerly SOE) in which a lot of employees read letters from hackers asking to have bans reversed.
I thoroughly enjoyed the video. And then ChYph3r, who runs Evepodcasts.com, tweeted this screenshot:
Hey, these aren't EVE-related tears, but when you get right down to it, botting, hacking, and RMT tears are the best tears, no matter what the game.
I thoroughly enjoyed the video. And then ChYph3r, who runs Evepodcasts.com, tweeted this screenshot:
Hey, these aren't EVE-related tears, but when you get right down to it, botting, hacking, and RMT tears are the best tears, no matter what the game.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Global War On Illicit RMT: Blizzard Slams Honorbuddy
A lot of people think that the introduction of the WoW Token alone will bring an end to gold sellers in World of Warcraft. Ha! If ending the selling of black market virtual currency in MMORPGs was that easy, CCP would have ended the practice in EVE Online years ago when it introduced PLEX.
I've criticized Blizzard for having a lax ban policy in the past, especially when compared to CCP. However, with the introduction of the WoW Token, which should have the top down effect of putting a cap on how much black market gold sellers can charge, I wondered about Blizzard's efforts at trying to choke off the flow of gold at the farming/botting level.
Things have changed. When I clicked on the link to visit the "penalty volcano", I discovered the link redirected me to a new page created on 1 April. I followed the links on the page to Blizzard's new "Exploitation Policy". I call the policy new as the page shows a last modified date of 3 April. Nowhere do I see any references to lengths of bans.
I then went to the forums for the Honorbuddy bot looking for reactions to the news of the release of the WoW Token. Honorbuddy is famous as Blizzard paid €650,000 in 2013 in order to halt the sale of the bot in Germany. Instead of finding a lot of talk about the new item, I found a lot of reports of bans.
According to what I read, a tripwire event occurred on 19 March. A tripwire event in one, like an update to the Warden anti-bot software, that causes all of the bots in operation to immediately shut down. Apparently, the emergency shutdown didn't work as many botters were banned for six months for their (supposedly) first offense. Six months for a first offense? Well, apparently, as you'll soon read, creating new accounts is quite easy.
Did I type "soon read"? Yes I did. I found some quality botter and RMTer tears on the Honorbuddy forums. Since the operator of the forums was kind enough to leave the forums open to the public, I thought I'd go ahead and share some of the feedback Honorbuddy botters left. Remember, the term "Abuse of the Economy" is the reason Blizzard gives for banning a player for conducting black market RMT. Also, I'm going to copy the posts "as is", complete with all spelling, punctuation, and grammer mistakes.
22 March
wesleysniper - "Summary : 5 accounts and 5 expansions bought from plati.ru not from that cheap battlechest link. all safe. applied codes and got 90 level boosts. paladin tank / hunter / shaman / druid and holy priest for the sake of looking normal.all of them have crafted items bought from AH or some 665 BOE items again for the sake of looking normal and casual.
"Lately i've been experimenting with 5 boosted chars. i leveled them up to 100 and sic them to wod normal dungeons. they barely made it 2 weeks straight in wod dungeons - and barely pay off their costs. this morning all of them are banned with the total of 100k gold which is made in 2-3 days ( and yes very very low gph overall )
"i dont know you all but from this moment on botting with honorbuddy is finished for me. and i dont know the plans of the developers or programmers but their product is compromised big time.
"you cant level your toons / cant send them to BGs / cant send them to Dungeons / no solo dungeons / no grindings so whats the use of hb ? and from what i understand is you just dont neccessarily be reported to a GM cos ppl get banned in their garrisons. so its something else.
"Can someone from programmers / developers side care to eleborate a little bit more of events happening lately because we'Re paid customers and i feel like we're deliberetely kept in the dark for the sake of not losing customers..
"Anyways TL : DR i'm shutting down my operations for sometime. me and my friend have lost more then 60 accounts in 1-2 weeks time and its not worth it anymore."
27 March
misterneko - "Yeah, another vanilla account banned. I use legit HB key, Millz/Kingwow2 of store, and still got the hammer. Seems 6 month is the standart. This is real..."
narusu - "I got the ban hammer pretty hard today a few hours ago. I had lost a few last week but the final 7 all went down at the same time today. All exploitation of economy. Seems a common thread today especially on US. I made an account to post this because i thought everyone should know the frequency of bans on US is high. Some of my accounts were 7-9 days old... ALL were online during trip wire event....o.O."
Note: this user lost 13 out of 13 accounts.
30 March
AlexCosmos - "My 6 trial acc was closed for goldselling. OMG, blizz are crazy? how can i sell anything on trial?"
31 March
dragonbuddy - "mule banned overnight, then set my 5/5 dungeon buddy and 1/1 anzul Gundrak too who is a separate account farm while i goto shops for 1hr,come back all banned. old school perma banned, all for bots as per usual letter."
Macatho - "Used WoD Trial on 5 accounts that had been without game time for months, they ran for 2-3 days then they got banned when they were off line. I'm seriously starting to question how to bot nowadays, botting for profit is just increasingly difficult."
1 April
Malice213 - "Only two soldiers left...and they are going to go dark until the game is worth playing again."
Note: The user had 11 of 13 accounts banned.
2 April
HBL0V3 - "42/42 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco"
3 April
233286 - "Not here the fill in a usual report, just stating that over the past 2 days I lost 34 account.
First lost 15 due to Eco exploiting, few hours later I checked and another 10 on EU were banned aswell for automated software.
"Next day I started off making 5 new raf accounts and had 4 left overs who I ran through instances (note: they did not run the same instances). These 4 accounts where banned the same day in about 2 hours. Other 5 who ran on other VM where still intact. They got 85, next morning set them up, banned after 3/4 hours.
"Now this was over the last 2 days, I have lost alot more but these went out with enough profit so I usually do not care to post. Now suddenly I am getting targetted hard? Or something else I have no idea.
<2 computers.="" different="" each="" ip="" mac="" modems="" multiple="" running="" vm="">
"That is it for me for a while. Will cooldown alittle and start again."
happyfriet - "Was trying to figure out what to do in WoD because of all the heat atm, so I made 3 WoD accounts, each on 1 pc with it's own IP.
"All 3 were doing (self-made) profiles after dinging level 100.
"Aaaand their gone... fml - they weren't connected in ANY way nor involved in gold selling.
"Ir pissed yo."
Mario27 - "i gues i was to greedy i already had botted 10 classes to 100 it was weird that i even came this far normally i was banned at questing lvl 15 and i dont get a 6 month or anything my bans are permantly evrytime with no Suspension i dont get that why but i was bored with the game anyways if i played for 1 hour i was done i play more on my ps4 then wow now those days wel that was it for me with wow i might come back onetime when the wow token comes out but then i wont be botting again"
v1go - "12/12 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco. 100 lvl, private grind profiles."
6 April
masterwow - "My main acc got banned last week, got a perma ban then i apealed and nothing they insist on perma ban, i never got any suspensions on that acc before, i dont know what to do!"
milouchoa - "I just get banned in my first attempt to sell gold. It was only 50k gold but they caught me. I´m trying to revert the ban, but I have no hope."
These are just some of the ban reports that weren't just filling out a questionnaire. Some of the numbers are quite surprising, given the scale I'm used to in EVE. But given the scale of botting and RMT in WoW, Blizzard has a lot of work ahead of it if it wants to make the WoW Token truly effective in fighting illicit RMT.
I've criticized Blizzard for having a lax ban policy in the past, especially when compared to CCP. However, with the introduction of the WoW Token, which should have the top down effect of putting a cap on how much black market gold sellers can charge, I wondered about Blizzard's efforts at trying to choke off the flow of gold at the farming/botting level.
Things have changed. When I clicked on the link to visit the "penalty volcano", I discovered the link redirected me to a new page created on 1 April. I followed the links on the page to Blizzard's new "Exploitation Policy". I call the policy new as the page shows a last modified date of 3 April. Nowhere do I see any references to lengths of bans.
I then went to the forums for the Honorbuddy bot looking for reactions to the news of the release of the WoW Token. Honorbuddy is famous as Blizzard paid €650,000 in 2013 in order to halt the sale of the bot in Germany. Instead of finding a lot of talk about the new item, I found a lot of reports of bans.
According to what I read, a tripwire event occurred on 19 March. A tripwire event in one, like an update to the Warden anti-bot software, that causes all of the bots in operation to immediately shut down. Apparently, the emergency shutdown didn't work as many botters were banned for six months for their (supposedly) first offense. Six months for a first offense? Well, apparently, as you'll soon read, creating new accounts is quite easy.
Did I type "soon read"? Yes I did. I found some quality botter and RMTer tears on the Honorbuddy forums. Since the operator of the forums was kind enough to leave the forums open to the public, I thought I'd go ahead and share some of the feedback Honorbuddy botters left. Remember, the term "Abuse of the Economy" is the reason Blizzard gives for banning a player for conducting black market RMT. Also, I'm going to copy the posts "as is", complete with all spelling, punctuation, and grammer mistakes.
22 March
wesleysniper - "Summary : 5 accounts and 5 expansions bought from plati.ru not from that cheap battlechest link. all safe. applied codes and got 90 level boosts. paladin tank / hunter / shaman / druid and holy priest for the sake of looking normal.all of them have crafted items bought from AH or some 665 BOE items again for the sake of looking normal and casual.
"Lately i've been experimenting with 5 boosted chars. i leveled them up to 100 and sic them to wod normal dungeons. they barely made it 2 weeks straight in wod dungeons - and barely pay off their costs. this morning all of them are banned with the total of 100k gold which is made in 2-3 days ( and yes very very low gph overall )
"i dont know you all but from this moment on botting with honorbuddy is finished for me. and i dont know the plans of the developers or programmers but their product is compromised big time.
"you cant level your toons / cant send them to BGs / cant send them to Dungeons / no solo dungeons / no grindings so whats the use of hb ? and from what i understand is you just dont neccessarily be reported to a GM cos ppl get banned in their garrisons. so its something else.
"Can someone from programmers / developers side care to eleborate a little bit more of events happening lately because we'Re paid customers and i feel like we're deliberetely kept in the dark for the sake of not losing customers..
"Anyways TL : DR i'm shutting down my operations for sometime. me and my friend have lost more then 60 accounts in 1-2 weeks time and its not worth it anymore."
27 March
misterneko - "Yeah, another vanilla account banned. I use legit HB key, Millz/Kingwow2 of store, and still got the hammer. Seems 6 month is the standart. This is real..."
narusu - "I got the ban hammer pretty hard today a few hours ago. I had lost a few last week but the final 7 all went down at the same time today. All exploitation of economy. Seems a common thread today especially on US. I made an account to post this because i thought everyone should know the frequency of bans on US is high. Some of my accounts were 7-9 days old... ALL were online during trip wire event....o.O."
Note: this user lost 13 out of 13 accounts.
30 March
AlexCosmos - "My 6 trial acc was closed for goldselling. OMG, blizz are crazy? how can i sell anything on trial?"
31 March
dragonbuddy - "mule banned overnight, then set my 5/5 dungeon buddy and 1/1 anzul Gundrak too who is a separate account farm while i goto shops for 1hr,come back all banned. old school perma banned, all for bots as per usual letter."
Macatho - "Used WoD Trial on 5 accounts that had been without game time for months, they ran for 2-3 days then they got banned when they were off line. I'm seriously starting to question how to bot nowadays, botting for profit is just increasingly difficult."
1 April
Malice213 - "Only two soldiers left...and they are going to go dark until the game is worth playing again."
Note: The user had 11 of 13 accounts banned.
2 April
HBL0V3 - "42/42 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco"
3 April
233286 - "Not here the fill in a usual report, just stating that over the past 2 days I lost 34 account.
First lost 15 due to Eco exploiting, few hours later I checked and another 10 on EU were banned aswell for automated software.
"Next day I started off making 5 new raf accounts and had 4 left overs who I ran through instances (note: they did not run the same instances). These 4 accounts where banned the same day in about 2 hours. Other 5 who ran on other VM where still intact. They got 85, next morning set them up, banned after 3/4 hours.
"Now this was over the last 2 days, I have lost alot more but these went out with enough profit so I usually do not care to post. Now suddenly I am getting targetted hard? Or something else I have no idea.
<2 computers.="" different="" each="" ip="" mac="" modems="" multiple="" running="" vm="">
"That is it for me for a while. Will cooldown alittle and start again."
happyfriet - "Was trying to figure out what to do in WoD because of all the heat atm, so I made 3 WoD accounts, each on 1 pc with it's own IP.
"All 3 were doing (self-made) profiles after dinging level 100.
"Aaaand their gone... fml - they weren't connected in ANY way nor involved in gold selling.
"Ir pissed yo."
Mario27 - "i gues i was to greedy i already had botted 10 classes to 100 it was weird that i even came this far normally i was banned at questing lvl 15 and i dont get a 6 month or anything my bans are permantly evrytime with no Suspension i dont get that why but i was bored with the game anyways if i played for 1 hour i was done i play more on my ps4 then wow now those days wel that was it for me with wow i might come back onetime when the wow token comes out but then i wont be botting again"
v1go - "12/12 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco. 100 lvl, private grind profiles."
6 April
masterwow - "My main acc got banned last week, got a perma ban then i apealed and nothing they insist on perma ban, i never got any suspensions on that acc before, i dont know what to do!"
milouchoa - "I just get banned in my first attempt to sell gold. It was only 50k gold but they caught me. I´m trying to revert the ban, but I have no hope."
These are just some of the ban reports that weren't just filling out a questionnaire. Some of the numbers are quite surprising, given the scale I'm used to in EVE. But given the scale of botting and RMT in WoW, Blizzard has a lot of work ahead of it if it wants to make the WoW Token truly effective in fighting illicit RMT.
Monday, January 27, 2014
A Blizzard Of Tears: Botters Banned In World Of Warcraft
"I got a 72hr on my main. But if it makes you feel any better i've lost about 30 accounts over the last 2 years."
I originally planned on trying to make a scholarly post using the words of botters to illustrate the differences between CCP's and Blizzard's methods of dealing with botters and hackers. But after reading Blizzard's ban policy, I gave up on that thought.
 |
| The Penalty Volcano: Blizzard's Ban Policy |
The reason that I bring up the ban policy is to prepare those reading this post for the confusion that ensued. For example, in EVE Online, CCP will ban botters 30 days for a first offense and issue a permanent ban for a second offense. Blizzard is a little more flexible, with no set penalties and with nothing between 3 days and permanent. The confusion begins below the cut.
Monday, August 12, 2013
CCP's War On Bots: Tanned, Rested, And Ready To Ban
Two weeks ago CCP published some graphs showing a decline in the amount of bot bans since the launch of Odyssey. CCP Stillman attributed the drop in bannings due to the changes to ice belts and 0.0 ratting. While the logic sounded good, I couldn't independently confirm these finding through the chatter on the botting forums I visit. Clearly I needed to get back to work.
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.
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.
Friday, December 7, 2012
First Look At Eve Botting Post-Retribution Launch
Retribution launched on Tuesday, which means that Eve Online's bot developers are working overtime getting their bots in working order. For example, the developer of the Eve Pilot family of bots stated on Tuesday that his bots become broken with every patch and he requires 1-3 days to make them fully functional again. Some of the obvious challenges facing the bot devs in Retribution include the images for targets ships changing from squares to circles, changes in Crimewatch that will prevent bots from immediately logging off when neutral or hostile pilots enter a system and NPCs developing a fondness for destroying drones. Bots are also affected by bugs, such as the local chat issue, initially deployed by CCP until said issues are fixed. Of course, expansion releases are also a time when complaints seem to increase about botters getting banned. I'm not sure if the reason is botters using software not fully optimized for the new expansion, CCP's Team Security deploying new tools a couple of days early or a combination of the two.
So what are botters writing on their forums? First, some are worried about what the changes mean for mission bots:
So what are botters writing on their forums? First, some are worried about what the changes mean for mission bots:
Thursday, July 5, 2012
CCP's War On Bots: Eve Pilot's Bad June
The trolls posting about botting on the Eve Online forums are beginning to irritate me. I really hate the ones that claim that bans only occur once a year because I think people will begin to believe them. Since CCP Sreegs or CCP Stillman haven't written a new security blog (for understandable reasons) and the CSM hasn't really shared the details of the Security briefing at the Spring Summit (checking to make sure the NDA is not violated), I guess I'll post some more botter tears, this time from the Eve Pilot/Eve Miner forums.
I can hear the groans now. More botter tears? Sorry, but this batch of tears may be interesting, or at least tasty. At least I think I saw the complaints that CCP Stillman hinted at on Twitter a few weeks ago. Also, patch 1.1 came out so I included some of the posts about that to describe some of the frustration of the bot users and to also point out places that CCP is messing with the bot developers.
I should add one additional note. Most of the technical details described in the below forum excerpts have been floating amongst most of the botting forums I visit. One piece of news I have not written about until today is that with CCP's increasingly successful detection of botters using virtual machines, users have been asking bot developers to look into a software called Redguard. I don't know too many details about the software except that most of the developers didn't think too much of the software when first introduced to it. Now? Something for me to research and watch.
Enjoy!
June 14:
baldur: "My bot got banned today and also one of my main chars wich has had no interaction with the bot what so ever my other alt did not get banned tho dont know why? What should i do what should i change. I admit my bot had been running for 2 days mining maby i should tone it down a bit? How did they figure it out? and what can i do to fix it ? and how did they ban my other account wich is not a bot and never has been ?"
June 15:
Famine: "Yup got banned also, right after DT. So far my main is not banned though. Guess ill check back soon. Only been using the bot again for about 4 days, before that i had not used it in over a month. used a VM, transfered isk directly to main, contract trades also, and in game trades to main. He only has 2 days in his skill queue thats what im annoyed about lol. If it was a 14 day ban and i had a long skill in there i wudnt really mind, have no plans to ever sell that character anyways. Id be surprised if my main doesnt get the 14 day ban also. Luckily holidays next week."
Famine: "Hmmm thats strange, they negative isk'd my bots wallet to nearly -700m isk... I know they negative your wallet for the estimate value you used the bot for but roughly that would equal the amount value of what i mined this week i think... if they went further back on the logs wallet wud be down in the -40 to -50bisk range."
spod: "I have just had 4 accounts banned :/ .. thought I was being so careful too. Ah well. I guess eventually they catch up. Time to roll some different ones I suppose. This only came a week after I started ice-mining with 2 of them that got banned. 3rd was a relatively new miner. The 4th was on a VPN, so I don't know why that got flagged. Others on a VPN and mains did not get it. All were using VMWare. I think the worst thing is that they have the stuff in their hangars that I can't get at. Slav, when can we have auto-place to a corporate hangar?!?
"They also negative ISK'd the characters wallets too. I wonder if it's worth biomassing them. Pity though since some are 15mil+ SP characters. Might be a good time for me to properly separate the bots and mains!"
spod: "Yea, it will take around 3 billion to zero out the balances on the chars I've had banned. I'm thinking that might be the end of the bot-box. Just say screw it and go play Skyrim or Civ5. Got nearly a year out of EVE thanks to EVE Pilot, in the end it just feels like a second job."
June 18:
spod: "Just temp banned. May make a new fleet of miners to pay off the ones that got negative ISK'd. It still bothers me how they came to ban mine. I had the timers set to take breaks and be pretty 'human like' I thought. I didn't mine excessively (max of about 10 hours a day, often less). Maybe I just need to reduce the timers further."
June 19:
rrfarmer: "Yep, about 2 billion in the red. Wow I must have mined a ton of Veldspar.
"Been using the bot for about 2 months. This ban is weird, I only booted for a max of 6-8 hours a day, every other day, with a ton of delays and log off times (did a lot of them manually). Also I would take the accounts and go talk in chat on them, get ganked, run corp OPs, and everything a human would do. they must really be getting serious about banning bots. 2 billion in the red is crazy. And with all the regular playing stuff I was doing on these accounts..."
Famine: "Well there would be an increase in bots being banned, CCP used to only mass ban bots every few months. Now they detect and ban bots on a daily basis. I reckon they have some new toys they are using to find them cause there are a hell of a lot of bans going around that started last week."
"Going negative ISK is not just from buying plex, if you are botting they will estimate the total cost of what you mined, negative ISK your wallet, you then have to sell all that ore you mined in order to get your wallet back to being positive. That ensures the economy stays stable."
Famine: "When i started using Eve Pilot i knew it was always only a matter of time until i got caught. Im not bothered about it, i can get caught 1 more time before i have to stop all together and make a new account unassociated with my other accounts. Would never want that char perma banned.
"Using any botting software you WILL get caught eventually, i can 100% guarantee you. It is only a matter of time. Get into botting knowing and accepting this is a must."
June 20:
Dinky: "The program is no longer safe to use if you want to maintain your accounts. Consider this:
1. One account per VPN
2. 6-8 Hours per day
3. Custom bookmarks
4. Custom directories & custom executable names
5. Frequent breaks
....and miner still detected and banned accounts as a result. These miners were new. Had never used the same computer configuration and were all running VMWare.......go figure!"
Dinky: "I only lost 2 of my 5 active botting accounts so far. The 2 accounts were on vmware with each using its own subscribed VPN. Only 1 account per VM and VPN so 5 VM's were running in total. I expect to loose all of them shortly so I have taken the precaution to move the assets out of them and monitor the situation over the next few days. I will then use redguard with new toons and see how I get on.
"My main accounts are okay as they all have separate email addresses & don't use VPN or VMWARE.
"As I said in my original post I only botted a few hours per day on each toon so I think the flagging must have come from the client itself perhaps through the new launcher.
"Whilst I understand the reason for you changing my statement I still think it is a very bad time time to be botting. CCP seem to be winning the battle judging by the number of posts from previously very successful elusive botters."
Zdzichu: "maybe what i writing not will be popular, but ... MINING AT BOT ISIN'T SAFE ANYMORE !!! that was , 2 - 6 years ago, right now - after that many years CCP got toys to catching botters, SLAV EB is a great and usable toy but - like others program like this easy to detecting..."
spod: "I've wondered about only mining in evening hours, i.e. drastically reducing the number of hours and then taking a day/days off every now and then. Maybe that will help. I'll have to crunch the numbers and see if it will even be feasible to run the bots for that short a time and be able to keep the accounts running + make anything decent. If they're only making a few hundred million over the cost of the monthly plex then it's just not worth it."
June 25:
macrolab1: "1.1 changed Inventory windows so Slav has work to do."
Slav2 (EP developer): "Ok, it will take some time to fix. Changes in setting files so first run wizard cannot be completed."
Slav2 (EP dev): "Dont try to use bot while it is not fixed. In best case it will not work, in worst - you will get banned."
Slav2 (EP dev): "CCP implemented crc checks and logging time intervals between making settings. You can see these timers in core_public__.yaml file and I think we need to add more randomization intervals here just in case if this info will be used by CCP to track bots."
Slav2 (EP dev): "The first test version is ready. It works with courier w/o any noticeable problems, hopefully it will work with trader and miner too. I will need to sleep couple of hours and go to work. Can continue tests after the work only."
"edited. Storyline missions support is still broken."
June 26:
Famine (On whether a patch will affect a bot): "Normal update yes that takes like 2 seconds to update, pretty much guaranteed to not effect the bot... major updates that are 650 MB that change the GUI, the inventory system and dozens of other changes... well the only answer to that is.. DUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
DSeverach: "Shader Quality, Texture Quality, and LOD Quality all say High and need to be Low."
Slav2 (EP dev): "Yeah, CCP changed place where they store these settings, I will need to add corrections."
ComalDave: "Eve Miner Statistics. Prices are totally bogus. It is telling me I can make 1 Trillion per hour mining Plagioclase. That is 1,065,301,000,000 ISK per hour. I think something is wrong!"
andre.h91: "3 or 4 day after buy evetrader bot got banned... I use this bot for 4-5 hour for day..."
June 30:
Поймал банан на 14 суток. написано при входе в игру
(I was banned for 14 days. This appeared when I entered the game)
User ------- is banned
Last login: 2012.06.16 02:33
Number of visits: 171
Reason: EULA/TOS Violation - Macro use
Until: 2012.06.30
По идее сегодня истекает 14 суток - но пока перса не разбанили.Кто сталкивался с этим - посоветуйте что делать ?
(The 14 days has expired - but not until the Persian unban. Who has experienced this - advise what to do?)
Акк разбанили.Но он щас в минусе на 34кк.Поправить можно это ?
(Account is unbanned. But he is currently in the red at 34 cc. Can you fix this?)
I can hear the groans now. More botter tears? Sorry, but this batch of tears may be interesting, or at least tasty. At least I think I saw the complaints that CCP Stillman hinted at on Twitter a few weeks ago. Also, patch 1.1 came out so I included some of the posts about that to describe some of the frustration of the bot users and to also point out places that CCP is messing with the bot developers.
I should add one additional note. Most of the technical details described in the below forum excerpts have been floating amongst most of the botting forums I visit. One piece of news I have not written about until today is that with CCP's increasingly successful detection of botters using virtual machines, users have been asking bot developers to look into a software called Redguard. I don't know too many details about the software except that most of the developers didn't think too much of the software when first introduced to it. Now? Something for me to research and watch.
Enjoy!
June 14:
baldur: "My bot got banned today and also one of my main chars wich has had no interaction with the bot what so ever my other alt did not get banned tho dont know why? What should i do what should i change. I admit my bot had been running for 2 days mining maby i should tone it down a bit? How did they figure it out? and what can i do to fix it ? and how did they ban my other account wich is not a bot and never has been ?"
June 15:
Famine: "Yup got banned also, right after DT. So far my main is not banned though. Guess ill check back soon. Only been using the bot again for about 4 days, before that i had not used it in over a month. used a VM, transfered isk directly to main, contract trades also, and in game trades to main. He only has 2 days in his skill queue thats what im annoyed about lol. If it was a 14 day ban and i had a long skill in there i wudnt really mind, have no plans to ever sell that character anyways. Id be surprised if my main doesnt get the 14 day ban also. Luckily holidays next week."
Famine: "Hmmm thats strange, they negative isk'd my bots wallet to nearly -700m isk... I know they negative your wallet for the estimate value you used the bot for but roughly that would equal the amount value of what i mined this week i think... if they went further back on the logs wallet wud be down in the -40 to -50bisk range."
spod: "I have just had 4 accounts banned :/ .. thought I was being so careful too. Ah well. I guess eventually they catch up. Time to roll some different ones I suppose. This only came a week after I started ice-mining with 2 of them that got banned. 3rd was a relatively new miner. The 4th was on a VPN, so I don't know why that got flagged. Others on a VPN and mains did not get it. All were using VMWare. I think the worst thing is that they have the stuff in their hangars that I can't get at. Slav, when can we have auto-place to a corporate hangar?!?
"They also negative ISK'd the characters wallets too. I wonder if it's worth biomassing them. Pity though since some are 15mil+ SP characters. Might be a good time for me to properly separate the bots and mains!"
spod: "Yea, it will take around 3 billion to zero out the balances on the chars I've had banned. I'm thinking that might be the end of the bot-box. Just say screw it and go play Skyrim or Civ5. Got nearly a year out of EVE thanks to EVE Pilot, in the end it just feels like a second job."
June 18:
spod: "Just temp banned. May make a new fleet of miners to pay off the ones that got negative ISK'd. It still bothers me how they came to ban mine. I had the timers set to take breaks and be pretty 'human like' I thought. I didn't mine excessively (max of about 10 hours a day, often less). Maybe I just need to reduce the timers further."
June 19:
rrfarmer: "Yep, about 2 billion in the red. Wow I must have mined a ton of Veldspar.
"Been using the bot for about 2 months. This ban is weird, I only booted for a max of 6-8 hours a day, every other day, with a ton of delays and log off times (did a lot of them manually). Also I would take the accounts and go talk in chat on them, get ganked, run corp OPs, and everything a human would do. they must really be getting serious about banning bots. 2 billion in the red is crazy. And with all the regular playing stuff I was doing on these accounts..."
Famine: "Well there would be an increase in bots being banned, CCP used to only mass ban bots every few months. Now they detect and ban bots on a daily basis. I reckon they have some new toys they are using to find them cause there are a hell of a lot of bans going around that started last week."
"Going negative ISK is not just from buying plex, if you are botting they will estimate the total cost of what you mined, negative ISK your wallet, you then have to sell all that ore you mined in order to get your wallet back to being positive. That ensures the economy stays stable."
Famine: "When i started using Eve Pilot i knew it was always only a matter of time until i got caught. Im not bothered about it, i can get caught 1 more time before i have to stop all together and make a new account unassociated with my other accounts. Would never want that char perma banned.
"Using any botting software you WILL get caught eventually, i can 100% guarantee you. It is only a matter of time. Get into botting knowing and accepting this is a must."
June 20:
Dinky: "The program is no longer safe to use if you want to maintain your accounts. Consider this:
1. One account per VPN
2. 6-8 Hours per day
3. Custom bookmarks
4. Custom directories & custom executable names
5. Frequent breaks
....and miner still detected and banned accounts as a result. These miners were new. Had never used the same computer configuration and were all running VMWare.......go figure!"
Dinky: "I only lost 2 of my 5 active botting accounts so far. The 2 accounts were on vmware with each using its own subscribed VPN. Only 1 account per VM and VPN so 5 VM's were running in total. I expect to loose all of them shortly so I have taken the precaution to move the assets out of them and monitor the situation over the next few days. I will then use redguard with new toons and see how I get on.
"My main accounts are okay as they all have separate email addresses & don't use VPN or VMWARE.
"As I said in my original post I only botted a few hours per day on each toon so I think the flagging must have come from the client itself perhaps through the new launcher.
"Whilst I understand the reason for you changing my statement I still think it is a very bad time time to be botting. CCP seem to be winning the battle judging by the number of posts from previously very successful elusive botters."
Zdzichu: "maybe what i writing not will be popular, but ... MINING AT BOT ISIN'T SAFE ANYMORE !!! that was , 2 - 6 years ago, right now - after that many years CCP got toys to catching botters, SLAV EB is a great and usable toy but - like others program like this easy to detecting..."
spod: "I've wondered about only mining in evening hours, i.e. drastically reducing the number of hours and then taking a day/days off every now and then. Maybe that will help. I'll have to crunch the numbers and see if it will even be feasible to run the bots for that short a time and be able to keep the accounts running + make anything decent. If they're only making a few hundred million over the cost of the monthly plex then it's just not worth it."
June 25:
macrolab1: "1.1 changed Inventory windows so Slav has work to do."
Slav2 (EP developer): "Ok, it will take some time to fix. Changes in setting files so first run wizard cannot be completed."
Slav2 (EP dev): "Dont try to use bot while it is not fixed. In best case it will not work, in worst - you will get banned."
Slav2 (EP dev): "CCP implemented crc checks and logging time intervals between making settings. You can see these timers in core_public__.yaml file and I think we need to add more randomization intervals here just in case if this info will be used by CCP to track bots."
Slav2 (EP dev): "The first test version is ready. It works with courier w/o any noticeable problems, hopefully it will work with trader and miner too. I will need to sleep couple of hours and go to work. Can continue tests after the work only."
"edited. Storyline missions support is still broken."
June 26:
Famine (On whether a patch will affect a bot): "Normal update yes that takes like 2 seconds to update, pretty much guaranteed to not effect the bot... major updates that are 650 MB that change the GUI, the inventory system and dozens of other changes... well the only answer to that is.. DUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
DSeverach: "Shader Quality, Texture Quality, and LOD Quality all say High and need to be Low."
Slav2 (EP dev): "Yeah, CCP changed place where they store these settings, I will need to add corrections."
ComalDave: "Eve Miner Statistics. Prices are totally bogus. It is telling me I can make 1 Trillion per hour mining Plagioclase. That is 1,065,301,000,000 ISK per hour. I think something is wrong!"
andre.h91: "3 or 4 day after buy evetrader bot got banned... I use this bot for 4-5 hour for day..."
June 30:
xromxxx:
Поймал банан на 14 суток. написано при входе в игру
(I was banned for 14 days. This appeared when I entered the game)
User ------- is banned
Last login: 2012.06.16 02:33
Number of visits: 171
Reason: EULA/TOS Violation - Macro use
Until: 2012.06.30
По идее сегодня истекает 14 суток - но пока перса не разбанили.Кто сталкивался с этим - посоветуйте что делать ?
(The 14 days has expired - but not until the Persian unban. Who has experienced this - advise what to do?)
Акк разбанили.Но он щас в минусе на 34кк.Поправить можно это ?
(Account is unbanned. But he is currently in the red at 34 cc. Can you fix this?)
Friday, June 15, 2012
CCP's War On Bots: I Didn't Want That H-Bot Anyway
The word out of the recent CSM Spring Summit in Reykjavik on the anti-botting front is good. Seleene was absolutely gushing about the success enjoyed by CCP Sreegs and Team Security:
31 May:
Dinam: "I got bans for 3 accounts. Invalid Login or password. Permanent ban."
BaNZ: "I rotate my chars a bit and I just got a reported temp ban."
nubhubble: "As I thought, posters above probably RMT'd and got caught. CCP are really cracking down hard."
Red Bull: "Did not RMT, got negative wallet also."
jastog: "Everyone get his wallet resetted. My corp mates that got ban are all like -3b each which is like a week of botting or so. Still don't know how CCP set the date when you bot and what they take from you."
Marazmo: "RMT, of course)) But after ban i have 2 chars as well. 1 sell. Now a play on 1 acc. Its enought of EVE in my life))"
4 June:
Diligent: "Just got banned second strike. Balance only on bot accounts was set to -3B. 10h/day/per bot with breaks for whole day every 3-4 days. Probably got caught cause one day i messed with timings and bot was working 17h :/"
super: "so this is still on? i havent been on for months and kind of thinking of eve again, but fuck it if i can't bot for my ships"
5 June:
slyer: "Just got banned with two of my accounts this day."
"While it was acknowledged that stopping people from completely automating a process is impossible, the goals have always been to change behavior and decrease the profitability of botting. Based on the numbers the CSM saw and the methods described to us, I feel comfortable in saying this has definitively been achieved. Detecting the bots didn't change anything; making it more painful to get caught (with changes in policy) is what changed things."While I'm happy to hear that, I just want to say one thing: don't get cocky. Of course, looking at the botting forums tends to reinforce the message from CCP. Today's tears come from my old friends over at H-Bot. My last post about the mission bot ended on 29 May, so I'll begin from there. Enjoy!
31 May:
Dinam: "I got bans for 3 accounts. Invalid Login or password. Permanent ban."
BaNZ: "I rotate my chars a bit and I just got a reported temp ban."
nubhubble: "As I thought, posters above probably RMT'd and got caught. CCP are really cracking down hard."
Red Bull: "Did not RMT, got negative wallet also."
jastog: "Everyone get his wallet resetted. My corp mates that got ban are all like -3b each which is like a week of botting or so. Still don't know how CCP set the date when you bot and what they take from you."
Marazmo: "RMT, of course)) But after ban i have 2 chars as well. 1 sell. Now a play on 1 acc. Its enought of EVE in my life))"
4 June:
Diligent: "Just got banned second strike. Balance only on bot accounts was set to -3B. 10h/day/per bot with breaks for whole day every 3-4 days. Probably got caught cause one day i messed with timings and bot was working 17h :/"
super: "so this is still on? i havent been on for months and kind of thinking of eve again, but fuck it if i can't bot for my ships"
5 June:
slyer: "Just got banned with two of my accounts this day."
Friday, June 1, 2012
Eve Online Bots Held Hostage: Day 9 - Eve Miner / Eve Pilot
I know by now that everyone is getting tired of reading about the trials and heartaches of Eve Online bot users. These poor souls have lost their primary income stream because CCP came out and for no good reason introduced in Inferno the unified inventory system that is so complex that bot developers are still having difficulty adapting to it 9 days after launch. But I feel that these sort of problems need some attention so the Eve player base can give these suffering players the support they deserve.
Over the last two days I've focused on mission bots like H-Bot and Questor. But all types of bots are affected by the changes introduced in Inferno. Today's subject is the family of bot collectively known as Eve Pilot. I'll focus mainly on Eve Miner but I'll start off with another product from this developer, Eve Trader.
Eve Trader is, like the name suggests, a market bot. But Inferno made it much less effective than before.
29 May - 30 May
peanutym: newest version after inferno. old version you gave me did this also. Buy or Sell orders it will scroll down 2-3 notches then stop. Seems to work fine for exporting and changing the prices. it just thinks that its over when its not. Only noticed it today, so upgraded versions and reran setup with no travel.
Slav2: At first, if you use VMWare, I am not responsible for any scrolling/mouse clicking bugs. VMWare is prone for such sort of bugs and only VMWare 7 + Windows 7 shows more or less good stability here and recommended to use. Second. Dont use newer items yet, some items were renamed/added in Inferno and I did not add them to bot yet.
peanutym: Here is the logs. i stopped it once it went from sell order to buy order. This time it didnt even try to scroll down and didnt go to the last order in the list. Stopped 1 before it needed to start scrolling.
I also noticed it didnt update any of the orders. What setting do i need to change for that? i have my current buy and sell taxes correct. max price is 10%, min volume is 5%, sell profit is 5%, buy profit 5%. its been that way since i got the bot and worked fine until inferno. So maybe this has something else to do with it. also as said before no vm, running xp pro. never had an issue before inferno
joffrey1: Every time the trader clicks on "export file" in game, there is a popup confirming that the files have been exported. The bot does not respond to this, and I have to manually close the popup and check the box saying "do not show again." Despite this, every time the bot exports any file in game I get a pop up window. Is there anyway to disable these popups or get the bot to recognize it? Also note this happens randomly, sometimes i log on the bot and get no popup.
Slav2: To disable popup you need to pause bot during first run and make personal and regional exports ones. Then unpause bot and continue first run. Bot should detect popups, but it does not wait for this window for a long time. If you have lag this is possible outcome.
I never thought of TiDi as an anti-market bot tool. So CCP Veritas fights bots as well as makes big fleet fights possible. Is there anything he can't do?
Of course, the initial release of the bot after Inferno gave every indication that Eve Pilot users were in for a long rocky ride. This was the response 3 days after launch.
25 May
Slav2: Please test this beta version and reply if you found any bugs. Couple of modes were temporary disabled, miner will not work with POS and will not use jettison containers.
I don' know if I should feel sorry for this guy or laugh my head off.
Xanii: Any idea how much longer? I just bought this last night and can't use it. It would be nice if there was something saying it was not usable yet or at least not let me buy it while it doesn't work... Can I get the downtime added to my subscription please?
Slav2: Probably another day. It was able to complete first run but need more tests before I release newer version. I dont think $0.17/day is so important to care about. You may refund your order and repurchase later if you need to save a few cents. Btw, how did you activate your license? You could not do this without serial and you need to complete first run to get serial. The term of your license does not expire w/o activation.
I think Slav2 is a bit agitated. But notice he says it will only be another day? Remember, he is dealing with his English speaking customers here. As I pointed out last week, he told the Russian bot users it might take weeks.
Some of the features were slow to appear and some users began to doubt.
28 May
jsvdfs: when can we expect the rest of the features? I am particularly interested jetcan mining. 5-6 days?
Slav2: I have added jetcan support but did not test it yet and was/will busy in RL today/tomorrow.
Kolerazie: @jetcan support. yes, unfortunately, does not go! He may not shift the 2nd load(cargo). Hangs itself on opening.
30 May
jaykay: Got a rough ETA on next version Slav? Not having fleet mode is a killer =)
31 May
sinthetix: Just wondering... Is this thing ever going to work? I just shelled out 60 bucks for something I can't even use. I only had EVE Pilot for about a month and just got used to how to set it up and now it doesn't even work. Maybe you should hire some help or something, I don't know. I feel like I've been ripped off. I've been patient and I understand the game has changed but damn. I got friends asking about this program and now they aren't even sure if they want it.
So is this thing ever going to work again or what? I've only just gotten the program recently and haven't seen how you guys update it or how long it takes, but when everyone says it would only be days and now it has turned into a week, when does a week turn into multiple weeks and then months? I haven't really seen any updates yet, just a link to a beta that doesn't work fully.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be a dick at all. I just want to know whats up with this thing. I check everyday and it is frustrating to look at the threads and see things like ''last post 1 day ago'' and ''last post 1 day 12 hours ago'' etc..
Eve Pilot is a collection of 3 bots. In addition to the trading and mining bots mentioned above a courier bot exists. Three bots and one developer. I've blogged about Eve Pilot before and I've never been impressed. The bots are broken and probably will remain broken for quite some time. I really don't understand why anyone would go through the aggravation of having a bot. Especially Eve Pilot. Add that CCP Sreegs and Team Security is looking for botters to take all their ill-gotten booty away and I'm just amazed that a market exists for this type of product.
Over the last two days I've focused on mission bots like H-Bot and Questor. But all types of bots are affected by the changes introduced in Inferno. Today's subject is the family of bot collectively known as Eve Pilot. I'll focus mainly on Eve Miner but I'll start off with another product from this developer, Eve Trader.
Eve Trader is, like the name suggests, a market bot. But Inferno made it much less effective than before.
29 May - 30 May
peanutym: newest version after inferno. old version you gave me did this also. Buy or Sell orders it will scroll down 2-3 notches then stop. Seems to work fine for exporting and changing the prices. it just thinks that its over when its not. Only noticed it today, so upgraded versions and reran setup with no travel.
Slav2: At first, if you use VMWare, I am not responsible for any scrolling/mouse clicking bugs. VMWare is prone for such sort of bugs and only VMWare 7 + Windows 7 shows more or less good stability here and recommended to use. Second. Dont use newer items yet, some items were renamed/added in Inferno and I did not add them to bot yet.
peanutym: Here is the logs. i stopped it once it went from sell order to buy order. This time it didnt even try to scroll down and didnt go to the last order in the list. Stopped 1 before it needed to start scrolling.
I also noticed it didnt update any of the orders. What setting do i need to change for that? i have my current buy and sell taxes correct. max price is 10%, min volume is 5%, sell profit is 5%, buy profit 5%. its been that way since i got the bot and worked fine until inferno. So maybe this has something else to do with it. also as said before no vm, running xp pro. never had an issue before inferno
joffrey1: Every time the trader clicks on "export file" in game, there is a popup confirming that the files have been exported. The bot does not respond to this, and I have to manually close the popup and check the box saying "do not show again." Despite this, every time the bot exports any file in game I get a pop up window. Is there anyway to disable these popups or get the bot to recognize it? Also note this happens randomly, sometimes i log on the bot and get no popup.
Slav2: To disable popup you need to pause bot during first run and make personal and regional exports ones. Then unpause bot and continue first run. Bot should detect popups, but it does not wait for this window for a long time. If you have lag this is possible outcome.
I never thought of TiDi as an anti-market bot tool. So CCP Veritas fights bots as well as makes big fleet fights possible. Is there anything he can't do?
Of course, the initial release of the bot after Inferno gave every indication that Eve Pilot users were in for a long rocky ride. This was the response 3 days after launch.
25 May
Slav2: Please test this beta version and reply if you found any bugs. Couple of modes were temporary disabled, miner will not work with POS and will not use jettison containers.
I don' know if I should feel sorry for this guy or laugh my head off.
Xanii: Any idea how much longer? I just bought this last night and can't use it. It would be nice if there was something saying it was not usable yet or at least not let me buy it while it doesn't work... Can I get the downtime added to my subscription please?
Slav2: Probably another day. It was able to complete first run but need more tests before I release newer version. I dont think $0.17/day is so important to care about. You may refund your order and repurchase later if you need to save a few cents. Btw, how did you activate your license? You could not do this without serial and you need to complete first run to get serial. The term of your license does not expire w/o activation.
I think Slav2 is a bit agitated. But notice he says it will only be another day? Remember, he is dealing with his English speaking customers here. As I pointed out last week, he told the Russian bot users it might take weeks.
Some of the features were slow to appear and some users began to doubt.
28 May
jsvdfs: when can we expect the rest of the features? I am particularly interested jetcan mining. 5-6 days?
Slav2: I have added jetcan support but did not test it yet and was/will busy in RL today/tomorrow.
Kolerazie: @jetcan support. yes, unfortunately, does not go! He may not shift the 2nd load(cargo). Hangs itself on opening.
30 May
jaykay: Got a rough ETA on next version Slav? Not having fleet mode is a killer =)
31 May
sinthetix: Just wondering... Is this thing ever going to work? I just shelled out 60 bucks for something I can't even use. I only had EVE Pilot for about a month and just got used to how to set it up and now it doesn't even work. Maybe you should hire some help or something, I don't know. I feel like I've been ripped off. I've been patient and I understand the game has changed but damn. I got friends asking about this program and now they aren't even sure if they want it.
So is this thing ever going to work again or what? I've only just gotten the program recently and haven't seen how you guys update it or how long it takes, but when everyone says it would only be days and now it has turned into a week, when does a week turn into multiple weeks and then months? I haven't really seen any updates yet, just a link to a beta that doesn't work fully.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be a dick at all. I just want to know whats up with this thing. I check everyday and it is frustrating to look at the threads and see things like ''last post 1 day ago'' and ''last post 1 day 12 hours ago'' etc..
Eve Pilot is a collection of 3 bots. In addition to the trading and mining bots mentioned above a courier bot exists. Three bots and one developer. I've blogged about Eve Pilot before and I've never been impressed. The bots are broken and probably will remain broken for quite some time. I really don't understand why anyone would go through the aggravation of having a bot. Especially Eve Pilot. Add that CCP Sreegs and Team Security is looking for botters to take all their ill-gotten booty away and I'm just amazed that a market exists for this type of product.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Eve Online Bots Held Hostage: Day 7 - H-Bot
Do you ever make a statement to the whole world (or at least the entire Internet) and are wrong? Do you ever confidently make a statement on the Eve Online forums and are wrong? And when you are wrong, are you ever happy about it? I am. That's right, I made a statement last week that within a few days after Inferno's launch that the bot developers would get their act together and all the bots would be working again. Reading the forums shows that a week later that bots are running, but not very well.
For my first example for how wrong I was, I point to the H-Bot mission/ratting bot. I thought that the developer had everything figured out in the first 24 hours, but he was a little optimistic. On the 22nd, just like real players, botters started reporting issues interacting with player owned stations.
22 May
H-Bot: Shit+clicking the open button opens containers of any kind in a separate window. So shit click open your corp hangar and position it on the left of selected item. H-Bot now shift+clicks when opening containers.
synchr0s: and what if i use Corporate Hangar? now it always opens default "LOOT" division
Clevik: When I warp away from the corp hangar, it isn't automatically close the corp hangar ammo window due to being too far away. Hbot is going to have to close the window before continuing to rat.
H-Bot: This will probably be fixed by ccp tomorrow. If not I'll make H-Bot close that inventory.
23 May
Pepko: Any solution to the problem, that when you open corp hangar it shows you 1st tab all the time ?
24 May
Me_me_me: I´m still waiting to this fix. It´s getting completely annoying to having close that window by manual after 1st reammo. HBOT should close that window. Please fix that urgently!
The release notes for both the 24 May and 26 May releases said this about the issue: *crickets* For me, the funny thing is that the H-Bot dev is waiting on CCP to fix issues.
Even after the latest release on the 26th the bot contained bugs that potentially could get a ship destroyed.
26 May
s1ut: Warped to a Anom that was BM and finished ( some reason one of the Sentry Guns Didnt Vanish ) The bot just sat there loosing shild and salvaging i manualy warped out when it got to 40% shild left
27 May
Diligent: That (failing to warp after finishing an anomolie) happens since last game update and few HBOT patches. Before it was perfect running but lately it starts to loop after finishing anomaly. It says that it don't see warp text but he is not even clicking warp on results. HBOT does nothing about scanner window, he opens it then "20:21:41|White arrow not found!"
cyceron1: ello
Anomalies autoscan
mini breaks this option is enabled in 3.5 260512 ?
H-Bot: Yes mini breaks work. Keep in mind this is to simulate afk for few seconds so use only low values for the duration because the bot goes afk even when fighting.
lethalzero: beware i lossse one ship today for this
Even yesterday botters were reporting issues involving the unified inventory.
29 May
mevip: i have ammo problem too ... tried to test it last night ... drake with no ammo *ammo refil enabled and bookmarks configured* . sent it into battle and it didnt detect its out of ammo ... it wass fighting with drones only ...
flabberjack: thats a different problem. the issue is with t2 ammo i think. when it drags onto the yellow area they do not move ammo across
lethalzero: please admin restore de old system for the ammo windows please
Something tells me that these bugs are helping Team Security find botters. Can you imagine a Drake continuously warping to and from a mission site for an hour without firing a shot? Obvious botter, right? So that might explain these last two entries.
29 May
Red Bull: btw, there are still bans occuring. fuck ccp
jastog: A lot of my corp mates got banned in last week. +14 days and all of them got negative wallet
I know that a lot of players have legitimate gripes with the unified inventory system. But from my standpoint as an anti-botting blogger I really hope that CCP continues its plan to improve the system instead of rolling it back.
For my first example for how wrong I was, I point to the H-Bot mission/ratting bot. I thought that the developer had everything figured out in the first 24 hours, but he was a little optimistic. On the 22nd, just like real players, botters started reporting issues interacting with player owned stations.
22 May
H-Bot: Shit+clicking the open button opens containers of any kind in a separate window. So shit click open your corp hangar and position it on the left of selected item. H-Bot now shift+clicks when opening containers.
synchr0s: and what if i use Corporate Hangar? now it always opens default "LOOT" division
Clevik: When I warp away from the corp hangar, it isn't automatically close the corp hangar ammo window due to being too far away. Hbot is going to have to close the window before continuing to rat.
H-Bot: This will probably be fixed by ccp tomorrow. If not I'll make H-Bot close that inventory.
23 May
Pepko: Any solution to the problem, that when you open corp hangar it shows you 1st tab all the time ?
24 May
Me_me_me: I´m still waiting to this fix. It´s getting completely annoying to having close that window by manual after 1st reammo. HBOT should close that window. Please fix that urgently!
The release notes for both the 24 May and 26 May releases said this about the issue: *crickets* For me, the funny thing is that the H-Bot dev is waiting on CCP to fix issues.
Even after the latest release on the 26th the bot contained bugs that potentially could get a ship destroyed.
26 May
s1ut: Warped to a Anom that was BM and finished ( some reason one of the Sentry Guns Didnt Vanish ) The bot just sat there loosing shild and salvaging i manualy warped out when it got to 40% shild left
27 May
Diligent: That (failing to warp after finishing an anomolie) happens since last game update and few HBOT patches. Before it was perfect running but lately it starts to loop after finishing anomaly. It says that it don't see warp text but he is not even clicking warp on results. HBOT does nothing about scanner window, he opens it then "20:21:41|White arrow not found!"
cyceron1: ello
Anomalies autoscan
mini breaks this option is enabled in 3.5 260512 ?
H-Bot: Yes mini breaks work. Keep in mind this is to simulate afk for few seconds so use only low values for the duration because the bot goes afk even when fighting.
lethalzero: beware i lossse one ship today for this
Even yesterday botters were reporting issues involving the unified inventory.
29 May
mevip: i have ammo problem too ... tried to test it last night ... drake with no ammo *ammo refil enabled and bookmarks configured* . sent it into battle and it didnt detect its out of ammo ... it wass fighting with drones only ...
flabberjack: thats a different problem. the issue is with t2 ammo i think. when it drags onto the yellow area they do not move ammo across
lethalzero: please admin restore de old system for the ammo windows please
Something tells me that these bugs are helping Team Security find botters. Can you imagine a Drake continuously warping to and from a mission site for an hour without firing a shot? Obvious botter, right? So that might explain these last two entries.
29 May
Red Bull: btw, there are still bans occuring. fuck ccp
jastog: A lot of my corp mates got banned in last week. +14 days and all of them got negative wallet
I know that a lot of players have legitimate gripes with the unified inventory system. But from my standpoint as an anti-botting blogger I really hope that CCP continues its plan to improve the system instead of rolling it back.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
The Inferno (Botting) Launch Day Blues
5/22/2012 7:56:17 AM - Tiny Miner started the mining session!
5/22/2012 7:56:17 AM - Commencing a new Run. Auto-Placing the EVE window in the top left corner of the screen.
5/22/2012 7:56:43 AM - Checking for items in the ship's cargo window. Found some!
5/22/2012 7:56:43 AM - Checking for the Undock button (to see if the ship is inside the station). Found it!
5/22/2012 7:56:43 AM - The ship is undocking now. Waiting...
5/22/2012 7:56:54 AM - Undock successful. The ship is in space.
5/22/2012 7:56:56 AM - Checking to see if an asteroid is already locked. Not found!
5/22/2012 7:56:57 AM - The ship's cargo window appears to be closed. The program cannot continue until you open the cargo window again. If the cargo window is open then make sure it is UNPINNED so that it has an opaque background and the drones window is not overlapping it in any way as shown in the screenshots from the tutorial page.
5/22/2012 7:56:57 AM - Taking the closing screenshot and saving it in the Tiny Miner settings folder under "My Documents".
5/22/2012 7:56:58 AM - Closing the EVE client immediately!
Asimov, TinyMiner forums
Some people think that botters live a carefree life, drinking Bulgarian white wine, driving Yugo convertibles while blasting Def Leppard and overall just chillin' out in one-bedroom condos in Mogadishu. But no matter what they tell you, the life of botters isn't all rainbows and unicorns, even before CCP Sreegs comes in and snatches everything away. No, think of the poor botter whenever a major expansion comes out. Not only does the botter have to wait for CCP to finish up, but then has to wait on their talented (or not) bot coders to fix their bots in order to start rolling in the isk again. I waited a couple of days because I wanted to demonstrate just some of what the poor botters go through on patch day and, if CCP manages to change a lot, the days after.
First, botters have to tell the botting devs the bot is broken. Like every bot isn't broken after every patch and expansion.
Tinker (TinyMiner):
"After the Inferno patch and the new "Unified Inventory" system, TinyMiner doesn't work anymore. All the inventory UI and functionality is different now (for example if I open 2 different windows for cargo and hangar, after I reenter the station I only have the cargo window open)"Spod (Eve Pilot):
"Looks like the 'inventory' window will be the most difficult to deal with since it replaces the items window that stuff can be dragged to. The new inventory system sucks completely. There's so many complaints about it on the forums.
"Unsuprisingly, first run does not work and neither does trying to continue as normal. Trying to open the 'cargo window' takes up the whole screen. If you enable the option to 'Merge Items and Ships into Station Panel' then at least you get an 'Items' panel you can drag stuff too. For now though, it's killed EVE Pilot. I hope Slav can look into this.
"CCP may even revert to the old system or make the new one optional if everyone is unhappy."
Of course the botters have to report everything into their bot developer. Apparently the unified inventory system really hurt the OCR botters.
Sid-T (TinyMiner):
"With the consolidated hangar/inventory they have also made 1 other change which is that your "active ship" no longer appears in the "ship hangar" (even if you open it in a separate window) so the way "repair in station" works will have to change also."Spod (Eve Pilot):
"Trying this and EVE is much improved but still not ready to work well with EP. You can set the windows in the correct places (Cargo and Items) as before, and the bot will undock okay. If you then pause bot, dock, save the settings and re-start EP then the windows are gone again, so it's not saving the settings between restarts - makes it impossible to use still :/"willy (H-Bot):
"I have a problem with ammo refill. He does everything right, except he cant recognize the select quantity window to set the ammo amount and he doesnt close that window. This will get him stuck, since you cant do anything else until that window is closed. The bot itself runs in a cycle to refill ammo, in reality he doesnt do anything since there is no right click menu unless you close the set quantity ammo window, which he cant detect."HalfBaked (H-Bot):
"I use a corp hangar to re-fill my ammo, and with the new 'Gay' Inventory i have really struggled to make this work, i am reluctant to use a GSC to re-fill."Gray (Questor):
"Did some tests, because of having nothing to do, just "for fucks and laughs". And discovered a more serious problem... Even if you find a way to open new inventory (say, just open it manually), you still have to make Questor open wrecks and containers. This can be done with an old method, thankfully. But still, even if you make an attempt to open smth, it doesn't mean that it's going to be successful! For example, last pocket of WC: you can camp Damaged Heron and try to open it every 10 secs - but you won't be able to actually access it because it's "guarded", until you kill the trigger group. Another example: you've opened a container, but your ship has moved too far away due to inertia before you managed to loot it.TinyMiner is pretty strictly moderated, so I don't have too many tears. But over on the Eve Pilot forums people were starting to question whether they would get to use their bots anytime soon.
"In both cases a container is going to be added to your inventory, it will be marked grey in overview - but it doesn't mean that it's successfully looted :( Before patch there was a 100% reliable way to check: if there is an open window, then we can initiate loot sequence. Now... I'm out of ideas. There should be some kind of a new container flag, like "accessible". "
Sabrael71 (Eve Pilot):
"Is there any known timescale to when the eve miner fixes will be implemented guys,will it be days or weeks?,the new inventory system really sucks"Deviant (Eve Pilot):
"For any info when we can start use eve-pilot i will be very grateful, I've just buy it and i cant use it ... i'm start thinking is that was a good investition. Please share some information"Shiplash (Eve Pilot):
"do you know a time frame as to when it will be compatiable and since im on month subscription can i get a some day credited to pilot"
Of course hoping that changes in the game kill all the bots is just wishful thinking. Eventually the bot developers either fix the problem or at least see a way to fix things. But these changes are bigger than usual, even for an expansion.
VanGogh (TinyMiner bot developer):
"Well the small patch from today seems to have fixed the ship's cargo window stability issue. Now it will stay open after docking/undocking so that's one problem taken care of right there. I should be able to release the new version in the next couple of days as there are still a couple of things that need fixing and testing beside the ore unloading in station. These include the "ship repair feature" and the "unload at a POS corporate hangar" option."Of course, sometimes a developer will tell different communities different answer. Here are two answers that Slav2 gave to when Eve Pilot would be back up. First, to his English-speaking customers:
22 May 12 Support:
"It will take couple of days to implement new function to use new inventory"The next day he told the folks on the Russian forums the problems were a bit more serious.
23 May 12, Russian Forums:
pirogovivan:
Slav, and how it is a serious problem, and when at least some can wait for the patch?Slav2 (Eve Pilot bot developer):
"Даже ССП требуется несколько дней чтобы устаканить все изменения в клиенте. Мне также требуется еще день на обработку нового окна + время на исправление всего кода, где использовалась старая версия каргохолдов (корабль, ангар на станции, джетконты и вреки, струкруры на посе). В течении недели бот будет работать, конкретнее сказать не могу, будет видно по мере продвижения."Google Translation:
"Even CCP takes several days to fix all of the changes in the client. I also need one more day to process new window + time to correct all code that used an older version of the cargohold (ship hangar at the station, and dzhetkonty wrecks, strukrury to POS). Within weeks the bot will work, I can not say specifically, we will see as you go."And Questor is alive and, if not well, then still breathing. Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
Da_Teach (Questor bot developer):
"Ganondorf is working on getting DE working again (Glider/Edgar might be helping, not sure). At the same time I'm putting the finishing touches on the support system (I had hoped to finish it last night but paypal was being a bitch).The near future may be today or tomorrow.
"Due to the major changes in the inventory system it will take longer than usual to get everything working again. But I suspect everything will be working again in the near future."
I've had fun watching the activity on the botting forums. Unlike bans, botting developers can't censor (very much) posts about bugs because they need the feedback to fix things. The funny thing I noticed while reading through all of the forums is that the developers are depending on CCP to fix bugs or make suggested or promised changes in order for their bots to work properly. So while regular players are having fun in game, or perhaps cursing CCP for making changes, many bot users are on the sidelines for days because their developers still need to fix their bots.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I'll never use a bot. I wouldn't want to go through all the aggravation bot users go through. And that is before CCP Sreegs and Team Security catches them and takes all their stuff.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
CCP's War On Bots: Questor Tears, A Mixed Message
"Unfortunately RMT tears are a bit harder to harvest but if you can find a way feel free to share (don't link the site) and I will give you a virtual hug in my head."
CCP Sreegs is correct when he wrote that finding the tears of Eve Online RMTers is harder than collecting the tears of botters. However, I found a place where I could find both RMT and botter tears intermixed: the forums for the Questor mission bot.
I went back to the beginning of the latest anti-bot, anti-RMT campaign and collected as many tears as possible. I published the first set of tears Monday to celebrate that Questor's software developer Da Teach got busted right before Fanfest for illicit RMT. Botting tears usually are fun but this batch is a bit depressing. The other tears I've published are basically from players who just decide cheating is okay. This batch includes tears from hardcore botters and RMT farmers. To say that CCP Sreegs and Team Security have a lot of work ahead of them is a bit of an understatement. But there are a few gems in this batch I got some laughs out of.
Enjoy!
27 February:
jakesmurf: "Just a heads up on a potential banwave - I lost a few accounts this morning at downtime. There doesn't seem to be any particular cohesion in which ones got axed and which ones didn't. I had several bot accounts that were not banned, and two accounts that never botted at all did get banned."
persin: "I can confirm, they are starting new ban wave. I had all my accounts that were linked to me banned for generic 2 weeks. I have not ever done RMT. Oh, I ran questor around 18hrs a day everyday. Total of 7 out of 7 accounts temp banned."
smg: "3 accs of total 7 were bannehamered for me today. 14 day's ban for using macro. I have been botting for 18 - 20 hrs a day. No RMT from this accs"
Nocturn: "6 of 6 Accounts Banned. 14 days ban for using macro. 23 Hours botting a Day. No RMT from this Accs"
Botina: "4 ban yesterday. 3 ban today. 15-18h per day. perma ban all during work. I am fucked..."
SamePerson: "2\2 perma ban 25 Feb. rmt and 23h per day."
28 February:
vicious666: 7 of my 84 bots got banned for 15 days + got ban on 2 non bot char who anyway where moving stuff around for the bots (such as freighter chars).
fun part is i do rmt with 70 of them, and none of that got caught, pratically they banned me for 2 weeks half of the 14 bots i use for sustain my gameplay in eve.
i also heard some friends who got banned 1 char from total of 8 he was running from the same computer, but the other 7 are fine. so the ccp methods are meh.. random/made manually/susceptible to gm discreption /willing to indagate further/not related to the amount of time,
I know about ppl who got ban on theyr only single bot who where running max 8/H day and ppl with 15 24/24 untouched, so is hard to define a "cause"
tbh is more than a year and never got such issue, so seams now ccp have some "will" to stop questor , or is an economycs trick, 3k account banished,so in 2 weeks all 3k gonna change account-transfer/sell chars ? is a 100000$ dollar operation for them (in plex used) and they not lose a single account
Botina: "Looks like i was ccp enemy no. 1. since i got permabans on 8 of 10 chars. Hm, what i done wrong... Maybe just bad luck with little more dedicated GM..."
29 February:
gotteshand: "Whats surprising about this is what was banned was not the botting accounts. All 98 are still intact nothing at all what they banned was 2 accounts where I collected the ISK in form of materials for super-capital and titan production. No rmt or anything.. Guess they wanted that isk gone badly because if API is right which it should since its still working all isk, assets etc are gone.. they just gone and wiped about 3trillion isk~ makes no sense to me with leaving the farming accounts intact wont hurt. Also talk to all the ppl I've outfitted with supers and titans in alliance no one received a ban. Bots and stuff has been up and running in not so crowed places ~5-6ppl local for 6 months now 23/7 over VPN's with 2 bots sharing 1 IP."
15 March:
Da_Teach (the Questor developer): "Well it wouldn't be fair if I didnt post here :) I got banned yesterday on 9 of my 10 accounts. I didn't run 24/7, max 8ish hours per day. But I doubt they got me for botting, I just did a lot of RMT :) The fact that they got my mule-char (and another char that never ran a bot in its life) pretty much proves that."
runkittyrun: "Just got 2 week ban on 2 account, only one was running for a few hours yesterday, previous to that I ran it 20/7. The other account was the isk holding one. Maybe CCP is doing round 2 of banning for fanfest?"
klak1212: "3 out of 3 accounts banned for 'Macro use' for 15 days. Ran 23/7 (or as much as I could). Seemed like after the 1.5 patch, my clients were crashing constantly and then today I got banned."
26 March:
gotteshand: "Fanfest Security presentation.. this is bad really bad..."
Edgar: "Sky is falling.... Stop botting now...."
rixim: "Most of this stuff is good for most of us. There are questions about the number of farmers in this community, but I suspect that those of us that do farm, are smart enough to not hold much isk or link accounts. :D"
Ganondorf: "No Rixim i think Edgar is right, stop botting now, dismantle your farms, you (you = the farmers) got ccp's attention in the first place, they were not caring about bots at all, and now i read ban reports from players every day. Even now a guy doing only a small amount of hours of botting got banned for 30 days for botting. Also yesterday another guy got hit by the banhammer, and the day before as well another one. It's not a good time to bot."
Loller68: "Fuck this, i was just going back in business to help sustain all my accounts. Farmers fucked up everything, as always when money are involved it's always a mess."
2 April:
Blinker: "Banned today for 14days; 1 never used Questor - Received the ban. 6 that used Questor also received the ban"
dawtips: "I had 5 banned today. Running 20/5."
19 April:
The Vindicator: "Accounts questor banned: 3. Accounts no-questor banned: 2. 1month of ban"
Gray: "6 bots + their logist/trader down the drain. All of them permbans for RMT (no warnings, no mail, just instaban). This set of accs has been running since 5 Dec 2011, though - which is a helluva lot of time for RMTing toons. Looks like either CCP gone lazy, or I've started to do something the right way..."
Monday, April 30, 2012
CCP's War On Bots: Questor Developer Caught In RMT Sweep
In early March CCP's Team Security scored a major victory in the War on Bots™ and the illicit RMT trade when they caught the developer of the Questor mission bot, Da_Teach, in an RMT sweep on 15 March.
On 19 March, Da_Teach indicated that he was changing his mind, at least partially.
A couple of weeks went by while Da_Teach decided how to proceed. The tears started to flow.
Finally Da_Teach unveiled his plans.
Does this mean that Questor is currently a top-notch bot? Not according to some of the tears associated with changing the names of star gates.
So basically development of Questor by Da_Teach is over, with the only work being maintaining the code after each patch that CCP publishes. From what I can tell, each Eve patch requires a rework of DirectEve since CCP does things to the code that makes botters lives difficult.
Questor development has always put in tasks that are a barrier to casual people picking up the bot and using it. Some technical expertise is required. Reading through the forums I get the impression that Questor or Questor-derivitives form the engine for many illicit RMT farming operations. In fact, in the leak of the GeneralStab logs following the fall of Northern Coalition last year, The Mittani opined that using Questor is more profitable than moon mining.
Da_Teach: "Well it wouldn't be fair if I didnt post here :)
"I got banned yesterday on 9 of my 10 accounts. I didn't run 24/7, max 8ish hours per day. But I doubt they got me for botting, I just did a lot of RMT :) The fact that they got my mule-char (and another char that never ran a bot in its life) pretty much proves that."
tetrikx: "I really hope this doesn't make you abandon the Questor project. Getting banned expecially in eve might be a big emotional hit but many found the inner strength to continue and/or start over."
Da_Teach: "It was not an emotional hit :) I haven't actually played eve for over 1 1/2 years now and the bots was the only reason I actually started up eve. For me this project is over and done for.
"There are a few dev's that can maintain DirectEve and I might also consider making DirectEve open-source.
"However, I will no longer work on it, look at it, or otherwise maintain it. I'm giving away my final char to a friend who's accounts where also banned and I'll be moving on to other games."
On 19 March, Da_Teach indicated that he was changing his mind, at least partially.
Da_Teach: "The project is still "mine". I might not work on it, but the license hasn't changed nor will it.
"That said, it seems a few DE dev's are only willing to work on DE if people donate. This is against my idea behind DE. As such I might look into two possibilities, either go open source or go partially paid (where I would still solve the issues within DE). Donations to a particular DE dev is still paying them to profit off my work (and before those dev's start saying "I did this and that", it doesn't begin to compare to the amount that I put into DE)."
A couple of weeks went by while Da_Teach decided how to proceed. The tears started to flow.
I3Questor (5 April): "Whatever the decision it, can it please be made soon. I have bots that think christmas came early because they havent worked a single minute since the stargate patch.
"I would like to make a decision on whether I am still running questor or go back to my mining bot because right now a few bill a month is better than nothing.
"I have already PMd People who are charging and got the answer that "oh we are only allowing selected people" *sigh* so obviously my US$ are not good enough.. lol
"Please get something going."
I3Questor (6 April): "Dude right now, all i care about is getting Questor back up and running. If someone is charging and the bot is working.. then I'm in.
"This thread has been going for long enough for DT to get a fair idea and while I understand that he will probably have to get a billing system organised etc, I would still like to know HOW LONG IT WILL BE and how much I will have to pay for my bots.
"Right now I am making 0 income because I am not a coder and everytime I try to compile any of the builds that are on Git, I get a sea of red..
"I just need things to move faster than the snails pace they are currently moving at."
Daruna (6 April): "Basically this, right here. I don't bot in order to RMT whatever I make, and I completely understand that those who make the bots, like DT, frown upon it. I have purchased ISK in the past because you get more than double the isk than a PLEX for the same price, and for me, money is pretty tight right now, and I'd like to be able to do things like play EVE for as little money as possible. If that means paying for a bot that in general costs as much as or less than a single EVE account and get it to pay for 5, then yes, I am very much willing to pay DT for his hard work.
"But I'd really love it if it happened sooner rather than later ;~;"
Finally Da_Teach unveiled his plans.
Da_Teach: "I can't stress enough that the subscription is for DirectEve support. While I will fix any major-game-breaking Questor bugs (and compilation errors), I will not improve it nor will I fix any bugs that it probably contains that are not game breaking.
"The fact that I will be providing a build server is mostly to get rid of the 'Ok, I am not smart enough to perform a command-line compile' posts on this forum. Don't confuse this with me supporting / further developing Questor in any way, shape or form.
"What you will get, for your $1 per instance, is:
* A patched DirectEve as soon as possible (usually within 24-48 hours, exceptions may occur)
* A daily compiled Questor master-branch (compilation errors will be fixed within 24-48 hours)
* Optionally the ability to compile any Questor-fork (compilation errors will not be fixed, it could possibly not return the correct binaries)
"If that's not the support you where looking for, for your $1 per instance, then I guess the support subscription is not for you and you'll just have to wait a week (and compile Questor yourself)."
Does this mean that Questor is currently a top-notch bot? Not according to some of the tears associated with changing the names of star gates.
Ritticus (6 April): "I found 4 typo errors referring to destination directories just in the compile.bat alone who knows how many real errors are in the code itself, I deem this project broken for now. DT seems to be heading away and until someone steps up or a pay-to-use alternative is established. this is as good as dead for now."
goldenlancer (10 April): "Just saying - I support making questor paid - but I have not had questor in over 2 months. Its been broke that long as far as I'm concerned. (Habitually broken for longer)
"I WRITE MY OWN CODE. I'm not a complete retard - I made my own AHK script (for anomalies) and have given up - im writing a code for missions too. Yet I look at the fixes I'm able to see, and none of them work. I've spent more time trying to fix questor than probably would have been necessary to write my own AHK script.
"Your alienating the very population you want to keep in the near future. I realize in the past this attitude leads to fewer people -> Less CCP attention, but these are the very people who are willing to fork over money for a product. People smarter then me will just write their own. People stupider then me usually dont have this sort of patience to sit idle.
"I wish you all farewell"
So basically development of Questor by Da_Teach is over, with the only work being maintaining the code after each patch that CCP publishes. From what I can tell, each Eve patch requires a rework of DirectEve since CCP does things to the code that makes botters lives difficult.
Questor development has always put in tasks that are a barrier to casual people picking up the bot and using it. Some technical expertise is required. Reading through the forums I get the impression that Questor or Questor-derivitives form the engine for many illicit RMT farming operations. In fact, in the leak of the GeneralStab logs following the fall of Northern Coalition last year, The Mittani opined that using Questor is more profitable than moon mining.
[08:54:53] [the mittani] i know a rmt transaction of about 2 trillionSince Da_Teach is not going to make DirectEve open source, hopefully that means the bot will soon become out of date and those who supply the illicit RMT trade will lose one of their best tools.
[08:54:58] [the mittani] that's about 40k usd
[08:55:09] [the mittani] don't knock rmt, it's p. serious cash at the upper levels
[08:55:36] [the mittani] fuck, iskbank had records of about 300k in profit
[08:55:56] [rat salat] Advice... skip the rmt, quit eve and get into med school lol
[08:56:14] [the mittani] rmt is relatively easy and doesn't involve 120k+ of debt
[08:57:06] [the mittani] it's not like humans do work to generate rmt isk
[08:57:09] [rat salat] No, but it does take 80 hours to control the corp
[08:57:14] [the mittani] it's all virtual machines running bots, or moon products
[08:57:23] [rat salat] Now, botting, that's different
[08:57:32] [the mittani] primarily it's questor in l4 mission hubs
[08:57:33] [rat salat] There's some RMT to be made there
[08:57:50] [rat salat] 1 bot over a month makes a tech moon look silly
[08:57:51] [rat salat] so yea
[08:58:57] [the mittani] and due to virtual machines, you can run as many bots doing missions as your cpu can handle
[08:58:59] [rat salat] E#xactly
[08:59:18] [rat salat] So tech for RMT is fucking irrelevant as far as I'm concerned
[09:01:59] [the mittani] goo embezzlement is an 'out'
[09:02:12] [the mittani] if you set up a rmt shop as a business from the start, you do bots in vms in empire
Monday, April 16, 2012
CCP's War On Bots: H-Bot Tears Are Interesting
Tomorrow is tax day here in the U.S. Since I know a lot of people are feeling the blues as they scramble to finish their federal and state tax forms, I thought about how I could brighten the day. The only way I know is to publish some more forum porn from a botting forum. Today's spotlight falls on H-Bot.
H-Bot is an Eve Online mission and ratting bot that apparently is pretty popular, even at a price of 30 euros. But does that higher price lead to a higher quality of tears than those I found on the Eve Pilot (Eve Miner/Eve Trader) forums a couple of weeks ago? I'll let you be the judge. Enjoy!
27 Feb 12 - Diligent: "I believe that these actions are only fanfest propaganda. I don't have my accounts banned, never had. I don't RMT. I have 4 bots, my friend has more and also don't get banned. Maybe we will be banned next few days but anyway...whatever you do it's too late. IMHO they don't look for how long you bot, 23h or 8. Bots are pretty easy to find. Just look at tengu players that uses specific fit or at least subsystem, then check his wallet. You got list of bots, then ban few accounts that had money transfered. So we have multiple accounts baned wchich raises statistics. I think this move is not to ban us permanently but show society how good is policeman. In my country there are days called by policemans "blue days", where all forces are on the street. Just to show ppl that police is there and doing their job, so they can feel safe.
"CCP as professional developer ended "hobby and cool game" stasis and entered "making big money" stasis. So remember that those guys from management have to show profit $$ at the end of month. So it's not interest to ban bots. Especially when Nex Store idea failed at start
.
"But anyway, whatever will happen I will be pissed if my main get banned and I wouldn't be at PVP, even for a week."
15 Mar 12 - Diligent: "Just got banned. 2 bots that were in use + my main char. Great Job CCP
. Now it's time to take care of my GF and other game. Be back in 2 weeks o/"
28 Feb 12 - Pepko: "They got statistic on everything : check this link https://twitter.com/#!/CCP_Diagoras - they can see every shit that happens. I dont think anyone can run anomalies for 8 hours without break .... so i think they know exactly who is botting."
1 Mar 12 - mike8787: On the news that accounts flagged for botting can no longer transfer character: "Well they just lost 40k euro in transfer fees. Sreggs mentioned they want to do this every month. That's potential half mil euro loss per year. Let's see how long he can keep it up before accountants show up and format his hdd lol"
11 Mar 12 - chzz808: "is anyone still being hit by the bandwave or is it safe to come out of the cave"
12 Mar 12
jackoko: "Guys only bot when you are near the computer, or get banned. I am always watching my bot on a second screen and if anything comes up I react like a real player"
wutwutwhy: "so why bother botting"
16 Mar 12 - Scald: "I'm using different e-mails for each account, but 4 chars was banned. So they use not only e-mails to track related accounts - I suppose IP, isk transfer and many other things can be used."
22 Mar 12 - MrBlubb: "I think, the problem is that hbot shows a very very special behaviour, that is easy to see on logs:
- Most people bot with open map due to OCR Problems.
- hbot keeps hitting Engage drones on every cycle, even if drones are already on target.
- current hbot layout for the eve-client is way to strict.
- hbot very often loads new overview (usual players will use tabs)
- hbot keeps trying to target a target, that is actually in the locking process (means a carrier will retry to target a frig like 20 times, until its actually locked)
- Color Schema: Black, black, black... (why not use a configurable fore- and background color with only NO Transparency?)
and so on."
26 Mar 12: Clevik and nubhubble respond to CCP Sreegs' Security presentation at Fanfest.
Clevik: "I don't know if they realize it but putting wallets into negative is pretty much a 1-strike policy. There is no way people are going to try and work their way out of a 10-20bil negative wallet. And since you can't upgrade your clone, make contracts, or do anything really, that account is essentially dead. I can understand the no trading characters after a ban, but if they want to try and make players good after a ban and keep them, they would take away assets on the 2nd or 3rd strike."
nubhubble: "We will see whether this is bluff or not but CCP can't go around setting every bots wallet in the negative. They're already losing out on a lot of money through not allowing characters who've been banned to be traded. This will really cause serious problems for them. But don't underestimate the stupidity of CCP."
29 Mar 12 - Diligent: "To bot or not to bot? What do you think guys? Bans going out today, is it worth to risk second strike or wait some time until CCP forget about bots?"
29 Mar 12 - Zeevs: "todai got ban for all caracter include those who non bot ! Intresting thing that am just siting in local 2 days and do not rat and get ban ccp is sheet"
4 Apr 12 - Sashka_kakashka: "it is over?"
H-Bot is an Eve Online mission and ratting bot that apparently is pretty popular, even at a price of 30 euros. But does that higher price lead to a higher quality of tears than those I found on the Eve Pilot (Eve Miner/Eve Trader) forums a couple of weeks ago? I'll let you be the judge. Enjoy!
27 Feb 12 - Diligent: "I believe that these actions are only fanfest propaganda. I don't have my accounts banned, never had. I don't RMT. I have 4 bots, my friend has more and also don't get banned. Maybe we will be banned next few days but anyway...whatever you do it's too late. IMHO they don't look for how long you bot, 23h or 8. Bots are pretty easy to find. Just look at tengu players that uses specific fit or at least subsystem, then check his wallet. You got list of bots, then ban few accounts that had money transfered. So we have multiple accounts baned wchich raises statistics. I think this move is not to ban us permanently but show society how good is policeman. In my country there are days called by policemans "blue days", where all forces are on the street. Just to show ppl that police is there and doing their job, so they can feel safe.
"CCP as professional developer ended "hobby and cool game" stasis and entered "making big money" stasis. So remember that those guys from management have to show profit $$ at the end of month. So it's not interest to ban bots. Especially when Nex Store idea failed at start
."But anyway, whatever will happen I will be pissed if my main get banned and I wouldn't be at PVP, even for a week."
15 Mar 12 - Diligent: "Just got banned. 2 bots that were in use + my main char. Great Job CCP
. Now it's time to take care of my GF and other game. Be back in 2 weeks o/"28 Feb 12 - Pepko: "They got statistic on everything : check this link https://twitter.com/#!/CCP_Diagoras - they can see every shit that happens. I dont think anyone can run anomalies for 8 hours without break .... so i think they know exactly who is botting."
1 Mar 12 - mike8787: On the news that accounts flagged for botting can no longer transfer character: "Well they just lost 40k euro in transfer fees. Sreggs mentioned they want to do this every month. That's potential half mil euro loss per year. Let's see how long he can keep it up before accountants show up and format his hdd lol"
11 Mar 12 - chzz808: "is anyone still being hit by the bandwave or is it safe to come out of the cave"
12 Mar 12
jackoko: "Guys only bot when you are near the computer, or get banned. I am always watching my bot on a second screen and if anything comes up I react like a real player"
wutwutwhy: "so why bother botting"
16 Mar 12 - Scald: "I'm using different e-mails for each account, but 4 chars was banned. So they use not only e-mails to track related accounts - I suppose IP, isk transfer and many other things can be used."
22 Mar 12 - MrBlubb: "I think, the problem is that hbot shows a very very special behaviour, that is easy to see on logs:
- Most people bot with open map due to OCR Problems.
- hbot keeps hitting Engage drones on every cycle, even if drones are already on target.
- current hbot layout for the eve-client is way to strict.
- hbot very often loads new overview (usual players will use tabs)
- hbot keeps trying to target a target, that is actually in the locking process (means a carrier will retry to target a frig like 20 times, until its actually locked)
- Color Schema: Black, black, black... (why not use a configurable fore- and background color with only NO Transparency?)
and so on."
26 Mar 12: Clevik and nubhubble respond to CCP Sreegs' Security presentation at Fanfest.
Clevik: "I don't know if they realize it but putting wallets into negative is pretty much a 1-strike policy. There is no way people are going to try and work their way out of a 10-20bil negative wallet. And since you can't upgrade your clone, make contracts, or do anything really, that account is essentially dead. I can understand the no trading characters after a ban, but if they want to try and make players good after a ban and keep them, they would take away assets on the 2nd or 3rd strike."
nubhubble: "We will see whether this is bluff or not but CCP can't go around setting every bots wallet in the negative. They're already losing out on a lot of money through not allowing characters who've been banned to be traded. This will really cause serious problems for them. But don't underestimate the stupidity of CCP."
29 Mar 12 - Diligent: "To bot or not to bot? What do you think guys? Bans going out today, is it worth to risk second strike or wait some time until CCP forget about bots?"
29 Mar 12 - Zeevs: "todai got ban for all caracter include those who non bot ! Intresting thing that am just siting in local 2 days and do not rat and get ban
ccp is sheet"4 Apr 12 - Sashka_kakashka: "it is over?"
Monday, April 2, 2012
CCP's War On Bots: Eve Pilot Tears, March 2012
Note: This blog post was originally titled "CCP's War On Bots: Tiny Miner Tears, March 2012". I got my eve bots confused. I apologize for the error.
I was in the audience for the Eve Security presentation and was delighted when CCP Sreegs pointed to The Nosy Gamer in his presentation for my coverage on the War on Bots™. Inspired, I have gone out and looked for some good tears from botting sites. I found a lot on the forums for Eve Pilot. Here are some comments from some users. I can't give out links because they are hidden behind a pay wall. But I'm taking screenshots to document the original text. Enjoy!
15 March:
desi0103a: No you are not allone i lost at this moment all my 11 acc that are not funny
now i think the bot is not safe ;(
liu_kuojen: 3bots, 5 accounts banned. including 1 account that has never touched any macro'ed isk
Eldritch: 6 accounts banned - for 2 weeks (thank god not permanent).
only 2 were botting on a different pc - same network, so it's deffinitely an ip-ban.
Very nice from ccp: i payed a new account today to switch from trial to normal account - also banned.
But I have to say, that I mined 23/7 the last days and that i used it although it behaved strange, so it's most likely not a problem with the bot.
godless: banned 2 accounts. 1 only macroing.
I am switching to another game after 7 years playing it. This game is for fucking ccp's friends. I don't have a public IP so it's kinda weird they banned me 2 accounts.
rider23: I was botting 20hrs/day, on 4 accounts, all banned (+1 extra!) for 2 weeks. 2 remain. Now, without botting I have no other way to make isk and get plexes for all accounts even for my main. So there is no way to play for FREE. FREE? Hmm, seems that CCP have problems with their funding to support company, servers, etc.
Fuck them
I say (sorry, but I had to say that) and I finally understood that I have no true need to play their game (or are they who play with us?),even though I have been with EVE since 1994...
So, I will let them eat my s**t, and on my 2 remaining unblocked accounts I have started the process to return all characters to the virtual biomass, where they virtually came from. Subscriptions already canceled.
It was one of the best games I've played but now I regret for the real money and the effort I have spent to this game. All the dedication I've given to this game could be a type of mental slavery. And I do believe that it is not worth investing money to any game unless we learn something from it. I have only learned a lot of useless crap for this game.
17 March:
EDIT - Both accounts just got banned..
March 18:
29 March:
My account was banned today to 4.11. The reason - the use of macro. That's it... C that nothing can be done?
fartovii: А вообще, не могу понять логику CCP. Борьба с ботами? Так ботов, на мой взгляд, около 20% активных аккаунтов в еве. И какой смысл в этой "борьбе"?
In general, I cannot understand the logic of CCP. The fight with bots? So bots, in my opinion, about 20% of active accounts in Eve. And what's the point in this "fight"?
30 March:
Has there been any devlopments on whats happening with this all? It seemed CCP were having a huge wave of banning everyone, I know quite a few who got banned. When my accounts are unbanned, what do you guys suggest I do? I hear that you cannot sell an account any more if its ever previously been banned, is this true?
I was thinking of continuing mining on those 3 accounts but less often and starting training up new accounts now .... what do you all think is best to do?
Dinky: Sorry to report but this message normally means that the characters have been perma banned. The same thing has happened to me with my characters. I pressed the GM's for an answer to when there investigation would be finished & the outcome was a perma ban. The message on logon simply means that CCP have not got the balls to state you are banned but the message means just that, so don't bank on getting the characters back.
The mistake I made was being greedy & associating the same email addresses with my main characters & the whole chain was banned- a lot of characters in all with mains in excess of 80 million SP each
I was in the audience for the Eve Security presentation and was delighted when CCP Sreegs pointed to The Nosy Gamer in his presentation for my coverage on the War on Bots™. Inspired, I have gone out and looked for some good tears from botting sites. I found a lot on the forums for Eve Pilot. Here are some comments from some users. I can't give out links because they are hidden behind a pay wall. But I'm taking screenshots to document the original text. Enjoy!
15 March:
SokarNox: I woke this morning to find 4 of my 4 accounts banned. I was only running the bot on one account... Great! Anyone else getting banned? Or was I singled out?
desi0103a: No you are not allone i lost at this moment all my 11 acc that are not funny
now i think the bot is not safe ;(liu_kuojen: 3bots, 5 accounts banned. including 1 account that has never touched any macro'ed isk
Eldritch: 6 accounts banned - for 2 weeks (thank god not permanent).
only 2 were botting on a different pc - same network, so it's deffinitely an ip-ban.
Very nice from ccp: i payed a new account today to switch from trial to normal account - also banned.
But I have to say, that I mined 23/7 the last days and that i used it although it behaved strange, so it's most likely not a problem with the bot.
godless: banned 2 accounts. 1 only macroing.
I am switching to another game after 7 years playing it. This game is for fucking ccp's friends. I don't have a public IP so it's kinda weird they banned me 2 accounts.
rider23: I was botting 20hrs/day, on 4 accounts, all banned (+1 extra!) for 2 weeks. 2 remain. Now, without botting I have no other way to make isk and get plexes for all accounts even for my main. So there is no way to play for FREE. FREE? Hmm, seems that CCP have problems with their funding to support company, servers, etc.
Fuck them
I say (sorry, but I had to say that) and I finally understood that I have no true need to play their game (or are they who play with us?),even though I have been with EVE since 1994... So, I will let them eat my s**t, and on my 2 remaining unblocked accounts I have started the process to return all characters to the virtual biomass, where they virtually came from. Subscriptions already canceled.
It was one of the best games I've played but now I regret for the real money and the effort I have spent to this game. All the dedication I've given to this game could be a type of mental slavery. And I do believe that it is not worth investing money to any game unless we learn something from it. I have only learned a lot of useless crap for this game.
17 March:
Gregar: I have yet to be banned and have been using the BOT on 2 accounts - I think I might have got lucky though as I stopped playing for about a month when everyone was getting banned and I had a day off when the next lot of people started getting banned... 
EDIT - Both accounts just got banned..
March 18:
Shitsai: Ok, something fishy is goin' on. I just create a new trial account, who only went to jita, and bought 1 skill book. Only thing he did "wrong" was running launcher and eve, while evepilot was sitting in the background. I have renamed the title to notepad, a long time ago. But this character has NOT done anything in game, that would cause a EULA violation. But now he is banned for 14 days. Who bannes a trial account?
29 March:
Suslik2004: Мой аккаунт сегодня забанили до 11.04. Причина - использование макро. Вот так то... C этим ничего нельзя сделать?
My account was banned today to 4.11. The reason - the use of macro. That's it... C that nothing can be done?
fartovii: А вообще, не могу понять логику CCP. Борьба с ботами? Так ботов, на мой взгляд, около 20% активных аккаунтов в еве. И какой смысл в этой "борьбе"?
In general, I cannot understand the logic of CCP. The fight with bots? So bots, in my opinion, about 20% of active accounts in Eve. And what's the point in this "fight"?
30 March:
squattingnevil: So, a while back all 3 of my miners got banned. They are still showing banned waiting investigation.
Has there been any devlopments on whats happening with this all? It seemed CCP were having a huge wave of banning everyone, I know quite a few who got banned. When my accounts are unbanned, what do you guys suggest I do? I hear that you cannot sell an account any more if its ever previously been banned, is this true?
I was thinking of continuing mining on those 3 accounts but less often and starting training up new accounts now .... what do you all think is best to do?
Dinky: Sorry to report but this message normally means that the characters have been perma banned. The same thing has happened to me with my characters. I pressed the GM's for an answer to when there investigation would be finished & the outcome was a perma ban. The message on logon simply means that CCP have not got the balls to state you are banned but the message means just that, so don't bank on getting the characters back.
The mistake I made was being greedy & associating the same email addresses with my main characters & the whole chain was banned- a lot of characters in all with mains in excess of 80 million SP each
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
CCP's War On Bots: TinyMiner Tears Not Bad Either
CCP's War On Bots™ is starting to pick up attention in Eve Online podcast circles, with RMT receiving some attention on Notalotofnews Newshour Episode #51 and Kirith Kodachi mentioning The Nosy Gamer's coverage on Broadcast from the Ninveah #47. With the podcast activity as inspiration, I finally managed to acquire something I thought I wouldn't get: reports of banned accounts from the TinyMiner forums.
When quoting bot users discussing bans, I want to provide links to the tears just so people know I am not making quotes up. Up until now I thought that the TinyMiner forum registration process would prevent me from providing the links. However, the TinyMiner forums have a security hole worse than the one in the new Eve Online forums and I can now provide the links. I had heard reports that the developer was deleting "I was banned" posts, but some of them either didn't get deleted or were cached prior to being deleted.
26 March: Rusty69 ("CCP's 'new' war on bots") - A know-it-all apparently didn't.
30 April: RuddyBear ("Banned for 14 days") - CCP is all about customer service.
19 May: fyreplug ("CCP's 'new' war on bots") - I'd ask for your stuff, but I don't like the touch of tainted goods.
Update: You may have noticed most of the links no longer work. The next time I find a security hole, I'll take screenshots.
When quoting bot users discussing bans, I want to provide links to the tears just so people know I am not making quotes up. Up until now I thought that the TinyMiner forum registration process would prevent me from providing the links. However, the TinyMiner forums have a security hole worse than the one in the new Eve Online forums and I can now provide the links. I had heard reports that the developer was deleting "I was banned" posts, but some of them either didn't get deleted or were cached prior to being deleted.
26 March: Rusty69 ("CCP's 'new' war on bots") - A know-it-all apparently didn't.
"LOLOLOLOL...well. after writing that big post above, i went to log in and just found 3 of my 5 accounts banned.....for 2 weeks too....
. I'm surprised they didnt banned my orca account too.....f-ing noobs. Also my other account which i also heavily marco on.... . I thought it was convient though, i just brought plexes on 2 of those accounts too that were banned, and i'll need to "subscribe or petition 24hr pass' to pay for a plex on the other one as the ban will go past when his sub is due. OH WELL...if i cant make enough isk to pay for them all in the following 2 weeks..well CCP will be losing money
. Problay only thing bad about it...VG...i never even got to test out that third key i just brought off ya
30 April: RuddyBear ("Banned for 14 days") - CCP is all about customer service.
"I received my first 14 day ban a couple of days ago - been using TinyMiner on and off for a couple of years so I suppose it was inevitable. Looking through my logs,I can't see any attempt at conversation by a GM which seems odd. Could be I am the victim of multiple player reporting? I've tried petitioning but the only communication I've had from CCP is a brief email telling me that my case is closed and would I like to give feedback on the way they handled it! "1 May: JohnyR ("Banned for 14 days") - Someone got smart. I wonder if this means that CCP Sreegs is mean?
"Well, after receiving this e-mail:2 May: Rusty69 ("Banned for 14 days") - Not only doesn't he know everything, but he is butt-hurt about it.
'Hi,
Thank you for contacting customer support and our apologies for the late reply.
You were detected as running macros and as such behaviour is prohibited by our TOS/EULA a 14 day temporary ban was applied. Further incident of this sort will call for more punitive measures against accounts involved, including possible permanent bans.
Best regards,
GM Nova
Senior Game master
EVE Online Customer Support'
"Guess i will behave now, i don't want my accounts banned
"To be frank though...its not just randoms players reporting botters anymore..CCP are simply looking at logged in hours first, then IP addys...if the account in question is currently logged in, the GM will simply have a peek and see whats its doing...if it mining, the GM can go through his daily little log and check how much ore you have mined. Really..a marco isnt that hard to spot. Some say that CCP wouldnt bother 'hiring' a dedicated 'bot catcher' but seriously...within his 8 hour shift it wouldnt take him long to scan through 50-100 accounts. Then some would argue 'ccp will lose a heap of money from that'...well yes they would if they banned all the botters...but as i find here they only seem to be banning people with either multiply account first..then looking at 23/7 accounts second. I had 4 accounts goins 23/7...3 got banned, other guy on here said both his acounts got banned, other lad said all of his 6 accounts got banned. And let me guess, anyone of here that only got there one and only botting account banned...i bet you were doin it 23/7. "
19 May: fyreplug ("CCP's 'new' war on bots") - I'd ask for your stuff, but I don't like the touch of tainted goods.
"Well, they banned all three of my accounts with the update and I have only ever used one to mine with. The others I use for missions alone. I mine to a POS so I don't even know why they would bother with me.
"Guess I'm done with EVE. "19 May: slasher87 ("CCP's 'new' war on bots") - I bet CCP Sreegs hopes the botters keep thinking this.
"Had one account banned today, was reported once and moved systems, mined probably 12 hours a day with random intervals through the day, and not ever more 5 days a week. Seems like people reporting seems to be the issue in my case. "23 May: thug ("CCP's 'new' war on bots") - Botters really have to be careful.
"got 6 accounts 5 got banned the day after the patch came out for two weeks the one that didnt has a different e-mail address so it seems to me that they look at the e-mail address of the rogue account and ban every character with the same e-mail...."TL;DR - Botting is bad. Botting with TinyMiner is stupid. The dev deletes posts to keep you from knowing how stupid, but fails at deleting.
Update: You may have noticed most of the links no longer work. The next time I find a security hole, I'll take screenshots.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
CCP's War On Bots: Ghost Suite Tears, Best Tears
Note: This is a copy of a blog post I wrote a few weeks back updated with newer posts, including a nice juicy post from someone who had 5 accounts banned. I renamed it so that the post would get around language filters. Besides, I like the name better.
Surfing the net searching the seedy underworld of Eve Online botting sites gives an idea of what CCP's War on Bots™ looks like from the botters' perspective. One discussion thread on the GhostSuite forums about bans picked up steam starting on 8 May. Here are some ban reports for those who would like some details of what CCP may or may not be doing in the on-going war.
From 8 May: I love the comment about how sitting at the computer didn't save Anonymous A.
13 May: CCP bans 4 more accounts from 2 different users.
From deadme4t. Apparently a safety feature designed to keep CCP from detecting bot use didn't quite protect him:
From Voska. This indicates that CCP are using technical means of identification and not just relying on reports. I know that CCP Sreeg said they were developing automatic ways of detecting bots, but a lot of people in the botting community don't believe it.
From jaec:
From JustDana:
24 May: Some indication on how CCP is verifying bot use.
27 May: Someone reports getting 5 accounts banned.
These are just the cases reported. I don't know how popular GhostSuite is, but it appears that CCP has tuned their detection algorithms to detect this bot.
Using bots is bad. Using this bot may mark a player as stupid.
Surfing the net searching the seedy underworld of Eve Online botting sites gives an idea of what CCP's War on Bots™ looks like from the botters' perspective. One discussion thread on the GhostSuite forums about bans picked up steam starting on 8 May. Here are some ban reports for those who would like some details of what CCP may or may not be doing in the on-going war.
From 8 May: I love the comment about how sitting at the computer didn't save Anonymous A.
I know two people who got banned and here's what they were doing.9 May: CCP bans 4 accounts for the activities of one:
Anonymous A:
Program used: StealthMiner
Accounts: 3 accounts per computer + Orca; all on one comp
Mining days per week: 6
Average hours per day: 14
Mining location: All characters in same system
Mining equipment: All hulks plus Orca
Profit per day: $250M approx (not even close to all level 5)
Length before getting banned: Approximately 1 month
Banned Characters: Every character used on PC, including 3 that were never involved in mining
Banned Length: 7 days
Notes: Was actually at computer most of the time and was present when banned; doesn't matter if you're at the machine.
Anonymous B:
Program used: TinyMiner
Accounts: 2 accounts per computer; two computers; total of 4
Mining days per week: 6-7
Average hours per day: 20
Mining location: Max of two characters in same system; moved between systems every 2-3 days
Mining equipment: All retrievers
Profit per day: $100M approx
Length before getting banned: Approximately 1 month
Banned Characters: Only 1 computer (2 accounts) was banned
Banned Length: 14 days
"I have only been mining one of my miners now for about a month and a half. The other miners have been sitting out. I had a miner mining for 23/7 same system. Stealth would sit idle every 10 to 15 runs for 10 to 15 minutes and log off every 200-250 minutes for 10 to 15 minutes.
10 May: CCP bans another 4 accounts for someone using the GhostSuite bot. This person needs to buy a clue, as it appears he also started a thread on the official Eve Online forums about getting banned.
"I came back Monday and Wednesday to find the same system message on Eve, I dont remember the message as I thought it had to do with jamming errors from rats; eve was open and GhostSuite had stopped mining. It wasnt showing the session had ended, just looked like it had locked up. I came home yesterday to find the the account had been banned. I woke up this morning to find that a second account that I had not used in over a month in a half with GS was banned for macro use.
"Only thing in common was the ip address and the email on the account. So far the other accounts I have, have not been banned yet. I will update further if I have any other accounts banned, as they do not have the same email address on the accounts.
"Guessing that I was reported by other users as the system I was in the rats jam heavily and GS cant handle the jamming. (I tried setting up ECCM in the tanking tab of settup-didnt have any success with it) I have come back to my account being jammed by rats for hours at a time. This may have other gamers reporting that. Especially since the systems being mined have been thinned out by banned accounts, making it more likely to be visably macroing."
"FYI got banned after a number of years myself, worst thing is over the last 2-3 months ive hardly used ghost miner other than for autopilot aspect,
"Was miening about 6-10 hours a day (sometimes only 4-5) in a newbie system....
"Basically i hold 4 accounts (only run GM on 1 of them) all 4 have been banned, im apealing the ban (as i said havent realy used GM at all for the last couple of months) but they seem to have a very low priorty on dealing with banned petitions, was submitted a week ago (submitted two) and have had 0 responce form them, also when accounts were banned agian no email just your acocunt is banned for two weeks on start up, as these acocunts are all paid for by credit car dit will be interesting to see if they will also refund the two week banned peiord as time not used."
13 May: CCP bans 4 more accounts from 2 different users.
From deadme4t. Apparently a safety feature designed to keep CCP from detecting bot use didn't quite protect him:
User XXXXXXXX is banned
Last login: 2011.05.13 07:22
Number of visits: 2716
Reason: EULA/TOS Violation - Macro use
Until: 2011.05.27
Login message.
Only used GS in a VM, in .8space Its my only alt, fully paid account, I use the $ to fund PVP on my main. I might not play eve anymore if I have to mission or rat to make $
Mining ~16hrs a day randomly. I upgraded to the GS alternate startup method as soon as it was available.
From Voska. This indicates that CCP are using technical means of identification and not just relying on reports. I know that CCP Sreeg said they were developing automatic ways of detecting bots, but a lot of people in the botting community don't believe it.
"I just got 3 accounts all banned as of this morning. Only one had received a warning from CCP. 2 Were in the same system mining ~9 hours a day. the other was 23 jumps away in a system with 4 people but mining ~14 hours a day.17 May: Someone reports getting a number of accounts banned for 30 days.
"Same ban durration as you deadme4t
"im slightly amused that they didnt ban my Orca pilot that was in fleet with them"
"I have recently been forced to put a number of my accounts on unpaid leave for 1x month, or so evesupprt told me too20 May: Looks like CCP Sreegs had another good day.
"I was using GS 1.3.1.50 BUT i have a feeling there is something like a 'criteria match' going on here as one of the accounts that was banned was not used/logged into for about a month. "
From jaec:
"Banned today. No warning, all my accounts, even the ones that don't mine at all.
I mine 8 hours per day on a schedule, I guess I didn't move systems often enough. "
From JustDana:
"I just received 2 more bans myself. I lost 3-4 miners total so far. The contributing factor was they were being disconnected over and over and over. windows being minimized... ive posted about this before.From macro:
"Were you receiving disconnects before you got the ban? I was running max of 8 hours per day. "
"eye they banned mine but also my main that was wharsh nvr macrod with him o well "
24 May: Some indication on how CCP is verifying bot use.
"what about a GM or whomever that min a window. i was on pause in the field... for about 20 minutes because ive been nursing my miners from work. so i seen my "selected item window" just randomly minimize. i had to un min it, it was pinned as well.
"so i dock up after un-min the window.. and undock after sitting for 5-15 minutes and now my selected item window is at the bottom of my screen and my overview at the top...
"this is the same horse crap that happened with 3 other miners before they got banned.
"the map got min and moved as well. "
27 May: Someone reports getting 5 accounts banned.
"Hello again, I finally had a response back from eve.
"One account was deemed a bot user - from what i can gather by accusation not "evidence" although unproven either way as eve don't wish to discuss this any further... a shame as i can see many legitimate reasons but still - it's their game.
"For clarification see below: -
Eve warning info
"All other accounts were banned due to "direct association" (Same IP I believe) and hence all 5 accounts were taken out of action.
"Solution - I'm going to ditch/sell the targeted macro account and start a new one on another unique email address.
"Small note - if banned - don't forget to send petitions from all your banned accounts (if all have a unique email) as it gives eve GM's something to do
"Fly safe all "
These are just the cases reported. I don't know how popular GhostSuite is, but it appears that CCP has tuned their detection algorithms to detect this bot.
Using bots is bad. Using this bot may mark a player as stupid.
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