January 21, 2014

Anti-Bot Fixes in Testing

Now in testing: Anti-Chat Spam and Anti-Emote Flood!

Back in October, we began talking about our plans to combat the flood of botters and spammers in AQWorlds. Since then, we've begun testing our anti-shop load functionity and Yorumi has built most of the improved anti-combat detection. 

Today we are beginning the test for our anti-chat spam and anti-emote flood fixes. If you've seen the walls of spam flooding into yulgar, you know what I am talking about. 

Apologetic robots are the saddest thing ever.

We have always tried to reduce the ways that botters can exploit the game, and take action against the players who choose to use 3rd party programs (bots, shop/quest loaders, auto-kills). We want to make sure EVERYONE who plays AQWorlds can enjoy it as much as possible! 

What Are You Doing About Botting?

Here's a progress update on our anti-botting functionality:

• Anti-shop load functionality: in-game for testing! 
  (We do a multi-stage test to make SURE we will not ban anyone who is not really shop loading)
• Anti-chat spam and Anti-emote flood: In-testing TODAY!
• Anti-quest load: In development, close to testing
• Anti-combat functionality: In development
• In-game suspension on Botter Island: Map art done, ready for coding 
  (Players caught botting will be restricted to Botter Island for a period of time. Visitors allowed. No combat on island. This is one step in an escalating tier of punishments.)

You do not want to stay here.

Not Sure What a "Bot" is?

Thousands of players are banned every week for botting, which tells us a couple things.

Many players don't know what a bot IS.

• A bot or "autoer" is a program built by someone else that plays the game for you. 
• ALL massively multiplayer games have a problem with them, and they are, and always have been against the rules. 
• It is easy to understand why  - it is unfair to legit players who put the time and effort into the game, it takes time away from building the game to deal with botting/cheating/hacking issues, and... these programs are dangerous! 

Many players don't know that botting is not allowed. 
You would not believe how many times we get asked "Is botting/using a trainer against the rules?!" There ARE people who don't know, and to them we say: It is not allowed, and you should uninstall your bot/trainer program right now! 

Players who bot don't know the problems it causes.
Problems caused by bots, and the fixes we've implemented because of them, have delayed, for example:

• Development of new functionality like Guilds 
• An overhaul of the PvP system 
• Cause virtually ALL of the server-side lag 

Players who bot don't know the risks involved.
Many stolen accounts are the result of people entering their login information  into these programs or the websites claiming to provide them. If you download and use these programs, they can execute malicious code that can do ANYTHING a virus or trojan can do, harming YOUR computer... including stealing your personal data.

Do not use bots. In addition to the dangers above, using them will get your account banned from AQWorlds!

Reminder from Artix

As you know, our goal is to keep our game fair, safe and fun. NOT to ban players. We are all human, we all make mistakes.

From this moment on, we hope and encourage EVERYONE, whether you have used bots in the past or not, to help us keep the servers fair, safe and fun. Thank you to all of the players who have always been doing this.... Battle on!