Has Jagex Really Done All They Could?

[Nash]

Well lately ive been working on a skiller account in f2p and have seen multiple lvl 3's all wearing that horrid oufit we all call: the bot look. they dont respond, and if you look them all up most of them have a high lvl in 1 skill (fishing, mining, and woodcutting are the main ones) so i asked myself "is jagex even doing anything?"

 

 

 

so i looked up the archives from back when they decided "WE NEED TO STOP RWT!" and i found alot of remarks like "were trying but every time we make something that stops them from botting they make something that beats it. :ohnoes: come on jagex your a world wide known company dont tell me your getting cleaned by some punks who read java scripting for dummies. (ace brings up a point, a small staff wont win against thousands of kids willing to cheat, and i dont personally know an answer to that one)

 

 

 

then found this heh, and yes they do, theyre reporting the bots. Something a program should do:

 

 

 

 

then i decided to go on a rs2 gold selling website to see if the numbers are really small (jagex says theyve cut the rwt to a small number and i believed them...WRONG):

 

see this image? thats not a "k" thats a "M" as in 100+ Billion gold sold! and ... i watched them add 3 billion to that number in under a month :ohnoes: why cant they confront these websites? lawsuits and such.

 

 

 

then i looked up bots for rs (not going to use them, just wanted to see some things)

 

found a "popular" bot forum and took a pic of the forum population

 

 

now imagine that many people, running 3 bots at once, mining/fishing/wcing... crazy huh.

 

 

 

then i took some more pics, same site...

 

 

 

 

 

i feel like i should explain this one^ i didnt sign up for the forum so i couldnt see some images but basically ever post is a post of somebody showing 5m+ profit from being botted and basically laughing cause theyre getting away with it.

 

 

 

 

 

im a tad worried that banning bots are to dependent on people reporting what they see, my dad is a computer teche these bots are pretty advanced, i wouldnt be able to figure out crap haha and id assume they other average players cant either.

 

 

 

what do you guys think?

[JustAGamer]

If you have a solution, by all means: share it.

 

 

 

There's nothing you can do until you find someone has already done it. past tense. Anyone who does that line of work knows how to get around an ip ban. There's no real solution to such a problem.

 

 

 

Also, a player report sends a report to the detection system. a "priority investigation" if you will. There IS a detection system, however it can only find so many things. There is no such thing as "uncrackable". If it can be made, it can be worked around.

[Nash]

see i feel there is, i want to learn some basic java and gethelp from somebody who knows alotabout java so i can figure out how they do it but im guessing its alot of repetetive motions right? so if they detected this motion they could ban them.

 

 

 

but theres two problems ive shown, one is botting, one is rwt, and come on its their game they should be able to throw a lawsuit at these stupid rwt websites.

[Danqazmlp]

Exactly as you said they said:

 

 

 

'were trying but every time we make something that stops them from botting they make something that beats it'

 

 

 

Relate it to real life crime, governments have billions, trillions even to put into stopping crime, but crime will always continue in a small minority, its the same with bots/farmers.

 

 

 

But the main thing is theres two different bots, which you arn't making clear which the post is aimed at. Theres bots who make money for the account and keep it on that acount, and theres RWT bots. Both can probably make the money easy, but the RWT bots have a MUCH harder time trading the money over now than they used to. Yes it is possible, but it is still very limited.

[acenator]

Jagex's main motivation for stopping RWT was to end the use of stolen credit cards for membership on bot accounts (the banks and credit companies were about to end their deals with Jagex). They have obviously accomplished this and botting is down significantly (I haven't seen a bot in a long time, but I also haven't been on f2p in a long time, so I don't know the situation there).

 

 

 

As for the random people out-coding Jagex, that should be expected. Just think about it like this: millions of people play this game; of those there are probably 10's (possibly hundreds) of thousands of people willing to cheat; who's going to win: the thousands of random people or the ~100 programmers (not sure about this number) at Jagex (who also have to make updates to the game content)?

[Nash]

true it is alot harder to transfer the gold over but theyve made a new technique, its "goldfarming" they go on your account and somehow farm gold (probably mine iron or kill avansies or green dragons)

 

 

 

edit to reply to ace: true i guess the thousands of people would win.

 

 

 

 

 

i also read more archives of theirs and they refered to rwt as organized crime, doesnt that mean they can threaten with lawsuits? if you were to cut down a few of these major rwt websites and basically (like they do in real life) show everyone what they did it would put fear into anybody wanting to make a rwt website

[JustAGamer]

who's going to win: the thousands of random people or the ~100 programmers (not sure about this number) at Jagex (who also have to make updates to the game content)?

 

 

 

Credits list:

 

http://www.runescape.com/kbase/viewarti ... 46#credits

[ThePie]

Seriously, where do you see these guys? I didn't see any bots this year. :?

[Nash]

Seriously, where do you see these guys? I didn't see any bots this year. :?

 

 

 

rimmington mining, cutting willows by port sarim (guess its less populated so they dont get banned), and fishing ive seen in p2p at catherby

[JustAGamer]

This about sums up the entire thread.

 

 

 

 

 

We currently ban about 8000 accounts every week for trying this sort of cheating, and for a long time that kept things under control. Things have clearly moved on, however, and that is no longer enough, so we are in the process of upgrading our detection and prevention systems. We also have logs of historical activity, so we'll be able to make sure that dishonesty doesn't pay. Please bear with us while we sort it out! There are also ways you can help us, so please read on.

 

 

 

What's happening is more complex than it first seems. What's actually going on is that the VAST majority of the level-3 characters you see playing the game repetitively and not talking to anyone, are actually people from countries such as China and Korea, who are trying to collect RuneScape gold to sell for real world money (obviously against the rules). Some of them aren't even using bots, they are just playing the game very repetitively with a single-minded purpose to collect gold. These people have no interest in playing the game properly, and therefore don't care if they get banned. The final effect is the same, though it spoils the game for everyone else.

 

 

 

We can (and do) ban them - including using IP bans - but they still find ways to make accounts. We seized 6 billion in RuneScape gold by banning real-world traders last week! Unfortunately, these people are obliged to work such long hours and are paid such low wages that if even a tiny fraction of gold makes it to the market, those running the sweatshops will be encouraged to continue. This is why we are now further increasing our efforts.

 

 

 

Source:

 

http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=785

[Nash]

"increasing our efforts" taking away trading and wildy or using legal actions?

[ilovecuttingyews]

Seriously, where do you see these guys? I didn't see any bots this year. :?

 

 

 

rimmington mining, cutting willows by port sarim (guess its less populated so they dont get banned), and fishing ive seen in p2p at catherby

 

 

 

I havent seen a macro at rimmington yews since the Anti RWIT sweep. Honestly though, these people that do this can not be stopped entirely. Let me give an example:

 

A few months before the removal or free trading and PKing I went to the willows that are south of port sarim. I decided to go on a macro reporting spree. I wrote down every name individually on a peice of paper beside me, final count: 87! Because I am a player moderator Jagex read my reports very quickly. The next day I went back (on the same world) and there was only 1 macro :thumbsup: Then a couple of days later in my routine macro hunts I saw that they had returned. OVER 70 BRAND NEW MACROS! So it doesn't matter how many they stop there will always be some that manage to sneak through. And the ones they do stop just come back.

[JustAGamer]

I wouldn't know. Jagex is not obligated to tell us everything. :lol:

 

 

 

Actually, I have no clue how an international lawsuit would work. Anyone have any clue how?

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

Because I am a player moderator Jagex read my reports very quickly

 

 

 

 

 

lol...macroing reports work the same between p-mods and non p-mods.

[mervinator_9]

I think someone sumed it up pretty well when they compared it to governments and crime, there are always loopholes and work arounds, so the problem continues.

 

 

 

Hate to say it but I also kinda doubt Jagex would really do anything to stop Farmers and Autoers right now. Anything that would make an impact would have to be pretty drastic and I'm not sure they really want to do that.

 

 

 

They solved the big problems they were having as a company, ie the credit card thefts being reduced, and drastically reduced the number of bots you see, so many people believe the problem is gone. After that I think people are relatively happy so why would they do something to upset the balance or spend alot of time and money on a proper solution.

[mister_moocky]

I don't understand why Jagex doesn't have some rwt sites taken down.

[wakka102]

Botting CANNOT be stopped, however the market for real world trading, which drove the botting, is nearly gone. The only acception to that being Bounty Hunter trading which is not effective enough to do on a large scale. RWT is what they set out to destroy and succeeded very well.

 

 

 

Just because they have tons of money doesn't mean they can stop everything bad. Look at the Iphone dev team for instance. They release Jailbreaks and Unlocks for the Iphone and Iphone 3g and as we all know, Apple is a multi billion dollar corporation that does not like the fact that people are doing this to their phone, however they can do nothing to stop it. They upgrade the phones firmwares and baseband but its only a matter of time before the dev team finds a loophole in the system.

 

 

 

In other words, no matter what Jagex does there will always be stuff like this, but they did get rid of a huge chunk of it.

[acenator]

Actually, I have no clue how an international lawsuit would work. Anyone have any clue how?

 

I remember something about Blizzard suing a WoW RWT "company" and it cost them a bunch of money and didn't really stop anything (they attacked one of the smaller RWT companies and most of the others just ignored it). It could work, but I doubt it would be anywhere near being considered "cost-effective."

[Maulmachine]

I wouldn't know. Jagex is not obligated to tell us everything. :lol:

 

 

 

Actually, I have no clue how an international lawsuit would work. Anyone have any clue how?

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

Because I am a player moderator Jagex read my reports very quickly

 

 

 

 

 

lol...macroing reports work the same between p-mods and non p-mods.

 

Just a Gamer, pmods have an ability called priority report,the name explains itself.

[tripsis]

Just adding on to what a bunch of others have said: what else CAN they do? Botting exists in every game and it seems pretty much impossible to get rid of it completely. Sure I guess they could bind accounts to the IP address that was used to first create the account and eliminate ALL forms of trading and character interaction. But where's the fun in that? :?

[Omali]

Just adding on to what a bunch of others have said: what else CAN they do? Botting exists in every game and it seems pretty much impossible to get rid of it completely. Sure I guess they could bind accounts to the IP address that was used to first create the account and eliminate ALL forms of trading and character interaction. But where's the fun in that? :?

 

 

 

I had the idea of removing direct trading between players, except for the trade limit worth of food and potions.

 

 

 

Obviously, Jagex would first have to fix the Grand Exchange prices, but the only form of RWT'ing would occur as powerleveling and account trading, with the small amount who will trade 60k worth of sharks every 15 minutes. It's the perfect plan.

[obfuscator]

To put it simply, lawsuits simply aren't worth it for jagex.

[Derrick44444]

I think they have done a great job. Rarely do I see a bot nowadays. And the yew prices reflect that. :thumbsup:

[The Dark Lord]

I don't see how Jagex could even take legal action because cheating on video games isn't illegal.

 

 

 

The only things that I see like this that are illegal are private servers because they infringe copyright laws.

[swordb88]

world of warcraft had the same problem, so they brought lawsuits and won

 

 

 

 

 

jagex fails again

[Brave2]

I don't see how Jagex could even take legal action because cheating on video games isn't illegal.

 

 

 

 

Agreed - cheating on video games isn't illegal BUT RS is not a video game it is a network based game and as such everything is owned by Jagex. We do not "buy" the game as in true video games we only "rent" our character as Jagex owns ALL rights to your character. We all sign an agreement (although most people do not read it) to that effect, and cheating is against that agreement and so IS illegal.

 

 

 

As most of the RWT sites are not UK based and with the problems of even identifying the site owners then any legal action is going to be difficult and very expensive.

 

 

 

Several people keep saying WOW won their legal case, so why can't Jagex? Well, for one thing, the WOW case did not involve RWTing and to be honest was unique. What they sucessfully prosecuted (as far as I am aware) was a lawsuit against a group of programmers (hackers, if you like) who were breaking the WOW code to produce cheats etc. which they then sold. Unfortunately for this group, they were identified and as they were based in the same country as Blizzard were relatively easy to prosecute. It should be noted that even though Blizzard won the case they ended up losing money.