The issue is more with the fact that so many accounts got falsely banned for supposedly 'botting' when all there owners did were log on and play runescape normally. This so soon after botany bay & botwatch go fully live. That is a very worrying sign, but thankfully it's gotten resolved quickly. The only issue I still see is that it was down to 'human error' but required a server wide reset to fix, sounds dodgy to say the least. Seems more likely an issue with botwatch, but alas we'll never know as Jagex seem unlikely to give us a full explanation to the cause of the event.

 

Systems and software interact in strange ways, and sometimes you can end up screwing things totally unrelated by having something like array access out of bounds, or pointer access that ends up causing issues. Some typos can cause huge problems.

 

They fixed the back end, but the server reset (is this the same as a rollback?) to undo what had happened. My guess is they don't want to undo any real bans on accident.

This gravely concerns me. Why would a human error permit the banning of thousands of online accounts that haven't had any history of botting?

 

We'll never get a real explanation of what happened here and that's what concerns me. Human error is vague and can cover so many different things. I don't want to call for a public lynching, I don't care if the guy(s) who did it get fired. I just want to know what actually happened with the system that was supposed to be free of false-positives and accurate.

 

I think that the main problem was that the system was pumped to this degree - that there were promises of very high accuracy - I think they even mentioned 100% accuracy at one point. That's just foolish. 100% accuracy with an automated system would imply that they've solved the Turing Test, and the money/publicity alone from doing such a feat would mean they wouldn't have to worry about saving up for RuneScape's future for a long time.

 

What actually happened? That's up for debate. What I think of the system design that would cause this to happen is answered with the next quote...

 

People already think they're lying by omission. I would rather just know if the botwatch system's full release is going to be delayed or not because it didn't perform to expectations or if someone really did put the semicolon in the wrong place or what. I don't want super-secret details about how their system works. I just want to know what to expect as a player.

 

...So from what I can guess to allow something this big to happen, the design would have to be along these lines.

 

There are components that monitor a player's repetitive behavior over a period of time, after a certain trigger is hit - be it by player or automation. While the system is running in an automatic mode, it would not have the permission to remove a player from the game. Human intervention would be required to ensure that players at any warning phase are not inadvertently banned or punished.

 

While in automatic mode, information would have to be gathered for metrics and quality assurance - to determine that the data being collected matches the profile of a bot within six-nines (99.999999%).

 

In manual mode, the assumption is made that the information gathered builds a strong case against the player and their actions, and as such, would be eligible for banning. The assumption made there is also that the data would need to be double-verified (that is, there is a hard-check in code that specifies if an account drops below a specific percentage, then the Mod is unable to ban).

 

My guess would be that the code to ensure that the bans would be justified wasn't properly QA'd or wasn't vetted. This is a massive failing, and easily could cost someone their job.

Dammit, I went to sleep and missed the Jagex Armageddon?

Sounds like someone mistyped a couple a 1000 into a 100 to me. Ah well, it happened, without significant long term ramifications (hopefully).

 

To be honest, I would've loved to complete my queen's guard outfit :P .

Dammit, I went to sleep and missed the Jagex Armageddon?

I was at work. While I knew I'd probably die there one day, I didn't think my character would. :lol:

Worst... Problem... Ever... :-|

 

Time to go see if anything happened to my accounts that left me with something in my inbox... :uhh:

 

~D. V. "Definitely not logging into the game itself for a few, though..." Devnull

so, if people already don't trust jagex, if they tell the truth (like perhaps, for instance, they COULD be telling the truth now, hard to believe, i know), they wouldn't really have anything to benefit from doing so anyway, so there's no motivation for them to actually tell the truth

 

ofc that also means they don't have anything to gain by lying either, since people have been in stuck in perpetual mistrust mode ever since the 2004 mental depression

Dammit, I went to sleep and missed the Jagex Armageddon?

 

Actually, it was more like the Jagex version of the "rapture" but still ... :rolleyes:

 

And, considering the number of people screaming for someone to lose their job because they couldn't entertain themselves for under an hour, I think we really need to settle back and get some sense of perspective.

 

The good news is that it now appears that they have a kickass bot detection system that's not only going to locate bots, but really knock them down, albeit for a little while. The bad news is that it appears that it's got a couple of tweaks left before it goes "live" for reals.

 

:lol:

Quality bot detection system they got there…

Soooooo, I'm just not gonna log in, m'kay?

Pretty hilarious stuff. I haven't logged in so I guess I've missed all the free spins action.

so, if people already don't trust jagex, if they tell the truth (like perhaps, for instance, they COULD be telling the truth now, hard to believe, i know), they wouldn't really have anything to benefit from doing so anyway, so there's no motivation for them to actually tell the truth

 

What's not to trust? It's obvious this wasn't intentional. I personally just want more info because I'm almost certain that down the line it means the full impact of botwatch will be delayed again.

so, if people already don't trust jagex, if they tell the truth (like perhaps, for instance, they COULD be telling the truth now, hard to believe, i know), they wouldn't really have anything to benefit from doing so anyway, so there's no motivation for them to actually tell the truth

 

What's not to trust? It's obvious this wasn't intentional. I personally just want more info because I'm almost certain that down the line it means the full impact of botwatch will be delayed again.

 

It's just the fact that it DID happened that wrecks peoples trust in Jagex

people trust jagex? lol