Additionally, I think that a botting service should be allowed to be offered on the site. Pay x amount of arms for a specific item that needs to be farmed. This would allow the botters to make more money with the aforementioned restriction in place, while still allowing them to sell whatever else they get within the weekly restriction.
added to my Screenshots Vault.
a future legendary post u made here.
I've cleaned it up a bit here, keep it a bit on topic guys 
As we say in Dutch, speel op de bal, niet de man.
Attack the words, not the person who said them.
Since I was tagged here, let me just say that I cannot know if an item I bought has been botted, stolen, or cheated. There's no way for me to find out so I don't bother myself with those sorts of questions. Everything I do, including trading, is done in good faith, and I assume the other party is approaching me in good faith as well. That's all what any of us can do, really.
i think its still funny that people still give a fuck in general.
game is old, just a "handful" peeps still play it.
way too many peeps have way too much money.
many have used bots to achieve personal goals or just to get rich.
toolbox (even tho i dont use it) helped mayn peeps do awesome speedruns and give the game some fun back.
all these personal accusations and sometimes even worse... why?
many of you act like little annoying kids ffs.
i get that, some bots annoy(kama spam bots), some bring life back into shit (pvp would be empty i assume without em), some bring money (farming/chesting)
i dont wanna attack anyone here, but my god, dont you have better things to do than to hate each other and bitch around?
These kind of things can be incredibly difficult to prove and while I realise some threads/items are likely a lot more obvious than others it is simpler for moderators and posters to follow existing rules.
you cant really tell what is botted or not.
I cannot know if an item I bought has been botted, stolen, or cheated. There's no way for me to find out
The only way to be unsure about whether the items sold by Purely/Autism Awareness Is Back/Ether were botted is by burying your head in the sand (which is what I did in nov/dec). That's what the legacy team chooses to do by requiring evidence but not having the means to gather or assess it. Which is what I would do, too, if I were a moderator; things get messy and it will be too much work to sort them out. This has advantages as well, such as giving users more freedom to determine the forum's contents.
Regarding forum contents, it seems to me that this place is now just for trading with loose morals. At the same time, recently there is no longer any interest in threads/discussions about actual gameplay. There's very little that interests me, and very little that I contribute that interests anyone. This thread was helpful for me to determine whether there was a chance of things changing in the future, so thanks to Dadan for starting it.
Exactly this Praise. Most of us dont care that bots are in game, we all are aware of that . We do care that They shamelessly can auction hundreds of items Here, ruining values of most items that regular players get.
Edit. We became fine with data collecting by bots instead of doing research Like it used to be in threads made for example by Red Fireball. This forum changes in the way That Dadan mentioned and Thats issue for some of us.
The only way to be unsure about whether the items sold by Purely/Autism Awareness Is Back/Ether were botted is by burying your head in the sand
You assume I know, and concern myself with, Purely/Autism Awareness Is Back/Ether or any other player/trader here.
I most certainly do not.
All I care about is if someone has an item I'd like to buy, and if they're willing to sell it to me at a price both of us are happy with. That's it.
First things first, I took most of the names from Ether posts (could be his chest-running data post or his WTS). As for the others, that was a bit random. Nevertheless, you do not have to participate, and I apologise for those who didn’t want to be mentioned. That was overall to get as many opinions as possible.
Back to the topic, thanks for the constructive answers received.
Sales of 500+ items are ridicilous. It will soon make any chest running or farming obsolete and that's a fact.
By putting them for sale on GuildWars’ biggest community website, botters are making it worst. Spamming, showing and selling 500+ items in Kamadan would surely take some time, thus reducing their impact on the market. I don’t think they would do it anyway.
Accessing the Legacy market and saving that time by only putting an extracted table (from their bots) is a gold mine for them.
I my opinion, I would simply suggest what other people already suggested:
Ban the obvious ones and let the benefit of the doubt for the others.
To the moderators:
Now you know people's mind, the time has come to take a decision and to stand for one side or the other.
I thank you in advance not to answer “No Legacy rules are broken so no action necessary.”.
That would mean either some rules need to be changed or you do not want to do anything.
To let it go is standing on the botters’ side.
Dadan question. If I was to sell my 212 os goths would that thread get banned under looking like a bot? There is a lot of people that could make 500+ item threads so interested how your going to determine who’s a botter and not.
Edit. For the record I don’t support bots however they do provide their own slice of the game no one with a life can replicate so buying goods from them I don’t see a issue as such. Also on that note you will find ethers thread had little to no items sell with so many bids due to them wanting way too much. So good luck to them and the storage accounts full of perfect q9s.
i think its still funny that people still give a fuck in general.
...dont you have better things to do...?
Aren't these the things we should be saying to the people cheating (and the ones consistently, knowingly benefiting from the cheating), not the ones objecting to it?
All most normal people want is a fair chance to enjoy the game they've chosen to play. Stop defending people who take that away from others.
Back on topic: What can Legacy do about it? Nothing. Are you hoping that they'll establish the provenance of every item before allowing it to be posted here? This issue is impossible to police just based on how a thread looks (e.g., lots of items) or who posted the thread.
Pointless thread, imo, which is why I've been avoiding it, despite being tagged. That was kind of obnoxious. I hope that doesn't become a thing. It's like being invited to help clean out a septic tank.
Pointless thread, imo, which is why I've been avoiding it, despite being tagged. That was kind of obnoxious. I hope that doesn't become a thing. It's like being invited to help clean out a septic tank.
Why should we say things to cheaters? they will cheat anyway, they shit on the rules, as they would bother when somebody says something about it.
you even said it yourself, pointless thread and all the discussion is pointless. cheaters will cheat, haters will hate and f*ckers will f*ck
Dadan question. If I was to sell my 212 os goths would that thread get banned under looking like a bot? There is a lot of people that could make 500+ item threads so interested how your going to determine who’s a botter and not.
Edit. For the record I don’t support bots however they do provide their own slice of the game no one with a life can replicate so buying goods from them I don’t see a issue as such. Also on that note you will find ethers thread had little to no items sell with so many bids due to them wanting way too much. So good luck to them and the storage accounts full of perfect q9s.
ObsidiaN it all makes sense but the same person selling hundred of items is releasing bot data and was involved in giveaway drama. This case is way too obvious to say we cant know etc.
The only way to be unsure about whether the items sold by Purely/Autism Awareness Is Back/Ether were botted is by burying your head in the sand (which is what I did in nov/dec). That's what the legacy team chooses to do by requiring evidence but not having the means to gather or assess it. Which is what I would do, too, if I were a moderator; things get messy and it will be too much work to sort them out. This has advantages as well, such as giving users more freedom to determine the forum's contents.
Regarding forum contents, it seems to me that this place is now just for trading with loose morals. At the same time, recently there is no longer any interest in threads/discussions about actual gameplay. There's very little that interests me, and very little that I contribute that interests anyone. This thread was helpful for me to determine whether there was a chance of things changing in the future, so thanks to Dadan for starting it.
Exactly this Praise. Most of us dont care that bots are in game, we all are aware of that . We do care that They shamelessly can auction hundreds of items Here, ruining values of most items that regular players get.
Edit. We became fine with data collecting by bots instead of doing research Like it used to be in threads made for example by Red Fireball. This forum changes in the way That Dadan mentioned and Thats issue for some of us.
Display MoreFirst things first, I took most of the names from Ether posts (could be his chest-running data post or his WTS). As for the others, that was a bit random. Nevertheless, you do not have to participate, and I apologise for those who didn’t want to be mentioned. That was overall to get as many opinions as possible.
Back to the topic, thanks for the constructive answers received.
By putting them for sale on GuildWars’ biggest community website, botters are making it worst. Spamming, showing and selling 500+ items in Kamadan would surely take some time, thus reducing their impact on the market. I don’t think they would do it anyway.
Accessing the Legacy market and saving that time by only putting an extracted table (from their bots) is a gold mine for them.
I my opinion, I would simply suggest what other people already suggested:
Ban the obvious ones and let the benefit of the doubt for the others.
To the moderators:
Now you know people's mind, the time has come to take a decision and to stand for one side or the other.
I thank you in advance not to answer “No Legacy rules are broken so no action necessary.”.
That would mean either some rules need to be changed or you do not want to do anything.
To let it go is standing on the botters’ side.
I'll turn the question around: what do you want us to do? It's a slippery slope and it is extremely hard for us to prove something - do I personally think people should be allowed to bot and sell their items here? No, I absolutely do not think they should be.
In fact, people who bot should be banned in the game and in that way we are in quite a unique position - Guild Wars is still popular and active, nowhere near what it used to be, but it is still online. But banning has always been slow in Guild Wars and it feels like it has crawled to a stop nowadays.
Usually, these issues should be handled by the one running the game, not a fan run forum. We lack tools to police things and while we can take action on Legacy, we can't stop things from happening - if we block something, it might just turn up again with a different name/seller.
So what can we do with this, of for this? To be honest, that has been a question that I have been wondering myself for many weeks. We are discussing this internally, we have been following this thread quite well, but most people by now know that I usually keep away from moderation. In my opinion, it is more healthy for a platform when the owner of the platform isn't involved with moderation itself (so that you can remain fully neutral should you need to intervene).
For the moment, our stance has been that we aren't the police of Guild Wars. That role should be filled by ArenaNet - but it is clear that they haven't been fullfilling this role as it should be. So perhaps that policy needs tweaking, but I don't know how far we need to go (and can go) with this.
Do we put a notice on things that we received messages that the user is suspected to be botting? Do we block the account from posting in certain area's on Legacy? Because that will probably lead to them just going for a new account to get around that.
If we ban those users, they will certainly just create a new one so that is not a solution on its own. It won't solve anything, except raise the Legacy user count further.
So this is more complicated than I would prefer it to be. We're talking internally and that it the most I can currently say about it. What I can say is that a rule rework is in progress (has been for a while), but that seems to be progressing nicely now.
So, my question for you guys is: how would you handle this were you in our place? Knowing that bans aren't as effective as you would wish them to be, having to at least have some proof from botting and in what way we could limit/display that.
It's a though nut to crack.
- Kev
Ravaidan Jalir Please don't twist my words. The thread is pointless because Legacy can't do anything to police the sale of botted items, not because cheaters gonna cheat. We're having this conversation because the question was raised about whether Legacy could police this specific community. The answer is no. But we can police ourselves and we do that by letting each other know what we think is ok and not ok.
For example, are shitty, manipulative, predatory price checks ok? Nope. But there's nothing Legacy can do about that (other than getting rid of PCs). But people have changed at least some of that behavior thanks to us policing ourselves.
This is just one example and it's the only one I'll give because I'm typing on my phone. The point is that policing ourselves can work. But it requires people to invest some energy into maintaining the integrity of the game they love and the community within which they play it. Your complaints about the community policing itself only serve to defend people who cheat and who consistently, knowingly benefit from cheating. Some of those people share a cape with you. Funny, that.
@ardunain That's exactly the kind of thing that people will just stop posting if they know it will mark them as a botter and keep them from selling items. The sales won't disappear but the "research" posts will. Or items will be put up for sale on an alt account or using a middleman. Or something else. It's impossible to police from Legacy's end.
Hello, I didn't read all the reactions because of my English. Kevin's last intervention and the quotes mentioned were quite interesting.
I answer him concerning the question: what would you do in our place?
It is impossible to regulate or control sales of this kind, regarding the problem of bots. The only viable and realistic solution is to remove the sales section from the site. With all that this implies, negative as well as positive.
Beyond that, it's an incomprehensible grey line.
Captain Krompdown even if they wouldnt dissapear imo there are ways of making some kind of limitation as I said there have been examples that are way too obvious to not know they re botted threads and the acceptance of bot data by our members is just sad. Also I Know that PhD is against buying currency for Dollars, can you explain me why you guys are fine with getting more items into collection from botters? Whats fun and nostalgic about that?
There re forums for botters and legacy wasnt one of them till now. We could aswell just allow posting bot files here if you and moderators Iaerah dont see a way of doing something about that.
What I would do is just simply take notes, you delete post when see flaming and you could delete threads that are known to be botted. I mean what else you need to know if same account posts bot data and then same items that drop from current chestrun are later on auction?
Captain Krompdown even if they wouldnt dissapear imo there are ways of making some kind of limitation as I said there have been examples that are way too obvious to not know they re botted threads and the acceptance of bot data by our members is just sad. Also I Know that PhD is against buying currency for Dollars, can you explain me why you guys are fine with getting more items into collection from botters? Whats fun and nostalgic about that?
There re forums for botters and legacy wasnt one of them till now. We could aswell just allow posting bot files here if you and moderators Iaerah dont see a way of doing something about that.
What I would do is just simply take notes, you delete post when see flaming and you could delete threads that are known to be botted. I mean what else you need to know if same account posts bot data and then same items that drop from current chestrun are later on auction?
The problem is the known part. Unless they verbatim say here are my botted items for sale we can't definitively know they are botted.
It is also a situation of false positives and framing people. Then the amount of moderation work is another problem.
Hypothetical Example: I say Yoji bots and there are some potential flags. He says he doesn't and you agree with Yoji.
In this case do we ban Yoji? What about if you were the person in question?
My personal opinion is you are free to buy/sell to anyone or not for any reason per current rules. I keep a personal blacklist and also use statistical data to measure the value of a trade.
So some players I won't trade with on here.
@ardunain Your proposal relies on "obvious" cases. Those cases are obvious because they've provided incriminating evidence of botting. They'll just stop doing that.
As far as [PhD] members acquiring botted items, I'm assuming that you're (still) talking about one recent thread where some pretty unremarkable items were being given away. It's worth noting that you're talking about a give away, not a sale. There is no advantage gained by giving items away. Selling botted items creates an unfair advantage for the seller. They become rich and squeeze other people out of the market. Selling botted items (which is what we're talking about) directly affects the quality of life of players who don't cheat. If people were out there botting items just so they could play Santa Claus, I doubt we'd be having this conversation at all.
As for the integrity of [PhD] collections, just remember: You can't bot the good stuff 
No I didnt mean giveaway Captain Krompdown. I am over that topic as we discussed. Just some people said They dont mind where items come from.
Edit. I am not looking for a fight again to be clear. Just wanted to know reasoning
Captain Krompdown even if they wouldnt dissapear imo there are ways of making some kind of limitation as I said there have been examples that are way too obvious to not know they re botted threads and the acceptance of bot data by our members is just sad. Also I Know that PhD is against buying currency for Dollars, can you explain me why you guys are fine with getting more items into collection from botters? Whats fun and nostalgic about that?
There re forums for botters and legacy wasnt one of them till now. We could aswell just allow posting bot files here if you and moderators Iaerah dont see a way of doing something about that.
What I would do is just simply take notes, you delete post when see flaming and you could delete threads that are known to be botted. I mean what else you need to know if same account posts bot data and then same items that drop from current chestrun are later on auction?
Legacy is still not a forums for botters - we won't allow discussion about anything concerning bots, how to make them and how to run them. Or just anything about bots, really.
When something is about bots itself, it will be banned before you can say the word "Quidditch".
What is a problem is how do you police things that are gained from botting, but for which you have no solid proof that it has been botted. Just suspecting that something was botted isn't enough, even if 1+1 equals 2, it still could be that (some) items were gained in a legal way. However, we're looking into what we should do in those cases. It ain't easy.
Whenever you start policing, you usually have some evidence behind you and the ability to verify those things. That's kinda impossible for us and hard to avoid.
If we crack down on it harder, people might simply use an alternative account to sell the items, or to post the data. And they could just drop it in smaller packets, over different accounts (while we do track IP's, IP's alone are totally not enough to ban someone. Banning 1 IP could block an entire country - Pokémon GO once banned 2 IP's from a Belgian ISP and all of the customers of that ISP were unable to play Pokémon GO. Blame carrier grade NAT).
For now, we are deciding what to do when it is very clear that there has been botted and what to do when it is certain beyond reasonable doubt.
Display MoreThe problem is the known part. Unless they verbatim say here are my botted items for sale we can't definitively know they are botted.
It is also a situation of false positives and framing people. Then the amount of moderation work is another problem.
Hypothetical Example: I say Yoji bots and there are some potential flags. He says he doesn't and you agree with Yoji.
In this case do we ban Yoji? What about if you were the person in question?
My personal opinion is you are free to buy/sell to anyone or not for any reason per current rules. I keep a personal blacklist and also use statistical data to measure the value of a trade.
So some players I won't trade with on here.
Perhaps a public blacklist is something which we need to do. It's being discussed.
It's far too easy to state that someone is a cheater, and we want to avoid that at all costs.
@ardunain Provenance is a difficult thing to establish, even for collectibles in real life. I'm not sure it's feasible to expect that out of this game. If you look closely enough, you'll also find that there are major collections that include items that only reached the market because of hacking. The same kind of thing happens in real life. The distribution of art, for example, has been heavily influenced by the horrors of WWII. Some of these things get returned, some apologies and statements are issued, but the world is still left with the scars of its past. All we can do is expect better from each other moving forward and make a community effort to say what we will and won't accept in our forum. Enforcement from "above", though? I'm not sure that's realistic.
I'll turn the question around: what do you want us to do? It's a slippery slope and it is extremely hard for us to prove something - do I personally think people should be allowed to bot and sell their items here? No, I absolutely do not think they should be.
In fact, people who bot should be banned in the game and in that way we are in quite a unique position - Guild Wars is still popular and active, nowhere near what it used to be, but it is still online. But banning has always been slow in Guild Wars and it feels like it has crawled to a stop nowadays.
Usually, these issues should be handled by the one running the game, not a fan run forum. We lack tools to police things and while we can take action on Legacy, we can't stop things from happening - if we block something, it might just turn up again with a different name/seller.
So what can we do with this, of for this? To be honest, that has been a question that I have been wondering myself for many weeks. We are discussing this internally, we have been following this thread quite well, but most people by now know that I usually keep away from moderation. In my opinion, it is more healthy for a platform when the owner of the platform isn't involved with moderation itself (so that you can remain fully neutral should you need to intervene).
For the moment, our stance has been that we aren't the police of Guild Wars. That role should be filled by ArenaNet - but it is clear that they haven't been fullfilling this role as it should be. So perhaps that policy needs tweaking, but I don't know how far we need to go (and can go) with this.
Do we put a notice on things that we received messages that the user is suspected to be botting? Do we block the account from posting in certain area's on Legacy? Because that will probably lead to them just going for a new account to get around that.
If we ban those users, they will certainly just create a new one so that is not a solution on its own. It won't solve anything, except raise the Legacy user count further.
So this is more complicated than I would prefer it to be. We're talking internally and that it the most I can currently say about it. What I can say is that a rule rework is in progress (has been for a while), but that seems to be progressing nicely now.
So, my question for you guys is: how would you handle this were you in our place? Knowing that bans aren't as effective as you would wish them to be, having to at least have some proof from botting and in what way we could limit/display that.
It's a though nut to crack.
- Kev
Bots have practically always been a part of Guild Wars and always will be until ArenaNet pulls the plug, that's the reality. There is nothing any of us can change about that. However allowing these people to blatantly offload multiple accounts full of unfairly acquired items on the last and only remaining active fan platform is not something that should be tolerated, in my opinion - and I believe the majority of the Legacy users agree with this.
No you can't exactly get rid of every thread consisting of botted items, but what you can do is simply remove a thread based on reasonable suspicion. Afterall if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck - it probably is a duck.
You, the mods, are not the police upholding the law. You're moderating a fan forum of a video game, don't make it bigger than it has to be. If you agree with (I believe) the majority here that something needs to change then I suggest you guys take action however you collectively deem necessary. No need to be all politically correct about it, imo.
Just my two cents.
i feel like an outcast now, Captain Krompdown, Spun Ducky, Kabong and god knows who else pointing fingers at me, accusing me of botting, beleaving that im doing something humanly impossible, just because i'm an active chest runner on 2 accounts simultaneously.
10.000 chests in 500h is not impossible at all, when im breaking 200-250 lockpicks per day on 2 accounts in 8-9h.
ANYBODY who wishes to run alongside with me is most welcome anytime.
I'm busting my as$ collecting 50 magmas shields in 2-3 weeks and you guys sitting there, cluelessly of what a dedicated enthusiastic guy can do when he has a goal, accusing me when you are not even playing the game or chest running 1h per week.
Sick and tired of the toxicity and drama in other games, 5-6 months ago i came back to this game hoping to chill and do what i like, but oh boy, how wrong was i.
I will not chest run less, i will continue to do what i like to do.
I refuse to insult anybody, please stop with those unfunded, proofless accusations.
also if i didnt had such a weak PC i'd probably do Live Stream everyday, but i can bearly run 3 accounts in the same time
Thank you, Kevin (or Iaerah , nice name by the way) for letting us know the mods are really trying to solve problems, or rather help with a problem A-net is not solving, e.g. botting. I agree that it is very hard to police on a forum with accounts that can be freely created. I've tried to ponder: if I were a moderator, what can be done to make the situation better, and not worse or more complicated. Here are some thoughts:
1) Start with the obvious. For example, data from thousands of chest runs collected with the precision that no man can do, is probably botted data. The poster also did not confirm it is not botted, and most people probably believe it is. So even if the data is quite interesting and informative, it should be taken down from the site. Legacy should not be encouraging (or even tolerating) botting activity in any way, and having botted data posted right in our face is against this spirit.
2) Tag the suspicious. Many users are seasoned players and know each other pretty well, especially the collectors. Many of us can see obviously whether items in a WTS thread is more likely botted or not. I admit some are not so obvious. As Yoji pointed out, the actions of a hard-working player may look like a bot to others. Therefore, I suggest that for threads that are suspected to be associated with bots (by mods, or reported by other users), place a tag on the first page, stating that the post has been suspected to be related to botting activity, and buyers should beware. The tag might make the poster angry, but will not affect the thread's visibility or prohibit any bidding activities. People who are fine with buying botted items, or people who think the items are not actually botted can still bid and buy. The actual trade happens in-game so there's nothing to police there. So why put a tag? To remind people that it is not acceptable to bot, and Legacy strongly discourages it.
3) Educate the masses. A huge thanks to Crayon and his thread, now more people know that unides (especially shields) can be checked, and buying unide packages for more than a few plat can (potentially) be a waste of money. People need to know this kind of information before they dive into the selling threads. Just like the Tyrian Serpent Axe issue. So put a sticky on unides too, and maybe also put a tag on threads that sell unide items/packages. Again, the sticky and the tags cannot enforce anything, but can serve as a warning. Also, educate the masses about bots! This is not encouraging people to bot (they can find botting information elsewhere pretty easily), but simply let people know where bots are currently running in masses in the game. HA is heavily botted for zkeys as we all know. Dragon Mosses are botted for gothic/echovald/ornate/amber shields. WoC-(A chance encounter) is botted for all sorts of factions core items. Many chest runs are botted (at least the two we got data on). And before the data thread even I thought that Magmas where not botted. Nowadays, probably any item that still drops can somehow be botted, just more or less, but people need to know. If some items are known to be farmed by bots, and suddenly a lot of them show up, people will be aware that bots may be involved. The education doesn't need to be all about botting though. We can start a new section like "drop locations information". We can discuss in detail what items drop where (including chests), how they are usually farmed, and whether the location was heavily botted. People will probably be interested in finding out more about the most sought-after OS items. Some information can already be found in the chest-running section. I'm sure many veterans can provide us with genuine, non-botted, high quality information.
4) Act. I understand that as moderators, it is impossible to please everyone. Some actions will infuriate certain people. It's inevitable. I trust that as moderators, you all have the courage to do something for the greater good of this community. Legacy is a great website, it is free, we can all speak freely and trade without boundaries. I cherish this deeply, and I thank the moderators for providing this opportunity. However, at times Legacy also became the nesting place of botters. I would not burn down Legacy just to stop them. They can't be stopped in-game anyways. As moderators, actions can be taken to hamper the botters, or at least make their threads look shameful and obvious. I urge you not to take away the freedom which Legacy has, but to provide the innocent with knowledge, which may enable them to make the right decisions.
Just some of my ideas, and I mean no harm to anyone.
Thank you for reading, dear moderators. You have my full support.
Sincerely,
Bluey
what u ask in ur #2 point Bluey is just a witch hunt... or a botter label, whatever.
the whole economy runs around bot activity.
some people on this thread seems just discovered this ......
O O O Yoji O O O I'll bite. I think you may have things a little twisted.
wut There's a lot more to say (because you're not the only one directly reaping the benefits of your questionable actions) but I'll leave it at that for now.
Sorry you're feeling down.
Finally, after declaring yourself not a botter, you post screenshots of some of the computer magic you use to play a superhuman amount of Guild Wars.
Are you actually calling the task manager of Windows computer magic ? The screen he posted was here to point out that 92% of his CPU is already used with 3 accounts, therefore he mustn't be able to have a bot farm like some may have.
To answer the thread, as there's no way of traceability of items, legacy or guru have always been "full of botted item sales". People buying in kamadan to sell higher on forums have been making gw money from it for years and now call for a witchhunt 
.
Bots are sadly part of this game nowadays, there's not enough players remaining to satisfy all of gw community, especially for players that actually want to play as a group (cf lunars last year for sc ; hoh, jq in term of "pvp"...)
Are you actually calling the task manager of Windows computer magic ?
This is idiotic.
I suppose it's possible that 1 person with 2 hands could legitimately play 3 accounts simultaneously. Legitimately playing means 1 keystroke = 1 action on 1 account.
Is it likely that anyone really plays that way on 3 accounts for 8-9 hours per day with no extra help? No. That sounds miserable. Actually, it sounds miserable even with the extra help. I am but a leisurely gentleman.
This all is really just proving the point that I and others have made about the impossibility of regulating this from above. The process of labeling threads (or people) as suspicious only leads to bickering and people adjusting how and what they post to avoid being tagged.
I think it's important to understand that [PhD] has been the target of witch hunters for years. This site and Guru before it are littered with baseless attempts to question the integrity of my guild. Now we have several (5?) representatives from [PhD] arguing against implementation of witch hunts as site policy. There's nobody who understands better how obnoxious the proposed process can get.
We can discuss in general terms what we find acceptable and what we don't. Always interesting to hear. But it's too much to expect Legacy to screen every item that gets posted. It will always come down to people making choices for themselves. Again, [PhD] is a case in point. We have clear and well-enforced policies about this kind of thing. Not every guild does and not every guild makes the same choices or enforces things in meaningful ways. Our choices have made us who we are. Your choices will do the same.
I wish that people didn't do things to give themselves unfair advantages over others. Would be nice if there was no RMT. Or botting. Or accounts being bought, sold, hacked, and harvested. But there are. And there always will be. And they will be on Legacy, even if rules are put in place that make it more inconvenient for them to be here.
In the end, like so many others have said, botting isn't a new story, even if there's a new wave of people talking about it.
I agree with Neutral that there is no perfect solution that can keep out 100% of botters. However, less than 100% is still better than nothing.
So far, the forum content that sparked this thread has all come from the same source. I'm probably naive but removing threads like Ether's would be a good first step. It might turn into a game of whack-a-mole for the mods if there are other botters starting to focus on oldschool items and selling on here, but that's not a given.
Bluey's idea of tagging suspected botters deserves some consideration. Obviously you shouldn't allow users to do this (removing reactions from selling/buying forums was a good decision), but mods can do it based on some internal list of conditions being met. The suspected user then has the opportunity to somehow prove that he is not botting, which takes the burden of proof off the mods. I also agree with San that you can allow yourself to be less than 100% politically correct (although you should watch out not to censor too much dissenting content; we don't want the whole board to become an echochamber of snowflakes).
Finally, now I'm just brainstorming but could it be viable to allow buying of botted items here? Could you make some kind of section where users can say "I want to buy botted items" and the botter can then contact them with a link to their own website/discord/shared document or whatever? This way, it would be less of a problem for botters if their sales threads are removed and they might try that option before making new accounts etc.
Btw there it is, the classic kromp moment bringing his guild into the discussion out of no where, completely unrelated. For the new spectators, check out previous versions of this act for example here or here. Apparently derailing this thread is in his and others' interests, so I'm looking forward to the next move.
Praise Sorry, man. I'm one of the few trying to keep this on topic.
Can Legacy police the sale of botted items?
Some people say yes. They want people, threads, and items investigated and tagged if suspicious or taken down completely.
I don't think that's realistic. People have their reasons and their examples and I have mine.
And thanks, Praise for bringing back those 2 threads. In both of those threads, I had to defend myself and [PhD] against unsolicited and baseless accusations of hacking and RMTing. They're excellent examples of how unproductive witch hunts can be. They also just demonstrate the fact that I'm not derailing the thread by pointing to my guild's experience. But I'd love to hear about how I'm derailing this thread or what interests you imagine are being served 
First Yoji feels like an outcast because of something or other I and others said.
Then Ardunain starts asking questions about [PhD] (though not in a confrontational way, that was understood)
Then Invokeur wonders if I'm calling task manager magic
Now Praise accuses me of de-railing this thread, then he promptly proves himself wrong, and wraps it up with another empty accusation about working some nefarious agenda.
Try to stay on topic, lads...
...or were you trying to make my point for me?
I am uping this for the lol guys.
When I have some time I really want to read the thread again 🤣
So do we still care guys or not ? 😛
I absolutely still care, but the same points still apply and are very hard to tackle for us, unfortunately.
How can we know that something is botted and how can we know that something is not botted? How can we be certain?
The issue lies that if we are going to police this, we would need to have solid evidence of it, which is hard to collect for us since we do not have the in game logs or information. In GW2, you'd be able to walk around and see the bots, but in this game it's impossible to do so.
ArenaNet is in fact the one that should be policing this, not us. They aren't, and that forces us in an uncomfortable position: how can we be certain if something is gained from botting or not? What proof/evidence do we have?
If someone bots on Twitch and we see those identically same items listed for sale here, that is indeed solid proof. But if someone that we ban as a cheater comes to me and requests me the proof on which grounds the ban has been given, I need to be able to provide that.
It's like instead of calling the police and deal with issues, taking justice in our own hands. And that just never ends well.
Even though the case here is a bit different as the police is just never coming... it's though.
Hello,
It is indeed impossible to have proof. The only way is to prohibit all sales on the site and to close the associated section.
Display MoreI absolutely still care, but the same points still apply and are very hard to tackle for us, unfortunately.
How can we know that something is botted and how can we know that something is not botted? How can we be certain?
The issue lies that if we are going to police this, we would need to have solid evidence of it, which is hard to collect for us since we do not have the in game logs or information. In GW2, you'd be able to walk around and see the bots, but in this game it's impossible to do so.
ArenaNet is in fact the one that should be policing this, not us. They aren't, and that forces us in an uncomfortable position: how can we be certain if something is gained from botting or not? What proof/evidence do we have?
If someone bots on Twitch and we see those identically same items listed for sale here, that is indeed solid proof. But if someone that we ban as a cheater comes to me and requests me the proof on which grounds the ban has been given, I need to be able to provide that.
It's like instead of calling the police and deal with issues, taking justice in our own hands. And that just never ends well.
Even though the case here is a bit different as the police is just never coming... it's though.
You're running a community forum of a practically dead game. It's really not that deep. But the ship has already sailed anyway. The legitimate players might actually be in the minority on here at this point.
I've had numerous "ANet created login issues" in the past couple months.
Literally 4x 3023 Account Security Lock on *each* of my 2 accounts between beginning of march and now.
It's super fun *not* doing anything to make it happen.
No multiloader or texmod, my 2 accnts are run on 2 pcs if i run them at once and i'll probably never finish carto.
Never have used toolbox, never used a damn thing... ever.
Meanwhile i know there's probably people who have had 5-10 accounts running all day every day during every single event and never an issue.
First off, I don't care if people sell botted items, so I'm in no way suggesting you do what I'm about to say. I just don't. It's a dead game. More activity is better in my opinion. And before anyone tells me to take the foot out of my mouth, everyone knows I sold items for a botter Ether 2-3 years ago (it probably helped spark this thread). I never did the botting myself, but Looney some botters are using 50-100 accounts, maybe more. Either way, Ryn aka Ether used about 40-50 accounts then, but that was years ago now. I saw them with my own eyes over discord stream, but even this is not enough "proof" to ban someone because for all anyone knows, I could be making it all up (I'm not. Or am I?).
Second, I've already accepted GWL's stances and dictator-like moderation, but. . .
But if someone that we ban as a cheater comes to me and requests me the proof on which grounds the ban has been given, I need to be able to provide that.
. . .why this? In my experience, you guys do what you think is the "right" thing all the time, so why do you even care about needing proof for a highly suspected botter account (example: created recently, 1 post, hundreds of items for sale, no other activity, etc)? This isn't a democracy. There is no "innocent until proven guilty" rule. You own this forum, do you not? Is there some kind of regulation that's got you by the balls preventing you from taking action? Personally, if someone pisses with my shit, I fight back. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. When it comes to this issue, all it looks like is you guys laying down and taking it. And to the argument that the botters will just make new accounts, just let bsoltan ban them over and over again until they quit like he likes deleting posts. "Git'm boy!"
Another suggestion would be to label suspected accounts using the Custom User Title. Enter "Suspected Botter" then disable them from changing it until they've given sufficient evidence that they are in fact not botting. Check out mine as an example. I'm sure there's a bunch of creative things like this at your disposal, but has anything even been done after "looking into it" for two years?
Nevertheless, I just want to reiterate that I, just like the GWL moderation team, really don't care about their presence on the forum because any activity is better than no activity in a dead game.
Is there some kind of regulation that's got you by the balls preventing you from taking action?
This can get quite technical really fast and I'm not an expert in the matter either, so I'll try and explain my reasoning here. If it's unclear, feel free to let me know.
First of all, Guild Wars Legacy (as well as I) are located in Europe, more specifically I'm located in Belgium. Our servers are located in Germany.
That means that we need to follow the European laws, and in essence I need to follow both the Belgian and German laws here. Since I'm located in Belgium, those laws are prioritized. You might know the GDPR by name, but that is the general name of the law that each country has had to adapt into their own laws. In Belgium, the Dutch version of that law is also known as AVG (Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming). The other law I need to follow is the anti-discriminatory laws of Belgium.
Belgium is quite strict in terms of laws. You might know that we're practically the only country in the world that banned lootboxes, for example.
Privacy and anti-discrimination is very important in Belgium, so at Legacy, I try to uphold these rules as well as I can.
The AVG is extremely expansive and difficult to comprehend and explain, it differs on some accounts on the general GDPR rules. So, quite a while back, I consulted with a lawyer into what this means to me/us.
The reason why I take this so serious, is that a few years ago, I've started my own company (GuildLab), under which Guild Wars Legacy technically falls these days. That also means that the laws that are applying to me/Legacy are suddenly a lot stricter.
What came out of the conversation with my lawyer was (and what I still remember, there is more).
And that last one is where it becomes difficult: upon a re-evaluation, we are required to provide the proof as well. It's just like back in the day when ArenaNet banned users depending on what processes ran on their computers; due to a GDPR request, ArenaNet had to give the proof upon which basis the users were banned. And this makes it difficult.
TL;DR: laws suck. Being in a country with a strict law is hard.
Ether Can you plis share some of your bobos with PM, I just want to see in code how good they are before I trash them because I am a 100% vegan, organic handfarmer.
I pay some cupcakes or blue lemonade 
I am uping this for the lol guys.
When I have some time I really want to read the thread again 🤣
So do we still care guys or not ? 😛
That's funny.
I'd imagine everyone has bought something from botters at one point or another. I do my best not to, but I'm positive I'm not 100% successful. I'm just a casual player who plays maybe an hour a day, and still enjoy just playing the game as it is.I still dont think I've ever completed The Deep or Urgoz, not to mention UW or FOW or DOA. Completing a collection hasnt been a driving force to buy and sell items for me. I probably over pay for things I want and undersell for stuff Ive sold.
I actually find myself more interested in who is driving and tanking the price of arms. I'm trying to recall what the cost of them were when GW2 was released, I want to say 80ish ectos but I dont recall for sure. Today i saw them being sold for 80-95 from a high of 155-160 not much more than 2 months ago. It's intriguing because seeing WTS on them almost died out ( at least the times I'm online) , and then the steady decline on price. Even ecto has dropped to 4kish from what imho I'd consider an average price of 6-8 k ish
I actually find myself more interested in who is driving and tanking the price of arms. I'm trying to recall what the cost of them were when GW2 was released, I want to say 80ish ectos but I dont recall for sure. Today i saw them being sold for 80-95 from a high of 155-160 not much more than 2 months ago. It's intriguing because seeing WTS on them almost died out ( at least the times I'm online) , and then the steady decline on price. Even ecto has dropped to 4kish from what imho I'd consider an average price of 6-8 k ish
Value of arms expressed as number of ectos is not really relevant as neither are of a fixed supply (1a=50e is effectively a currency cross, if the next day 1a=100e but that same 1a still only buys you the same amount of nick gifts its not become more valuable). What matters is what an arm can buy you, on that score there value has absolutely collapsed (as have ectos). By now everybody must have noticed a doubling, tripling, 10Xing of prenerf items, high mini ect. Almost everything fixed supply is effected, even newly generated items like nick gifts have seen a huge rise because there is a gargantuan amount of new arms moving around bidding them up thanks to an army of bots in DoA all day everyday for months and months and months. Much sad 
