Note: We recorded this episode before Jagex’s bot announcement on July 16.
Question from Jmycenae
1) I have had some personal experience with this issue this week in a related problem: my teenaged son's Runescape account was hacked. We honestly cannot figure out how it happened. He hardly ever plays any more (having moved on to Minecraft), and generally only logs in once a week to run around with me and find penguins. Last time he was on was a week ago, then last night I saw his username logged in, while he was sitting at the computer right next to me definitely NOT playing. He went to account recovery, was able to get the account back in moments, and logged in himself. He was in the moss giant area near gnome stronghold (not where he had last been), wearing rune armor (not what he had been wearing). An investigation of his bank determined that the thief had sold off his best equipment (full Zamorak armor, various dragon armor, whip, food, etc.) and apparently had set a bot program to fight the moss giants. There were 3500 big bones he hadn't had before, a bunch of herbs and other giant drops, and his attack level had gone up several levels. I am quite sure he did not share his password or bank pin with anyone, yet someone obviously obtained them. None of our household computers have viruses that we can find - at any rate if we had a virus on our computer, it seems they would have hacked my account too, which they did not. So we can't understand how the hacker got into his account in the first place, but even more are confused by what the heck they were doing? Why steal an account and make it bot giants? Further, they had left some 3 million gp in his bank, obviously the proceeds from selling off his items. Why hadn't they transferred it to their main account? What do you think might have been going on here?
Thanks so much for any light you can shed on this troubling problem.
Jmycenae
Question from Meltdown
Q1: I think over the past 10 months we've really seen how much bots are a part of RuneScape. More than half of all players are bots, and JaGex themselves said 50% of the bots are actually paying members. The game would be dead without them, whether they want to admit it or now. So 50% of their income are from bots, they can't just get rid of them all, and JaGex knows this.
So my actual question... if you were the head of JaGex, what would you do regarding bots? It's financial suicide to ban every single bot on RS, but it's almost another form of suicide to let them stay. Let's face it, they are ruining the game. What would you do?
Question from waffle233
Hello,
#1:As Meltdown said botting is apparently 50% of Jagex's income. But isn't their other ways to make money off this in a positive way for the game, such as suing the owners of the Botting sites. I bet theirs hundreds of them out there and they could make tons of profit of this.
#2: Do you think it might be a smart idea for Jagex to have a system update type thing on a regular basis. It would annoy some players but it would log out the bots or do you think Jagex should make the 6 hour log-out timer a 4hour log-out timer? This would also decrease the amount of bots in the game at once.
Question from Jbobman7
Is there a reason jagged doesn't shut down botting sites, I remember hearing about them shutting several a while ago.
Also I was watching a video by silentc0re about botting, is it true they have ones that simulate human movement and can talk?
If yes is there any way to stop these bots?
Thanks
Question from Lord Rickles
Hi Hosts,
Although I often wonder if Jagex is really doing all they can to stop botters, I feel the recent release of Max, the max cape NPC that obviously runs on a macro of some kind, is Jagex's attempt to understanding how bots operate. Do you feel Max was a test subject or a form of research on Jagex's part and just the tip of the iceberg of what they are actually doing, or am I reading too much into this? What are your thoughts on Max?
Thanks a bunch,
Lord Rickles
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