ArenaNet took a strong stance on cheating in Guild Wars 2 early on in the game’s lifespan, and they’re sticking to their guns when it comes to botting.
In a blog post on the Guild Wars 2 website, security coordinator Mike Lewis said that the team banned over 34,000 bots in the month of November alone, and the company isn’t planning to let up on enforcing the rules.
“We’ve gathered massive amounts of information about the habits of both normal players and automated bot players,” Lews said. “We contracted a team of data specialists to help us build comprehensive tools that comb through this data and find effective ways to single out and terminate bot accounts. Automating this process has been a major focus of the ArenaNet security team, and we’re now seeing the considerable fruits of this labor.”
ArenaNet’s security team may be focusing on automating the process, but that doesn’t mean that’s all they’re doing. Lewis said that its GM staff are constantly on the lookout for suspicious, bot-like behavior.
“Another way we identify and combat bots is through manual observation,” Lewis explains. “Our GM staff is equipped to monitor the game around the clock and detect bots from within the game itself. We have a considerable task force assigned to patrolling the world and eliminating bots, as well as helping us continue to improve and refine our automatic detection tools.”
ArenaNet’s combined efforts to thwart botting in Guild Wars 2 does appear to be working. Lewis said that the company went from having an average number of 2,000 reported bots per hour in the month of October to only 20.
