RSBANDBUpdate! - Battling The Bots

We're doing another special segment on bots in RuneScape. We'll be covering various topics from the current situation to what bots do. Now comes your turn.

We want your questions! Post your bot related questions in this topic. You have until Monday (11th July) to submit.

Note: When we say bot related topics, anything goes. If you have a question about bots, this is the time to ask us!

Dear hosts,

I have 2 bot-related questions.

1) When doing slayer tasks I find that there are a lot of combat bots in certain areas. For instance, at Black Demons in Taverly Dungeon, and at Dagannoths, I have seen many mid-level characters, dressed pretty much alike, following the same combat patterns, and not talking. I cannot imagine how this has become so prevalent even in combat areas. I could understand the old wood-cutting or fishing type bots, but this seems ridiculous. How does this even work? Are players paying some botting company to level up their characters? I am confused and glad to see that you are doing an episode on this issue; I would appreciate some general background on what bots are even doing on Runescape.

2) 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

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.

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