Ok - I don't want to be an alarmist, but it does seem that 9/22 was a ban wave (albeit a small one). I haven't seen any of the developers come out and mention that they are investigating the bot for possible detection after the multitudes of bans yesterday.
Now, after my first perma-ban about a month ago, I had a second account banned. The first one had been banned about a year before for "exploiting the economy", though I was using it to gather on, and was leveling a few toons also. Then the email came in about a month ago that the account had been perma-banned. I had been botting for ore for about 2 to 3 hours, occassionally manually stopping the bot for breaks or to gather dark soil. I was monitoring 100%. Then I was logged out, no notice (I thought that the network had blipped and I lost contact to the server). When I tried to log back in, I received both the Banned notice in the client and the email (nearly simultaneously).
So I took a few lessons away from that:
Don't bot on an account that has a guild leader (lost a couple bank guild guild leaders - luckily, I always have more than one toon per guild and from more than one a count)
Don't bot for too many hours (3 - 4 was the limit that day)
Don't bot the same zone too long
Don't pay for a bot with a 60 day game card - whoops
So, I then had a second account that had never had any action levied against it...
I leveled one toon up to 60, then started a DK. Botted it to level 90 alternating with the other toon.
I began using HBrelogger with like this:
I had the DK log in and bot in one zone for 60 mins +/-15 random mins. It would then change zones and repeat the time settings. Change zones again, and repeat the time settings. Finally, one more change in zones, and repeat the time settings. The DK was an herbalist/miner. Previous gatherers were only mining OR herbalist.
It would then log in the lower level character and level it for 2 hours +/-30 random mins.
It would then log out for up to 4 hours +/- 60 random mins.
I would repeat this cycle 2 times, then manually shut it down for a few hours (usually 6 to 9).
Both toons were using LogMeOut and BreakTaker plug-ins.
Now, this all seems very non-bot like since the timing was never exact on any of the online or offline times.
But, yesterday, this account got caught in the 10am PST ban wave and the account had been online less than an hour. No previous account violations, no notice until after the perma-ban.
Is it getting just too unsafe to use HB anymore? I thought that I was actually playing it smarter this time around, but it seems to me that the bot is getting easier to detect, not harder as the devs would believe with the rhetoric of why they are delayed with updates after a patch ("we are testing bot detectability).
How about a dev pipe in here and let the community know that they are doing something about this?
I DO appreciate the hard work that seems to go in to this bot, but I also do need some reassurances that this is not the beginning of the end.
Thanks in advance for any information that can be provided.
Now, after my first perma-ban about a month ago, I had a second account banned. The first one had been banned about a year before for "exploiting the economy", though I was using it to gather on, and was leveling a few toons also. Then the email came in about a month ago that the account had been perma-banned. I had been botting for ore for about 2 to 3 hours, occassionally manually stopping the bot for breaks or to gather dark soil. I was monitoring 100%. Then I was logged out, no notice (I thought that the network had blipped and I lost contact to the server). When I tried to log back in, I received both the Banned notice in the client and the email (nearly simultaneously).
So I took a few lessons away from that:
Don't bot on an account that has a guild leader (lost a couple bank guild guild leaders - luckily, I always have more than one toon per guild and from more than one a count)
Don't bot for too many hours (3 - 4 was the limit that day)
Don't bot the same zone too long
Don't pay for a bot with a 60 day game card - whoops
So, I then had a second account that had never had any action levied against it...
I leveled one toon up to 60, then started a DK. Botted it to level 90 alternating with the other toon.
I began using HBrelogger with like this:
I had the DK log in and bot in one zone for 60 mins +/-15 random mins. It would then change zones and repeat the time settings. Change zones again, and repeat the time settings. Finally, one more change in zones, and repeat the time settings. The DK was an herbalist/miner. Previous gatherers were only mining OR herbalist.
It would then log in the lower level character and level it for 2 hours +/-30 random mins.
It would then log out for up to 4 hours +/- 60 random mins.
I would repeat this cycle 2 times, then manually shut it down for a few hours (usually 6 to 9).
Both toons were using LogMeOut and BreakTaker plug-ins.
Now, this all seems very non-bot like since the timing was never exact on any of the online or offline times.
But, yesterday, this account got caught in the 10am PST ban wave and the account had been online less than an hour. No previous account violations, no notice until after the perma-ban.
Is it getting just too unsafe to use HB anymore? I thought that I was actually playing it smarter this time around, but it seems to me that the bot is getting easier to detect, not harder as the devs would believe with the rhetoric of why they are delayed with updates after a patch ("we are testing bot detectability).
How about a dev pipe in here and let the community know that they are doing something about this?
I DO appreciate the hard work that seems to go in to this bot, but I also do need some reassurances that this is not the beginning of the end.
Thanks in advance for any information that can be provided.
