Guild Wars 2 has been out for nearly 2 months now (yes, two months!) and within the past month something has been becoming more prevalent than ever… bots are taking over. In most moderately populated areas of Tyria you are sure to come across them. At first, it may seem like a lowly guild with a bunch of non-social members, but no, they’re bots.
To Catch a Bot
You can recognize bots fairly easily in the game. Sometimes they’ll have extremely random player names that you just know weren’t created by any sensible, real person. Other times you can label these soulless players by the fact that they are completely naked and only moving when event-specific enemies spawn. Either way, it’s rather obnoxious and ArenaNet doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.
If you find a bot while out and about in Guild Wars 2, do us all a favor and right-click on its name and click that wonderful report button. But make sure it’s actually a bot before you do this. Reporting anyone and everyone you see is just as abusive, if not more so, than using a bot yourself.
Why Bots Exist in MMOs
Bots typically serve one of two purposes to no-life players with no real love for the game:
1. To auto-level their character without an ounce of effort.
2. To farm gold and/or rare items to sell.
The latter option is generally taken up by the wonderful Chinese who then create their “GW2 Buy Gold” websites and charge an arm and a leg to sell in-game gold. These are outright scams, are not supported by most MMOs and buying from them will more than likely result in your account being banned. So don’t waste your time with it. Plus, it’s just stupid to do. You paid $60 for a great game, PLAY IT, don’t be a loser and cheat.
Why Bots Ruin the Game for Others
In most MMOs bots can really rob you of gameplay by sucking up crafting resources before you can even touch them and taking out enemies before you’re even in range. GW2 does have a few things going for it that help combat this such as shared experience (everyone gets all XP and other points rather than just a portion) and individual gathering nodes but bots can still be an issue in this game.
For instance, bots are almost always found at recurring events, in large numbers nonetheless. So by the time you get to an event or are able to start participating most of the action is immediately erased because the bots systematically take out all of the enemies fairly quickly. Sure, you still get XP/currency/karma but you missed out on being able to play. And that just absolutely sucks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ArenaNet really needs to step up their game when it comes to moderating the presence of bots. They destroy the fun in the game and serve no real purpose. The accounts using them should immediately be banned and some sort of patch should be made to eliminate the use of the bots as well.
What do you think of bots in GW2? Do you think ArenaNet needs to be more aggressive in taking care of them? Comment below!
