I guess I haven’t been even logging in recently, that I didn’t realize login queues due to bots are still a problem on NA West. I decided tonight to login to knock out my weekly tasks for my gold tokens, but was met with a 19K queue on NA West Mari (all west servers show as busy).
At the rate it was going, this would take at least 2+ hours to get through. I logged off. I saw this Reddit thread about long queues which revealed this has been ongoing (and gotten worse) over the past few weeks.
I do realize the complexity of anti-botting measures but AGS and Smilegate RPG are losing the battle. Back during the KR open beta launch, one of the biggest issues were the massive login queues due to a combination of foreigners using purchased accounts (often times made with stolen KSSN’s), and then a large influx of Chinese players who were utilizing a patched launcher with built-in VPN and an app which allowed the game client to effectively bypass the queues.
Due to how KR accounts are tied to a mobile phone number (in addition to KSSN), Smilegate RPG was able to send out account re-verifications (there were adding servers at a good clip but eventually decided to begin culling accounts in these re-verification waves). Over time, they managed to get it under control.
Unfortunately, there is no such system in place for the AGS version. So dealing with bot operations is a literal whack-a-mole competition. Part of this is not helped with how the game itself, lacks even the most basic fundamental server side validation checks to deal with teleport/speed hacking (botters are now literally just teleporting to next destination whereas early on, they would simply ignore collision or pathing restrictions).
The oft-made suggestion of hiring more GM’s to stamp out the obvious to see botters is a money/time wasting one because you would need GM’s in each channel in every zone. Additionally, there needs to be an actual documentation process in place even if it all looks obvious (because mistakes can also be made where someone legitimate might get accidentally flagged; that documentation process is necessary for the appeals process).
Smilegate RPG has removed once easier to obtain gold rewards to make it more difficult for the bots to farm gold that way, but that also has the detrimental side effect of punishing legitimate players (there were some NPC rapport that could be quickly completed where players who took advantage of that in the first few weeks of the game, were able to get the gold rewards; everyone else is now SOL or need to grind to a higher rapport level to get that same reward if it has not been completely removed).
Another thing I noticed is that concurrency has risen; back in April, CCU’s were below 400K players (358K average). When I looked at the Lost Ark Steam Charts tonight, it was at 800K (average over the last 30 days has been 558K). Some of this could be attributed to players returning for the new updates, but another part of that are the bots (to satiate the RMT side of the equation).
Regardless, AGS and Smilegate RPG have this major ongoing issue they need to address in a much better way. I know the hardcore players will sit through these queues, but for those like myself who have reduced their time playing, likely won’t bother with these 5-digit queues (that itself leads to further disengagement from the game). I know the game is popular enough where folks like myself are considered expendable and thus a non-factor. The question becomes how much frustration it creates for the rest (where it slowly erodes that goodwill relationship; remember, it took years for Blizzard Entertainment to burn through a lot of goodwill and trust when all of the missteps [which they could easily weather before], began to pile up and snowball one after the other).
