The root of the problem in pRO is basically dishonesty, a.k.a. cheating.
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Bots are the easiest cheats available, and a lot of people pretty much want to cheat their way through the game, when they don’t realize that they’re only cheating themselves because the endgame is also as important as the journey, so if they bot their way to max level, they miss out more than half the content that the game provides, reducing RO to nothing better than DotA or Counter-Strike: a frag fest where the only thing matters is victory.
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At least in the perception of the majority, LU is cheating their customers out of their money by being too quiet or not being open about their policies or situations. But what I really think is the problem isn’t the standard “company secrecy” — although it’s part of the problem — it’s just that the whole thing seems too disorganized and unprofessional.
* Customer Service became reduced to copy-paste replies as if they just throw your queries into a cache and answer them only when it’s convenient (and often they don’t seem to read the whole message, and instead look at keywords).
* The recent scandal with Vanguard Anael + RPC 2007 underhanded tactics make a lot of people untrusting of LU’s motives. A former classmate of mine (from Urdr) claims that there were several edited skills (like Identify Item being able to cast Storm Gust with no cast time or delay) being used by the champions, and at the same time they got disqualified because of items that were placed BY THE VANGUARDS according to them. With that, and the lack of professionalism displayed by Anael + no disciplinary action taken against him, who do you think is more reliable, a company that employs cloak-and-dagger self-preservation tactics, or a group of open-source individuals who [claim to be] open on their motives?
* With PLDT limiting the number of employees for LU (to maximize on profits), people have to multitask and so the whole company runs inefficiently because hati ang effort at concentration sa iba’t ibang mga bagay…
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Bot development has always been revolving around cheating. It can’t get any simpler than that. Finding loopholes? Learning more about the way RO works? Just by reading the history of bot development, you’ll see that those objectives are just a facade to hide the fact that bots are made to cheat, to do things the “easy” way, even though the repercussions are more bad than good especially when deployed en masse. I believe kaliwanagan and other bot devs already knew about that, but because of selfish motives still decided to go develop bots.
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I just hope they employ that third party anti-bot program ASAP, and make sure that it actually works.

Hehe good morning to you too MD Thanks for the compliment.

Pero, nung naglaro na aq, yay, ang patch pla ay para ma deny ang mga botters!

Once again, LU knows what is justice! I know that LU doesn’t want just money, they want to create a new world for gamers!

On the other hand, wakokoko… DI PO AQ MAKA PM… and lagi aq nadidisconect… well.. that’s the side effect. /no1 (>.

I feel Gravity/LUG really is hurdling a big mountain here. What really makes the Botters strong is its community. Openkore develops so much faster than RO dishes out updates with its weekly patches. On one point, of course because of the many anti-bot measures, but fine tuning and minute improvements are contributed by multiple users and gives a boost to the development of bots. I mean I’ve seen people there going out of their way to learn to program just help develop Openkore. And continuity of development is not really a problem as it is open source.

And what does LUG/Gravity have? Paid employee developers, who as you said don’t have a clue/damn what they’re up against. A bugged game program with no decent systematic bug and glitch report system, and if even you do report exploits, bugs and glitches manually, customer support turns a blind eye until the game succumbs into a verge of collapse. Game publishers not in touch with its players, so even honest, vigilant people helplessly watch as their game go upside down. In the end, they established a disillusioned userbase with much concern about keeping bots running/out, finding ways to dupe/prevent dupe items, and other exploits/counter exploits rather than concerning about gameplay and improving its content and playability.

But still I still credit them as they have an Ace in their cards - they OWN the game. They SHOULD know it better than anyone. Now if they’re smart and committed enough to use that knowledge is another question.

Someone in RB (Nauko Oblivion it was I believe) pointed out an interesting fact: http://ragnaboards.levelupgames.ph/index.php?s=&showtopic=59668&view=findpost&p=1345477 if RO shuts down, OpenKore loses purpose (except maybe to provide bots for private servers), but when OpenKore shuts down (highly unlikely), RO will still operate as is. It’s something that people often overlook as they constantly burden the servers with more and more stress (in part because of bots, in part due to faulty implementation of antibot measures that wouldn’t have been there if people restrained their botting activities).
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I believe the message of kaliwanagan was, “if you are to bot, bot responsibly” (no KS, no mass harvesting, purely for leveling or gathering certain items but only with one or two characters, not a whole army). I however find the idea of “responsible cheating” as absurd as our Philippine politics nowadays, because cheating is cheating no matter how you look at it. Still, if people were a bit less selfish maybe LU wouldn’t have bothered implementing buggy antibot features, and we might still have monsters dropping cards and items normally [and we would likely still have Fly Wings, Teleport and Butterfly Wings] if botters weren’t so desperate to cheat their way through the game.
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Personally I think that the dev team of openkore might delay or stop the implementation of new anti-bot measures when they see that LU is serious in their stance against bots.
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Right now they’re just using features that Gravity are planning to distribute worldwide, and so to adapt to their international player base, they need to work against anti-bot features developed by Gravity itself. BUT by making a pRO Valkyrie-exclusive anti-bot feature (which hopefully would be implemented in pRO Thor as well), it’s not like OK would bother to waste major resources and time just to allow botting in just ONE server. Remember their promise for Thor, that they won’t support it when RagDefender was implemented? If you analyze it, it’s not a matter of “we won’t make bots for Thor if you put in jRO’s RagDefender” but more of “we’ll leave the server alone if you put in server-exclusive antibot features”.
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Unfortunately we already know that LU just used the padded packet system, which they were already working on anyway… making the statement invalid.

to Yralyn - it would be better to think another way, why not ask LU to be stiff in there crusade againts bots - why not implement as what you say MP army?

botter exist because LU does not go directly on the issue. - they keep people in circles as long as they gain money - anyways it is like graders in a school where there are side walk vendors and teachers scold students not to buy to side walk vendors but teachers does not do anything so that students will not buy from side walk vendors -

@IdoNotExist
Linawin ko lang, the MP Army suggestion is only an idea I included in this post. It was never a plan of LU to implement such.

Top 5 guild’s of Valkyrie Server have army of bot’s..
you want some evidence??..hehe..
pero ung rank # 1 na [KOJ] manually cla,pero eache member dun meron 2-3 bot lng…sa Baldur tlga cla bot..pra harvest../no1.
pero d2 sa valkyrie..ang [KOJ] d mttwag na meron army of bots..
sa Mantas,Siezure,Dugyots at illuminati™..
hehe..anu?? musta?? kea nmn ksi mlakas sa siege..dami members..ksi gni2 gngwa nyo oh..->
“RGM->70+ pasok lng”
Recruter:anu sali kana d2…bgyan k nmn bot..
Example player:tlga? ayus..bsta meron supplies at BOT..yehey..