Tool_of_Society

The bot report button somewhat does that already. Once enough people have used the bot report button on you a captcha will pop up and if you mess it up you get a debuff and unknown stuff happens in the background. In the first few months of the classic servers I was getting at least one captcha a day while leveling. The thing is if the bot program is of sufficient complexity it can answer captchas.. It's kind of sad but automated programs have an easier time answering captchas than me sometimes...

You have provided no evidence of a mass ban for using WTFast. Such a ban would of been a huge ordeal for a fairly large chunk of the population that uses WTfast or VPNs to play who also post on these forums, reddit , and the discord server. I on the other hand have facts supporting my statement that WTFast is not causing people to be banned. If you have any real knowledge of networking and how software works you would know it's silly to claim "OMG I WAS BANZORED FOR USING WTFAST!!!"... Juji confirmed as much here. https://forums.lineage2.com/topic/10677-wtfast/?do=findComment&comment=80087 Hime has also confirmed that people are not being banned for battleping/wtfast/vpns through various mediums. Xigncode is used in a variety of games and the developer fine tunes the software to the requirements of their clients (ncsoft being one). The developer of Xigncode is well aware of teamspeak/discord/VPNs/battleping/wtfast and more. It's "easy to bypass" because someone did the hard work for you and created a tool/tutorial/whatever to bypass it. When tens of thousands of people are trying hundreds of thousands of ways to break your security product it's inevitable that someone will succeed. Sadly xigncode is better than game guard which would straight up rootkit your computer leaving it vulnerable to attacks... This right here shows your ignorance. I kind of want to educate you on why you're so wrong but I've discovered over the last several decades that it's rarely worth my effort. So I'll leave you with this thought... If it was so simple then every online game wouldn't have cheats/hacks/bots/exploits....

Meanwhile I just logged into my accounts one at a time by hitting enter for the ToS screen and server select.

Well the answer was stated by the OPin the thread titled "Log In Problem Fix". You posted in that thread. AT least some people including me were able to log in by hitting enter on the numkey when the game client finishes loading (at the accept Terms of Service screen). I've been on all my accounts on 7 desktops for around 7 hours now.\

What? One of my machines runs off SSDs and loads the client in a blink of the eye and it worked just like the other 6 desktops...

There was no mass ban of players using WTFast or VPNs. There are a lot of people using that service who post on the forums here and are also on the discord server right now. WTfast is just a routing service for the packets and doesn't modify the game client or engage in activity that could be mistaken for a bot. VPNs are very similar except they mask the user's IP while changing the routing of packets. Those who blame WTfast/VPNs for their ban have even less standing then those who try to blame steam/discord/team speak for their ban. The developers of Xigncode are well aware of Discord/TS and those overlays are not something their program is looking for.

Any bypass of the 3 clients per machine restriction is bannable.

All nine accounts in via enter key.... It makes no real sense that clicking is broken but usage of the enter key works fine....

You're fine as long as you're not running more than 3 clients on each machine. I've run 9 clients total on live for years. I'm up to 7 desktops

This game barely resembles the real classic. No SAs like MM. Much higher MP regen rates. brooches/pendants/whatever the hell applying elemental attribute is in the character status screen/CP/etcetc It feels like a bastardized version of GOD pretending to be "classic"... I spammed the shit out of SS in closed/open beta with little issue. The real issue in the early days of the game is that no one knew WTF they were doing outside of the few who were able to play on the Korean server. That means people were doing all kinds of things wrong which decreased their income and slowed down their leveling. I was a veteran of korean MMORPGs so I had a good idea of what I was doing. At the very start I saved shots for skills but by the time I was in my 20s I was spamming shots(AW). My assumption has been that most of those "services" are just straight up scams. A good chunk of bots are probably run by the high level "leetsauce" players that claim everything is fine and they are awesome because they are just that much better at the game. In the real classic people would bot their mains too so it was a bit of a past time for some people to hunt down the botting spots of the high level big players..

Not having looping macros and watching botters outlevel them was the final nail in the coffin for VASTLY more people than would quit because of something so minor as looping macros!! See I can make unsubstantiated statements too Personally I believe that fishing is far closer to "soft botting" than macro loops. Fishing is vastly safer than trying to run looped macros. Fishing is far easier and quicker to setup and you know unless the server blows up your character will have advanced some every time you check. The reality is people are tired of seeing botters everywhere running with what appears to be impunity (some are getting banned but there are just tons of them). After all the crap Ncwest has pulled I just don't see looping macros as something that would generate much real outrage. Obviously some people will be against it and some of them will use alts on the forums to try to bolster their case. That's just how things go in a free to play game that is pushing into p2w territory. As for me over the last few months I bought 4 SFF computers off ebay to expand my desktop setup to 7 total desktop machines. I run three clients on the main computer and one client each on the second/third systems with full keyboard/mouse. The 4 SFF are controlled with wireless keypads to save space on my desk and run one client each. All four SFF are also hooked to a singular monitor, keyboard and mouse via an IOGEAR GCS24U.

Earlier I d/ced but I was able to log back in on all 9 accounts but just d/ced again a moment ago. I live very close to the servers so it's clearly the server.

I've been seeing parties requiring VIP 4 for some weeks now. I farm with 9 accounts and I did some tests involving VIP levels a while back. The first test was 30 hours of farming with 8 vip 4 and 1 vip 1. Then I farmed 30 hours with all VIP 4. I was in the same area and my characters gained one level part way through the second test. All mobs were still yellow after the level gain. Tracking daily items and adding them up at the end of the week showed no real difference in drops (aside from more stems). I actually got one weapon with the vip1 and no weapons with all vip 4. I've exact numbers saved somewhere and I'll take a look when I have time if anyone wants to see the details. I've farmed with a variety of VIP levels and I really can't tell a difference. Which isn't surprising because when a drop rate is 0.005% even +50% drop increase means it's still only 0.0075%. Weapon parts and useful items tend to be around 1% drop rate so even then it's 1.5% which isn't statistically noticeable until you're into the tens of thousands of kills. So basically even my numbers are not relevant statistically because my sample size is too tiny. Realistically few people will get a large enough sample size to ever tell. You'd have to bot 24/7 to do that.

Guys uhhh please stop giving them ideas....

Warframe, POE, Fortnite are all raking in cash. Warframe is doing so well they actually removed a cash shop item because they discovered someone was binging on it. Yes they actually removed a profitable item because they felt some people were paying too much money into it. Warframe is what you get when a developer actually cares about their player base and REGULARLY communicates with their players. I just bought 50 bucks in Nccoins a couple days ago as part of my standard "support the developer" purchase. It will be my last purchase.