The advancement
After many years of theory, trying out various things, exploring the possibilities, we've finally done it for real!
As you've seen, we've had a lot of updates since the new year, to try it out on entire RetroCores, gather data and analyze them carefully and adjust/adapt systems for all challenges.
And we've now achieved the greatest cheating-detection system we've ever seen in action.

As we all know, all games of today are plagued with cheaters.
Especially Tibia-related ones, as it's more competitive with its "save and store" of character there many are encouraged to use cheats to gain an advantage over enemies, or to try to match up with an already plagued game.

The unspoken truth among the majority of MMORPG games
RetroCores are no exception, we too have been plagued by various cheaters, some of which we didn't even knew about until the last few days of total-analyze of the entire game.
And we've tried to do our best to have a certain balance, we've tried to wipe all cheaters at once, we've tried to phasing it out and deleting cheaters a little slower, to find that balance there cheaters are kept to a minimum without damaging the community as a whole.

Truth to be told, the majority of tibia servers speak of "we don't want cheaters" and "we delete them on sight" while letting cheaters plague their game in different ways.
Some servers allow huge rune-farms, because that boosts players online and makes the game more attractive.
While others simply just ignore the cheating situation and only punish any if absolutely necessary caused by too much attention in public places.
There's also servers out there that actually try their best to keep cheaters away (often very low-populated), that would seem clean, but in reality isn't, as you'll read later in this article, there's much more cheaters than you'd even think of, silent ones, ones that not even us in the staff knew about.

After that comes the horrible double-moral that's plaguing the community itself.
One part of the community screams for "clean" games, while they're at the same time refusing to play games that's not plagued by cheaters, which means they refuse to play a game that's not showing huge numbers of players, which often is the case when you wipe all cheaters at once.
We've also faced a large number of "silent cheaters", those that claim they've never cheated but always have some sort of cheats active when they login to the game.
Those that won't even admit to their closest friends that they're cheating somehow.
Over the years, with our over 17,000 deleted accounts, we've encountered countless people complaining about "unfair deletion" completely unaware that the friend they're defending, has been cheating every day.

All servers have dirty secrets, so what are RetroCores dirtiest secrets?
In full honestly, we value a game without corruption the highest!
We've had a few gamemasters, even a few community managers that went corrupted.
Luckily, there were already countermeasures against it, with great limits and logs/notifications preventing any dangerous corruption to take place with the result of dismissal of the staff member instantly.
But our dirtiest secret by far is that we at some points have tried to let cheaters roam freely for some time.
Don't get me wrong, we hate cheating, we've NEVER supported it.
However, as mentioned above, with "the unspoken truth", it's been clear that true success is in finding the correct pace of deleting cheaters.
So we've tried back and forth, higher and lowering the pace, trying to find the balance there the game grows but the majority is happy about the "cheating situation".
We've launched a few worlds, there we tried it differently, some worlds we cleared cheaters too quickly which made the record messages not being able to shoot up high.
We've tried a few launches to let the cheaters be, for a moment, which skyrocket the record messages and more people were interested in trying out RetroCores.
Our finding was that the most successful worlds, were the ones there were no deletions that were handed out the first 2 days, and then a slow pace of cleaning them up afterward (or 2-5 deletions to pretend cheaters are being deleted on the spot).
While the worlds that didn't get anywhere were those we started deleting cheaters instantly and in grand numbers.
In RetroCores we've mainly let cheaters be dealt with the !reportbot command which is automatic with the old detection system.

What's the old detection system? and how does it work with !reportbot command?
We've mentioned the old antibot system earlier, here and there over public places, it has been in charge of !reportbot command.
And it's been very good at its job, as when it detect someone, it's 100% accurate.
However, that antibot system couldn't detect all kind of bots and was rather limited, it couldn't detect macros/taskers, it also had huge problems detecting PVP bots.
When a report has been validated (by the old antibot), there's been a chance for the player to be deleted, to keep the "balance".
The auto systems decide itself when it will accept a report as valid and deliver the punishment.
So it's been random and fair with no "taking side" for anyone.
Of course this have been little troublesome as at some points there's been cheaters getting out of hand, and not caught by the systems and staff had to step in.
When you view the cheaters list you can see difference by who caused the deletion.
If it says "processed report", it's the !reportbot combined with the auto-systems randomly choosing when and who to delete.
When it says "automatic" it's the auto system taking care of someone who tried to modify the client in a dangerous way.
When it says "automatic detection" it's the new antibot system punishing someone who was automatically detected.
If it doesn't say anything like the three things mentioned above, it's a fully manual deletion made by a staff member, a community manager or by an admin.

The command !reportbot will start using the new antibot-system to validate reports!
The old antibot isn't good enough to make it fair enough in its randomness, but after gaining the new antibot system, it will be able to detect all types of cheats with amazing accuracy, which will for once make the automatic deletion-roulette more random and fair than ever.
First time ever, macros, recorders, taskers, autohotkeys, PVP bots.. will be fully detectable by the command, unlike earlier there only raw bots under right circumstances were detected.

Promoting numbers instead of quality
In the last 10 years, in the majority of games and communities, numbers are more important than quality.
Games become worse, their honor and ethics have got worse, and the "dirty tactics" against rivals have been increasing.
This is caused by the community, the players themselves, for as long players are blind to the hype and large numbers dirty tactics and dishonor are promoted more than anything.
When the majority of players prefer games with a large number of players rather than small, far above content or abilities of the creators, it sends the signal to game devs to work for the biggest numbers by any means, rather than content and back-story.
This can be seen in major game companies, there releases of bugged games instead of finished ones is increasing.
Everyone should see the logic here, you can see it everywhere, hype is far more valuable than quality.
Sure it does happen that a good quality game gets a good hype, but looking at all games together, you can see a pattern where impressive numbers go before quality.
And unless game communities can realize and change their number-hunger to good content, it's just going to get worse.
Today it's common that tibia servers and even other games, make private deals with large groups of players "clans/guilds", to get an activity boost, and many of those deals are more filthy than you'd expect.
For as long as the community value high numbers of players online rather than the game itself, DDos, Hacks, filth-throwing campaigns will be a leading problem.

We've seen games die overnight, because of misunderstandings among players,
For example, a "big" streamer takes a day break from streaming the game, half the game freaks out that it's going to die and quits just like that.
We've seen games that got a lower number of players in the early morning, and people thought it was dying, and not just people sleeping.
Another one we saw last Christmas, a decrease in 40% of players during Christmas eve made people think it was dying, while people were off to celebrate Christmas, it was "dead" 2 days after.

This is how sensitive the community is to numbers, numbers mean everything, numbers are better than quality.
It causes good games to die because people take one day break, because people sleep, and because people logout to celebrate something.

We're tired of the constant lying being promoted in tibia games by both games and the communities!
We're completely tired, of having this battle there we show our hate towards cheaters but have to keep it slow or the community dies instantly.
And we're tired of every other tibia game out there, doing the same, for the same reason.
We want to turn the table, promote honesty, which has been our goal for a long time but one that's hard to reach.
We want to see in the future, servers and players being honest, saying what they want, without hiding a secret agenda, voting for what's right, and promoting fair behavior from both devs and community!

Our goal for 2022
Our goal is to finally remove that stone from the chest, we want total transparency, we don't want to keep tiny lies here and there just to satisfy the communities twisted double-standards.
It's hard and stressful wanting to be honest at every turn, but being forced to keep these small lies for the sake of the community.

We finally have what we need.. to make a move on this motion, to release the truth, to start shaping the community for the better.
We're releasing a new world, we're going to promote honesty in our community, and we sincerely hope more communities join in on our plan.
We also hope that this move will open the eyes of the community, to think twice about large numbers, and maybe.. just maybe.. take a leap of faith in "dead" games, giving it a chance to prove itself, rather than blindly follow the crowd.
It was better before when players chose games for their content and their potential, and not because of how many plays there.
Those times promoted games to work hard and honest, and evolve themselves, today it's not like that, today the majority of games are permanently "dead" if some "key" players leave the game, or if there's a misunderstanding or too many go to sleep at the same time.

We want to have different set of RetroCores worlds in terms of antibot, worlds for those who want a clean world for real, worlds for those that like to cheat or be among cheaters but having a chance of getting caught, and finally worlds for those who want to cheat without ever getting punished, and very soon, we will finally have all 3 types of worlds!

Cleanera, the world's first true clean tibia world!
We're launching Cleanera in early 2022, with Antibot-measures that is set to FULL-AUTO.
This means that there will not be a single cheater in this world (for once, truly).
We know that every other tibia server has in the past 10 years advertised about their "antibot client", their "antibot systems", but came short, either with lack of skill or purely for the purpose mentioned above about not taking care of cheaters because numbers are more important.
We've often seen servers release claiming "antibot" but still had more botters than anything else.

Because of that, we understand if you're a bit skeptical, if Cleanera really can live up to the promise, can it really capture and punish all cheaters with 100% accuracy?
And can it really, know the difference between a cheat and non-cheating players who just got into a situation accidentally caused by a glitchy computer, or high latency or ping spikes?
Yes, our new Anti-Bot system can do that, but of course, you can never know for sure, but hopefully, the community can sense it when they finally try it out, and tell from their perspective if it seems to be true or not.

What kind of cheats can the new antibot detection capture?
All of them actually, everything that's considered cheating in the rules are detected without mistakes.
We've run huge amounts of tests the last few days to ensure it captures everything and doesn't accidentally capture non-cheating players.
In the writing moment, there are 1,966 detections and no accidental detections, that's been made in the past 5 days since the release of 1.38 patch.
It's so good at detecting that we can run statistics on the most popular cheats among RetroCorians.

Most used cheats in RetroCores after survey created by the new antibot-system:
(this is by player count, and not person, some people run multiple bots at same time)

• OTBot: 66% (plain bot)
• RifBot: 12% (plain bot)
• TinyTask 6% (macro)
• OuPilot: 5% (advanced macro)
• MacroRecorder: 4% (macro, keyboard & mouse recorder & playback)
• Auto Hotkey: 2% (macro alike)
• Mouse Recorder Pro: 1% (macro, keyboard & mouse recorder & playback)
• Others 4% (various bots, macros and things, such as programmable gaming mouse with macro hotkeys)

Worlds with different Antibot Measures
There will be 3 different kinds of Antibot measures.
FULL-AUTO: A world that's truly clean, no bots, no macros or help tools to help people get an advantage over you.
Manual: A world that mainly focuses on !reportbot there it's up to chance if a valid report will cause deletion of reported cheaters.
None: A world where botters can roam freely without any fear of getting caught.

Why will the old worlds only have Manual?
It's the best way to keep the "balance" mentioned earlier, the balance majority of people are used to (in all tibia related games).
And with an automated system, randomly picking who to delete, make it fairer for everyone, especially war-teams, there they cannot accuse it of staff taking a side in wars.
The grand problem, people don't trust in "antibot" claimed games anymore, it's been abused by all types of games there they often speak "we won't have any cheaters!" and yet you find cheaters here and there if not everywhere.
This makes people expect there to be cheaters even though the grand words there won't.
And those who would choose to play fair are tilting towards using cheat to be able to keep up with the many cheaters that exist.
We've seen this in many games, there fair players turn to cheat because the cheating was out of control.
PUBG is one of those games, there the number of cheaters was so high, that fair players started to try out cheats just to have a chance at winning just once.

For this reason, it's a bit unfair to release the antibot into all worlds, when the community has already been shaping them with their standards for years, not mention dangerous as it could instantly kill all worlds and at 99.9% chance would.
But we hope, that with Cleanera, that people will be open-minded, and shortly realize that the antibot system is not another time of "we won't have cheaters" but still there isn't, but really is an awesome system and that the world will truly be clean, so you and everyone who can imagine playing a game without bringing cheats will finally have somewhere to play.
Just imagine it, being in Cleanera, you see a player pull off some real nice saves with runes or manas, and you know it's skill/luck and not a help-software, nice isn't?

More than you know, uses cheats, even more than we knew
With the new detection, and analyzing the game and all players the past weeks, we've seen what's really going on, and you'd be surprised to see it.. or well.. some of you would be surprised while others were just expecting it.
We've came across players, that we'd never think of as a cheater, but ended up being one.
So many nice and good people, who seem fair and true, turned out to be using either plain bot for light-hack, and hotkeys for manas/uhs.
While others just have macro-based cheats that allows you to create hotkeys similar to "item hotkeys", making you use uh/mana by a key only, and hotkey to load a rune so you don't need to move the mouse back and forth.

How popular could Cleanera be?
If Cleanera was launched just like any previous worlds, claiming anti-bot without explaining the past, process, and dark secrets, it would die really fast.
To begin with, people wouldn't believe in the "antibot" because why should they? every server and every game ever claiming it has still had cheaters.
So a small portion would begin, but before anyone leaves Rookgaard half the players online would be deleted, they'd think it's because the staff is checking around and nothing more, maybe even accidental deletions by a bugged system that some servers have tried and failed with, not taking into account that computers work differently and what one doesn't trigger the next one could.
Anyhow, because of the doubt in most minds, and declining numbers online, it would likely be completely unpopulated within 1-2 days.

However,
We're tired of the lying, and we've actually built a kickass antibot system, that doesn't mistake people based on latency, lagg, kicks or computers that works differently with all the different sets of drivers they might have, we just want to be honest with you, what's going on, and make you more open-minded.

Because in theory, if the entire world believes in us now, what we're writing, that our new antibot really is as great as we say, and that it will remain effective in the unforeseen future, if the community stands for what they preach, for a fair game, clean from cheats, all of them, even simple mouse-scripts by programmable mouses..
If by all that, in theory, Cleanera should become the most popular and populated tibia-related server in history.
But that's just theory, we can never see into the future and say how popular it will be, but if the community is true in their words, Cleanera has a shot at being the most popular world RetroCores has ever had before.
But for this to work out, people must realize that people can go to sleep, that people can take a day or few off, without it meaning they quit, without meaning that Cleanera is dying.

Cleanera will not have a single cheater, it means that there will be peaks and dips that are nowhere near each other.
Cleanera could possibly have 1,000 players online in the evenings, and 10 in the morning, because there will not be any afk cheating keeping huge rune-making farms online 24/7.
They must also realize that because no cheaters are online, the player number could be lower than competitions worlds, because in tibia-related servers you can estimate that 2/3 of the characters online is not unique people, a few multi-client, some don't but then there are a few people who run huge farms and having 20+ characters online while server-managers let them, to keep the game alive (as mentioned in the "unspoken truth" above)..
People need to know and realize this, realize that numbers and reality are two completely different things, that a game without cheaters has more unique people playing, rather than fewer people and more characters.
Easy said, Cleanera only needs to reach 100 players, to be as active and chatty as a server having 300-600 "players".

But we know one thing to be true, either the outcome of Cleanera.
And that is that Cleanera will have the most healthy atmosphere by far since there won't be any toxic cheaters running around that doesn't care about their reputation, but only manual playing players, that doesn't want to lose their hard work will be there, causing them to be more careful and nicer, which is the main thing promoting a healthy atmosphere.

The community will decide how Cleanera will start!
We will in the coming week be discussing and checking out how the community wants Cleanera to be, where it should be hosted, how to deal with certain issues that could follow with the lack of cheaters providing runes, and more.

The War-Server is already FULL-AUTO!
The war-server had never had any forms of enforcements before because it's a special world, it's not linked to RetroCores like normal worlds, and so information flow has been extremely limited and due to that, it's been hard to enforce anything there.
However, a few days ago we updated the war-server to be able to carry banishments, and so we added the FULL-AUTO systems to the war-server.
So from now on, you can be sure there won't be any cheaters in the war-server, whoever you fight will be a manual player!
We didn't create any news or notifications about the change, so we could in quiet see players fall into the trap, and so they did.
Even though War-Server is rarely used, it has still managed to deliver out 15 permanent-banishment to cheaters trying to act tough.

Final Words
We hope you all can forgive our dirtiness, whoever you might be, all fair, rage botter, war team member, silent cheater..
But we've been forced to keep those tiny secrets, doing these weird balances, because of how tibia-community has been developing the last 15 years.
We also hope you can make a stand, be more honest about yourself, what you really like, and not go against yourself in hopes you'd be the only one not impacted by your words.
Help us, make the community more healthy, more open, more honest, we need it.. majority of tibia community have been toxic enough for one life age, but it shouldn't have to be toxic, people should be able to talk and keep together even if their opinions are different.
Having a different opinion doesn't mean you must hate eachother.

And we sincerely hope that this whole topic wakes everyone up, so we can all start working together for a brighter future in RetroCores, and hopefully across all tibia-related games or maybe even other games too!

We also hope that you're looking forward to discussing Cleanera and how it could be, we are.
We're actually hyped for Cleanera.. finally a world that's not only "visually clean", but actually 100% clean from both the visual and the hidden.

Sincerely,
RetroCores Staff