Well, I sure hope so, WoW alone has at least twice as many players as FF14 has (and they have more incentive for botting with wow tokens being a thing). But the transparency would be much appreciated.
To be fair, I haven’t physically seen a botter in WoW Retail in a long while, although I do have seem a fair share of them in Classic. Probably because Classic is cheaper. Maybe grindier.
cries in druid boomkin bot form There are TONS but they keep getting banned, then more are created. Never ending fight.
On your second point though, Classic and Retail are exactly the same in that you have access to both for the same subscription. All the WoW content from Vanilla through the end of BfA is also free with that Sub. The only thing they charge money for game wise is the latest expansion which is Shadowlands.
Yeah, but shadowlands isn’t cheap. So I imagine if I was a RMT mob boss and I had to choose, I’d RMT in Classic and save me some bucks per banned account.
I have a series of email exchanges with a Blizzard developer. We discuss trading ideas for D2. That person’s response to that website was “how else will players trade?” So even Blizzard considers it a trading site. We’ve been talking about the site on the forums for more than a decade, it isn’t a problem.
Also, the site users sell D3 paragon leveling services. They are not manual leveling services.
You mean you join a game with a bot and it runs rifts for you?
Tbh, it’s a bit hilarious how the game design favors that type of botting service, with how viable it is to just wait in the rifts entrance and eat popcorn while your blue exp bar goes woosh
Oh sweet summer child. They don’t spend money. They use stolen accounts mostly, and when not doing that, they use stolen payment information (some from customers some from large data hacks). Credit card numbers get bought for cheap. Those folks are not paying to run those bots and they don’t care when the bot gets banned. There is another rube out there without an Auth on the account who falls for “click here for Beta!” or whatever.
On the good side, after the AH was gone and things were made BoA D3 accounts were no longer a target.
People are going to have to be VERY careful not to fall for phishing scams, fake websites with D2R info, etc. They will target and farm the account info well before D2R release then after release steal those accounts for their botting use.
True. I’ve been working with cybersecurity for so long and yet I forget people are dumb enough to fall for the [BlizzaRdGMVeryLegit whispers] scams
Some fall for the whispers but those are a minority. Emails telling you that you got into Alpha click here! You were banned but verify your account here! Fakewebsite with info on [game you love] but loaded with malware! Legit website that you made an account on to use their char planner - but security is poor and it gets compromised. If someone uses the same password/email there as for Bnet…hackers get their free bot.
sigh
People still don’t keep things very secure. They don’t lock down browsers, use secondary auth when available, use diff logins and passwords on diff sites, etc.
I don’t even know a single of my passwords. I legit refuse to memorize them. They’re all in my password managers.
All my emails are GPG signed as well so I can prove it’s me when I send it.
People need to watch some pep talks on basic security.
I have a notebook. heh. I also have a copy of a spreadsheet on a separate USB device that is not in my house.
My cats are not going to steal my info and log in to anything. I actually need to set up a packet of info for family so that if I die they can access and close accounts. They would never be able to sort out my password list which is hints, not clear text.
It’s also important to realize that the average income in the US and the common wealth countries is very high compared to the rest of the world. There is a lot of disposable income among Gen X, Millennials, Gen Y and Z that the gaming companies and the people that parasitize off them love to gobble up.
I just generate them with a password managers, which in turn requires 2-step auth to even get to it. Ez and safe. Although I haven’t thought about the inevitability of me getting eaten by a shark when I go surfing yet.
That likely happens, but I think it’s even worse, such as what is done with D2 leveling services on the site.
I use this with online purchases. However, I use only one pw for everything Blizzard and it’s the same one I’ve been using for more than a decade.
Usually there’s nothing wrong with that, unless Blizzard falls for one of those big password leaks that no big company is immune to.
Modern Bnet passwords are all stored as salted hash so even if they get them, they can’t do much with them. Further, if too many failed attempts are made at trying to log in to an account, Blizz locks it pending further verification. So brute force password guessing is not useful.
Sadly, Bnet 1.0 has a HUGE vulnerability in regards to that. When you create a D2 account, it sends the password in plain text, but only at the time of account creation. So it could potentially be an issue if someone happens to snoop your password in that moment and it is the same as your blizzard account passwd.
Otherwise, that’s great. You would be suprised how many HUGE companies still store their passwords incorrectly. A fairly recent example I remember was Adobe.
This security convo is great. I sometimes get paranoid out of my mind because of forum bugs and I’m utterly ignorant on security technology. All I know how to do is make a very strong password and hope for the best. I’ve never been burned, but I believe people have tried. I know my IP gets snooped by Blizzard customers because I don’t use a VPN for fear of forgetting to turn it off when joining bnet. A few weeks ago a bnet hacker knew I was in game by accessing my IP on this site, which they then used to try and find me on other sites.
That is impossible. Nobody can get your IP from the Blizzard website or from modern Blizzard games. You connect to the server. They connect to the server. The server does not let anyone see your connection info.
Now, old Bnet would if you played on Open Bnet because you are connecting directly to someone else’s computer so the IP address would be available.
So basically he was playing on my ignorance when he said he knew I was in game? Blizzard did ban him permanently from the forums that day for posting information about me. He’s been trolling the forums for about 5 years and he hasn’t return since that day under any account. His writing, spelling, grammar and use of word is very distinct.
Despite our differences I do sincerely appreciate your input regarding my safety with Blizzard products.