It’s not like these accounts are banned the instant that they’re detected. If you flag an opponent in game for botting on Friday night ain’t no human being taking a look until Monday morning.
What I don’t get is why there are bots in the first place.
There is no way selling top tier arena drafts is the main reason for the bot problem.
How many people even still play arena it cant be much. I dont even know of any arena streamer on twitch,if there is a few then they have a low amount of vieuwers. And then regular people buying a bot account to do one single top tier arena run and then ditch the account again?
Like really,i dont believe hunders of accounts are sold every day this way. Who would even buy those accounts for a death mode in a death game. Maybe on asia i dont know that server but i dont believe it on na or eu. Its simply impossible for arena runs to be the cause of massive bot pressence they dont have the volume.
Maybe sell account with 50k gold that i can see beeing a market for. But selling an account with 1 top tier arena run. And having to farm 10 accounts to 150 gold to get that one top tier run. I dont believe this is a big enough market.
I can see blizzard closing arena for other reasons,but not because it would be the root of the bot problem. I simply can not believe it is it makes no sense at all.
Thats because you dont know a thing about hearthstone streaming and you said it yourself
Asians have their own alternative to twitch and thats where they stream those botted arena drafts
You can also find top chinese players streaming on that site (will not advertise it here)
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There is an active market for it for Chinese players. It’s huge.
There might not be a market for it for where you live and what language streaming you watch, but it’s there.
It would be like living in Texas and saying you don’t believe people really listen to K-pop because no one you know does and refuse to believe it’s a big market.
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As a Texan I can confirm that literally no one listens to kpop here. Still faulty logic ofc
Ok maybe thats true. But would those streamers not do those runs on asia server then. And would they not buy accounts that botted on asia servers.
It might explain the bots on asia but i have a hard time seeing this as an explanation for the bots on eu and us.
And even the asia thing i have trouble believing. Maybe the streamers run the bots themselves on alts that i can see (though even that seems a lot of work to me for virtually no pay off). But someone running bots to buy 10 arena runs and then sell one of them,i just dont see that beeing a viable model and a big market.
And even if it is on asia (which i also have a hard time believing) it still wouldnt explain eu and na.
This is a hypothesis more than a proven fact, but I’m still 99% sure I’m correct when I say this: all of these botted Arena decks are sold for less than $2 USD each.
When gold botters destroyed the Diablo 3 economy, Blizzard attempted to implement price controls by enforcing a minimum exchange rate in the Real Money Auction House for gold to real money. What the botters did was undercut this “minimum” rate greatly so that you could buy gold even cheaper than allowed. So people who wanted to buy the most gold for the least money they went to third party, black market websites. It worked because they completed against Blizzard and offered higher value (although lower convenience). Blizzard was serious about fighting the bots as soon as it became clear that it was cutting into their 10% RMAH fees.
I strongly disagree with the idea that it’s mostly streamers buying these decks. I think there’s a much broader market because I think that the botters are selling high quality Arena decks for less money than Blizzard wants for a single normal Arena run. I think that a bot that completes its life cycle probably generates one whole dollar of profit, and that botters make lots of money because they run lots of bots and sell lots of Arena runs, rather than catering to some kind of elite streamer-only clientele. And Blizzard is getting more serious about fighting them because they’re selling less Arena runs for real money.
Not to say that streamers on Asian websites don’t buy botted decks. They do, and they’re the most prominent indicator of the problem. Like the tip of an iceberg.
Taking away the incentive does work. But it has the drawback of also taking away the incentive for regular players.
And i have no doubt arena decks have been sold. But i doubt this beeing a large enough volume to explain even a small percentage of the amount of bots. It simply can not be when you think about it and run some hypothetical numbers.
Puts on tinfoil hat:Maybe blizzard wants us to think it is so they have an argument for nerfing arena but thats something different entirely.
I think it’s also very important to understand that the “Asia” server does NOT include China. China has its own strange Internet restrictions and anyone in China who wants to play Hearthstone would need to (illegally) use a VPN, and most VPNs will “relocate” you to the Americas.
Also, before the China server was dismantled when the Netease deal fell through, there were more Hearthstone accounts there than the rest of the world combined†. A couple years ago the average Hearthstone player was probably a resident of China. Might still be the case, but it’s hard to tell with data because the players have gone underground.
The situation in Russia is similar. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Blizzard stopped offering services to Russian customers. They also need to use VPNs now and are somewhat famous for botting. So it’s a mistake to assume that China is the sole source of the problem.
† It’s unknown how many of those were actually bots.
Are you not aware that the Asian server was shut down in China? That’s why they swarmed other servers using a VPN.
You seem to have completely missed this in the past. The reason it is SO bad right now is that they all came over from their server to the others. Now, according to other Chinese players, it no longer matters because the damage is already done. When they reopen the Chinese servers, other Chinese players are saying they will not just all of a sudden go back. They’ve already invested the time and energy to build accounts on other servers so they will likely keep them.
I think you’re completely unaware of the situation and why it is the way it is.
Instead of saying “I have trouble believing” you should instead just say “I don’t know”. It’s not like someone presented the evidence to you and you’re denying it, right? It’s more that you don’t even know.
You can start getting informed with this post from a Chinese player
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/134be9c/have_you_been_bullied_by_overly_powerful_decks_in/?rdt=64352
Start there and get a bit more informed so you understand why bots exist.
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I dont buy it,its just common sense.
I actually wrote a whole argument but i removed it. I dont feel like discussing this anymore people just dont see it or more likely do not want to see it.
And the one to provide evidence is the one making the claim. The claim that chinese players botting free arena runs to sell is a major reason for the bot problem. Ty for reminding me about the evidence!
Obviously i have seen zero evidence in this thread or the blizzard post.
Here’s my evidence for saying the Hearthstone accounts on the China server outnumbered accounts in the rest of the world combined. Scroll down to October 2022 or earlier.
https://hearthstone-decks.net/how-many-players-reach-legend-in-hearthstone/
I consider it relatively self-evident that Ranked is infested with bots, and that Arena decks are on average much stronger than should be possible even with overlay helpers like HearthArena.
I literally showed you the evidence. Furthermore, you can actually go in deeper and see the actual evidence for yourself.
The irony. Sounds like you are the one who doesn’t want to see it.
I provided a link with the evidence.
The fact that you didn’t click on it and read and go further is on you, not me. You didn’t see the evidence because you closed your eyes.
I haven’t seen denial this long in awhile.
The link tells you how it’s done, the top streamers doing it, the websites that exist providing the account purchases, the pictures of it happening, the outrageous arena decks, first hand accounts, acknowledgements from actual botters and a plethora of more evidence. Completely absurd at this point to deny it. Zero chance you read that thread at all.
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if they really banned so many it’s pretty crazy how i still face nothing but bots in standard ranked… match after match after match… it’s literally like 15 bots between 1 real player… and even the people i suspect of being real players have basic auto-generated blizz names and might be bots too.
You mean this is your link of the evidence that selling top tier arena drafts is a major contributer to the bot problem? And this is the evidence that you want me to take serious because you think it proves your point (it doesnt even do that even if the post is 100% genuine and reliable).
Thats as good as a random player coming to this forum and saying “the game is rigged because i lost this 90-10 flip”
I dont deny arena runs are beeing sold. But i think botting arena runs accounts for less then 5% of all botted standard/wild games. They are not the main reason for botting they simply can not be. It makes zero sense.
Seems a bit hypocritical to ban bots when they run their own.
Do you have another idea, then? I’d like to hear it
The link is the explanation for people like you who don’t get it or understand.
The data to support everything can be found searching all the info provided. It’s the starting point.
You can then stop being uninformed by looking up the websites selling the transactions, the botting programs, the streamers, other players showing off the bots, the historical data of influx of players in the various modes, the botting bans and how the banning of HS in China led to an influx of players on the other servers.
No one is going to hold your hand and walk you through it. The first step is wanting to be informed. You don’t seem to want to know.
Just ran into 2 not arena decks in arena yep seems to be working Blizzard.