2023 Recent Actions Against Exploitative Accounts: Playerbase Review, Is Botting still a Problem?

WoW Classic Mists of Pandaria Classic Discussion
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Complete breakdown of all Recent Action Against Exploitative Account threads:

  • May 2023 - Bornakk - Open Post History - 167,799
    (Posted on WotLK Classic Discussion)

ToGC is released.

  • June 2023 - Kaivax - User Public Profile Hidden - 127,014
    (Posted on WotLK Classic Discussion, then moved to WoW Classic General Discussion)
  • July 2023 - Kaivax - User Public Profile Hidden - 116,921
    (Posted on WotLK Classic Discussion, then moved to WoW Classic General Discussion)

Vanilla Hardcore is released.

  • August 2023 - Kaivax - User Public Profile Hidden - 145,566
    (Posted on WoW Classic General Discussion)
  • September 2023 - Kaivax - User Public Profile Hidden - 136,014
    (Posted on WoW Classic General Discussion)

ICC is released.

  • October 2023 - Kaivax - User Public Profile Hidden - 203,026
    (Posted on WoW Classic General Discussion)
  • November 2023 - Kaivax - User Public Profile Hidden - 197,455
    (Posted on WoW Classic General Discussion)

SoD is released.

  • December 2023 - Bornakk - Open Post History - 270,970
    (Posted on WoW Classic General Discussion)

Total Accounts Actioned Against: 1,364,765

That’s right. Over 1.3 Million. 8 Months.

The same bots queing bg’s, in instances farming raw gold, and running routes in the open world are still online.

Log on and look for yourself.

We, the real Classic playerbase, can not believe anything said by Blizzard since the introduction of the WoW Token to Classic World of Warcraft, when it was promised it would never be introduced to US servers.

We, the real Classic playerbase, can not believe anything said by Blizzard since introducing character boosts to Classic World of Warcarft.

We, the real Classic playerbase, can not believe anything said by Blizzard since the introduction of: changes, creating new systems with anything they want to our Classic version of the game.

We, the real Classic playerbase, can not believe anything said by Blizzard since their purposeful mismangement and destruction of servers with Layering and Transfers; creating unbalanced one sided mega servers to only produce revenue through faction changes and server transfers. Since Phase 02 Vanilla Classic.

We, the real Classic playerbase, can not believe anything said by Blizzard since their refusal to ban and monitor the Arena PvP scene since TBC Classic against scripters / bots that play the game for that player.

We, the real Classic playerbase, can not believe anything said by Blizzard since they are so inept to have not created character clones of all characters at the end of TBC Classic and have TBC Era servers available for those who wish to play that version of the game.

As a player in the Classic playerbase, ask yourself the following:

  1. Do these bans reflect the removal and handling of the BOTTING situation from your gameplay point of view?

  2. Are the BOTS you see in the open world, and at instance entrances gone?

  3. Some players are more passionate about hunting BOTS, even keeping track of BOTS themselves using the friends list and writing notes of when the last report was done to that specific BOT. Are the BOTS you keep track of still present and online?

  4. When you enter a battleground, are you still seeing BOTS?

Take a moment and be honest with yourself. What you see on forums, what you see on 3rd party websites, what you see on discords, what you see in the game.

I want you to get up right now. Sit up.

Voice yourself. Things have got to change.

Your opinion matters.

8 Likes
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Get rid of the wow token… problem solved

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It seems silly that you post a post mortem then want to come back to keep fighting. That said, wrath is already toast. They don’t care about it or its players. We’re in life support, and they’re planning to pull the plug. Once that day comes, wrath will be deleted. I’m almost thankful it’ll be gone. It means I won’t be tempted to keep paying for it, and that this bastardized version won’t be wrath’s legacy.

“Your opinion matters.”
-Not to Blizzard.

You’re totally barking up the wrong tree, and assuming that all gold trading uses botters. It doesn’t. The problem is that botters dump their gold into our economy even if you don’t buy their gold. In other words, even if you buy none of their gold AT ALL, they’ll still bot it and dump the gold into our economy.

Barking up the wrong tree, like the last guy. There’s nothing wrong with trading legitimately earned gold. It’s the farming of malicious gold that’s the problem.

A sycophant isn’t any better for the forum than a troll.

2 Likes
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Those posts are made for PR reasons and nothing more. Blizz fanboys eat them up. But if you log into the game you see the reality.

5 Likes
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Players create the demand for bots, if you want to address the issue that’s where you start. You’re never going to beat botters from a technology/enforcement side because they don’t care if the accounts get banned.

It’s a problem that needs to be addressed from the demand side. 6 month to perma bans for people transacting with gold sellers and/or RMT boosters, first offense. This is not a new game, the ToS is well established. If people are encouraging RMT on the forums ban them too.

If you actually want to make it non-profitable to run bots in WoW, take away the customers.

2 Likes
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Forget 6 months. Perma-ban if you’re caught buying gold. Imagine if that streamer Soda had been banned when he got caught like a month ago? Instead he got…0 days suspended. Yup, not even a single day. The whole situation is a joke.

5 Likes
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I’m not reading this they don’t read the forums you know this

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every.
single.
online.
game.
is.
infested.
with.
bots.

It’s not a conspiracy, Blizzard is taking about as much action as they can without severely taking resources away from more important departments. Just go hangout on Owned Core - people have been proudly botting since 2004 in this game.

Back in the day it was a little easier since people were buying bots from actual companies registered in countries that made it easier to sue HonorBuddy being the most infamous one. Now it’s largely decentralized from indie bot creators through discord servers.

Only way to solve bots is to either:
Remove every single grind in the game. No leveling, no reps, no professions.
Remove all player trades
Remove all currencies

Sound fun?

9

Someone finally gets it. Bots will always exist unless you make the game miserable for everyone.

RuneScape thought they solved botting and RMT years ago by removing free trade.

It didn’t work. And is now known as one of the worst updates the game ever had.

It’s not that Blizzard can’t or won’t stop bots. It’s simply that the most effective solutions would also catch innocent players in the crossfire, and Blizzard wants to avoid banning innocent players.

1 Like
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Quickly get sued if they banned players without any real investigation. False positives still happen, no company wants to ensure they have more of them.

I’ve been reading old blueposts from like 2008. Back then the going tin foil hat theory was that Blizzard was “allowing bots” to speed up BG queues.

Yeah the tinfoil hat stocks have always been high

h ttps://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/us-en/3811454640-mining-bots-are-everywhere-again/

1 Like
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Sued for what? Blizz can ban you for any reason they want, or for no reason. You have zero rights.

The bots are beyond obvious. They don’t try to hide. A handful of GMs could clean up the game in no time.

Blizz doesn’t want that. They’ve realized bots and whales are their surest way to make money, so that’s the playerbase they want.

2 Likes
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If they are ignoring their due diligence and banning players en masse without review? Yeah investors would probably get a little miffed after awhile

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:man_facepalming:

Review? Log into the game and you see the bots. Hmm, why is that level 50 mage flying through the air? Hmm…why are these characters running obvious scripts in set patterns. Hmm…why are these characters hacking through the ground?

The bots are beyond obvious. As has been said, a handful of GMs could clean up the game in a weekend. No matter how many fanboys try to defend Blizzard’s actions on the botting epidemic, the reality is it’s all smoke and mirrors. Blizz has no interest in cleaning up the game.

Let’s say 25% of the Classic playerbase are bots. 65% are whales who rely on those bots to buy gold for whatever uses (mainly to run GDKPs). Do you really think they care about the 10% of legitimate players? No, they know they’re addicts who aren’t going anywhere no matter what anyway.

Investors don’t give a damn what kind of players are here. WoW could have a playerbase of 90% bots. It could have a playerbase of 4 billionaires spending outrageous money in cash shops and micro-transactions. The source of the money means nothing to them. The bean counters have obviously concluded bots + whales = the most profits. And that’s all there is to it.

2 Likes
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Blizzard has found a way to effectively “sell” currency in WoW without suffering the backlash that would come from outright doing it. Blizzard clearly has the technology to track bots and ban them automatically, yet the bans come in waves rather than instantly. This gives bot farms a window to run and achieve profitability before getting banned and having to start new accounts. Blizzard takes a cut from every subscription generated (hundreds of thousands per month), the bots sell gold, and a large portion of the player base partakes in buying the gold. Add on top of that all the additional subscriptions from players who would not play the game if gold buying wasn’t possible (see the popularity of GDKPs.) In effect, Blizzard is selling gold. Blizzard then releases figures showing how many bots they banned, but that’s only to appease the legitimate players who are naive to what’s going on and can be led to believe that Blizzard is doing something.

All modern MMOs, online games, and live-service games have in-game currency for sale. Don’t believe for a second that the world’s largest game maker with the world’s most successful MMO and a series of some of the world’s most popular games which include in-game currencies just decided to skip their flagship game with this idea.

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They didnt perma ban soda so I dont give a damn anymore…

Just buy gold.

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the uptick by 60% at month 6 clearly shows the old bans being re-banned.

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They keep referring to themselves in the plural sense. Has no one explained proper grammar to them? No wonder Blizzard doesn’t pay any attention. Poor writing skills will almost always turn away any sort of critical thinking.

Thanks.

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They’re also a regular around here known for trolling, so that also plays a part.

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That’s not a thing. Companies reserve the right to suspend service to a customer at any time. Sure, you CAN sue, but you probably will waste your time and money on a loss.

Extreme cases could see the FTC step in, but we’re talking an en mass type of situation, like the game “The Day Before”, where the product is just so unbelievably awful that the feds have to step in.

You getting banned as a false positive won’t even be a thought of a thought to the FTC.

1 Like
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You talked about how you want to go to pservers.

You can do that right now you know. You don’t actually have to stay here.