The Boomkins are on both Alliance AND Horde, tagging and killing literally EVERYTHING in the area (murlocs), and this is a QUEST area in Azsuna (near Narthalas Academy ruins, I’m flying at coordinates 51.19, 33.84). There are roughly 30-40 of them, all set to a specific pathing pattern and combat/ability usage pattern, and looting pattern. They are also so abundant and constant that they are causing SERIOUS lag in the entirety of Azsuna. I am almost certain that this is a player who is farming materials/gold in order to sell the gold for real money.
I first came to the location of this druid farm maybe 45 minutes ago, and it’s still going. One player in Azsuna chat mentioned that this druid bot/multiboxing farm has been occurring for WEEKS. This is exactly why I took the time to report as many of this player’s druids as I could in-game, why I took the time to send an e-mail to hacks@blizzard.com (or whatever the actual e-mail was; I got it directly from a Blizzard support post), and why I am taking the time to post this here on the WoW forums. I included about 25 screenshots in my e-mail showing the pathing behavior of the Boomkins, the various different Chinese guilds they belong to, how half were Alliance and half were Horde, and the messages in Azsuna chat about the botting and the resulting zone-wide lag.
Report a few of them, you don’t have to report all of them. It works. You can also send an email to hacks@blizzard.com Not much can be here done about it.
Pure conjecture and you don’t know who is behind the characters and what they’re doing. It could be a bot. It could be a multiboxer, which while unsupported, is allowed. If you believe them to be cheating, right-click and report. That is all you have to do. It’s the only evidence that Blizzard will take because the report flags them so they can go to their logs and see what’s what. Screenshots won’t do anything really. Right-click and report, and move on.
If it is indeed a botting group and not a legit multiboxer, then the only people you need to direct that to are the idiots who use these illegal services. Until the player base stops using the services, there will be bots.
And as an added note, if you’re hanging out to see them all disappear with a sudden ban-hammer, you’re going to be disappointed. Blizzard takes the time to research these things. If it is a bot, they want to break the bot. If it’s a multiboxer, they’ll check to make sure they’re not using illegal software. It takes time. Not minutes or hours, days or even weeks. Blizzard deals with them on their time.
Blizzard doesn’t normally remove bots in a whack-a-mole method. That actually makes the problem worse, not better. If they are farming gold to sell for real $$$, Blizzard follows the gold-trail and removes the ill-gotten gains.
Multiboxing is ok in most circumstances. If you think they are botting though please report them. If they are botting you should be able to tag the quest mobs before them. When I was dealing with bots they weren’t fast enough to tag before me, and they ended up helping me even though they weren’t getting anything for the kill.
I wasn’t questing there but I was doing something else in the zone and noticed it; they were definitely bots. I guess I may have used the term “multibox” wrong. Also, while I don’t know if screenshots will actually help in this scenario, despite what you say, I’m glad I e-mailed them. If Blizzard immediately deletes them without looking at them, cool. That’s their prerogative. I’m simply trying to be helpful.
Anyway, no, I was not “hanging around waiting for them to disappear”: why in the world would you assume I, or anyone for that matter, would do that? Literally everyone has other, better things to do. Just because I can take the time to put together a detailed, thorough report of what I saw down there – SO. MANY. BOOMKINS. – doesn’t mean I didn’t immediately “move on”, as you said multiple times. There was quite a bit of lag in the zone due to the bots, which again is the entire reason I took the time to report them. Obviously I left the zone, and will try to avoid it for a while until Blizzard removes the bots or the bots move somewhere else.
I posted here because I wasn’t sure if Blizzard actually looks at every in-game report that is sent, and I wanted to be sure that this one was looked at and investigated; especially if they could “follow the money/gold” and address the group/organization that is actually profiting off of this behavior.
Now that I know I don’t need to post here, I won’t in the future, and I’ll just use the in-game reporting (Thanks, Ravenhawk!). And with that, I “move on.”
You don’t know that as you don’t have Blizzard’s logs. You have what you think are bots. Nothing more, nothing less.
I said that because we have had people who do do that. I agree with you, I think it absolutely ridiculous. I’ve seen where they made a post here. Then came back within an hour or so to demand why the druids were still there. Some people will sit there. They will record numerous videos of it and screenshot it. None of which does anything, which is why I say report and move along - because for some reason that is a concept beyond some people.
