4AM In Stormwind, Totally Legit

Well, we’re in the year 2024 and these pixelbots are still going unbanned at times for years.

how bout /played past x% of character’s existence. This bot is online 99.9% of the time.

I like what they did on tw server. They can’t fix bots so they removed the gdkp ban….

you should make that suggestion to blizzard bc their staff are the ones with expertise to speak on it. i am not that person. i am not sure which forum location is the best for such a suggestion.

This is why there is a delay from the report to the ban, usually a random number so that the botters have no clear indication of why they were banned, and thus cannot easily adapt.

But people here just want them banned immediately, which leads to “better” bots that are harder to detect and do something about.

Unfortunately that’s a fallacy.

It’s literally teenager script kiddie stuff raging around unchecked that they keep remaking accounts for because they make the gold back by the time they’re re-banned.

The methods to make bots harder to detect already exist, the problem is that it’s too easy right now, as the client side anti-cheat barely exists atm. Once the bots are forced to use kernel drivers to mask inputs, and not able to use VMs and localhost RDP, botting numbers will go down. The barrier to entry will be raised if blizzard were to get serious and immediate ban and license out an actual anti-cheat rather than phone it in with shoddy data bans.

Imgur

All that twitter post tells me is he’s drinking their own koolaid. They have open vectors right now as we speak that completely mask external inputs and apparently haven’t acted on it.

Teenagers are literally AHK’ing away as the client side anti-cheat isn’t being worked on like it should. They’re just doing quick and dirty curve fitting data bans and proud of it like it’s enough.

sorry gms can only pop up during streamer events

1 Like

Time to roll back the clock and make all gold a physical item that has to be handed over piece by piece hehe, every gold costs 30 silver to mail maybe? haha oooh after gathering a certain amount you are attacked randomly by revolting peasants

It has been 20 years and billions of dollars earned later. I think it’s quite clear the problem isn’t going to be solved.

2 Likes

I didn’t comment on what he wrote. Just shared it. You want my opinion? It’s BS.

These occasional monthly or semi-monthly ban waves don’t do the job. You’re giving the bots weeks or even months to farm all this gold, spread it over the server, collect their payments from whales. That’s why it stays profitable for them.

You want a real solution? You need GMs monitoring the game. Someone sitting at a desk pouring over logs doesn’t do the job. Ok, maybe it helps…whatever. But far more important is GMs actively policing the game. Park a GM outside Stockades. When you see the train of bots coming out to the vendor and right back, this is what you do: Ban. Ban. Ban. Ban. Ban. Put a GM on each Layer (because of idiotic layers that shouldn’t even be in the game) on each server doing this. When the bots find a new spot, you put GMs there: ban, ban, ban ban.

That’s how you fix this problem. Don’t give them the time to take root. Don’t wait until they’ve already farmed and sold the gold. It’s no mystery where the bots are. It’s no mystery who the bots are. It’s obvious for all to see. So just boot them.

And just as importantly: perma-ban gold buyers. One strike and you’re out. Caught buying gold, your account is closed. Watch players actually think twice about buying gold. Right now at worst maybe they get a 2 week vacation. Big whoop. It’s well worth the risk.

Take off the kid gloves and deal with the problem.

1 Like

Unfortunately that’s a fallacy.

How is making it easier for bots to know what catches them out “a fallacy” ? This is a business with money to make, and if they can figure out how to avoid being detected, they will be.

The methods to make bots harder to detect already exist, the problem is that it’s too easy right now, as the client side anti-cheat barely exists atm.

You’re touching on subjects that are more complicated than you think. For example, a client-side detection system can be circumvented locally, broken by a system or driver update, or just be flagged and stopped by system software (such as malware dectector and anti-virus). Not to mention issues that arise from making anything client-side authoritative (see New Worlds for the bugs and issues that introduces). There’s also issues with things like WINE and Linux, where for some games anti-cheat software detects WINE as malware, and flags you.

If it was easy, it’d be done. That it isn’t done, anywhere, on any MMO, tells you that this isn’t as easy as you think it is.

I agree that more active policing would help.

The downside is, you’d need hundreds of GMs to do it. 4 GMs per server, 6 servers is 24 employees. Add in 10 layers per server, now we’re at 240 employees. If more than one region per layer needs coverage… that’s 480+ employees dedicated only GMs.

Let’s assume only their Singapore office is used - that’s just shy of 350k per year for 24 GMs at the LSQ rate for Singapore. If the need to use layers? That is 3.5 million per year.

No business can responsibly maintain that level of active GMing and remain profitable.

From my understanding many bots use the click to move feature, maybe they can change that somehow. Idk though

remember to report those bots because that is literally the only way that blizzard will ever know that bots exist!

It is that simple, if you’re actually trying to detect bots.

People shouldn’t be asking why Blizzard can’t ban bots, they should be asking why Blizzard doesn’t want to ban bots.

1 Like

I would imagine 1 GM could spend a day hopping through SoD servers and layers and ban a significant amount of bots. OP has posted multiple videos of this same exact spot. It’s a little odd that it hasn’t been taken care of immediately.

I’m also very uninformed on how all this works, so I could be completely off.

People who tout this as an option in 2024 actively out themselves as having low IQ.

Taken out of context and I made it clear that I’m uninformed on how this works.

1 Like