You are right, Boulder, it is ridiculous. Bots, exploitation, cheating, shouldn’t be in our game. The unfortunate reality is, they are, and they will likely continue to be as long as people look for short cuts.
Our Support and Hacks team does what they can to combat them as best as they can but it is a great deal more complicated than “I see a bot, ban it”.
As Perl mentioned, our hacks team works to do more than just take out an individual bot, they work to see what kind of trace a bot leaves in our game and they work to either break it, block it or detect it, so that they all can be dealt with and not just the ones that are reported. This often takes time as we don’t want to tip our hand, we don’t want the bot creator to focus in on what may have been detected so that they can improve their program to hide. It is a constant battle and we want to make sure we have the most impact when we take action.
Do things get missed? Some slip through the cracks? Unfortunately, yes. We try to have the greatest impact we can, but we also try to not negatively impact legitimate players. This means that we generally need more than “It looked like a bot”, as evidence. So yes, it can take a bit longer to catch certain exploitation, but our teams are dedicated to the task.
To be clear, our Support staff does respond to tickets, but they aren’t part of the Hacks team and they aren’t directly tasked with those investigations. They won’t be able to provide any details.
You are correct, we do not have an email address for CS contact, though we do have a hacks email you can submit suspected reports to. No, you will not receive a response, it isn’t intended as a contact point only submissions.
We also do not have a direct number, we have a callback option, but again, CS wouldn’t be able to provide direct assistance here outside of ask you to use the right click report option for any suspected botters.
Correct. Our forums are here for players to discuss the game, and aspects of it, with their fellow players. It is also used by our Devs as a source of player feedback/suggestions. They actively monitor ongoing discussions about the game and the various player concerns. If you’d like to see a change to how we handle something, or more transparency on what actions we do take, etc… then that is where the discussions should happen. It will unlikely receive a blue response, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be read and taken into consideration by our Community and Dev teams.
MVP’s aren’t doing a Community Managers job, but they represent part of the community. They tend to be subject matter experts and lead in having productive discussions. They don’t always agree with everything Blizzard does, but they do tend to express any feedback they have constructively.
I understand you are frustrated, Boulder. I do. However, attacking other posters, trying to insult them, is never okay. You are welcome to disagree with someone or dismiss what they are saying. What you aren’t allowed to do on these forums is disparage your fellow players.
I will edit/delete some of those violations, and the responses to them, but please be mindful of our forum policies going forward.