For days now in the dwarf district, one sometimes two, female human rogues in boosted gear with gibberish names (think smashing your keyboard), have been spam-sitting while opening lockboxes while occasionally changing it up by snapping 180 degrees, stealthing and speed-boosting to the nearest vendor.
At this vendor they’ll continue opening lockboxes for a while before doing the exact same trip back to the guild bank. Without a fail, without missing a beat.
When I made a DK a few days ago there was an army of gnome DKs running around all at different stages in the quest line - all in the same guild, ‘OCKuu’, just like the rogues.
A few people including myself have reported the rogues and they seem to have been suspended but everytime one disappears another pops up. If you check the guild in the armory too, you’ll notice how funky it is. 501 members, created in 2020, 386x demon hunters and 465x tanks.
It’s kind of sad how little attention it seems to get.
I have been noticing more and more bots grinding this month. I am convinced they are making gold to sell for real money to the people desperately trying to afford the brutosaur mount before it gets removed. That is my educated guess anyway.
There’s always a herd of them farming porcupines at the coat of Drustvar near the gallows where you begin the Order of Embers questline, but lately I’ve also seen them several other places. And of course, there’s always 10-20 moonkin druids eternally botting on the Isle of Thunder.
Reporting them doesn’t seem to do anything either.
Someone mentioned that they were farming the seals near that same spot, aswell. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been to Drustvar in a hot minute but I haven’t seen them bot over there… though, they must be somewhere.
When you trade the lockpicking bot it’ll put a ghost iron lockbox in trade… which means they’re most likely funneling those lockboxes from the Isle of Thunder farm to the guild bank?
I agree with you, though. They’re definitely gold sellers… every report I specifially mention that the entire guild is suspicious but it gets completely ignored and it’s super frustrating.
After making this one bot log out 2 times in a row, the 3rd time I attempted it logged out quicker, logged back in like clockwork but this time was clearly controlled by a human. Instead of following a set path it opened ~3 lockboxes before moving to the bank. When I kept trading it it kept cancelling it ; targetting me, and running away from me… back into the guild bank area where it logged out.
It didn’t come back for a while. Currently it’s standing there, popping in and out of stealth doing basically nothing…
Oh I forgot to add : there’s 427 DHs in that guild now, that’s 41 more DHs than when I wrote this post. They’re seemingly constantly leveling more, because a friend spotted one in Legion Dalaran and did the trading thing as it stood at the mount vendor, which it then put the ebony gryphon in trade and sat down AFK aswell. After about 10 minutes my friend closed trade and it snapped right back.
I saw hundreds of Demon Hunters autonomously clicking the Heart of Fear LFR in Vale to farm for Motes of Harmony.
Not 1 hour ago, saw three or four Gnome Death Knights levelling in Zangarmarsh. All following the set route, all Blood Death Knights, all Gnomes, all from… you guessed it, OCKuu.
I took video evidence showing 2 of them doing the exact same thing at different times and sent it in to Blizzard’s report email. Hopefully there’ll be a full investigation but I’m not holding my breath, they’re notoriously slow at these things.
It’s frustrating.
This stuff happens and the economy can go whack rather quickly, screwing over legit farmers. (Got run out of a few spots by bots back when I was farming the brutosaur.)
This is why I honestly believe they need to have GMs in game actually watching for this stuff instead of just working off player reports. (that have a threshold before they’re even looked at)
Some of this stuff is so painfully obvious, but nothing happens for such a long time, and damage is usually done before anything does happen.
If people are really concerned about this, just check a seller’s name before you buy stuff off the AH, or try to contact people you know who like to farm and just buy directly through them.
If I see them, I’ll toss a report in. They seem to be trying to do something, but the system they have set up to do so is painfully slow.
The problem with the new Auction House design is, a lot of the times we can no longer check the seller name, especially when it comes to things like the Motes of Harmony, which makes it impossible to avoid supporting the illegal practice of botting by not buying it.
Oh yeah, I’m not surprised whatsoever. I hope they take a look at it and take action, but I also think it’s depending on how many people cause a scene over it.
Is this before or after Blizzard finally realise the amount of money they make from Subscriptions is way low because all these bots basically pay for themselves with gold earned from the Auction houses as well as making real money for themselves by selling in-game items and services?
Unsure what you mean, but I’ve noticed them gaining more and more numbers the longer the xpac goes on. It’s extra bad currently because of the 5 million gold mount I assume.
Pretty sure there’s going to be another massive ban wave for the bots in the near future. The problem is starting to get out of control and there’s more and more people getting vocal about it. Here’s hoping anyway.
I hope so, whenever I point it out in general or trade chat, there’s one maybe two people who actually want to witness it themselves, but other than that it seems like most people are either unaware simply don’t care much, which is fair.
It’s the forums though. You tell them that the sky is blue and you’ll have the majority of people agree with you, while the very vocal few will screech about how you’re wrong/lying and how stupid you are for saying that. I think enough people are seeing how bad the issue is getting and that’s what matters.
They literally just did a banwave last month and unsurprisingly hundreds more will pop up in their place. Warden is honestly a joke. Gold in this game is meaningless and it’s even more apparent since Gallywix got nuked and it was reported that something like 5 billion gold was taken out of the game because of it?
Makes you wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Edit: 5.6 billion. Which is about a million dollars in WoW tokens I think.
This is literally why Blizzard needs in game GMs again watching servers and live banning these people. It’s utterly ridiculous. Stop doing this in waves because the problem has gotten so bad that it’s not working anymore. Look for patterns. 100 druids in iron docks farming the first group of trash? Ban all of them. 100 demon hunters in botanica? Ban all of them. There’s no reason for this anymore.
My guess is they’re trying to devalue gold enough to where they can sell it cheaper than the WoW token for a profit.
I joined WoW later than most people (Legion), so I’m completely clueless… why did they remove in-game GMs again? Power abuse? GM accounts hacked and sold?
I feel like it’s a solid idea to bring those back. Or hell, a system where if you report bots you get some invisible checkmark behind your name that puts you in front of their review queue because you’re a trusted player?
Who knows, perhaps they’re going to bring it back in Shadowlands, I’m not holding my breath but it’d definitely be better for the health of the game and on smaller scale, individual realm communities.
