Im wondering how can you tell someone is botting, Im assuming is an automatic system that flags. Reason im asking is because my friend, who is disabled and very fond of farming things (I know is weird) got not only accused of botting but flat out banned, yet when he appealed they just sent a broken link and no real explanation as of why did they get that idea.
The TLDR is , he is disabled and homebound, he got himself the pre order and was all excited, I told him I wasnt able to get it now and I had to wait due to financial/budget things. He went to farm for gold (and I only know this now) to try and get me the expac as an early xmas gift :3
I know for a fact he doesnt use bots because he actually has the patience of a monk to go and do the stuff himself, was always his thing to run stuff over and over for mogs and some gold.
I would imagine you guys could check his path? Actually look and see that he was chatting in the guild? I mean ngl is a little scary to think that you can be arbitrarily accused and condemned when it simply didnt happen. Reminds me of The Process by kafka.
I ofc feel super bad not only bc I know the guy himself , because he was trying to do something nice for me.
I was planning on doing some dungeon spam to carry a few lowbies for mogs, but with such obscurity and how blizzard been unreachable for the last few years its just a very bad taste.
I know you cant give me info on his situation and I know is not my account or whatever but this is concerning, the GMs havent even been reading most tickets, you tell them “I re downloaded wtf folder” and their msg is standard “re download wtf folder” .
I know you guys are probably overworked and have to rely on copy paste, but thats on the company to put more GMs and give them the situation to actually read the tickets and avoid the “target dummy” response.
We, as players, don’t have a surefire way of telling for sure. We can only have our suspicions and bring them to Blizzard’s attention.
Blizzard, however, has a robust set of tools to help them do their sleuthing that we will never be made privy to.
There is an appeals process for a reason, which you mention that your friend already made use of, that’s the most that we can do. If the findings of each subsequent GM remain the same, then it’s hardly arbitrary.
But everyone is aware that Blizzard are human, and to err is to be human. There might not be a mistake today, but sometime in the future it could be discovered and it will be rectified.
They will not elaborate any further than “botting/automation”. Unfortunately while there are good faith players out there, that is exactly the information that cheaters would absolutely love to have to be able to keep being ahead of Blizzard’s work on catching these illegal folks.
Please tell your friend to appeal and appeal again, they are absolutely allowed to keep appealing until they’re warned that no more will be accepted.
Now, just speaking here theoretically and with no knowledge of your friend’s practices and all of that. The biggest things that people get caught up on can be third-party software/hardware - even if it’s not used for WoW, but sometimes for work or other games (i.e. ISBoxer, AHK are probably the biggest culprits).
Another big big thing is that if your friend is multiboxing? That is allowed (although unsupported), but absolutely nothing is allowed to help streamline that practice. No software, no hardware. 1 keystroke = one action. No cloud computing.
Those things are usually the more obvious things that tend to catch people. Again, I’m not saying that this is what caught your friend, but just generally speaking for what I’ve seen come through here on CS over the years.
I do wish your friend luck in their appeals. And I’m not sure what link they were sent? But if you or they could possibly say what the link was supposed to be, we can definitely work to get an operational link. Sometimes things have changed and the templates that GMs may use might not have updated properly with it.
Yea but the process isnt transparent, I get making mistakes, but like, the flagging process goes straight to ban? Ban first investigate later?
Im disabled too, I dont have his patience to repeat same content and Im not homebound and have other stuff I do incl volunteering which takes quite chunk of my time. But to think that blizz can just have some weird algorithm and flag me isnt a concern, but that it would just trigger a ban is frigging terrifying ngl.
Absolutely not. What your friend was doing at the time of the sanction would not have been what got them. It would have been something from days, even weeks earlier. Investigations take time. The only sanction that may go through fairly quickly is the social type (i.e. language, spamming, etc.).
He only has one account, he doesnt multibox, he in fact doesnt know how, im the one who helps him with his computer woes, hes not tech savvy, he knows to get the game and get addons, update things, but multiboxing or even programming weakauras thats me.
I appreciate your insight tho.
They sent him a thing with the link and the link is broken , and there is a tinge of irony that their message seemed like a bot lol v.v. Being accused of something is bad enough but being flat out punished and not even told whats going on, after he bought the pre order no less. (in the sense of he was excited, not that buying gives you right to cheat ofc)
Intentionally so. The people who make the botting programs and the players who intentionally use them would absolutely LOVE to know exactly how Blizzard detects them. They want this information, so they can build a better program that won’t be detected.
Even providing this insight to a legitimate player in this forum can be found by the bad actors. So the whole process is kept strictly internal.
No. They investigated. There are no account actions applied without a full investigation by a full-time paid employee of the company.
Now, are mistakes possible? Of course. That’s exactly why there’s an appeals process.
Any communication from Blizzard is generally a template answer, which ensures every player with similar issues get the same advice. But using templates =/= bot. A human being is selecting the template to use, and possibly adding additional pleasantries/RP/etc.
Do you know what the link was supposed to be to though? That’s what I was trying to get at. Whether it was perhaps to the EULA/TOS or maybe an article in line with the issue. Normally if a link is posted, there is something corresponding with it. It may seem minor, but if we can help even that regard, it may help with some clarification for your friend.
Another thing to be aware of is the use of hardware that creates macros. It is very easy to make macro that breaches automation rules. (ie, one action per keypress).
Simply creating a macro on a gaming keyboard/mouse that automatically casts a sequence of spells/attacks with one button, or rapid fires (continually casting a spell over and over while a single key is pressed down) can get an account actioned.
You are absolutely correct, we cannot really discuss someone else’s account.
As far as how these are done, we cannot really discuss that either. Nothing a botter would love more than a tutorial on how they get detected.
That’s why we have an appeals process, in case of potential false positives. I know it may not seem like it if you read these forums - but those are a infinitesimally TINY portion of accounts we find that are malicious and doing very bad things.
I get that about the detection, but there should be more transparency regardless.
Im assuming you guys are just going by entering the same instance and hitting the lock, because I got my nodes stolen by bots many times in the past (when nodes werent shareable) and even the more modern ones, they path funny , I try to talk to the character and if they dont respond after a while and I dont see them talking in general I report them and you can clearly tell by the pathing.
If anyone was to check his movement on the board they would see is a player not a bot, I assume that is something that would require a bit more attention beyond “instance trigger lock was active twice in this many hours”
What im asking from the company is transparency in the Process and for them to read the tickets not just slap a template when you literaly tell them you went through all that already
Never a good way to determine if a bot. Many players (myself included) often won’t respond to random whispers etc from people we don’t know. Does that make me a bot in your eyes?
To be blunt, if you want to offer feedback, you can do that through the in-game suggestion box or on general forums.
The nodes are up free to grab for anyone, they don’t belong to any given person. And folks can have muscle/hand related issues. A path taken isn’t any form of bot tell.
Someone not replying to someone doesn’t make someone a bot. I ignore random tells from random folks for the sake of not wanting to ruin my time with random folks getting into a fight with me becase I got to a herb/ore before them.
They investigate before they ban. If the account gets flaged for something for them to investigate that will not go straight to a ban until a human can review and either act then or they can decide to watch future activity live to see what they can see.
Not in itself, but I was under the impression that my report would be investigated and if turned out I was wrong, the person would not be disrupted. So all other players could do was to report the suspicion.
