I have to say, while AH botting would be a real problem, it would fairly easy and cheap to prove. Buy up some white vendor gear, preferably weapons and armor of different types. Basically, stuff that no typical player is ever going to be looking at or for. Check their vendor values, and film yourself with a high frame rate* posting the auction for about 5-10 silvers less than vendor value. Do this 8 or 10 times straight, then do it again with an AH add-on allowing you to post the auctions super quickly(spamming just 1 item if you have to).
If someone’s sniping, they’ll likely snap up most or all of the auctions rather quickly, but your mass post will take at least a few seconds longer. If it’s a bot, there shouldn’t be much difference in the times.
Post results to youtube as proof.
*high frame rates allow you to more accurately show how long an auction is actually live.
Now that is an argument that could be made, I would think. That all scans should be initiated manually, and if Blizzard started enforcing that it would break something like TSM’s Sniper function.
I don’t think that as of yet that anyone has made that argument, though, or if they have then as of yet Blizzard hasn’t sided with the people who would want it cracked down on.
As long as its a player refreshing the screen and sees the auction and buys it. that is legitimate. If there is a mod or any 3rd party software searching for such things that is bannable. I can confirm this is true on retail as I have gotten a few people banned by this as I put up things for incorrect price and had it auto-purchased and my item given back to me.
The addon doesn’t buy. It searches and gives you a list of potential items you might want to buy. You still have to decide to buy it and press “buy” manually.
What it does do is continuously re-perform scans of recently-listed items at the auction house to add to that “bargain” list, which might not be accurate, once you manually start the scan. That’s the part that’s iffy.
That was aimed at the gold sellers primarily, though I rather expect they like that it broke census as well. Gold sellers were taking the output of that to put into the channel invites people were getting.
Just going to the AH today and this toon who has been afk for over an hour of me sitting in Org keeps doing the /wave animation which means he is making a purchase?
I play the AH and if something is posted cheap I wouldn’t think twice about buying or sniping it. But if someone whispered me and said it was an accident I would give the item back. If it was very rare or expensive item I might ask them to buy it back for like 10% of its value, but I’d still be fair about it. There have even been times where I buy something cheap and mail the seller more gold without them saying anything.
I once sold a rare mount, goldenmane reigns, for coppers. It accidently happened because of an update with the AH addon I use and changes that happened in the settings. I tried to buy it back right away from the buyer, I offered 100k to get it back but no luck. I was just happy it went to someone that used it instead of just reselling it.
As said, I play the AH, but I also don’t feel the need to take advantage of people or the system like I see some other goblins doing. As in posting auctions with 1c bids and 2-5x the going rate on the buyout and taking advantage of the default ui and people not using AH addons. Looks greedy and unethical in my eyes.
Honestly. why did Blizzard create a cancel auction button if these bots are taking your items before you can use this feature? The botting is eliminating a designed feature of the game completely. This should be ban worthy. Absolutely made me feel like quitting the game forever. Completely unmoral. Fix this please!
Blizzard can reduce their effectiveness by randomizing how new items are pushed into the AH database, and restricting AH refreshes to like once every 5-10 seconds. I’m assuming these bots are literally refreshing the AH for the last or first page(whatever page shows new items added), and does so many times per second. No other explanation for their ability to instantly buy everything out before I can even cancel.
blizzard should just ban all sniping addons theres scripts that people run that skip over the need to click anything in these addons it buys them the second theyre posted and theres no way a human can react that fast its impossible