I see bots constantly in Classic Hardcore. They are almost all hunters and usually have a Chinese pet name, and of course a gibberish character name. They follow regular paths for hours on end, grinding through levels and skinning what they can. They are absolutely easy to spot and highly predictable. I spot them instantly and report them on sight.
Blizzard could do this so easily, but they don’t. They choose to let this go on. It has been 20 years now, and they have not eliminated bots in this game because they choose to. They won’t spend a few dollars to deal with the issue because they’re a publicly traded corporation that opts to give more money to shareholders at the expense of game quality. It is profit over players.
There has been a lot of discussion around this. Your opinions are not unique here, as many have similar ones, though iirc Blizzard have stated that it is similar to an arms race, where there is real money on the line for bots and gold sellers, who will continue to increase efforts towards turning a profit.
I’m not sure what a reasonable solution might look like, but if you care about this problem, why not come up with botting solutions and sell your products to gaming companies?
Had a coworker get banned for most of a entire year for botting. So i know they
do ban them. Taking out each bot as you see them. Is like running around
stomping on each idividual ant when trying to get rid of your ant problem.
The only way to get rid of bots for good. Is making it so anything that players
collect. Cant be traded to other players, including gold.
Sorry would rather deal with bots than have them make all items untradeable, as bots have little to no real impact on most people most of the time. For HC, the problem really isn’t that much an issue and likely would be solved with two main things. First eliminate the ability to transfer items like consumables off server, specifically black lotus, arcane, and other high value herbs, and on server transfer they could simply exchange them for gold. Then get rid of or change petri flasks in some way to make them not benefit the botting community as this would eliminate likely the only item in HC which would actually make bots worthwhile.
Wrong. Bots Do Have an effect on the economy in the game, as they reduce the number of resources available to legit players if they are farming Herbs or Ore; and affect the price of items on items in the AH making it hard for legit players to earn funds for their characters from crafting and item sales above what a vendor will pay (which is often less than the value of the raw mats that are needed to make things).
No, Bliz should have staff members that actually read the reports that we send in to report the bots and examine the accounts involved. And when they ban someone they should be banning NOT just the account but also any credit card associated with the name from starting a new account.
Does this mean that you believe lower quality results in higher stock value, such that it leads to things like increased revenue and subscription numbers?
it doesnt take hundreds of employees, a couple could ban a hundred bots a day easily. when its no longer profitable to bot the problem gets reduced and you could add GM tasks to the new employees to make their salary have a tangible service to the consumer.
sad that they gaslit a good handful of their customers into thinking its a massive undertaking thats not worth their investment.
Well, the topic isn’t a shallow one that is easily answered without a depth of knowledge about how systems work, trade-offs, balance, and some decisions being made, but I’d guess that they do and have developed many solutions.
There’s a question that you’ll probably ignore, but I’ll pose to you that is worth answering. Is botting problematic? How problematic, and how can you show that with verifiable data and/or a repeatable process to understand exactly what that means?
If you don’t know what you’re paying a sub fee for and you find that ridiculous, then it is. Put a little effort into learning something maybe (at least if you care to know things).
Been saying this for years, like actually since vanilla WoW. They’ll never do anything because these are paying customers…just like you and me. And theres a lot more than you realize.
We, who played since Vanilla, remember GMs banning people, making offences good again, answering questions, and actually heping out. They were never many, maybe 10 to a region, but man did they make a difference!
Yeah people are thinking it takes top tech to prevent bots, but no.
The easiest solution is often not discussed. Setting up anti-bot team, where people only focus on banning bots would cost a bit of extra.
Everyone blames the company, they should do this and that etc,
But the only thing driving this market are players. Period. Players are creating this issue. Players keep buying gold and lots of it, so if there is real money to be made off these losers, this will continue to happen.
There is a lucrative market for it, so this is what we get. How is the company suppsoed to fix this if its customers keep breaking the rules?
The only choice they have at this point is 100% restricting all trading or making the process so cumbersome and annoying that people do not bother doing it.
That is no fun but unfortunately you have sad, selfish individuals in the world who literally do not care about the integrity of the game at all. So they ruin it for everyone.
If you buy gold or have ever purchased gold in this game and you are reading this.
No the only way bots go away is if the players stop paying them to be here. If they only made 1 or 2 sales every 6 months it wouldn’t be worth it for them to continue botting in world of warcraft.They would bot a different game instead. But because many players buy every other week, they stay
