From reading a recent thread from the “founder of wowhead!” or more specifically the comments countering the “technical details” in his post (which he has since deleted) I’ve actually learned a lot more about the problem… And it’s more complicated than I thought too…
Basically… botting is enabled by reverse engineering the client and/or modifying the signal as it goes from client to server, in order to get around the protections Blizzard has in place. From there, its just a constant “Cat and Mouse” game of blizzard adding new protections to its client and signal code, and the botters figuring out ways to crack it. Think about how much money companies like IGE were worth 10 years ago… There are millions at stake on the botters side… so its hard for Blizz to keep up with the resources they can throw at cracking their code. Given enough time and resources… they’re pretty much always going to be able to break it… It’s just a losing battle for Blizz…
So why can’t they just monitor XYZ coords?!
Because that’s a lot more complicated than you think too. Think of all the ways you can move instantly. Blinks, Summons, Knockbacks, Teleports. So, again, all the hackers have to do is figure out a way to spoof one of those actions and it looks legit, (and again they’ve got enormous resources to do so). And if they make detection too stringent, then you start running into false flags. And in a game where people spend millions of hours playing… even a false positive of .1% means thousands of people are getting flagged and/or banned unfairly.
Not saying Blizzard couldn’t do more. I think they obviously could, but it would take time and money and even then, theres a good chance the botters just adapt (since the entire existence of their business depends on it…) No one likes botting… but its definitely not as easy a problem to fix as people are making it out to be.
Granted, it’s difficult to automate, but Blizzard doesn’t need to have a breakthrough in AI or anti-cheat software. It wouldn’t be that difficult to hire a team of active GM’s for each server. That would at least be a step towards alleviating the problem.
Maybe it wouldn’t put much of a dent in the bots. I’d still be happy to see them do something more than they’re doing now. “It’s hard” seems like a bit of a cop out.
I was thinking it’s possible to assign y-coordinate values on players.
For example, if a hunter is casting Eagle Eye 1000 meters in the sky, his Y-value would be 1000. And if there is no terrain that allows a player to get that high up, that player is immediately flagged and banned if found casting Eagle Eye.
So threshold y-coordinate planes would exist to raise flags.
Maybe then bots would move underground? Or go into the terrain? That’s possible and then the cat and mouse game begins anew.
This wouldn’t be inexpensive, IMO. It would likely be a full time job for a lot of people to cover all of the servers and investigate every reported instance.
It’s a simple matter of economics. The financial incentive for these shady organizations is significant. And the only way to overcome that is for Blizzard to spend enough resources to make botting and selling gold so difficult to do that it’s no longer profitable. But Blizzard has obviously done their own cost/benefit analysis and decided that it’s just not worth it. So it is what it is.
The free market has decided that what we have now is at equilibrium.
Every time I’ve used goblin glider and randomly clipped half a millimeter under terrain and been DC’d, I wonder how many bots are actually caught using this method. Doesn’t seem to be very many.
I agree, its always a cost/benefit… Almost anything is possible given enough time and resources… but the point is, as you said, its not a small number. And even with a large dedicated staff (assuming they don’t have one already) I’m not convinced it would make a huge difference. In vanilla wow, when we DID have an active Gm team, bots were actually much worse. And the barrier to entry then was much higher since you actually had to buy a copy of the retail game. Now the botters can set up for as little as a $2 and after their first 100G or so they’re already making a profit…
The problem goes back to the false positives and the tenacity of the bots. If you set it to 1000 they’ll go to 999, then 998 etc etc. Until you finally have to set it at a level low enough that people trigger it by jumping off high places, or rocket boot backfires, or the winterspring quest… or probably any number of things I cant even think of.
Because you’re randomly encountering the system (which is proof there is A system btw.) They’re deliberately looking for it, figuring out its boundaries, and working to constantly get around them.
Most of this can be coded pretty quickly since long distance moment all has fixed locations with spells associated with them. Even traveling the correct distances the rate at which they travel those distances relative to cool downs. Or a really easy one Z axis relative to the items picked. Most of them should be clearly blow the player location VS bots that are under the world.
if its flagging accounts that get reviewed and they do a clean up they could expedite that clean up of bots to be far more than it currently is. But it also pretty clear that a bunch of level 1s that just spawned into the world and fly off into the sky that something is CLEARLY wrong and should be flagged and stopped far sooner.
There is no question blizzard should do more. And not just in classic but in retail. Hell i could say it extends to COD Franchise too with how little they actually seem to really care to remove people that make playing the game unfun for others. Warzone last summer was just infested with bots.
The last thing a milti-billion dollar company really needs is a defense force to come and tell the players how hard it is for them to stop bots and you dont understand they are trying but botters are just mean and keep doing it!
If certain illicite servers took a hard stance against gold farmers, or did something like IP banned any IP out of China, they’d get relentlessly DDoS’d. These guys are pretty resourceful. It’s definitely a full time job to tackle them. My frustration with Blizzard is not that they’re not fighting them (they are), it’s that they are not putting enough resources in fighting them (because money).
They just the thing… It cant be. You think Blizzard doesn’t already have this system in place? Of course they do. But with a reverse-engineered cracked client, it’s sending a code to the server that says “I’ve been summoned,” even though they’re just hopping up into the air or zooming to a random node spawn location.
And you’re talking P-servers. Imagine how tenacious they’re gonna be in classic where they were making many many times the money.
Blizzard does not want to get rid of botting!! And I’ll explain why. Bots drive up the price of WoW tokens on the AH. The reason why this is key is bc people are more inclined to spend 20$ on a WoW token if they get let’s say 120k from it on the AH. I can almost guareentee about 60% of WoW tokens are bought off the AH by bots. It’s my belief that the bots and blizzard have a contract/deal with one another so both are actively making money off the consumer. I also believe the bots have blizzard the idea for the WoW token.
Yes i think blizzard can track player potion in the world since that has been done for years before blizzard even did mmos. Speed hacking is one of those things thats really easy to see and can be flagged. is the mage moving faster than run speed without a mount. Hmm that might be a red flag. Did that level one first action was to go 40units vertical and 10 units forward? Hmm that might be a red flag.
If you have been summoned and even if it the anti cheat checked every 1 in 1000 it would eventually catch people that were clearly not using a spell and had nobody else interact with the code that was sent.
I get that its cat and mouse same as it has been for security since locks were invented more or less. That being said places that want to keep things safe usually have better locks and tools to find people doing things than the Mages in strath. Gathering bots that use teleportation to get to things in the open world and are under the item they collect (and thus the world and should be falling) are pretty clear things that should be red flagged quicker and dealt with far sooner. I refuse to believe that blizzard could not put more effort into those tools and algos to find and remove those people.
You’re not following. We’re talking code here. The game doesn’t just “know” the “mage is moving faster than run speed.” It could be the mage blinked. It could be the mage teleported or got summoned or used a hearthstone. or maybe they just lagged . So if you engineer the client such that it’s telling the server “I’m blinking” or “I’m getting summoned” erroneously… there is no way for the game to just “know” that’s incorrect.
Again… code. It’d be INCREDIBLY difficult to code the game to automatically disconnect any time you glitched inside of graphical terrain (past what already exists which is why people occasionally disconnect as they jump etc…) and it would cause all kinda of issues besides (getting feared into walls being the most obvious example.) And so wherever you design leeway to allow for those situations… the bots find that leeway and exploit it…
Guys at Pepsi really pissing you off huh? Was is the Mountain Dew? Because I dont think its actually what caused… that. Pretty sure thats an urban legend and you might want to direct your anger elsewhere.
Bots would not exist if players weren’t paying money for gold.
I realize Blizzard is banning bots.
What is Blizzard doing about people who are buying gold?
I suspect they aren’t doing much at all about those people. You know, the kinds of people who pay 198,000 gold for a sword and say they farmed DME for it?
Many of the exploits and hacks used in “Classic” are the same as have been dealt with on the private servers. Classic WoW reminds me a lot of the old Pheenix and Script WoW realms where botting and hacking in that era were off the chain bad. Its part of the reason why I never took those too seriously.
The newer private servers have the hacking and cheating and botting MOSTLY on lockdown, and their team of GM’s swiftly nukes hackers and cheaters from orbit.
I pride myself in being a great Dire Maul East farmer. My personal record is killing all Lashers, melee demons in the bottom floor and picking up all bottom floor herbs in 13 minutes and 30 seconds.
If you somehow keep that pace for an entire hour, which is pretty much impossible to do, and counting the time spent resetting the instance, you will get around 140 gold per hour.
So, in the best possible scenario, assuming zero mistakes and not counting the time for picking up buffs in Yojamba and unloading you’ll be able to buy that sword after 1415 hours farming DM:E.
Which… Uh
I guess… Is possible? We’re talking absurd dedication, consistency and discipline for 2000 hours. WoW has millions of players, the claim is in that “crazy and unlikely, but possible” zone.
