How about you hire 10 to 20 in game players on each server with limited gm powers. Their role can be strictly for botting only. Hire players who have a great reputation to solve the botting issue. Pay them with in game time . Allow regular gms to have a final say if the player makes a mistake. Also hold the player accountable just in case he or she wants to just ban people for no reason. I mean blizzard is constantly telling us to right click and report why not enhance this a bit. Plenty of videos and post have been shown that the botting is out of control. It seems like blizzard is trying really hard to listen to the community for once. I haven’t played this game since may but i still like to keep up with what is going on. What do you guys think?
i think they see the botters as revenue.
A fly hack should be super easy to detect. Folks going out of bounds in instances - should be easy to detect.
They know the botters, they dont care.
Where do people keep getting this? Is it Twitch Streamers or YouTubers or is it just general confirmation bias that bots are viewed as being–in any way, shape, or form–good for Blizzard.
Cynicism and a lack of understanding.
And the thing is, every single botter has one thing in common. They’re purchasing new accounts and purchasing boosts this late in TBC. It should be incredibly easy to just monitor those accounts.
Obviously not everyone buying into the game at this point is a bot, but I mean… That’s one thing they all have in common.
It honestly just makes sense man. We’ve had a few conversations so I’ll try and explain it without snark.
So I mean, they do ban them right. We’re all aware of that, but it’s the manner in which they ban them that makes many question their actual intentions. They only do ban waves every three or four months from what I can tell. So, to me, this says that either they manually check every three or four months, OR, they’re sitting on data that proves people are botting and wait for the three or four month mark to do a ban wave. Either way, neither “solution” makes any logical sense. Think about it for a minute. So how does it work? They don’t tell us obviously, but we do know for sure that they do the “ban wave” thing and that many are banned all at once. So, why? Why do they wait? Why not just ban people the second that they have evidence they’re botting? Instead they what, allow someone blatantly breaking the TOS to continue playing until the “ban wave” occurs?
If not that, then they must only check every three or four months, and spend no time or effort looking into it the rest of the time. That also makes no sense, because again, they’re using reports from other players as well as automated systems to flag certain actions and behaviors I’d imagine.
So basically, the way they handle banning bots doesn’t make any real sense to begin with. With that out of the way we can then consider their potential motives for not having a sensible methodology;
Money. I mean that’s what basically everything in the world boils down to. Money. It’s no different here. By banning them with these methods what it does is allows the Bots and earn enough gold to make a profit as well as be able to purchase another account and boost when they eventually do get banned. Every ban then results in $70 of revenue or so. However, if they did what literally every single WoW player and their TOS demands and banned them immediately, it wouldn’t be profitable for the botters, and the problem would actually go away. But so would a consistent source of revenue.
Money is good for Blizzard. Blizzard looks at us as if we’re fools. Look at all the changes they’ve made… They obviously don’t think we have much in the way of standards, and they’re not wrong. Gamers in general are half of the problem because we continue to financially support companies that treat us this way.
Honestly if they continue to do the “ban wave” method of allowing them to earn enough profit to merit purchasing another account and boost after the ban, then why would I ever believe they care? They’re making money off of it when they could easily just stop it from happening.
And then there’s the region locking issues, which they spend zero effort enforcing, as there are several large Chinese guilds on Herod for example. I point this out because a lot of the bots come from foreign countries where they’re earning a living by grinding gold out and selling it. So if we’re not even addressing region locking in any meaningful way that’s just another step we could be taking that would help prevent bots and make it more difficult for them to operate. Blizzard doesn’t care. Or rather, I should say, Activision-Blizzard doesn’t care.
I’m part of the problem. I’m still here, which means I’m still subbed. There really is no other solution than for Blizzard to suffer an extreme loss of revenue-- but what do you think that will result in? Do you trust the current dev team for instance to do a “Fresh Classic+” with “new content”? I sure don’t. There’s a lot of people that went to FFXIV saying that WoW needs a similar treatment as FFXIV had, recreating the entire game basically. Does anyone here really trust the current staff at Activision-Blizzard to handle that? I sure don’t.
I don’t think it’s confirmation bias or influence from streamers. A lot of us have twenty some odd years of watching Blizzard as a company operate. We saw them in the glory days, and we watched them go steadily downhill. Oh hey, fun fact-- did you know BFA was Blizzards most profitable expansion ever? Because as gamers, even in one of the worst expansions, we continued to throw our money at them. I don’t see any positive way any of this ends. But yeah, if they can’t even handle the problem of Bots running rampant and flyhacking through their dungeons 24/7 then really… What should we expect?
And here I was thinking a Blue would say “Darn, the jig is up.”
I don’t think it’s all too wild to think a business would like more money and that saving on costs by not having employees look after it is crazy. Why wouldn’t a company like blizzard take their time to send out ban wave to encourage the botters to reinvest.
Maybe a no communication policy is bad for public relations and not to mention nuking any customer good will.
We don’t wait for “the silver bullet”, our teams actually take action on hundreds/thousands of accounts almost daily, if that gives you an idea of the scope of things.
I have to agree with this because like many, I was scammed out of enchant mats for my healing weapon back when prices were through the roof. I spent DAYS farming the gold to pay for the 8 shards/crystals that I wasn’t able to come up with on my own. I farmed for DAYS, all of the different types of elementals to get the sets of 80 motes of each kind that I needed.
Blizzard did not return my gold. Blizzard did not return the 8 shards/crystals. Blizzard did not returns the 240 motes that I lost. Blizzard did not refund me the game time either. What DID Blizzard do? The scammer was on a 3 day suspension for scamming a DIFFERENT player and my report fell under the umbrella.
Blizzard doesn’t chase after the lost materials on our behalf. The scammer presumably sent the mats to another account, which in turn sent it to another account until the mats have been shuffled around enough that Blizzard doesn’t chase after them.
The scammer kept the mats, came back in 3 days and has that much more gold to sell, which he turns into USD and funnels out of the states, never to put it back into our economy again.
I would like Blizzard to get rid of Boosts altogether. Seriously, if someone is that lazy that he can’t game his way to max level, then why is he playing? People who buy boosts are not gamers. They’re lazy individuals who support terrorism and divisive actions by bad actors in other countries.
I really don’t care that in Cambodia they pay for internet by selling gold. If they can’t afford internet, get a job. A legal one that isn’t in support of harming American citizens. American citizens aren’t involved with the media, the military, government or the games of power and control. American citizens should not be funding these people.
That said, I’ve also noticed that chat agitators are making their way back into the chat channels. These are paid bad actors, usually with mid and low level 20 characters.
It is absolutely DISGUSTING that #1 Blizzard has not informed our government that bad actors are using MMORPGS to manipulate the minds of American gamers of all ages but these gamers are knowingly purchasing things like boosts in a constant funnel of USD out of the country, with the belief that they are just one person and their purchase makes no difference.
It’s a serious situation that needs aggressive attention.
---- and furthermore, the only way to remove bad actors in the game is to remove their resources. Ban boosting. If players want to BUY a boost from Blizzard, then make it an available option. If players want to buy gold, the Blizzard should make this an available option. If players are too lazy to be a gamer in a video game, then showing them the door would be a GREAT way of getting the actual gamers to return.
Nope, we don’t like each other buying gold but the truth is the bad actors have left us with no other options. Outside of banning VPN’s and forcing each player to maintain an account in his or her own region, there’s only so many viable options.
Asmom said so?
Which sounds incredible until you start thinking about how many servers there are actually across this game. The US Retail server list is ~220 large or so. You ban 1000 accounts a day that’s not even an average of five per server.
I don’t really believe that Blizzard staff doesn’t try to deal with bots, but I absolutely question if Blizzard actually gives them the resources necessary to handle them in a reasonable manner, whether that’s due to incompetence, overall budget cuts courtesy of Activision (which seems to be a running theme), or seeing them as some free extra revenue they don’t want to crack too hard down on is debated.
Whatever defense Blizzard wants to put forth falls largely on deaf ears since players continue to see the exact same bots run rampant for days or weeks before being dealt with. I know I have seen plenty of accounts that just exist for extended periods of time despite multiple reports, yet I remember in Cataclysm reporting botters mining in Uldum and being able to watch them go offline while I was still there farming.
Whatever they are doing isn’t enough.
Personally, Blizz is being stupid.
Make a script that filters out most of the rogues and mages in the “botted dungeons” when doing a /who of those zones.
Then move all the bots to “hidden Layers”.
Problem “solved”. The bots remain, but are rarely seen.
“BuT bOtS WoNt bUy ThE bOo$t !”
Honestly I wish all the people who said that would have it tattooed on their forehead but that would be half of the posters here.
No, it’s peer pressure. It’s Koolaid. Don’t get wrapped up into it.
Step into my mind Defiance. Thomas Sowell once said something about how if you can’t know anything, the best you can do is know the extent of your own ignorance. This is what humility is all about. Humility is a virtue. Accept the fact that you don’t know everything.
After you’ve accepted that, realize that you do not and will not know how Blizzard does things unless you’re there, in the seat, doing whatever their team does to botting. Same with me, same with just about everyone ever who wants to act like they know anything about this.
Once you accept that, you come to the next obstacle which is, should I trust them?
And, really, that’s up to you. Speaking for myself, I have to admit I don’t trust Blizzard. But then, why do I still play?
I play because I also must admit I don’t know myself. I’ve made mistakes in life and I will continue to make mistakes. So if Blizzard makes mistakes, I know they’re on the same level as I am. I can 't judge them for being any better than I am because they’re people doing whatever they can to live in world full of broken people.
As much as I or any person likes to think they’ve got it all together, humility will show us we’re imperfect, we’re leagues away from where we think “perfect” is.
Once you arrive at that point, look at your gear. Your raiders. The people you’ve befriended. All of these things. Whatever Blizzard is or isn’t doing, whatever these bots are or aren’t doing, it doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that you’ve got some T4!
You ran Kara. You ran Gruul. You did Mag. Or whatever. Fun things are happening!
DON’T let some know-nothing guy on YouTube or Twitch tell you that somebody over there is making your life miserable.
The only person who makes your life miserable is YOU.
That being said, I have chosen to revel in the game. I embrace the CHANGES mindset because it’s a a way of looking forward, of choosing not to sit in stagnation, but to take RISKS.
No, Blizzard doesn’t do that. If you consider the lawsuit, it’s the other way around. Everyone else wants to look at Blizzard and consider them the fool. You can call it envy, but regardless you need to keep in mind that folks like you and me are working at Blizzard. People with lives, with livlihoods, etc.
A lot of these people are trying to make a living doing a job that entails…well, whatever it entails. Thinks that we simply do not know.
Again, we need to accept our own ignorance on these things.
We all are. We can also be part of the solution. You group with people, play fair, do the best you can, that proves to them you’re a good person. That shows you’re making the best of what you believe to be a bad situation.
No. But then again, like I said, if I was in charge I wouldn’t trust myself because I know I screw things up. That’s what needs to be acknowledged here. People screw things up all the time.
Forgiveness and understanding and thankfulness are necessary during these times.
Do things that make people thankful for you, Defiance. Thankfulness is also a virtue.
If you ran a 5-man with strangers you don’t know and you thought the tank was mediocre. Thank him for pushing through, for not leaving, for making the run possible. Thank your healer too!
Make people feel like they have value in what they do. Because that’s a rare thing nowadays.
FF14 is run by people. Given it’s run by people, they’re going to run into their own share of mistakes. It’s inevitable. They’ll try to differentiate themselves from Blizzard, but ultimately they’re not going to be immune to the same culture that plagues Blizzard.
Most of how I’ve been informed on this subject has come from Professor William T. Cavanaugh and his book, “Being Consumed.”
bots are fun to watch.
Just a heads up nearly all bots are banned in 2-3 weeks. That’s cost effective for blizzard as the bot buys a new account and boost every few weeks and the bitter gets his money’s worth before the account is banned.
The Indonesians selling gold are generally legit players and take a lot longer to get banned. They only play to make money, but don’t bot