They’re taking over. I’m advised to always right click and report but the numbers are either too great or not being thinned like we’re told to believe.
Almost every single zone on my server has troll hunter bots with chinese boar pets and these are just the most visible. Mara/zg carry script running bots are everywhere as well.
Blizzard really really needs to be proactive again with bots and aggressively search for them, being reactive is currently not working. The situation is getting worse every day.
R&R is the only way it would be way to time and money consuming to monitor the realms 24/7 R&R sends way more information than coming to the forums only to be told what you already know. These things take time to find and break the botting program and then send out the suspenions.
How long is time? It’s been months and it’s only getting worse not better.
Maybe right click works, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it’s only flagged upon x amount of reports I don’t know. What I do know is every zone has multiple bots running 24/7.
Its not as simple as you think it is it takes time and effort yes it can take months but when they do take action they come crying here claiming false bans and what not.
Blizzard takes the time to understand how the bots work, and the methods they use to interact with the game so that when they do a ban wave, they get as many as possible, with the intent that the bots aren’t able to easily figure out how they were detected, and circumvent Blizzard again.
Classic launched 26 August last year. During those almost 10 months, has there been a bot ban wave at all? In the past Blizzard has always made a press release to announce a bot ban wave after the fact, but if there has been one, I missed the news.
Actually, there have been several, for classic and retail. But the problem is the gold farmers and sellers just fire up a new stolen account and pick up where they left off.
Because we see a mass amount of people complaining on the forums in a short amount of time, that they just got banned, and they don’t understand what happened.
They DON’T announce it anymore for the reasons I gave you.
Because we get them coming on the CS forums crying that they was unfairly suspended or something along that line. Do a forum search, make sure to look for the locked threads.
We don’t share those numbers anymore - but they are massive.
They do just fire up new ones to replace, but it isn’t a battle that we’ve ever stopped fighting.
There is truly only one way to ever STOP these guys, players have to stop giving them $. As long as they have a vested interest in returning, they will - and we’ll keep fighting them.
Or Blue posts. They invariably post to reiterate the proper appeal method. Occasionally they will post on whether or not the appeal would be successful.
They only announce ban waves some of the time. They no longer announce numbers. The numbers don’t mean much. There would still be accounts that look like they are botting in both retail and classic. Ones using a different botting program than the one targeted by the ban for one. Accounts not actually botting for another.
The number of accounts “botting” doesn’t actually tell a relevant number. In quite a few cases, the botting is not being done by the account holder but by a criminal organization that hacked the account. If that account holder gets their account back, the ban is generally removed.
They sometimes announce them in General Discussion and Classic General Discussion.
I tend to agree with the OP. As a customer it LOOKS LIKE not much is being done. Ban wave hits and the same day there are others in that spot doing the same thing. So it appears as if nothing is being done. Hopefully they will win the war on bots, but I see them in every game so I just learned to live with it and ignore them.
Asking people not to cheat? That’s like asking the botters to stop botting. They go hand and hand. It’s not our responsibility to clear out the trash. If you allow them to cheat, then the cheaters will buy their service.
If you have a fool-proof way of making sure no one cheats, the developers of all the games would love to talk to you. Otherwise it is just hallow ranting. No one can prevent cheating. The whack-a-mole method of removing botters won’t remove bots from the game. It would make it worse.
Botting software is like computer viruses. You build an anti-virus program to remove the virus, someone changes the virus so that the anti-virus program no longer removes it. The same thing with botting software. Blizzard builds patches and detection methods to find and neutralize the botting software, someone updates the botting software.
If you see it and don’t report it, you become part of the problem. You aren’t required to clear out the trash, but you should report it so that Blizzard can.
All the bashing of how Blizzard handles bots does help the bot makers. It promotes apathy. Apathetic players stop reporting. With no reporting, the problem gets worse. So thank you for helping botters by bashing Blizzard. The next time you see a bot, feel proud that you helped them stay there.
Your points are invalid. Cheaters prosper because they’re allowed to for long periods of time. We report them, but it seems like vanity. We need more than 2 purges are year.
You have zero idea how often that happens, Chaosnachos, I’ll positively guarantee you woefully underestimate what is done.
Justice may not always be swift, but it is sure. Cheat, it may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow, but when it does happen you can kiss all your time, energy and memories of that account goodbye - if not permanently - for a good long time.