Blizzard stopped doing that because it was tipping off the botters and they would change their program to avoid detection by Warden.
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When? I didnt see any announcement.
So how do you know for sure they happened?
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Then it would be wise to tell the players when you do these massive purges. Perhaps, we wouldn’t feel like useful idiots.
If you feel that they should be notifying us players more often, then you’ll want to post constructively in the General Discussion forums suggesting that they do so. The Community Managers there can pass along feedback from GD to the people who make these sorts of decisions.
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Cool, you do you. I’ll do me.
I am sure more is done than we ever dreamed of, but when the ban wave hits there are characters ready to replace them right then and there, and you’re back to square 1.
I went back onto classic and there was a botter there that was botting the last time I had played almost 3 months ago. Same name, same race, same hair (screenshot player)… So unless you banned him then a new guy was made in his image with the same name then he’s been able to get away with it for almost three months. Same path, skinning bot. I would kill something and he would make a b-line to my corpse if he’s within a certain range and then run back to the spot where he started the b-line and turn and continue on his path. I reported him three months ago and again a few days ago. I ran him into the water a few times which is pretty funny because he will run into the shore wall for a second (cannot climb up there), then turn and run into the wall for a sec, then turn again and swim out a bit. After about 30mins of running into the wall or standing there, someone will fly him back to the start and reset him again, and I will do the same thing. It’s fun to mess with them, but he’s been there for three months. Sometimes I would just skin his kill faster than he did (because I am faster). He’s not a normal character either. He’s got no guild, never does anything except botting.
I know you guys really do try, and hope one day you have a big breakthrough that will kill the programs rather than just break them until they update the bot programs. I am rooting for you all!
Okay so… either there are NO Bots on my Classic server or I’m woefully dumb and just don’t know what one looks like. It’s probably the latter?
For people like me who don’t know how to recognize a Bot, either in AV or out in the world, would someone like to either write, or point me to, a primer on what they do/look like etc. and I’ll be happy to do my part in reporting them.
Botom line is if someone looks suspicious right click and report if its negative the player will never know.
From my personal observations, players get mixed up when it comes to bots and multi-boxers. Multi-boxing is allowed but not supported. It generally is a group of characters that appear to try to stand all in the same place all the time. Or they follow a single character, but as a clump.
Bots tend to no be in a clump like multi-boxers. They tend to go in a queue rather than a clump. They take the same path repeatedly (doesn’t make someone a bot, but observationally that is common).
It is possible some multi-boxers are botting as well. If you suspect that, report one or two of them. Don’t try to report them all.
A lot of both groups use druids for farming. They have travel-form for ease-of-use. It doesn’t prove they are botting. It doesn’t prove they aren’t either.
Don’t bother trying to whisper them. It doesn’t prove/disprove botting. No one is required to respond to a whisper. They could have chat turned off. They may not respond to random whispers. If they are multi-boxing, you may not be whispering the main one on their screen. They could be watching Netflix while farming. Getting a response doesn’t prove they aren’t botting. Botting just means that a program is automating their game-play. They could be at their computer responding to whispers to try and fool others into thinking they aren’t botting.
At the start of expansions before Pathfinder/flying is added, any character glitching through the air can be reported. They may not be botting, but fly-hacking is an exploit and also reportable.
If you have observations about how the alleged bot is acting, you can give detailed information, screen shots, and/or video to hacks@blizzard.com to help the group working on breaking and removing bots. Blizzard doesn’t need you to spend all your game-time tracking bots. You do not need to gather “proof”. The proof that Blizzard uses is their log files. They will not ban someone because they “looked” like they were botting. If your observations lead you to believe they are botting, report them and then move on.
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in which case, click on one of the characters you suspect is a bot and hit ‘F’. that’ll switch your target to whomever said person to targeting. if said player is on follow, you’ll target the “leader”. if not, chances are, THAT is the leader the others are following.
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ohh, interesting trick, gonna see about using that when I pvp against a boxer.
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