Bots. Hate em or hate em, they’re everywhere, and probably will always exist in some capacity in any game (even if you don’t see them). And while developers do much in order to deter or diminish their effect on the game, it’s a never-ending, uphill battle. But there’s a lot of misconceptions or illogical information floating around about bots and why they seem to never stop. Here’s some of the common ones and why they aren’t true or simply don’t make sense.
Blizzard only bans bots in waves / Blizzard isn't banning bots because they're still there
Let’s talk a bit about how Blizzard handles bans. First off, yes, bots that are found do seem to not get banned immediately, but are at least flagged and banned a short while later. The main reason for this is banning a bot as soon as it’s confirmed gives an idea back to the bot owner as to what the bot did that set it off, and then they can adjust accordingly. A bot that adapts is a bot thats harder to find.
As for why bots are still there or never seem to leave (even when the bans do go out), I did some research and it didn’t take long to find a Battle.net account generator. After being banned, it takes barely any time at all for a bot owner to spin up hundreds of new accounts, ready to bot.
Blizzard doesn't ban bots because they're making money from them!
I see where people are coming from with this one, but in a thread discussing this on the SoD forums, it simply doesn’t make sense. Let’s assume for a moment that Blizzard is, in fact, making money from bots. It would then still make sense for Blizzard to ban bots as soon as possible, because then the bots would come back with a new account with a fresh sub. But clearly thats not the case, and there’s more. A bot owner is trying to maximize profits, but there’s always the chance that the bots get banned before they can farm or sell too much. So, they find ways around having to pay at all.
The most likely methods are:
- Stealing legitimate accounts and botting on them
- Stealing credit cards
- Actually subbing for real but once they get banned, doing a chargeback (which does get your Blizzard account banned, but I don’t think that matters…)
So clearly, Blizzard making money from bots seems a little silly now.
Now, lets cover some “solutions” I’ve seen floating around, and why they’re not ideal, and how the “treadmill” relates to all this.
Bots are so obvious, Blizzard just needs a couple GMs to float around in BGs to ban them all!
There’s a few problems here. First off, Blizzard really dislikes the “looks like a bot” argument, because there are players that do somehow act goofy or derpy enough that people call bot on them. Actually, players will really call bot on any player doing anything remotely out of the ordinary (I got called a bot in TBC for farming Mageweave Cloth from low level ogres… There just wasn’t any on the AH, man!) Blizzard prefers something more concrete, and less circumstantial. But let’s say they did plop a GM or two into BGs to ban bots. Congrats, they’ve banned a bunch of bots, but this is very, very short-term. Bots will always be back, and if doing BGs gets them banned, they’ll just move elsewhere where they won’t be noticed.
This also brings up an issue called the “treadmill problem.” The treadmill problem basically refers to a task that doesn’t end, and therefore occupies someone infinitely because it has endless upkeep. Assuming the bots decided to not move and kept on doing BGs, someone is now doomed to sitting around, banning bots, in the same fashion, forever. Companies don’t like the treadmill problem because it’s a waste of time and resources that could be spent elsewhere, and ultimately, since bots will most definitely just move elsewhere, having someone sit around and just ban bots is not a long-term solution.
There’s one more thing to note before moving from the “bots in BGs” discussion. These bots are most definitely getting the gold to sell by farming honor, buying gems, and then selling them. However, this is probably better than chasing them off into the open-world or instance farming. In the case of honor farming, they don’t actually generate gold, only gems, and then they’re moving around other people’s gold instead of gold they farmed. It doesn’t actually cause inflation because they aren’t increasing the gold in circulation. The effects are less severe than if the bots were forced to farm old instances for raw gold or something.
Instead of banning bots, Blizzard should make them unable to trade or use the AH, or secretly move them to a different, identical-looking server
Back to the treadmill problem, Blizzard could spend the time and resources doing this, but as stated before, bots adapt. The moment this update rolls out and botters start noticing that they’re effectively being shadow banned, they’ll just have the bots occasionally check that they can still use the AH, or make a way to detect if the “server” they’re on is different than before, and then all that time Blizzard spent? Pointless.
This is the problem with “solutions” to botting. They’re simply not viable. There isn’t a long-term solution that doesn’t affect players, will never have false positives, and won’t be overcome by botters in no time at all.
And for my last point…
Ban the buyers and botting will stop!
My question to you, is how do you know the buyers aren’t being banned? Very few will ever admit to buying gold (In fact, you’re probably more likely to get legitimate players saying they bought gold, sarcastically), and those that do are not going to have a favorable mentality towards Blizzard. If they get banned, do you think they would admit to it? No, they’d probably just pass it off as if nothing happened.
And since I know someone is thinking of it, what about Sodapoppin? I can’t speak personally for Blizzard, but it’s not uncommon for games to make your first punishment more lenient if you’ve been a good player for a very long time. It’s not like he wasn’t punished at all, he did still lose his gold and items, and he was basically forced to be public about it.
I’m certain the regular trolls here will come and complain, finding any small detail to have issue with, or just refuse to acknowledge points that make sense. But to those that do play this game, think a little. Blizzard is trying, but there are limits to realistic solutions.
And with that, I will take my leave.
