BOTTERS - Who do we have to brigade to get this up to the top?

[Delimicus-heartseeker]

@Valinia-netherwind

They actually do not. You would have quoted em from 2020 if you could find em in 2020. You do not.

Customer Support in the Spirit of Classic

We’re going to end this here as all this back and forth is entirely unproductive. I’m afraid overall you may be operating on a bit of bad information, Leafie. Assuming any part of your “response from a GM” isn’t entirely made up for your own narrative, if a GM did at some point state that the email is used by Dev, I do apologize for the confusion. As most folks might be aware, the hacks email goes to our Hacks team, hence the aptly named address. They are the ones that do the lion’s share of …

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-amount-of-bots-on-classic-is-unacceptable/534824/44

Bots in Tanaris

“Let these dudes bot” is more than a little misleading. We don’t “Let” people bot, anymore than law enforcement lets people commit crime. We do what we can to curb the behavior, both in preventative measures as well as reactive penalties. Again, we’ve love to remove 100% of the bots, or better yet prevent them entirely, but it is far more easy to say than do. These folks aren’t slouches, they are clever and their only goal is to go undetected. Asking players to use the right click report option…

Cheating and Botting

That tends to be one of the more ridiculous claims that I’ve come cross throughout the years, but unfortunately, there are those that believe that. Yes, technically, we may be receiving subscription funds from accounts that may be violating our policies. That doesn’t necessarily equate to making money. First, if they really are exploitative accounts, there is a high likelihood that the funds used to pay for game time aren’t legitimate. Either the methods of payment are stolen or the game accou…

A Bot infection

You are right, Boulder, it is ridiculous. Bots, exploitation, cheating, shouldn’t be in our game. The unfortunate reality is, they are, and they will likely continue to be as long as people look for short cuts. Our Support and Hacks team does what they can to combat them as best as they can but it is a great deal more complicated than “I see a bot, ban it”. As Perl mentioned, our hacks team works to do more than just take out an individual bot, they work to see what kind of trace a bot leaves…

Does reporting players work properly?

Yes, but it is important to understand a few things. First, you are reporting your suspicions only. While you may believe them to be botting, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are or that such behavior can be easily verified. That isn’t to say that you can’t, with some accuracy, identify those that are likely using some kind of automation, but there will always be some uncertainty without specific verification being available. An account note that says “I saw them, they looked like a bot” isn’…

Lack of Zin'athid

That isn’t remotely true. We do, fairly often, but it isn’t a situation of once you get rid of them they simply go away. It is a big industry with a lot of incentive for those folks to continue their illicit behavior so it is a constant struggle where sometimes we make huge steps forward and other times they are difficult to detect, prevent or eliminate. I’m not entirely certain what your solution is, as I don’t think additional nodes would solve the issue, more likely exacerbate it. Feel free…

Bots everywhere

Which, to be clear, are used as reference points for our investigations and not the basis of any action that may be taken against an account.

Bots on Rattlegore

I’m sorry, Sokajoo, but that isn’t accurate. Of course we want to remove exploitative behavior as quickly as possible, that hasn’t changed, but a lot of these investigations take time. Several weeks is not uncommon, as we are often working to discover how a particular program may work and how best to detect it on a whole so that we can deal with the bots that may be reported but also the ones that are not. So that we can hopefully prevent their use entirely. That is the same today as it was 10…