Edit: Replies are going as expected btw. Shows that nobody believes Blizzard is capable of doing the right thing, because they’ve proved the polar opposite to everyone. Keep it coming btw. Tell 'em how it is.
This post is to call out the botting problem in TBC, and hopefully gain enough attention to Blizzard. Updoot this post if your server has a botting problem!
I’m one of the possibly few players that actually enjoys WoW still, I’m holding on to my last hopes that these issues will be fixed. On my server, Grobbulus Alliance, its largely flyhacking bots farming Mana-Tombs. It’s gotten so bad, that its starting to make less and less sense to farm nodes in the open world / in dungeons, because bots can just farm them non-stop. For example, Hardened Adamantite Bars have gone down by 50% of what it’s normally listed for since we’ve gotten an influx of bots. One of the gold-making activities I still enjoy, becomes more and more utterly meaningless.
For context, I report bots like its my daily quest, every single day, the same group of bots every time. I even see them get banned, and thats great! But then they come back because its just so easy, VPN to buy the boost / sub for cheap, level mining up real quick, then back to botting. Then probably sell the gold to buy more bots - it’s a downwards spiral that auto-refills itself so easily. It’s not like Blizzard is able to make much $$$ off of this either, even if the banwaves were every month or even every week. The problems are exclusively in-game, and must be solved in-game.
I did some investigation, and managed to get in a group with a bot. The only reason this happened, is because the bots occasionally hearth to Allerian Stronghold to mail their illicit goods to their bank out, then die getting back to the dungeon. When trying to rez, they accept my group invite so I can watch them. (Note: You can use this same technique, but turn on Heroic mode so the bots can’t enter the dungeon for a good few hours until they’re programmed to log off. It’s fun while it lasts!)
Since I was curious, I decided to watch what a level 58 rogue bot would be doing in Mana-Tombs, a lvl 64-65ish dungeon. I initially thought they’d be farming pickpocketing through sophisticated pathing, but no, they’re just flyhacking. Every single one of them, count 12 since the writing of this post, is flyhacking to mine and herb the entire dungeon.
I’ve seen videos of bots farming Slave Pens, using no-clipping through walls to land in the water, while also looting potential chests. This is not a Grobbulus issue, as far as I’m aware, but I’m sure its prevalent on other servers.
What have I done, as a player, to combat this? I just report the bots, every single day. I even opened a ticket, but my ONLY reply was basically “Keep reporting them, and post on the forums.” Alright, fair, so I’m doing just that.
Now, the reason I’m making this post is fairly simple: I want something done about it, providing the best constructive feedback I can give. Its obvious that - ever since implementing the 58 boost, botting would be a huge issue, so here’s some solutions.
As for issues like flyhacking mining/herb nodes? The most direct solution - is of course - have some sort of system to catch flyhacking automatically, especially in dungeons. However I’m far beyond the point of expecting something like this to be implemented, as this problem extends back to like, phase 2 of Classic vanilla. I do know that there is flyhacking detection implemented, as its effective in getting bots banned when you report them FOR flyhacking. Issue is, it takes far to many reports for these bots to get banned, and by that time they already made enough gold to sell to re-afford a new boost and subscription.
A more realistic suggestion might be to fiddle around with death barriers, like in WoD Hellfire Citadel, I’m aware that Blizzard put up a bunch of death-walls to prevent some sort of fast gold-farming strategy that lets you bypass the first two time-consuming encounters. Why not something similar in TBC, but just bring the death-floors just beneath floor level? Might be tricky, but it’d kill flyhacking bots beneath the dungeon on a fresh boosted character. I’m sure, for Blizzard, this is a tricky mess, but it needs to be fixed soon. Also, wasn’t flyhacking an issue in Dire Maul North/East too? I’m not sure if that got fixed or if I just didn’t hear about it after the initial posts about that.
Another suggestion - Help me, help you, Blizzard. I’m perfectly fine with using the right-click report system to report bots for flyhacking, but PLEASE make it easier! I literally have to do /who 58 mana-tombs, whisper every single bot, THEN report them all in the chat window. Why can’t I just report them in the /who window? Also, even if I report them in the chat window, let’s say I’m in Stormwind or if I have an active guild chat, sometimes the “report player” button goes away because it gets pushed up so far that you’re no longer eligible to report the player in the chat. It’s strange, PROBABLY a bug, but if you truly want to use this system to deal with the issue entirely, then please make it easier for players to use it.
I’m curious what kind of reaction this post will get (my first genuine post on the forums, ever.), so I’ll just throw some questions out there. What’s botting on your server like? Do a quick /who 58 and see if you can find fishy behaviours. How many times have you reported them until you noticed them getting banned? I’ve gotten mixed results, sometimes some bots get caught and others don’t even if I report them equally.
