BOTTING IS IN A GOLDEN AGE | Bot-2-Win? Got a half hour? You can bot too!

Community General Discussion
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For the first time since Mists of Pandaria I’ve began getting interested in making gold again. I want to purchase tokens for frivolous over-priced services I can’t rationalize spending dollars on, I digress.

As I began this quest of mine I began to wonder;

Why is the druid humping a stump? And that one. Oh, and that one too. How come this warlock is casting two spells and two spells alone? AFK farming? Doubtful, another obvious bot.

What I’ve come to realize is botting is as widespread and after some digging as EASY as it was in the golden age of gold farmers to get into, back in the Honorbuddy days. Honorbuddy was a notorious and incredibly functional botting program Blizzard has since managed to shutdown through a combination of litigation and client spyware (when WoW is open Blizzard regularly scans your windows and processes).

I will admit, I thought botting was mostly behind us, relegated to obscure groups intent on earning a profit on the black market selling gold.

I was wrong.

You need about a half hour and $40 to get into botting today. From what I’ve read and the videos I’ve seen the bots look as function as Honorbuddy but are distributed in a less centralized fashion. Often via Discord groups hosted by individuals or groups of clever coders that can easily fade into the ether and reappear as a new entity if they catch heat. Most of them only seem to accept Bitcoin, making it difficult to litigate and track vendors.

In addition, as I’ve read most botters claim you will not get banned unless you get sloppy and catch player reports. This is easily mitigated with the sophisticated methods built into the bots to evade player detection. A few examples; auto-whisper replies, auto-logouts with players present, random pathing model for farming, and literal apps that you can use on your phone to monitor your bot in real-time.

Back in the day Blizzard didn’t hustle tokens. Now that they do I think botting is a greatly increased concern. I’ve seen countless reports of bots earning what seems to average around 60K an hour on the most trivial farming profiles. Many Discord groups sell unique complex profiles for a steep premium, and they seem to be well received.

Gold aside, there are plenty of combat bots that can crush it in PVP or on the PVE meters with a little user input (basically pick your target and dodge swirlies). There are also AH bots that leverage TradeSkillMaster and metadata. I suspect a lot of those longboi bros AFK at the mailbox are running said bots, but that’s besides the point.

I don’t know about yo, but I’d feel like an idiot spending $20 on a token or competing with bots when I farm my own raw materials to earn some gold. Luckily, I get by just fine flipping the AH with TSM, but if I didn’t have years of experience with the WoW economy I’d be pissed at what Blizzard is allowing to degrade the game I pay $15 a month for while simulataneously having the gall to charge $20-30 for incredibly basic services.

I considered listing the names of some of the websites/ Discord groups/ and users I’ve come across but I think that would be counter-productive. I certainly can if someone in a position to communicate the information to relevant parties is interested.

/thread

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If someone is combat botting, they might as well quit and do something else with their time. Clearly, they don’t want to play the game.

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I mean, I feel the same way, but if you’re interested in just ‘winning’ than you could careless. Same mentality all of the aimbotters and ‘hackers’ have in many other games.

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I think Blizzard secretly allows botting because it keeps tokens moving on the AH

No matter who buys the token, Blizzard made money off of it, so why would they care?

They like to talk about being against botting, but I really don’t think they are as long as it generates money for them

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So what you are saying is the entire playerbase can bot and Blizzard won’t ban you because they are making $ ??? :rofl:

Either you are For or against? pick one, no middle ground, no hiding.

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why is the druid humping a stump? maybe he’s lonely. who are we to kink shame?

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I mean - I really am convinced Blizzard has gotten desperate. Banning the account would mean 15 dollars less a month for them. GM help stopped completely years ago, boosting sites FLOOD the group finder (Despite being against rules apparently) and have for a while now yet not only are the sites not getting ceast and desist letters, the same players I saw in BFA posting them are still doing it. Now bots, which are obviously bots, are getting off scott free. Like, GMs used to trail people and watch them to make sure they weren’t botting if the player was suspicious. Now it seems they dont GAF anymore.

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I think they are far less ‘stringent’ than they could be because they it doesn’t hurt them financially. If it’s harder for a ‘normie’ to make gold off farming resources that makes it more likely that ‘normie’ will then buy a WoW token with actual money.

If the price of resources is reduced by lots of farming by bots. That means it is harder for those ‘normies’ to make gold to purchase carries which then also increases the amount of wow tokens bought with real world currency.

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Only a bot believes in absolutes.

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That would mean everybody are bots since they can never ever say a yes or no answer in their life :rofl:

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Exactly.

Any way you spin it, botting (and multi boxing) only brings Blizzard money

Which is why I think they’re secretly for it, and just claim to be against it

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Boosting for gold has become so rampant that I genuinely believe money generated from service and specifically tokens has begun to rival that of just the sub revenue.

Blizzard has to know allowing boosting for gold is not healthy for the game. It’s not that they “can’t” make it against the rules, it’s that people who purchase gold from blizzard and then turn around and buy boosts with it bring them a TON of money.

Call me crazy, but when they banned multiboxing software, I’m almost certain it was to reduce the amount of materials being generated therefore increasing the cost of consumables enchants etc resulting in people that don’t farm their own mats having to spend more gold on said consumables, and hopefully just buying a token to fund their gameplay as opposed to just getting by with the gold the game organically gives you. My guess is the metrics finally tipped in the direction of multiboxing being a net loss for them.

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I think this expansion has probably made gold sellers so much money.