Amazing how folks are calling this out yet nothing done oh boy.
All of those bots one way or another also generate profit for Blizzard. Much more profit than we do tbh. That’s why they haven’t ended it once and for all.
The bot being used on all of these screens is a OPEN SOURCE bot. It’s all running off LUA code. I’m not a programmer/coder but I’m amazed Blizzard hasn’t put an end to this yet once and for all.
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I don’t know why anyone would think there aren’t bots.
with no token in classic people are still gonna buy gold the only way they can
We don’t need a random youtube video to confirm what we are all witnessing ourselves. Blizzard has a reason why they aren’t cracking down as much as they can be. It’s probably related to profits.
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A streamer hyper-sensationalizing something for personal gain is not exactly the same thing as a massive problem. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t any bots, but this guy is feeding into a gossipy fanbase that likes to hate on and blame others, apparently.
Where do you play? Can we log in together and can you show me where the bots are that are impacting your gameplay?
Botting in SOD is off the charts. Lax or no enforcement by Blizzard.
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My mailbox being full of automated messages from Blizzard saying my reporting has lead to a ban/suspension says otherwise…
Sure, log into Chaos Bolt, head to The Angerfang encampment, and go to layer 1. Enjoy the hunter running endless loops, botting, to gather Charskull loot when the rare pops.
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My experiences say otherwise. Enjoy your imaginary mailboxes.
Ah, Chaos Bolt. I don’t play there, and trekking to the Wetlands on a level 1 toon is going to take probably more than an hour including deaths… Maybe you could do it for me, and stream it on Discord?
FWIW, I play Alliance on Crusader-Strike and Horde on Lone Wolf. I’ll put a bit of time into going to check out someone’s claim, but I’ve done this before and mostly it’s just hyperbolic nonsense.
I wish, i have to manually delete 20+ a day on my main…
Bump, this is ridiculous.
Chinese botters are definitely not paying $15 a month. I guarantee you that they are playing in whatever state / province / country that is the cheapest for probably a few dollars a month OR they are still selling gametime in minutes instead of months.
Just make these areas more expensive and make 6 month subs mandatory so if they get banned in a day they lose a lot of money.
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It’s cute that you and blizzard think gold farming bots are the problem. Its like arresting hookers. John’s are the problem, hookers are their solution. Gold buyers are the problem and Blizzard does NOT perma ban them.
That is the problem. Blizzard IS the problem.
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Something doesn’t add up, that dude had like 384 accounts, that’s roughly 5,760$ a month in Sub fee’s. You expect me to believe that dude makes more than 6k a month selling WoW gold? Highly unlikely
Move on or unsubscribe. Nothing will change
lol yea these guys make a ton of money
It’s not difficult at all when you take a few things into account:
- Bots aren’t necessarily paid for by the people running the bots. As in, the people running the bots may be using other people’s money without permission. It’s not uncommon, but it’s by no means always the case - if it was, Blizzard would be more vigilant about it, because people would be constantly doing chargebacks.
- A bot only has to make a small profit to be profitable. A small profit when you’re running 300+ bots is a lot more than a small profit. The point where one bot makes a profit over a $15 subscription fee is EXTREMELY low. When you get spammed with messages of people selling gold, only a few people have to make a couple small purchases to cover that sub fee and turn it into pure profit.
- A game like WoW doesn’t exactly take the beefiest rig to run, so it’s not like you need a computer that uses a ton of energy for every single instance of the game you’re running. You can pretty easily run a dozen or more instances of WoW on one computer through virtual machines. Electricity doesn’t have to be factored nearly as much into the cost of operating a bot farm as it would if you were needed a $3k rig using a ton of electricity to run each instance of the game.
- There are certain people, often referred to as “whales,” that have a massive amount of disposable income relative to the majority of players - anyone else remember that dude that dropped over $100k on Diablo Immortal and ended up getting so ahead of everyone else he ended up as the only person in his own matchmaking bracket? - that buy a massive amount of gold, be it one large purchase or repeated smaller purchases. This small group of players very easily funds not just bots in WoW, not just bots in MMOs, but MTX in games that sell it directly as well. It’s the Pareto Principle in effect.
- In the most extreme cases, we’ve seen Method buy 130M of gold from Gallywix during 8.3 with cash. We’ve also seen Gressil sell for 198K gold in a GDKP in Naxx during Classic. The person who paid that much for it got banned right after the transaction, but things like this show people who are willing to run bot farms that it can be lucrative, and people who are already running bot farms that if they toss some more cash into their farm, they can strike it big if whales are willing to buy enough gold. Even with the person being banned for that, there are endless much smaller transactions that people have witnessed, will admit to, have footage of, etc. that were left alone because it wasn’t such a high amount as to probably instantly flag the transaction in the game.
- This is tangential, but Old School Runescape had people that are documented to having run bot farms where they’ve made - with receipts - over $40k in two months botting, with less investment. Is it really that hard to believe people are doing this in WoW as well? Especially during Classic and TBC Classic, where WoW tokens aren’t being sold?
It’s not highly unlikely for someone very organized, that does this as a job, to run a 300-400 account bot farm. People will even do AMAs about this stuff, especially after they move on from doing so and can show the receipts without worrying about impacting their income.
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Good read, made a lot of sense. The Method part I thought was kinda weird, where is the money in World First raiding? I have never seen an advertisement where they endorse something, and most of their members have less than 100k subscribers. So, where’s the money coming from?
Most, if not all, guilds on retail that push for world first are sponsored. Probably isn’t advertised much, if at all, which I’d guess is because most of the people that have any interest are people playing the game and see the patch notes and dates for raid drops directly from Blizzard.