I stumbled upon a bot farm (I see them every once and awhile), about 5-7 bots farming a fast respawning enemies.
I was on my gnome hunter reporting them from far away. I used my stealth ability to get a bit closer and then one of the horde hunters revealed my stealth with their flare.
Then like 2-3 of them started following me around, I assumed they were bots but they could of been players. But for whatever reason they were following me, even as I was flying away.
I quickly jumped off my mount and used my stealth ability again to hide. Saw them circling in the air.
I slowly came back in stealth from far away and reported the group of 6-7 people who were botting. But I assumed those people chasing me might of also been bots trying to report me.
In my not at all professional opinion, however, they wouldn’t. If they created a program that was reporting other players, it might develop a pattern that Blizz would be able to detect through the reporting.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Thank you for reporting, though!
Anyone can report for anything, but penalties only get sent out if you are actually breaking the rules. I could not explain the behavior, don’t know if this was PVP? Perhaps this wasn’t a bot, maybe a m-boxer on PVP? Seems a bit too much for a bot farmer to want to follow you around, I can only imagine the script would focus on gathering as much resource as possible and moving it out before their account gets caught, not follow random players.
To answer your title question, of course bots CAN report. They are utilizing accounts that have the same abilities as you or me, and any reports would be treated the same (investigate and take appropriate actions).
However, bot programs do not get programmed to “report” people. Because reporting people near their botting operation would also shine a light on what they are doing, and they don’t want that. So effectively, no, bots do not report you.
The situation you have outlined is not bot behavior. Those were regular players, and yes, they probably were reporting you. If you were not breaking any rules (and reporting a farming group is not breaking the rules), then you have nothing to worry about.
If that was a farming group, and not bots, I don’t think a false report would do anything, unless you’ve repeatedly sent in false reports, after a certain number the system flags for false reports.
Though that’s rather odd behavior for a person or a bot, especially if PVP isn’t enabled.
Just for later: Mass report penalties aren’t a thing. Because if you can be mass report penalised, so can bots. If they can, why has no vigilante group made an effort to clean them off the face of WoW? (Because this isn’t a thing)
If they spotted you and then followed you, they were not bots. Bots run without a human behind the keyboard. Sometimes a real person may “check” on their bots but they wouldn’t go to the extent as to what you described.
They were likely a group of players farming mats for something.
As others have said unless you’re going out of your way and messaging them and saying “reported “ or any other communication saying anything or telling others in chat to report them, jumping on other toons to report then no nothing will come of any reports against your self for reporting them.
Not a thing in the way it’s misunderstood to be. You cannot get someone penalized purely by having multiple accounts report them. That does not happen and was made up by actual rulebreakers to spin a more sentimental narrative for themselves. The only thing that results in punishments is if a human finds the reports to be valid.
That behavior doesn’t seem like botting. It would seem pretty inefficient to break from the script to chase down another player to right click report him. But even if you were reported, based on what you’ve told us, it doesn’t appear that you have anything to worry about, as nothing you’ve done is a game violation. Happy gaming!
Okay …but why? Did you read the blue reply to it?
The OP was not actioned for their name and a mistake was made…by a human…when the reason was sent to the OP.
So yes, multiple accounts can report you, but without any wrong doing, there’s really nothing that they can do. A temporary squelch, perhaps, but that’s it.
