Cheaters, and Farmers, and Bots, Oh My!

It’s been pretty obvious from the beginning that Blizzard commits minimal resources to Classic. They didn’t want it. It’s a huge slap in the face to retail developers every day that many people actually prefer a 15-year old version of the game over their modern and “improved” version.

But they couldn’t ignore the money to be made from releasing it, because successful private servers had shown that the demand was there. And, as I understand it, they also used Classic to gain a stronger legal argument for shutting down private servers, who had claimed that the vanilla client was abandonware and free game.

But it obviously gets very minimal support and resources, and it is not a very actively managed MMO. They are likely only going to address major issues that might lead to a significant decrease in sub numbers, and even then only if it’s not too much trouble. Otherwise this is the wild, wild west.

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oh
so they’re just incompetent, not in bed with them

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One false narrative falls apart and another rises.

You’re correct. Based on the people I see in the open world, it might be 50%, considering they can hide in dungeons where I can’t.

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“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
~Some Guy

Sadly this isn’t the Blizzard of Vanilla where having this many bots would have been a massive embarrassment and had them removed by now. They are more driven by dollar signs than game quality.

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1.) Bots weren’t as advanced.

2.)The botting industry wasn’t as large or as lucrative. How many people were raiding, how many people were raiding with this extreme min/max attitude that now persists across the entire WoW community?

3.) They’ve always been driven by $$$. Remember when they introduced the first iteration of loot boxes in an MMO? Yeah, it was called the WoW trading card game. People purchased cards for a game they had zero intention of playing in order to get rare loot cards in a game they did play.

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Compare TCG to the entirety of what you can buy now. TCG is vastly minor with few rewards in comparison. They needed money then as they do now, but they weren’t beholden to a parent company that sacrificed everything for profit.

Yeah, you’re right. There’s NO WAY Blizzard would have iterated on their first successful, low effort project. They thought to themselves “Wow, we just spent thousands to make millions, we should never do something similar ever again!”

… and then Activision came along!

Stop.

Something you never see people talking about with the bots. The barrier to entry is lower in classic. They don’t have to buy a copy of the game like they would with retail. All they have to do is subscribe to the game. If they really wanted to stop the bots, they’d have put a price tag on the game of like 30 dollars. It would reduce turn over when they actually do ban them. But the way it is now they’ll just create a new account because its cheap.

Looking at this and having time to think about it I have come down to think this is crap. They do make money on this because you do have to pay for the accounts whether it’s stolen credit card money or not. The proof of this is the amount of bots that are still active which means they are taking the money whether it’s stolen or not.

This said it perfectly! We have all seen this in one form or another. I have reported bots on every server I play.

If they are not accepting the money from these bot accounts then how are they still able to play with no penalty?

Okay, go take your findings to the media. This is a big story, you’re gonna make bank.

Yeah let me just call CNN and Fox.

Not suggesting you believe what I said. Just be open to the possibility

Open to the possibility that Blizzard is blatantly lying dozens of times about their financial status regarding bots on their official forums, and not one gaming news website has commented on it. The same gaming news websites that jump on anything negative; negative press sells big, as you probably know.

This is different from what the community usually claims as lies from Blizzard. This isn’t a design decision they go back on, or change their minds on. This is a definitive statement echoed across multiple posts and multiple employees. You’re claiming they are outright lying to the community about this, go take your evidence to a gaming journalist. You could also go to the CS forum and confront them about this, that would be the right thing to do if you think they’re lying to their entire playerbase.

Why have they not stated any of this in a blue post then?

Sounds like a reason for them to lean on to finally give tokens. Another profit

That 3rd one I already commented on

Because being told to tell people “Blizzard make money or can be viewed by the company as even remotely positive is laughably ridiculous” as your job is not out of the normal. I’ve worked at places where they told me to “Stretch the truth”. So I can easily imagine a company like Blizzard/Activision could lie to people

Bottom line you believe them as genuine and I don’t

Yeah, some people still believe the Earth is flat, I don’t.

I don’t believe them. I’m not sure why you do.

Probably because I’m not a conspiracy theorist.

Well at least you’re not completely closed minded

Blizzard doesn’t want Classic to fail BUT the current management looks real bad that it is NOT failing. That means all the sub loses since Wrath on, was not due to a change in the market but mismanagement of the product.

I am sure they are doing alot of Devsplaining to the big money guys trying to keep their jobs.