edit: I just want to say, it’s amazing how there are so many troll accounts on these forums with literal thousands of posts-- the vast majority of them play damage control for Blizzard and basically live on these forums. It’s getting really tiring seeing them constantly respond trying to discredit the very legitimate complaints of the playerbase. If you enjoy the game so much, get off the forums and go play it.
original post: The bots get removed in “ban waves” that occur every few months. However, players that purchase gold get a three day ban and that action is taken fairly quickly after they break the rules.
So why do bots get a pass for a few months whereas actual players are punished immediately?
To be clear, I don’t support buying gold, I have never personally bought gold, but I see more and more reports about these three day bans. I just thought to myself, hey, that’s pretty amazing that they actively allow botters to bot while they can somehow spit out bans against actual players on a regular basis.
This is just more proof in my eyes that they’re allowing bots to continue on in order to monetize the ban cycle. They allow them to bot long enough that they can make enough money to afford a new subscription and boost. However actual players that actually play the game? They get banned immediately?
Because it’s a cat-and-mouse game. Bot makers find a new way to go under the radar, game developers have to find a way to patch that and detect it. The process continues and it’s probably automated… because doing things by hand in IT is not sustainable.
You also don’t want it to be blatantly obvious what you just did to detect the bots. Therefore, they might wait a little before making changes and wiping out all the bots.
Exploits happen in the same fashion. If the exploiters know exactly what you just patched, they’re already a step ahead because they’re thinking about how what they changed may be patched… so if it’s obvious, they already know exactly how to fix their exploit and keep doing it, just in a slightly different way. It happens all the time.
Versus buying gold it’s blatantly obvious. There’s no memory injection. There’s no programs running outside of the game. There’s just gold going from one character to another.
What’s difficult to understand about the difference between software manipulation and sending gold? They’re two very different things.
I’m sorry, but this thought process is sheer ignorance and stupidity.
Game developers understand they’d lose more money on people unsubbing due to bots than they would potentially gain from some botters. Most people and 100% of all developers don’t want their games plagued and ruined by bots. It’s just that the people developing the bots are also extremely intelligent. It’s a game of chess. It will never end unless the game just isn’t profitable.
I think the more obvious answer is they just dont care to spend the resources to deal with it in any out of the box way. Analytics pick ups what it picks up. Some stuff is easier than other stuff to look for and review.
They actually ban bots based of simple reports now and not just for banwaves. No idea what changed but it happens on my EU server atleast. No idea either if they get the full 6month - permaban, but you can only hope.
For gold buyers… well only because bots cheat does not mean you can cheat too. Expecting no quick punishment is rather silly. 3 days also is literally nothing compared to 6months / permaban… in my opinion all goldbuyers should get the boot on 6months so these botters would have no source of income.
…banned on Tuesday, and back in time for the weekend
But honestly, Blizzard has zero incentive to ban bots faster than they can make back the money for a sub and lvl 58 boost.
In fact, from a purely business POV, it’d be stupid. That’s $55 they miss out on in just one month. That would take 4 months (rounding up) to achieve with subs alone.
So, if they ban…say…every 2 months that’s an extra $110 per bot account per quarter; almost an entire year’s worth of a player subbing. And, on top of that, Botters usually run multiple accounts. That means multiple MAUs that can be reported each quarter, since they don’t remove the MAU of a banned account.
Corporations are all about money ‘now’, not money ‘long term’. Blame investors for that mentality.
I’d be willing to believe that if they actually took an active role in dealing with bots.
Many have stated they’ve reported a bot and then continued to see it for weeks. Some have even gotten the ingame mail from CS saying they’ve taken action. Yet the reported bot remains active.
I mean, all you have to do is sit outside an instance these days and watch the rogues stealth-sprint repeatedly in or the mages blink-backpeddle in (again repeatedly).
And that notion that “oh they want to cast a wide net and ban a bunch at a time” is BS. Do you honestly think gold sellers would waste time with a game that claps their accounts (compromised or not) with in 24hrs?
((This would then reduce the chargeback fees they end up paying for those accounts using stolen CCs. There’s also the added bonus that players would see immediate results and would be more likely to ‘stick around’.))
All-in-all. I don’t believe them. And I will continue to not believe them until they have a handle on the bots. This laissez-faire approach is unacceptable.
Problem with that line of thinking is why wouldnt they just do the token then and cut out the middle man. Because it would make people upset, more than bots? I dont know maybe.
All the bot sub money is coming from people already willing to pay for wow stuff. Why wouldnt blizzard just milk them instead.
It would. They’ve “tested the waters” multiple times. Or are we really going to fall for the “oopsie we accidently allowed non-Chinese client users get viewing access to the tokens”.
Each time was met with a huge outcry, so Blizzard claimed ignorance and never ‘pushed the button’ to make the tokens available in The West.
EDIT: Another thing I just thought of. If they truly wanted to stop the bots, and assuming that most are using compromised accounts. Force 2FA. I bet 99% of the players have a cell phone.
That’s fine. I’d just be careful about spreading your misinformation on the forums. Misinforming people and creating hesitancy in reporting bots doesn’t help the situation.
It’s kind of like vaccine misinformation, to be honest.
