Funny how they can ban players for buying gold in a timely fashion, but not bots?

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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lol…three days.

…banned on Tuesday, and back in time for the weekend :rofl:

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.

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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.

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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.

The ban waves happen right before a game sale, which happens about every 6 months.

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.

So, you’ll readily believe the anonymous claims made by various players but not Blizzard?

I’ve only seen this on a couple of YouTube videos. Never seen it done personally, however.

Just out of curiosity, I did a /who of Slave Pens on Ashkandi right after reading your post.

Time is 7:45PM, 9/25/2021:

https://postimg.cc/HcXhrN8K

Tell me who the bots are, please.

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.

If it was just one person. No, no I wouldn’t. And if I didn’t see multiple hunters running around Alterac Mountains during Classic; reporting each one of them and then watching them continue to exist for the few days of each week I’d swing by there to farm Wintersbite.

I’d be suspicious of the mages. Specifically: Des, Bav, and Car (purposefully abbreviating due to forum policy about dropping names). Though I do know /who doesn’t denote if the dungeon is heroic or not.

There’s also that Ashkandi is about half the ‘seen’ pop of Pagle. Like, right now, there’s 21 non-70 mages in Slave Pens.

((And I know how this looks, but apparently there was a ban wave a few weeks ago. Keep an eye on Slave Pens and see if more ‘strangely named’ mages and rogues start showing up.))

Yep, I know it looks tinfoil hat-ish.

I encourage people to report bots. And, if those characters that are clearly botting continue to persist after the report, keep reporting. And then come here and Tweet Blizzard CS; in short, make noise.

((Obviously stay with in the ToS for both platforms.))

Oh and don’t just say “bot” in the report. Give a bit of detail as to what they were doing and how they were moving. Of the roughly dozen or so characters I reported, all of them resulted in a ingame mail.
…though they did stick around as I mentioned earlier.

Blizzard should be running ban waves on a weekly basis. Not every couple months.

Heck, if I were them, I’d make a webpage that posts how many accounts were banned for various reason: Exploiting, Botting, Gold Selling, Gold Buying, Harassment, few others maybe. No names.

Would go a long way to dispelling the rather solid impression that Blizzard doesn’t care, and actually relies on Botters to pad numbers.

That’s the thing though, would you believe them? Would you believe those stats? They already said they take action against bots 24/7 and ban thousands daily but I’m assuming you don’t believe that.

Would it really help if they posted stats about what they’re doing?

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I like bots in the game. they are fun to watch. I could report a few but it’s not my job.

Honestly, if the bot infestation was still high. No.

That’s largely what’s driving all this. We aren’t seeing the action just the words. Or at least, we’re not seeing the action in substantial levels.

What they could do is start a program that effectively deputizes some of the players to either outright suspend accounts for a few hours or prioritizes their reports – basically escalating them to an immediate GM response; as in a GM will port in and observe.

((Obviously with harsh punishment if the privilege is abused.))

You just equated vaccine misinformation with spreading misinformation in a video game??? :flushed:

Well it’s kind of accurate since spreading misinformation that may dissuade players from reporting bots leads to even fewer bots being banned, which creates a less healthy game environment… it’s just so much less serious than anti-vaxx for damage.

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everything is outsourced and automated to save $$$. which is blizzards only goal anymore. When you interact with a “GM” it’s just some random person working a job and following a script, they don’t know much of anything about the game and generally speaking just give out copy paste responses based on buzz words in your tickets. If you press the issue enough times you will EVENTUALLY get to somebody a bit higher up who knows a thing or two, but is still generally handcuffed by the copy paste response they are supposed to use. If you then push EVEN HARDER and open tickets till you are blue in the face…you can, if you are lucky, get in touch with a person who will actually look into your issue…or to put it another way…get in contact with what a “GM” used to be back in 2005-2009. There are exceptions of course but this is the formula…and i imagine it’s nearly the same kind of thing when dealing with bans and bots. Just a generic approach based off an algorithm with very little to no human interaction beyond a person following the cut and paste script they are supposed to follow, with no direct knowledge of the game whatsoever.

No, that is a really, really super uncouth comparison.