Herbalism bots plaguing BFA. What is being done? It's getting worse and worse.
My reports seem to be doing nothing why?
I would like some reassurance please.
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If you are using the right click report option to report those characters for cheating, Noobles, it will be looked into. These kinds of things tend to take some time as our Hacks team is usually trying to work on the overall issue and break the bot, which often takes a good deal of investigation and work to do.
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so report them...09/19/2018 03:55 PMPosted by NooblesHerbalism bots plaguing BFA.
Blizzard will deal with it in their own way09/19/2018 03:55 PMPosted by NooblesWhat is being done?
Sorry, but Bolts of Lightning don't drop out of the sky to obliterate the "bots". Blizzard takes their time and investigate the culprits and in due time, take care of them.09/19/2018 03:55 PMPosted by NooblesMy reports seem to be doing nothing why?
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Thank you Vrakthris
Thundertotem your passive aggression is not helpful. Only insulting to me.
Thundertotem your passive aggression is not helpful. Only insulting to me.
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I think you are reading a bit too much into my post....
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Thing is bots have always been a problem! Sure you see them more and more now that a lot of these mats are in such demand now.
As long as you have those who buy gold. Do not want to take the time to farm the stuff they need you will have bots in the game. Either being run by fellow players or by hackers using them to make gold to sell to their clients.
So report them and move on. They do track them and try to figure out better ways to detect them and if part of a hacker group track all those connected and shut them down. Remember the hacks have 100's of stolen accounts to work from, shut one down and then have a lot more to just replace them.
As long as you have those who buy gold. Do not want to take the time to farm the stuff they need you will have bots in the game. Either being run by fellow players or by hackers using them to make gold to sell to their clients.
So report them and move on. They do track them and try to figure out better ways to detect them and if part of a hacker group track all those connected and shut them down. Remember the hacks have 100's of stolen accounts to work from, shut one down and then have a lot more to just replace them.
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Time to stop boosted characters from herbing and mining IMO until they do some other human activities.
Seems that being on 90% of every day and gathering a bazillion herbs is not triggering anything.
Moved location 3 times today when herbing because the number of bots. Mostly boosted druids but also a few other classes. All have the same zig-zag movement and they stop at every possible node spawn place whether a herb or mining node there or not. Can tell if they just stopped for no reason because no gathering skill is cast.
A lot have also turned experience off that way their 110 boosted gear does not diminish.
Explains how some sellers on the AH have 20 darkmoon decks for sale non-stop.
By the time this gets fixed (if ever) the damage will be done.
Seems that being on 90% of every day and gathering a bazillion herbs is not triggering anything.
Moved location 3 times today when herbing because the number of bots. Mostly boosted druids but also a few other classes. All have the same zig-zag movement and they stop at every possible node spawn place whether a herb or mining node there or not. Can tell if they just stopped for no reason because no gathering skill is cast.
A lot have also turned experience off that way their 110 boosted gear does not diminish.
Explains how some sellers on the AH have 20 darkmoon decks for sale non-stop.
By the time this gets fixed (if ever) the damage will be done.
11/03/2018 08:06 AMPosted by SixofnineTime to stop boosted characters from herbing and mining IMO until they do some other human activities.
While some of these may be boosted characters, the majority of them are from stolen accounts. When they shut one down, another pops-up.
Be sure that you are right-clicking and report for cheating. That's how you get Blizzard's attention to the bots.
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No you didnât. Unless you too were on 24/7.
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They will shut down the accounts when they are ready to knock out the bot program.
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I have to admit that the botting problem is getting more and more out of hand. Itâs to the point that on my two main servers that I rarely bother to farm herbs anymore because of all the bots cutting the amount of herbs down significantly per route.
Is it really that hard to break a program? (Legit question)
Is it really that hard to see that X account only runs its 110 druid at X farming spot for unlikely amounts of time in a row without ever stopping or deviating off path, sends the herbs to another toon that sits at the AH, lists sometimes tens of thousands of herbs at a time, and then transfers huge amounts of gold around in extremely suspicious dealings, and on top of all that never experiences any of the content outside of a few herb farming routes? Those of us that have herbed for hundreds, or even thousands of hours in BFA feel pretty insulted that this suspicious activity isnât being dealt with in a timely fashion. The last time (A couple of months ago) I saw that I wasnât seeing the same bots, presumably from a ban wave, new ones with a slightly different route were up and running already. If a handful of crooks can outsmart and code bots better and faster than the best and brightest Blizzard has to offer, what does that say?
My uneducated suspicion is that the answer is that botting isnât being taken very seriously now at a time when Blizzard/Activision is cutting staff in numerous areas just to see how far they can push it before incurring major backlash from players. I do understand that itâs a company that has to make money, but when you post record earnings, and then cut staff, well that just looks plain greedy.
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Except itâs not âa handful of crooks.â Itâs a black market âserviceâ hosted in countries outside U.S. legal jurisdiction that has a vested financial interest (to the tune of millions of dollars ) in building a better mouse to get around Blizzardâs better mousetraps. Blizzard is in a cold war with those people, and the only way to make it go away permanently is for players to stop giving the criminals money and to secure their accounts.
As thatâs pretty much impossible and never going to happen, because of human nature in todayâs society, Blizzard combats them in the most efficient way possible. That does not include playing whack-a-mole with the bots. Doing so will only help to hammer out the flaws in the programs, telling them what got them caught so they can correct them and make them harder to detect.
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As a matter of fact, it is, because none of those things are inherently indicative of a bot, none of those things say anything about how the programs work, and most of those things are very anecdotal and arenât verifiable or falsifiable in the event of appeals, among other problems with these kinds of shallow, and deeply mistaken, understandings of how these things work that posts like this tend to reflect.
People, especially frustrated people, have a tendency to see bots everywhere, which is dangerous because then it will seem like nothing is done and create apathy.
In the whole scope of things, it actually is quite timely. Youâre just not privy to all the timelines and details, nor do you really seem to understand the process and what âtimelyâ means in that context.
Well, at least you admit itâs uneducated, but itâs actually straight up wrong. Blizzard does take security seriously.
Sigh.
Okay, letâs be clear here: Activision is not the same thing as Activision Blizzard. It is not Activision that ordered layoffs, and not Activision Blizzard who make bad games like Call of Duty 26 (Black Ops 4). Activision Blizzard is a holding company, means it handles stocks for a number of companies. It ordered the layoffs to King, Blizzard and Activision whoâre all divisions and have thus far been operating fairly autonomously.
Quoting myself.
That statement is wrong in multiple places. First off, the layoffs are over. It was that one instance, and thatâs done. Itâs not ongoing.
Second off, that hyperbole doesnât even come close to the why. The reason for AB ordering the layoffs isnât one that many of their consumers have agreed with, but itâs certainly not âjust to see how far they can push itâ.
Yes.
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Yes. What they do to âbreakâ the bot program has to minimally impact legitimate players. Back when the gold-sellers were âwritingâ their URL in dead characters in the sky Blizzard took a while to stop it. Thatâs because all the initial resolutions would have locked characters on a single plane. No going up hill. No going down hill. No using stairs. Blizzard had to find a way to stop this graffiti but still let players play.
Pure speculation on your part. Some of that would also encompass large guilds that have characters that farm materials for their main raiding groups. If it is always a 110 druid, itâs level-locked. An âexpenseâ and time consuming step a botter wouldnât waste time on. I know I leveled pretty quick just running around there on any character with herbing.
You only speak for yourself. Donât presume to speak for anyone else.
Definitely. Your statements would have looked less educated if you had actually educated yourself on what was happening.
Itâs Activision-Blizzard that is the holding company, not the game developer. Blizzard is the game developer of WoW.
Not game development. They are expanding game development. If you had bothered to research it, you would know this.
When players only look at the part of something that supports their agenda, they miss the important information that disproves it. Yes. people were made redundant. It is not pleasant. I really feel for those that no longer have those jobs. However, if you check the jobs listings at Blizzard, they are looking for more in other areas. Especially in Game Development. It was not the money-grab issue that players like yourself have made it out to be.
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Which wouldnât have stopped them anyway - I recall a period when they were lying in the street outside Stormwind AH to spell their URLs.
OP, if you have herbed literally thousands of hours in BFA - thatâs on average several hours every day - then you probably look like a bot to some people. Thatâs one reason they donât just go âoh, looks bottish, ban it.â
It was after that. They had them up in the air.
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My reports seem to be doing nothing why?
From my experience they do a mass ban all at once. At least thatâs what Iâve seen happen. These things do take time though, but believe me when I say it does happen.
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I donât think people often realize the scope of botting. Blizzard isnât fighting Bob in the Basement; theyâre fighting a well-equipped, well-funded criminal business that makes a lot of money off of peopleâs poor choices.
Bots run on complicated programs that the criminals constantly update to keep ahead of the curve. That program is what Blizzard wants to break, so it canât be used anymore in WoW.
Just banning the account wonât break the program, and banning the account wonât stop the botter. Theyâll just grab another compromised account and start again, and they have a lot of compromised accounts queued up.
This isnât a single guy with a few accounts; this is a criminal business with tons of people whose only job is to steal information and use it to make money. Botting is the least of what they do; they also steal credit cards, bank info, identities - anything to make money, because that money is very very good.
Report any bots you suspect, but also spread the word to your fellow gamers to not become a victim of their enterprise. Losing their accounts to a botter is the least of what these people are capable of.
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But you know what though, that would be an awesome idea.
Every time a bot or someone gets the ban hammer, a lighting bolt should come from the sky and hit them where they stand. Make it a bright blue or white lighting bolt that stands out.
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On the other hand bots help blizzard make money Pots cost so much gold that you are forced to buy a wow token.