but other then the recent news of the the thousands of bans Blizz recently made, what exactly is being done about bots and how does Blizz handle this issue?
I’m curious because for the past several weeks I’ve seen the same druids outside instances I farm for raw gold. Always in the same spot, never reply to whispers, immediately go invis when I whisper, and always on. I’ve filed many reports and as its been weeks now, I’m starting to suspect that reporting is a waste of my time.
I somewhat learned about botting in my computer science studies and from what I understand it’s easy for a developer to identify a bot based on things like mouse movement, and keystroke input since bots have drastically different input mechanics then humans. So does Blizz have software detection like that built into our installs to quickly track and ban bots?
I’m also concerned because I’m aware of how accessible botting software is to come by. I’m sure with a little bit of homework any player could learn to bot, and if the ends justify the means I’m worried that my raw gold farming won’t keep up with gold inflation.
Lastly, has anyone tested Blizz on their response to botting? Of course its against the TOS but I’m curious if anyone has gone out and made a bot to do some harmless and obvious botting things just to see how long it takes to get banned.
I have been reporting the same druids for 1 month now. Each run of the instance I’m running returns roughly 250 gold, so 2500g in an hour before lockout. I’m going to lowball things and say 2500g x 20hours = 50k gold a day, equating to 1.5mill gold made this month per druid. Since tokens are selling around 120k gold, that’s roughly $240(Blizz currency) a month per druid, so multi-boxing 5 druids adds up to $1200 a month… I’m a student working minimum wage and that’s way more then I make a month…and I know there are much more lucrative raw gold farm instances.
Blizzard studies the bot and figures out how to break it before issuing their bans and suspensions. They don’t play whack-a-mole because that just alerts the bot makers. I wouldn’t recommend testing their response to botting. You could lose your account for 6 months or more
Just a fyi, not responding to strangers whispering you doesn’t make someone a bot, and how do you know they’re always on? If you’re sure they’re a bot, report and move on. Blizzard will investigate and take appropriate actions. Aside from announcing ban waves, they will never tell us what happened to our reports or who was included in those waves.
Reporting the same person over and over could be seen as harassment. Especially if they’re not actually bots.
Botter’s, and now multi-botter’s, have been a problem in this game since it began. Since this problem has persisted, my opinion is that there is no way to stop them - only slow them down. I imagine Blizzard spends a lot of money just spinning their wheels trying to stop these people.
With that said, as others have commented, all we the players can do it to report them ONCE and move along. My theory is why you’re seeing the multi-botters outside of dungeon entrances is because of the last band wave, now they’re using dungeons to raise a new squad of lvl 120 druids, hunters, and warriors - or, perhaps they’re selling level 120 character to players? I have no idea their motivation.
Blizz wants their sub money, so they ‘study’ the bots for 2 years or so, and when blizz needs a quarterly report boost, they ‘ban’ all of the bots, knowing full well that they will purchase new accounts and subs.
Rinse and repeat. That is how Blizz deals with them.
but its the combination of behaviors that make it suspicious. The players I’m referring to are players who aren’t only camping the same instance coincidentally every time I’m there, they are also sitting in the exact same spot, making the exact same movements and immediately going invisible when I whisper them (to hide their portrait and avoid getting reported.)
I’d be naive to think a real human player could check all those boxes.
In regards to harassment, the whispers I’m sending are along the lines of “Hello, are you a bot?”, which from what I understand isn’t harassment unless they replied asking me to stop whispering them . If they ever replied and said something like “please stop whispering me” and I continue, then it could be seen as harassment, but even that response would relieve my suspicions of them being a bot.
Lastly, I have done what you advised, my first report was filed back in June, but this post is questioning why several weeks later I am still seeing them, since in that time they have already made their gold.
The intention of the post was to better understand what Blizzard’s actions are.
I’m glad to hear Blizz takes the time to monitor the botters as other posts have mentioned to create more efficient solutions to botting, instead of banning each player individually, which wont solve the botting issue as a whole.
Basically I’m just looking for someone who is more knowledgeable then myself on the subject to explain to me “they can’t just ban people because of reasons x,y,z”, so I not concerned thats Blizz is turning a blind eye to botters.
They do a ban wave occasionally to make it seem like they do more than they do and botters just run more bots. If anything they catch the casual idiot who bots on his main account like a fool and while that is amusing, it does very little to stop the rampant botting and absolutely nothing to stop multiboxing which is somehow more legitimate than botting because of reasons. Blizzard makes money off both of them and they both ruin economies and annoy people the same but it’s different somehow.
Hey guys, to keep things on track I just wanted to share what inspired this thread.
This is an example of one of the individuals I reported back in June. I believe I was able to disrupt the bots script with a group invite, causing it to think it was currently in the instance and running its usual path.
