I don't understand how multiboxing is different that botting

I agree. And, really, Blizzard’s stance is that whether a player responds or not, is at the keyboard or not, isn’t the back-side meaning of botting.

Botting isn’t actually about individual keypresses. It gets broken down to that when people get mad about multi-boxing, usually because of the single keypress that led to their death (whatever damage ability got them because they were hit 5 times or 40 times instead of 1 time.)

When speaking of Botting in World of Warcraft, most often we’re referring to one of two things.

One is a botting software program. In this case, it’s a long sequence of many actions, with qualifiers when to perform some. The botted character moves along a pre-determined path. If it’s an herbalism bot, it moves to each and every known location where an herb has spawned and performs the interact option at that location, delays long enough to have collected the herb, and then moves again. It might have basic handlings if a mob attacks it or if it dies. Whether a player is in the seat actually isn’t relevant so much as that the player is not making the decisions, is not pressing the keys to perform the actions.

The other is attempts to use macros or the API to perform multiple actions in a way that has been very explicitly made not possible. One example is people using fancy computer mice with macro buttons to try to externally handle things like time delays.

If you look at the sticky post Macros: Essential Information and the third section, “Macros - What can they not do?”, those are rules that Blizzard has made, what they consider vital to the integrity of the game, to not allowing players to bot. For example:

Macros cannot make smart decisions for you. They can’t cast spells based on cooldown, or check if a buff is active, or magically fit all your abilities onto one button.

If the way you control another character is set it up so pressing “1” on the keyboard activates a keybind in the other client to /tar [main] and /cast [heal], you’re making the decision and controlling that character - even if “1” to your main tells them to /cast [spell].

A multi-boxer is sending “1” to every client, but they have to have decided that they actually do want ALL clients to perform the keybound action. If no one needs a heal, and they press “1”, nothing stops it from casting the heal.

The bot you described doesn’t require the player realizing they’re at 40% or deciding what heal is needed or pressing the key to do so.

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