Maybe. They’d have to have some information about the rival though. Anyone can find, use, or create their own botting programs, websites, etc. and sell gold.
I could be very wrong, because I simply don’t have any data or insight, but I’d suspect that people who would wish to form and control a cartel would be mostly people who are actively playing, whereas people who would wish to run bots for RMT gold sales are business-oriented.
I don’t think they care about whether some players blacklist them from their PuG raids, or guilds.
And there may be some ways of enforcing penalties that we are unaware of. Heck, there may be collusion with GMs, and kickbacks.
There may also be Blizzard employees going undercover, playing the long-game, pretending to be players, getting in with the cartels and working their way up so they can dismantle them from the inside over the next few years…
you’ll find many of these businesses actually overlap with each other.
contrary to what many believe, filling gold orders and material orders is alot harder then most would expect so cooperation is very important.
you see more face companies that would act as brokers and connect you with distributors and other middle men while others run and operate bots and scripts getting product for their customers.
honestly if this wasnt against tos or eula, this would be rather a logistical impressive feat.
While that seems like a reasonable statement, I certainly don’t have access to Blizzard internal cost/benefit analysis metrics.
If there are reasons to believe that they are losing legitimate player subscriptions to these bot cartels, there may be reason to do so.
Of course, it’s all speculation. I’m riding around different areas at the moment, mining and herbing, and trying to find bots in the open World on Faerlina.
I’m genuinely curious as to where I would go to notice all these bots in my day to day activities.
I’m on a low pop server and I wonder the same thing. I can gather plaguebloom and other herbs or buy them at a reasonable cost. My guild even farms black lotus now and then though I’ve never found one. But I get lots of ads from gold sellers in my inbox so there must be some bots on the server. I suspect the the higher the server pop the greater the market and the greater the problems.
You are a skeptic. You question everything on these forums like there is some alterative motive behind the complaint.
You are on one of the most populated servers and you dont see any bots? I mean if you are only doing instances, or sitting in org selling ports I guess that’s possible. If not you are either being dishonest with yourself or are completely clueless. I can tell you in the last week I have seen bots in the barrens leveling. In azhara fishing, and even running a route around one of plagued farms in WPL (this one was literally named Aassdd btw). You can easily tell by scripted movements, and zero human interaction. They don’t even target you unless you are hostile and have hit them.
Its clearly a net negative. You don’t even have to do any math to see that. Again you are attempting to “just ask questions” about stuff that isn’t even relevant. But “I’m just asking” You sound like a flat earther. Again, reeks of skeptic who questions actual facts.
Perhaps. I do tend to question things rather than accept unverified statements as fact.
Correct. So far at least, but I’ve only circled through Silithus and Winterspring so far, doing Herb/Mining rounds. Heading to EPL now.
It could even be both, or myriad other things. There’s no dichotomy here, other than one you are positing.
That’s what I’m expecting to find. I don’t spend a ton of time farming mats in the open world, so when I read on the forums that there is a massive botting problem, I get curious enough to go to try to verify it for myself.
I mean, nice ad hominem attempt. I’d suggest that if you would actually like to try to discredit someone by name-calling, you use something that makes sense.
The WBs themselves should be removed or the CDs and hassle of dropping them should be removed. The trend is starting raids with WBs and kudos if you’re able to finish with WBs, but whole servers being held hostage by buff drop timers, even with good organization, makes the whole raiding scene a massive chore. WBs ruin the game.
Only took them 15 years.
They’re not going to shell out more money for a human being to keep a server clean, much less several human beings to keep several servers clean. It seems like they won’t shell it out for better automated anti-cheat either.
“Original AV” is a meme. The original AV was several mistakes compiled into an entertaining mess that nobody really understood. Having it back wouldn’t illicit the same response from players now that we understand AV.
No. This is the slippery slope that brought us heroic raids, and then LFR and Mythic. Raids have one difficulty and people clear it or they don’t. If you find a raid too easy, enjoy spending your time on something else.
Mega servers work if the node spawn rates for materials is dynamically adjusted for it. Something that every pserver understood was too much effort for Blizzard to implement, so they stuffed 3-4x the accommodated amount of players onto one server and called it a day.
No. You’re playing an old game, not a remake. You won’t recapture the mystique of any vanilla event any more than you’ll recapture doing any of the raids for the first time as a player tackling the unknown. You’re nostalgic for a feeling from this game, but you haven’t realized that by definition you won’t ever move beyond the nostalgia into experiencing that sensation as it if were fresh. The game’s content will never be fresh. What keeps vanilla alive 15 years later are the endless new experiences of doing that same content over and over again with new people. That’s why it’s a good MMO and not a dull single player experience like retail.
I will concede that people act like there is a flock of bots flooding every zone. This isnt the case. There is however a bot problem there is no questioning that. This morning im herbing atm while my kid sleeps. I’ve come across one clear bot in WPL. A simple /who blackrock depths shows 16 rogues and no one else. Also 1 group of 4 mages and a priest in stratholme. All guildless faceroll on the keyboard names. Sure a few could be real players doing some solo farms. More than likely most are gold farming bot characters.
There are known Indonesian gold selling GUILDS on my server. We know who they are. They have broken English names and sit in farm areas farming gold to sell to raiders.
I’m not going to try to convince you that there is some MASSIVE game destroying amount of bots just stealing all my quest mobs. I am however going to objectively tell you there is a clear botting problem that affects a lot of players on a daily basis. If you are at all involved with this games community you will notice shameless gold buying, and most people being aware of the bots. I know a guy who sells TO the farmers lol.
Edit: This one bot in WPL btw? Chinese letter name for his pet. Guildles. Sits on one of the WPL farms and waits for plaguebloom spawns. Might not even be a bot, but at the very least a gold farmer with plans to sell in game gold for IRL cash baby.
I dunna think there is a game mechanic that Blizzard could implement that would somehow change the persona of the playerbase to some sort of benign consciousness that would bring back the summer of love.
Blizzard certainly created some hicups with Classic but it was certainly mostly the playerbase. Community and all that.
That’s a shame though. Bots infiltrate the integrity of the gaming experience and cheapens player’s hard work.
You might be right, but you don’t know that for sure. You’re essentially saying “you think you do, but you don’t”… but what if I actually do??
I agree, but this is a fantasy list. I realize that one isn’t practical.
I disagree with you here. What harm would randomizing AQ materials do? I realize I will never re-capture the nostalgia of the first time, that’s not what I’m trying to do. But mega guilds are effectively bypassing the event entirely because they know exactly what to shop for and stockpile their reserves (on both factions) from launch. That trivializes the event and makes it less fun for everyone. This is of course, just my opinion.
I’m not going into details about it because there’s no point. It’s too complicated to explain here and I know you’re going to argue with me no matter how rational I believe it to be. Plus, the topic has already been argued to death in hundreds of other threads and we don’t need more of that here.
I’m simply saying that I have an opinion on the matter - and my opinion is that it can be done. The end.
On the topic of faction balance. Here is an idea. Would faction buffs make an impact? This is nothing major that would change things, but perhaps encourage new blood?
Say an NPC in town that gives you a buff of your choice. The faction NPC doesn’t have to be immediately available he could be tied to a quest chain. The buff options don’t also have to be immediately available they could unlock after certain quests or levels. At level 60 they could provide less than they do or simply not be available.
+5% exp.
+5% reputation exp.
+10% faster movement when a ghost with a 15 sec invulnerability duration after reviving.
Casted buffs last 20% longer and have a % chance to not be removed upon death. This wouldn’t affect cons.
You have a higher chance to of finding rare mobs.
While in a group, that is not a part of a raid, healers can have a small chance to receive an auto-revive prompt.
+up to x MP5 the lower the lower your mana is upto an x amount maximum. This could also be translated in some way to rage or energy.
Of course, none of the buffs would last post death.
I get that all of the above can be misused (griefing for instance), but at this stage in WoW Classic’s life cycle is there anything that isn’t being abused?d
That’s a pretty good list. Problem is, there are seemingly tons of people out there who will inexplicably defend to the death extremely cheesy, sleezy practices like world buffs, multiboxing, GDKP, and boosting, acting like they are vital parts of the game. To get rid of those things, you’d probably also have to get rid of those players that defend those practices in the process, which, actually, would probably be the biggest improvement to the game… their absence. They would not be missed.
