I get it, Blizzard doesn’t care about the players or the game anymore, money keeps the world turning. But don’t you even care about your own reputation? This is less of a forum post for discussion more of a way to bring attention to this (well known) issue. I suggest anyone who cares about the state of the game also makes a similar post with the same video until something is at least said about it.
Blizz doesn’t care. $15 is $15. And they’ll use this as a reason to add the token (which we know doesn’t stop botting, and actually increases it). And players don’t care, because they want to buy gold. This is what Classic has become. And the hardcore server will be even more botting and gold buying.
Blizzard bans free open source bots because they are easy to ban wave. They get the pattern from several player reports and they just ban every character that simulates the same pattern.
But they don’t care to spot custom bots that farm instances because they’re harder to spot. These are bots that goldfarmers pay for.
And custom bots are the worse because they’re the ones moving hundreds of thousands of gold (in Era).
Open source free bots are unreliable and don’t matter because people using them aren’t even doing RMT.
Blizzard is blind.
Ill say they likely dont care either because its another 15 bucks and bumps the MAU
These are some enlightening and disheartening details. Idk about how detecting these work so I appreciate the information. I had false hope they might enforce their OWN rules and do something about bots blatantly fly hacking. Example: pay some kid $20 an hour and show him what to look for (no clipping fly hackers) and the areas its popular. This person could hop from server to server and spend 20-30 minutes just watching different areas. Then either show him how to initiate an account ban or let him keep a list for someone else to do later. Not like it’d really cost much, the undetected bots still pay his salary.
Blizzard isn’t blind; this is what they want.
Oh hi Classic era, do you know what Blizz did when the “bots” got out of control in WotLK?
We got the WoW Token…
So, youre official statement will be along the lines "We detect and ban billions of accounts per month, but they keep adapting. We’re introducing the WoW Token in Classic Era as a means to combat illegal gold. We know its not the perfect solution, but it is a tool that is both safe and effective. We will provide you with the multi trillion ban numbers in the followijg months to show you how serious we are, once the outrage over us adding the WoW Token in era is over.
Those ridiculous Blue posts about “We’ve banned x amount of bots” are just insulting. It’s all lies. Blizz can say whatever they want, then players log into the game and see the same bots fly hacking 24/7 forever.
As far as them saying the Token stops (or deters) botting…that’s complete nonsense. It encourages buying gold from sites, because players are doing that anyway and now they can play for free as well. The Token price is like…4k? Quick google search shows buying from gold sites is $38 per 20k gold atm. Just cut that in half for simplicity sake and it’s like $20 for 10k gold.
So you can:
A. Buy your monthly sub from Blizz for $15. THEN buy a token for $20 to sell for 4k gold. You’ve now spent $35 for your monthly sub and 4k gold.
B. Spend $20 for 10k gold. Buy a token for 4k off the ah to pay for your sub and pocket the remaining 6k.
Hmm, what will players do? Spend $35 for 4k gold or spend $20 for 6k gold. And Blizz does nothing about gold buyers either, so there’s no risk. The real saps are the ones who are too afraid to buy gold from gold sellers, thinking they might face punishment or (even more hilariously) have some kind of ethical objection.
And none of this matters, because Blizz doesn’t care. They have no respect towards their game or the people playing it. And the players are just as much to blame. They buy gold to buy gear in gdkps, because that’s all Classic has become. It’s a game for whales and bots.
There’s no integrity. There’s no brand.
Third option: leave the game altogether.
You’re right and we all know it. I still don’t get it. The bots are selling cheap gold, they’re likely also paying their subs with gold. So the gold sellers earn that sub money, not blizz. So these bots are actually stealing blizzards business BECAUSE OF the implication of the wow token. If bots pay with gold they make, and people pay bots for their gold and pay blizz with gold, how does blizz actually win?
Seems like a vicious circle.
From what I understand not only do a lot of people by gold, but the shame in gold buying is essentially not there either.
The epidemic of bots is just the visible result of lots of people buying gold to create the demand. The gold sellers are doing the best income per hour thing by farming with bots instead of manually playing the game. The bot accounts would have to get banned quickly to make it a net loss to the gold sellers to keep buying new accounts, leveling them and making enough gold before getting banned
If there is another SoM I strongly support a draconian gold cap. If all you did was play the game legit something like 20k should be more than enough
Why does everyone keep bringing up $15?
Blizzard already said they don’t make money off the bots…
You make some good points. I suppose a ton of the players must be buying for it to be this out of control right? A gold cap could be a solution but I’m sure people would just funnel gold through alts, the cap would become a minor inconvenience. Seems people mostly enjoy playing when they don’t have to play… like watching youtube while a mage runs you through DM for hours using gold you never earned. Why not just say screw the game at that point? Really odd stuff.
I’ll play Classic WoW instead!
Somebody pays for every sub. Either you do for $15, or you buy a token and someone else pays your sub for $20. Despite what that tool Ybarra says, Blizz DOES make money off the token.
If you’re referring to Classic Era, I fully expect the token to end up there too. Botting and gold buying is already rampant and going to get even worse with the upcoming hardcore server. Blizz will, once again, swoop in and add the token with ‘this is the only way to mitigate bots!’ Which is another lie. But hiring GMs costs money. Why do that when they can exploit the situation instead of addressing it?
Crazy how even after all these years, the exact same bot scripts that were active in last Wrath are up and running now. I bet if glider bot came back they wouldnt be able to stop that either, or maybe just wouldnt care to even if they could.
Might as well switch to a private server at this point, at least they have actual moderation.
But there wouldn’t be farming bots if people weren’t buying.
They’ll get around to bans eventually but by then the damage will have already been done and the banned will just make new accounts and do it all over again anyway.
WoW (especially Classic) isnt ActiBlizz’s bread and butter anymore, far from it, so just forget about the level of attention that used to be paid to it and any hope of Blizzard doing something that makes any kind of difference - or to act quickly.
As other posters have stated, integrity went out the window a long time ago and this stuff wouldn’t happen if enough decent folk were playing the game - no integrity to speak of there either. Blizz and those clowns are made for each other.
I wish I still cared like some of you do but I just can’t. It is what it is. I remind myself to be happy with what I got (don’t talk to me about private servers) - official servers - and if I ever get sick enough of the state of affairs I can just walk way. Wouldn’t be the first time.