Everyone needs to understand that this is coming because Blizzard didn’t have the forethought to address multiboxing when designing their Chromie system in Shadowlands.
Now with pressure to release there is literally no time to fix a huge system like this so they’re doing what Acti-Blizzard does and punish the players.
After 15 years of Multiboxing being okay they have decided that NOW it suddenly isn’t because they don’t have the technical ability to fix a broken shadowlands system.
Great, I was leveling this character to sell summons. I want a refund for my time invested Blizzard.
This will not, in any way, prevent you from simply all-tabbing on your other 2 accounts and manually click on the summon portal.
You may proceed as normal.
That’s probably correct. I haven’t played retail since the beginning of WoD so I’m not sure what the Chromie system is or how boxing is affected.
*edited
Looked it up and it’s basically level scaling. Just one of the many reasons I’ll never touch retail again - level scaling is garbage, always has been garbage and always will be garbage.
Says the copy/paste wannabe script kiddy.
It is absolutely clear as it stands currently.
ToU is not split between retail and classic.
I did back in TBC when software multiboxing was just starting to take off. Still have my KVM switch somewhere, started with 3 different computers linked via switch before I eventually switched to Keyclone then eventually Isboxer. For the hardcore multiboxers, hardware can easily be done. Would still be very viable in TBC Classic. Will most people go this route? HIghly doubt it, I know I won’t as I’m just not that into multiboxing as I used to be. Not worth the effort since it doesn’t hold a candle to what software of today is capable of.
But as far as 5-man leveling/dungeon grinding goes, hardware is very viable in easy content such as vanilla/tbc dungeons. For PvP and/or Arena, hardware is trash. If anything this will bring multiboxing back to its niche style of gameplay before all the goons jumped on the bandwagon and started terrorizing solo players by holding areas/hubs/zones hostage like a bunch of d-bags.
DO you know exactly how their anti-cheat and detection software works? I bet you don’t. You have no real basis to say this definitively one way or the other.
It may well be that botting programs are using a lot of the same functions and calls that the multiboxing programs use. And if there is overlap they can now auto ban for it without worry of bans being unintentional.
A long needed change as watching some of these people work on there 20+ accounts on live was just silly. Stand in an area as your army literally cleans house then mail stuff to your other boxses to craft and sell on the market.
Classic would quickly get there as we move into TBC with farming older and outdoor content in places people just are not.
No disrespect, but I’ve been reading your comments on here, touting software knowledge, and “from a developer’s perspective” rhetoric. I’m a video game engineer, I’ve actually written anti-cheat software. You’re barking up the wrong tree.
If they are using key dispatching software it is ANCILLARY to the automation they are running. Stating there’s “overlap they can now auto ban for it without worry of bans being unintentional” is actually furthering my argument that they have no idea how to detect the automation software. You do you realize, you’re perpetuating my case right? Like you understand, that by saying this you’re actually indirectly agreeing with me.
Yes, but without actually seeing their heuristics and source code for the way they do anti hack detection in their clients, there really isn’t any way we can definitively say one way or another the reasons they stated are true.
Otherwise I will give them the benefit of the doubt and trust that it will make it easier for them. They have far more specific knowledge then either of us, of their product.
Without even looking at it, I can give you several solutions as to how they’re doing it. High level:
1.) They’ve looked at common executables for key dispatching, and added them to a process scanner
2.) They’re process scanning open WOW clients, and checking input delay, and aggregating the data across all open clients
3.) They’re looking for input sources with identification that is not directly related to the keyboard serialization code
They said they are looking at key broadcasting. Without even looking at the source I can tell you how that’s done. Why? Because solving DLL injection for the automation software is difficult to detect.
Yes, and its possible a decent amount of the lazy botting software is doing similar things which it will help them cut down on.
The super hard botting to detect is the kind that uses a full client re-write that looks like the normal client to the servers, but isn’t and is modify data and falsifying what is sent as being legitimate.
Those kind of bots are hard to deal with but they are also extremely expensive and time intensive to make so are much much less common.
My guess would be that most of the bot software is lazy and this will allow them to drill down at the lazy one easier.
Yup you’re 100% correct on most of those points. But a blanket fix that impacts actual multiboxers, is incredibly lame (and frankly a bad business model, I highly doubt people are quitting the game because legitimate multiboxers are running rampant).
ISBoxer (which is the most common) doesn’t have any automation. There’s literally no way to do anything the bots are doing, with that software. You have to control your characters, that’s that. Blizzard simply cannot figure it out. I have no idea what numbers they are looking at when making this decision, but the impact of bots is actually proven very negative. That’s not the problem they are solving with this change.
That is correct. The driver is mechanics in Shadowlands expansion.
Yeah I read this too, which is also incredibly unfortunate (and lazy)
finally these scum are gone
Umm… you realize that every botter isn’t writing/developing their own botting method from scratch right?
Yes, and a full client rewrite takes hundreds of development hours normally. The only people that really do this are large bot farms, and they generally wouldn’t then sell the client because if the game company gets a hold of it they can counter act them easier and sink all that work.
Most of the sold bots are relatively short development ones made by 1-2 people, that are exploiting some very specific things.
They can be hard to detect but generally are faster and easier to patch.
Everyone knows how it works. Just Google Warden. There’s plenty of information on how to work around Blizzard’s inept “anti-cheat” software.
Thus, the thousands of bots, fly hacks and cheats you see … month after month.