Rampant Botting and Exploiting

[Lawrence-grobbulus]

Not too much to say here but I wanted to make a thread about this video to see if I could fish out a blue post response.

Frankly I expect nothing but who knows. XD

https://youtu.be/nWW9s8xGf-8

[Rukkles-fairbanks]

At this point I’m starting to think a blue response is even less likely than bots being banned. Private servers did far better jobs than Blizzard while taking in far less money.

An addendum: Makes one wonder how much of these newly arrived queues on realms are just the bots migrating over to NA.

[Luaana-moon-guard]

My guess is a blue would be more willing to kick people off the forums complaining about botting and pretend there is no botting problem then addressing the botting problem.

Diablo Immortal trailer anyone?

[Khlause-kurinnaxx]

Its truly sad, they had that kind of fly hacking wall clipping underground mining and herbing slimeballs in wrath bigtime, and blizzard did something at that time, cleaned it up by late wrath.

I hope blizzard kills all these botters and hackers off, its killed the markets, and some will complain about the inflation a bit, but truly the inflation is unavoidable. Botting and hacking killing the market is fixable.

[Akumetsu-bigglesworth]

I wish they’d do something, they wont, and sadly as it gets worse I may just end up dipping out but I’d love to stick through to the end of TBC, however blizzard doesn’t seem to care as long as they keep them bot subs.

[Peragrine-grobbulus]

I watched a vid by another content creator who came up with some very valid points.

Such as - the NoChanges crowd would be popular with Blizzard because doing nothing regarding Classic - and supposedly supporting that principle - would be a far less costly move, development-wise, than fixing issues that make it more playable today. He also pointed out how Blizzard games such as Classic have an initial burst of design enthusiasm with hotfixes rolled out, interaction happening frequently, etc, only to die off as the game went on.

So you end up with things like issues with battlegrounds and botting happening because there is no initiative or drive there to do anything about it. There is also the fact that bots increase certain metrics used to show investors how well their product is doing. Bot are on a great deal of the time, and that artificially inflates the figures given out to those investors. While the number of bot accounts as against regular accounts might be smaller, the amount of time they spend on (which is what is reported now, not sub numbers) makes the game look a lot healthier).

And for anyone who doesn’t believe me, that time played metrics are a thing, let me quote from their 2019 Annual Report:

“We consider a variety of data points when determining the estimated service period for players of our games, including the weighted average number of days between players’ first and last days played online, the average total hours played, the average number of days in which player activity stabilizes, and the weighted-average number of days between players’ first purchase date and last date played online.”

If they really want to improve the situation, what they need to do is employ a few roaming GMs to visit areas that have been repeatedly reported as botting locations, check out characters farming and if they prove to be bots, immediately kicking them from the game and cancelling their accounts. Blizzard has already stated in its legal documents that they have the right to take action up to and including account cancellation for people found contravening the rules. If they do that on a regular basis, it will become more expensive for people to create accounts, level up and bot and they may go elsewhere for their money.

[Zhanli-wyrmrest-accord]

@Luaana-moon-guard

My guess is a blue would be more willing to kick people off the forums complaining about botting and pretend there is no botting problem then addressing the botting problem.

“There is no war in Ba Sing Se.”

[Valinia-netherwind]

ThEy BaN iN wAvEs!

from:

Customer Support in the Spirit of Classic

We’re going to end this here as all this back and forth is entirely unproductive. I’m afraid overall you may be operating on a bit of bad information, Leafie. Assuming any part of your “response from a GM” isn’t entirely made up for your own narrative, if a GM did at some point state that the email is used by Dev, I do apologize for the confusion. As most folks might be aware, the hacks email goes to our Hacks team, hence the aptly named address. They are the ones that do the lion’s share of …

@Valinia-netherwind

“Of course we’d like nothing more than to instantly remove all potential botters, cheaters, exploiters, but that isn’t the reality of the situation. Our goal is always to do what we can to do more than play wack-a-mole, but to better deal with the overall issue. While you are likely not to believe it , our hacks team does have a fairly good success. You have the advantage of a myopic point of view, with a limited view of the whole, where our team has to look at and address a wide array of bots, exploitation and cheating. They may not always be able to get it all, but they do what they can as they are able”

Its absolutely atrocious. I literally met a bot on my druid when I was lvl 20 ish or so and we both ended up meeting in every zone till I was 60. I bet hes still out there killing dragons in feralas. I reported him for weeks and nothing. And i took my sweet time to lvl my druid too. Jesus christ I wish we still had pservers.

[Khlause-kurinnaxx]

I target player run bots on my own faction, If you see them make sure they know you know that they are botting and its gonna cost em if you are to keep your mouth shut. real players have skin in the game, the bot famers dont.

Its easy to figure out who’s who, just look at their gear and guild, it’s not hard to figure out. Just make sure that when you are extorting them, do it from an unguilded alt, and unguilded alt on a different account is even better, just in case blizzard choose to take action vs you for doing something good for the economy, such as ya know, collecting taxes from the bots.

[Hates-yojamba]

Shame on you blizz!
SHAME!SHAME!

[Attention-bigglesworth]

it would take literally weeks…maybe months of the forums filled with posts before they even look into anything. They will delete threads and ban/mute forum posters and people who reply before they will ban a single bot. They don’t care, and unless it is going to cost them $$$$ they never will care. The best thing people can do is vote with their wallets…but no one will because there is no other option. Personally i hope a new private server opens up again.

[Cauchy-heartseeker]

@Peragrine-grobbulus

Such as - the NoChanges crowd would be popular with Blizzard because doing nothing regarding Classic - and supposedly supporting that principle - would be a far less costly move, development-wise, than fixing issues that make it more playable today. He also pointed out how Blizzard games such as Classic have an initial burst of design enthusiasm with hotfixes rolled out, interaction happening frequently, etc, only to die off as the game went on.

This is crap. I’ve been watching the development of Classic since it was announced. The “No Changes” idea is not about being lazy and not maintaining the game. It’s about keeping it as close to possible to a Vanilla experience. They were very transparent and forthcoming about how they would go about this, and they justified everything they’ve done.

Once the game was launched, Blizzard did a pretty good job addressing things that needed fixing. Layer hopping, exploits in battlegrounds, resource management. Some of these things took time. It’s probably not out of laziness. It’s more likely due to the complexity of the game. If players start squawking about something, the devs will have to:

1. Determine if the squawking is indeed about a problem and not just whining
2. Determine what the cause of this problem is
3. Attempt to fix the code causing the issue
4. Test the fix
5. Address any issues that came up from that fix
6. Test those fixes
7. Address any other issues that pop up
8. Repeat until some stability is achieved

We’re given blue posts when the CMs have something to say. We are not entitled to “to the minute” updates.

Want to blame someone for ruining the game experience? Try blaming the selfish/stupid players who’re taking advantage of these exploits!