I see 3 fishbots in revendreth on my server for 10 hours every night. I have been reporting them every night for 2 months. I sent video and screenshot evidence to Hacks@blizzard.com. I stand in front of them on a large mount for 10 min and they keep casting through me without catching anything. Why doesn’t blizzard do anything about this? Literally makes me want to quit the game.
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If they really are botting, Blizzard will prioritize analyzing them and other reported bots with similar behaviors to figure out how the bots are interacting with the server and what kinds of software are running on the botter’s computers.
That way, they can kill the entire bot ecosystem at once by breaking the bot software rather than playing whack-a-mole with individual bots, especially since the bots just create another account and go right back to it.
You don’t kill a pest infestation by squashing one pest at a time.
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If something like this really puts you to that point, then I don’t really know what to you tell you.
You right-click, report it and move on. I will never understand people who feel the need to sit there and stare down another player/bot. Do you sit there for the full ten hours to time them? You don’t know who or what is behind the scene. It may be botters, it may be real players who are reporting you for a form of harassment. You’ve done your part and Blizzard will do theirs in their time - if they really are bots. Which you don’t know for sure either way without the data that Blizzard has, just your suspicions.
And reporting does, in fact, work. Hang around here long enough and you’ll get people who’ve been sanctioned due to other players’ reports. Just because you don’t see it or know what or when sanctions are issued, saying that they don’t work is untrue.
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reporting isnt an instant action. They need to investigate and break the bots.
Also, how do you know they are there for 10 hours straight? Are you sitting there being annoying for 10 hours?
I do long fishing sessions all the time and just ignore ppl on mounts in front of me and keep casting - you can actually hit the bobber through a mount, so your not being as game breaking as you think you are.
Just report and go on about your day. Bot or not, a toon fishing has no impact on your gameplay.
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I fly around and check if they still exist once and a while, not like it’s hard. Fishing bots play in first person. I know that from a 5 min google for wow fishing bot. You can tell it breaks their loop super easily by standing in front of them by the way they constantly cast instead of clicking the bobber 1 second after the bite. It’s not that THAT person is impacting my gameplay, it’s the thought that there are probably thousands of these running across all servers destroying the economy and raking in thousands/millions of gold in a way that is against TOS.
Ya idk what to tell you besides they are 100% bots, it’s super easy to tell because they cast in the exact same amount of time over and over forever. Also, I know reporting works because I get messages telling me action has been taken when I report mining bots in Vot4W all the time. I don’t know why reporting fish bots doesn’t work though. Should be pretty easy to tell a guy is a bot when he fishes for 10 hours a night doing the exact same actions over and over in the exact same time sequence.
Blizzard takes all botting seriously despite your false claims not everythign is cut and dry and they have to go thru hundreds of thousands of reports just because action doesnt happen on ur time frame doesnt mean nothing will be done report and move on.
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That’s not the point though.
Blizzard never bans a bot here, a bot there. All that does is alerts the bot makers they’ve been detected and they quickly make changes to avoid further detection.
Blizzard investigates (this involves wading through a hell of a lot of data that the logs produce), they then have to develop a solution to break the bot without breaking the game - not an easy task considering WoW is millions upon millions of lines of code - on top of an equally complex hardware/network setup.
They then investigate the ongoing reports and try to detect those using the bots, investigate and form a case - and ultimately they’ll unleash the mass ban hammer (and boy do the botters cry foul when that happens - all crying innocent lol!)
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You may be surprised how serious some folks are about their fishing.
Again I’ll say - you think they’re bots. Unless you have Blizzard’s data, you don’t know that for certain. One reason that nothing has been done as yet could be…wait for it… they’re not bots and they’re not breaking a single rule by squatting there for 10+ hours fishing up mats for feasts or to AH or whatever the reason.
No one here is saying that botting is okay or that you’re in the wrong to report something is sketchy, just to clarify. What we’re trying to say is that despite your google-sleuthing has told you - you really don’t know what another player is or isn’t doing.
You right-click and report them.
You move on about your day and forget they exist.
To focus on someone else, whether they’re a bot or another player, isn’t really healthy. Play the game for yourself. What someone else is doing isn’t really any of your concern - save for reporting what you think is questionable behavior. That’s it. I could find a spot and report umpteen people a day for anything from chat violations to zone disruptions or any number of things, but why would I pay my monthly sub to do nothing but worry about what other people are doing?
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I completely understand this. Of course, it’s the same as seeing a single crime - e.g. a theft - and then thinking about how deep crime actually goes, and how many thousands of people across the globe are currently being ripped off, robbed, etc. For sure, it sucks.
As regular citizens (read: game players), we have one way to combat this stuff, unless we ourselves want to join the crime-fighting team. That one way is to report the crime to the authorities, and move on.
Just as you wouldn’t really try to “oversee” your local PD’s efforts into combating theft and robberies, you don’t need to “check up” on things you’ve reported or even spend any time at all speculating on what’s happening behind the scenes.
The cop takes your report, and says 'thank you for your diligence," or some such, and you go your separate ways, right? If you do indeed see the same criminal again robbing someone else, you call the PD again. Your only obligation as a citizen (notwithstanding emergency aid, but I’m not talking about that) is to report the crime and move on.
There has to be some trust, despite what #socialmedia would have you believe. The people in charge are putting time and effort into combating crime; they take our reports and follow up on things. Keep in mind that just as the local PD won’t go five-star-GTA to find a stolen bike, neither will your favorite game company put everything else on the back burner to bust a fishing bot.
Good luck!
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Thank you for helping to improve WoW by reporting suspected bots.
Possibly like has been said, Blizzard is investigating the bot, working on a detection system for that botting software, and fixing the exploit that the bot might be using trying not to break the game for legitimate users.
Or they are actual players playing in first-person and cast over and over again to get the bobber where they can see it around your mount. Not everyone will move or react when someone is harassing them.
Why are you hanging around them and standing in front of them? You just need to report them and move on.
On a side note, I now know why people keep standing in front of me or on my bobber while I’m fishing. I thought they were just doing it to harass me. I have arthritis in my hands and sometimes spend time(hours) fishing to do something in-game that doesn’t involve a lot of movement. Maybe next time I’ll cast over and over again when they do it.
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I’ve been accused in-game of botting before. I never felt any obligation to respond to the accuser or justify my game play.
I used to be particularly amused by people who would stand on my fishing bobber who didn’t seem to realize that simply binding a key to a particular action could allow me to click through them to the bobber. Came in very handy during the old STV fishing tournaments.
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Feeding my kitty in Classic I was also. So much fishing
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