So, Blizzard usually gives us a nice “Thank you!” in the mail if we report bots. This is nice to see and it shows us that Blizzard takes our reporting seriously and wants us to continue to report botting and other types of illegal behavior in the game.
Here’s an idea: Why not do more than give us a simple “Thank you.” Would it be too much to ask that players be rewarded with gold, faction rep, or crafting mats for making legitimate bot reports?
Bots usually affect the market in ways that cheat regular players out of a lot of resources in the game and I think the reporting system should act as a way of compensating for that loss. Additionally, this would give more players an greater incentive to report botting and cheating.
That’s a really interesting idea, but I can see some challenges with it.
It might encourage frivilous reporting, so the reward would have to be given only if it leads to action against an account. It could also lead to a kind of collusion if the rewards are good enough, encouraging people to bot and report themselves from another account for the rewards. Finally, it could encourage weird things, like having people send low level bots around to report high level ones, or have people make lots of level 14 hunters for Eagle Eye to get high level reporting rewards.
But I like it. I think the main thing would be that the reward would have to scale appropriately to the level of the character reporting, being good enough to incentivise reporting but not so good as to become a source of farmable wealth in itself.
Perhaps some kind of gift package in the mail that contains a random amount of silver or gold (depending on level) and an uncommon item, with a small chance for that item to be rare or epic.
I think frivolous reporting exists regardless. This wouldn’t change that for better or worse. The reward would be based on whether or not the GMs think the report was legitimate and the situation was actually handled on Blizzard’s end.
What if instead of gold or loot or whatever we just got more positive GM involvement in game? For example during beta GM’s used to come in and do random fun stuff from time to time.
Don’t waste time Mobikon, once someone has embraced a conspiracy theory like “Blizzard doesn’t care about bots as long as they get their sub money” little things like logic and reason have long left the building.
Yeah, totally, nevermind the rampant botting that Blizzard has asked us all to report in lieu of them cleaning up any of it themselves. Take an honest look at the game you’re playing. Blizzard doesn’t care about botting, they don’t care about RMT, they don’t care about Classic.
No, no. Hes right. Blizzard doesn’t do anything about the bots. In fact, Blizzard probably looks the other way, because it’s a paying sub and money is the only thing they care about now.
So your argument is that because bots exist, Blizzard isn’t doing anything about them? That’s stupid. That’s like saying because criminals exist, police aren’t doing anything about crime.
It’s not a black-and-white issue. As the saying goes, you can’t see the forest for the trees.
I don’t know who this YouTube personality is either. I’m guessing he likes complaining about the game but still pays for it and continually buys every expansion regardless.
There is truth on both sides here. Bots do get banned, but lots slip thru the net and the ones that are banned seem to be replaced quickly.
The report function works for bots, but see above. The report function on mail is a joke and I think it sends an email to someone who hasn’t worked at blizzard since 2013.
If this were ever implemented all I can picture is a giant bot blob roaming the countryside mass reporting any player foolish enough to get within render distance of it.