Akkkkkkkkkksssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaalllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy they’re closer to cyborgs since they have flash parts as well.
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For a moment I thought you were trying to make a dial-up modem startup sound 
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It depends on the Mechagnome. The ancient Mechagnomes of Ulduar are 100% robotic, and the Heritage Armor of the Playable Mechagnomes is supposed to be “full mechanization”.
https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/132054-archivist-mechaton.jpg
After a long work week, Mortis, thank you for the chuckle.
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Part of the problem is that bots and the bot makers adapt. That was a big reason why the bans were done in big waves back in the day as the proactive approach would just tip them off and make them find ways to either circumvent the system or appear more like a legit player.
Seems to me the approach now is proactive, but reliant on player reports. As bad as it may appear, I have a feeling the issue would be much worse if they did this in waves like they did before.
I am curious as I do not think that the botters are selling the gold for real money. The cost of gold is equiv to the cost of tokens so why bother buying and risking your account instead of buying a token.
There has to be a way to make actual money so I wonder how the bots are doing it. Can the tokens be used on other games? Is there real money to be made with stuff that can be bought with tokens other than wow items?
Figure out how the real money is being made and find a way to stop that action then the botters naturally disappear. Trying to stop the botters instead is an act of futility.
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At least from BFA until now, it’s been open-world mount drops and special, extremely expensive mog gear that drops from random world mobs.
The Ardenweald group I watched was farming mog items (I forget the exact item at the moment), but it sells for almost 5-6 figures on the AH.
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Not his job to provide a solution. That’s Blizz’s problem.
Mate, lets be real, bots are freaking obvious to identify.
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You can do something yourself by repeatedly using clickable items dropped in their path.
There are plenty of places that offer in game gold for real money, I’d suspect they would probably be a fair bet as a suspect.
Yes, and then make a big show of banning them. Post the numbers on the forums. I believe FF14 does this.
That doesn’t mean GM’s have to sit there and do that forever, but enough to make it clear that Blizzard is actively banning obvious botters when they see it.
Another nice thing would be to tamp down on the whole sales/boosting/coaching crap. That stuff is absolute poison for the game.
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this sounds like a multiboxer… bots tend to have keyboard-smash names…
where as legit boxers will often name their characters
Blurpa
Blurpb
Blurpc
Blurpd
etc.
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Yes, among other things, they do sell gold for real money.
Problem is, Blizzard is taking it all into account now when designing the economy.
Why do guilds sell carries? Because material costs have increased dramatically with each of the last 3 expansions.
Do you know how much feasts costs to make? Multiply times 20 pulls per raid night. Or 40 potions per pull per night = 800 pots. That’s 4,000 herbs.
The reason guilds sell carries is because people sell their herbs for a lot of gold, but more importantly because Blizzard keeps designing the recipes to require more and more mats every expansion, whether for alchemy or cooking.
Can you IMAGINE what the prices would be like if the bots weren’t driving prices down as much as they are?
Ironically, the best thing Blizzard could do is go back to the old days of needing only 1 or 2 herbs per potion. With a 60 to 80% reduction in demand, the motivation to bot would disappear.
At least for the farming bots. Those crazy boomkin squads, I dunno. Maybe people should stop paying huge sums for transmog?
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Don’t bother. It’s always the same people that come into these threads to defend their actions or claim that you’re blind and can’t tell it’s a bot.
bOtS hElP kEeP pRiCeS dOwN!
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Yes they do, but the price for the gold is the same if not higher than tokens so again no reason to risk your account when you can buy tokens.
Do you really think it’s in Blizzard best interest to ban these bots? They’re making money of them as well I reckon. Even if they buy tokens to keep their accounts alive. It all equals money to Blizzard atm. Idk but nothing is been done about them.
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Since there is a lot of technical stuff that could be associated with the bot problem its best to just give feedback. If its a simple problem then by all means feel free to give your own solution…but giving your own solution SHOULD NOT be a requirement to giving feedback.
Automated flagging (note: not banning) can go a LONG way these days. Bot activity is so behaviorally different from player activity that it sticks out like a sore thumb with even the lightest analyzation. It’s not a stretch to say that a small team (~3-5 people) with the right skills could probably cobble together something that identifies bots with 95% accuracy, working toward 99%+ over the course of a year or so as the data rolls in.
With autoflagging set up, GMs just have to flip through and mark the handful of false positives, which the system can then learn from. It’ll become a cat and mouse game, but after a while it’ll be so hard to build a bot that fools the flagging system that bots will have to realistically simulate players at which point any benefit gained from botting has been eroded down to almost nothing, not to mention being ludicrously expensive to develop.
It’s nowhere near as big of challenge as it may seem. It’s a simple matter of two things:
- Will on Blizzard’s part
- The executives on top allowing budget to be directed to such efforts
The first may actually be the biggest factor. They may have run the numbers and found it more profitable to let the bots do their thing while making token efforts publicly to avoid upsetting players too much.
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