Xfour are you being sarcastic with that or serious? Because I’m sure you can figure out the difference 1 resource stream vs several means for prices.
The present situation on WMC.
Mostly the former.
I see its a serious issue and something needs to be done about it, but it is also a side effect of the cluster I most enjoy being successful.
if the reliance of bots/mules dies down, people will get back into DME/jump runs (literally best way to farm most important matts lmao) it will just go through a pain period as things creep up in price and whales try to gouge the AH til it stabilises.
Speaking of, someone on Mankrik tried to gouge flasks from 140/150 gold to 250gold, and bought out all 40g lotus to relist at 100g, within 2 days it was back to normal, r.i.p their gold
1 Like
Can this occur please? Stop free transfers from low pop servers. Bots and farmers abusing the free transfer shouldn’t be a thing.
5 Likes
Fully agreed; its annoying because it makes my farming professions WORTHLESS due to the fact that the botters are importing mass volume into our economy… its gross.
BAN THE IMPORT VIRMIN!
3 Likes
Free transfers from low population servers killed OCE Cata Classic for my entire guild (because the only option was a Horde-dominated PVP server).
It’s clear at this point it’s not just that they want low pop servers gone, but they specifically want OCE ones gone first.
There are 9 level 60 hunters non-stop farming on Grobbulus at any given time. Stop the free transfer export abuse.
Nobody is using this service anymore to get their characters off Grob, it’s time to make transfers paid again, at the very least.
(but like also, ban bots?)
4 Likes
Arugal search by instance and area 18/10/2024
- 2 x lvl 60 bots running 8 x lvl 23-25 bots in Scarlet Monastery (they start bot running them thru Shadowfang Keep to level )
- 32 x lvl 60 mages in Desolace/Maraudon botting the instance and selling/mailing stuff via Nigel’s Point
- 16 x lvl 42-49 bots in Zul’Farrak/Tanaris cycling thru Gadgetzan for mail box/repairs etc
- 1 x lvl 60 mage in Black Rock Spire (usually around 4-5 bots)
- 1 x lvl 60 hunter bot mining in Azshara
- 5 bots in the Badlands farming rock mobs
65 clear bots and every instance bot is a mage. And this is just alliance.
Who wants to come to a server where bots outnumber players by 10:1. We want to attract more players not more bots.
3 Likes
I’m a multiboxer who is leveling horde side on the Faeralina cluster with the intent on transfering to Whitemane when I am done. I check the /who list all the time and try to avoid people (I’ve had some of the professional farmers follow me around and probably right click/report me, even though I’m following the rules, and I don’t feel like eating an autoban and going through the appeals process, so i play with this constant anxiety, lol.)
- Anyways, horde side is 98% botters/professional farmers. Server population horde side is only about 20 people though. Depending on the time of day sometimes more or less.
- The VAST majority are hunters but I see a few exceptions like some 60 mage out in Arathi for 2 months before switching this last month to Badlands.
- There are always alliance and horde hunter bots out in badlands farming the rock elementals, always.
- They love botting the winterspring first two furbolg camps for some reason from 55ish-60(Maybe the extra xp from bead turnins?)
- Between alliance and horde hunter bots/farmers they have all the major zones locked down at all times on ore/herbs… both factions on EPL, Winterspring. And normally with only one or two in Burning Steepes and Azshara but with just 1 faction at a time normally
- Felwood for some reason too Alliance side. 1 horde side in ungoro for months(maybe he’s the devilsaur guy or something)
- 1 Hunter in EPL is mostly a bot but sometimes he is manually playing which I found interesting.
- They farm the Gurabashi Arena chest too… I’ve spammed the who list at chest time and seen them switch off their hunters and log into a character they have prelogged there.(mostly lowbies doing yolo runs) then log back onto their 60 hunter
- Most of the professional farmers have pvp ranks somehow.
- Most of the bots and farmers have special characters in their name in the vowels for some reason. Not always though. Some have american sounding names or are hacked accounts.
- Normally you can tell a bot because he has all BOE gear. Some of the professional farmers on here have raid gear with enchants. I couldn’t believe it. Has to be stolen accounts unless they raided with them ages ago. No one on horde side has raided on this server my whole time here.
*the majority of the botted lowbie hunters disappear after 60. I doubt they are getting banned because so many of the other ones are out there blatantly everyday. I have a few guesses why but don’t know.
*a lot of them don’t bot/play 24 hours a day. They seem to have a shift change where they log into the other faction or another account.
On one hand, I see why blizz has a hard time catching the professional farmers… You can’t tell them apart for sure by their name/gear/they have pvp ranks/ American sounding names, and some of them will occasionally switch zones every month or two, etc. I feel like even those guys should get autoflagged for human review though just for farming that many nodes/herbs for that many hours a day, for that many weeks. The bots though I have nooooooo idea how they can’t detect them. I am a coder and i honestly feel like I could code something to autoban them with 100% accuracy. The bots are way too obvious, it’s sickening. And the professional farms are obvious enough if you have something to autoflag them then manually look through logs with a human and see what are they doing with all those herbs/ore and what are they doing with the gold after. I can think of some ways to try to hide some of it like only doing gold transactions under certain amounts, and to space out the actual gold transactions, only use the AH to change hands of gold and items, etc… But still all that stuff does leave a paper trail in logs and a half intelligent human should be able to see that all this person does is farm, then dump gold on the AH by overpaying a LOT for stuff then not using what they bought, or constantly giving away the gold from selling stuff to people.
My solution: hire better coders/hire more actual people.
1 Like
This 100% – Blizzard’s open world bot detection and removal process is almost unbelievably incompetent and ineffective. In fact, as pointed out here, they may be perfectly capable of shutting down the bots but choose not to.
3 Likes
We have a lot of those on Grobbulus and I’m not actually sure if professional farming, in and of itself, is against the rules. Or should be, for that matter. I think it’s damaging the game but is this a matter of people playing the game how they want?
With that said, there are two points I’d raise here…
- When I watch these folks play, they still look like bots. They follow the same routes, they make the same weird turns. I can’t help but wonder if they’re using a botting program and just having a human monitor.
- If people want to be professional farmers, they should have to do it on the servers the intend to sell on. At the very least, free transfers need to be disabled so that if they want to do this, they’re paying the $35 per character transfer fee; however, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all to farm things on one server and then bring them to another. The only limitation I know of is a gold cap which I think is 5k, but you can have your bags/bank full of nothing but edgemasters if you wanted to and nothing prevents that.
Blizzard absolutely needs to step in and address this. It’s gone on for way too long now.
3 Likes
When i say “professional farmer” I am referring to china farmers and whatever other mostly asian countries they are doing it from. I don’t mean that offensively in any way, just stating the truth. People selling what they farm for gold and ultimately for real money.
Some people will farm on dead realms to fund their main characters on populated realms and not ultimately for real money. You can tell them apart by how many hours per day they farm they farm the same zone and how many weeks they are doing it. And if you have access to logs like Blizz does you could see if their gold/items from farming end up being spent on their own characters on their account or not.
I bet maybe 1 in 10000 people would farm EPL nodes/herbs 8 hours a day minimum for 2 months strait. The number is probably 0 but you get my point. You can increase those numbers and see how easy it is to get to where you can easily weed out these gold sellers just on stats alone. I am speaking from someone who checks the /who list a lot everyday on a low enough populated realm to recognize the names and zones they play in… and some of these guys are doing it more than the number example I mentioned.
You are 100% on the way a lot of them play and move. The backpeddling on them is hillarious. You see it so much because they play mostly hunters. Not all of them are terrible but generally speaking. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn its some child labor place in some bad country. It would explain a lot.
Yeah you are right the gold transfer limit is a complete joke. At the rate these guys farm they probably are transferring a ton of black lotus, arcanite, and other goodies worth waaaaaaaay more than 5k per load.
I agree though they need to disable this. It won’t stop it but it will slow them down and hurt them. Even 1 free transfer per account would help if they absolutely refuse to fully disable it. Needs to be disabled though.
1 Like
" In fact, as pointed out here, they may be perfectly capable of shutting down the bots but choose not to."
That would explain a lot if true. I wouldn’t even be surprised to be honest.
They are using a bot program. The instance farming mages on Arugal all have names like ugsres, rteysd or ohfghv and the same routine. The ones doing ZF, for example, all port back to the Gadg inn, head to the mailbox to auto mail stuff, head to the repair/sale NPC to auto sell greys and soulbound stuff, create mana gems, drink, drink again, fire off an ice armor, walk in the same path over an anvil and walk to the instance on the same path. They blink at the same spots. They auto-frost nova if they run into a mob and keep pathing to the instance.
It’s so obvious they are bots.
Blizz does a mass ban event every now and then but then they just restart. A few 60 bots leveling fresh bots through SFK, SM, and Mara takes a few days and then they are capable of botting themselves in ZF and then BRS.
And that is why these “ban waves” are self-defeating. Until they detect and ban before time-to-profit, the bot problem will not be solved.
They could wipe most non-bop items on transfer - they are from one ‘azeroth’ and do not belong in another.
I would support this
3 Likes
As would I.
1 Like
Arugal search by instance and area 20/10/2024 1:36pm Realm Time
- 2 x lvl 60 bots levelling 8 x lvl 16-18 bots in ShadowFang Keep
- 2 x lvl 60 bots levelling 8 x lvl 26 bots in Scarlet Monastery
- 30 x lvl 60 bot mages in Maraudon and selling/mailing stuff via Nigel’s Point
- 6 x lvl 47-48 bots in Zul’Farrak/Tanaris cycling thru Gadgetzan for mail box/repairs etc
- 11 x lvl 56-60 mages botting in Black Rock Spire
- 4 hunter bots in the Badlands farming rock mobs
71 clear bots and every instance bot is a mage. And this is just alliance.
Get rid of the bots and attract players
1 Like
Arugal search by instance and area 21/10/2024 7:56pm Realm Time (update)
All trainee bots fully fledged and 50 lvl 60 mages now botting in Maraudon
1 Like