Every so often there would be a ban wave, blizz would post a thread announcing that there was a ban wave, and a bunch of forum goers here would toddle over to their forum to watch the complaining, then players watching would come here to provide commentary, and the bot forum would see it and tell the company to hide their forum because we are all so “pathetic” here.
Every single time.
ingame harassment usually results from posts like the OP.
Idk why, because botting is a problem.
It’s kind of stupid we had to wait until asmon’s stream for people to be aware of this or try to do something about it… I’ve been reporting every bot I see for the past few weeks and it’s obvious they are bots regardless of boomkin or feral druid. I"ve only seen one get banned. The other 15-20 bots I’ve been reporting on a daily basis are still there in the same exact location farming the exact same path/route.
This isn’t even that hard to spot Blizz… literally I hop on for 5 minutes and I see them.
They do it’s called ban waves.
As a single email can only sign up for one Battle Net account and it’s still technically signed up for it , this happens with the ban wave
Learn how the internet works and why this is a very silly suggestion.
Say Bot A-ZZ use a VPN that 1000 legitimate players also use , should those players also be banned and blocked for no reason ?
Say someone bots and gets IP banned, then (as happens) their IP is given to a new person who wants to play WoW, should they be allowed to ? or should that ban stay ?
Ahh I miss those posts 
my favorite was the ones asking Blizzard to refund the $ spent on the bot when it got banned (general was half as fun as CS after the big ban waves)
Asking Blizz to refund the bot? Or refund them for their WoW accounts/subs?
And my favorite was people buying the “lifetime” license… And then 2 months later it was shut down.
If blizz wanted to prevent botting i’m sure they’d find a way. But it’s better to just ban bots, this way bot owners will have to buy new account and new subscription. An absolute win win for blizz.
The solution is pretty simple. Instead of banning accounts just shadowban accounts suspected of botting and be more aggressive with the shadowban system than the current system.
What does a shadowban mean? No trading with others who have not been shadowbanned, no ah, no mail. Basically no in game transactions except for other shadowbanned accounts to prevent adding a trade check to the bot script.
What does this do? Well instead of the current cycle of bans and new accounts bots won’t notice when they have been banned and waste a huge amount of time continuing to farm for nothing. Do that enough and for a long enough time and it will become unprofitable to keep botting.
If a player gets shadowbanned incorrectly a ticket is opened with some sort of proof of non-botting that is difficult to spoof. So you also give someone an out for being more aggressive with the bot detector.
Say goodbye to bots.
I don’t know if blizzard wants to do this based on the micro transactions shop for gold or because of sub volume but it’s not hard to stop. Every website that exists that is popular has ways to deal with bots and most of them simply shadowban to solve it. Let the bots keep working for no gain and make them waste as much time as possible is the goal.
both, the ones asking for refund on the $$ spent on the bot were the most 
worthy though. Also seen posts asking for refund of gold purchased on a 3rd party site and not delivered. Ahh there are so many great posts over the years.
I never saw any post with the nerve to ask for compensation for the bot from Blizz (why admit to cheating?) but it’s not completely impossible. I do remember on their forum they would rant and rave about how they were going to do a chargeback on the expansion (if recently purchased) and sub though.
I’ve never heard of this. Out of curiosity, which games do that?
Don’t know of any games that do it but it’s very common to shadowban bots on popular websites. You want the bots to not reset and to keep wasting resources for no gain.
Seems like it would pretty easily work in game when restricted trial accounts already exist.
Still is whack a mole and will cause 30 seconds of issues for the bot makers and they will be right back, the reason that whack a mole does not work is that it allows them to easily know exactly where they were , what they were doing etc. that got them caught to quickly patch the bot and send back out on a new stolen account.
Ban waves as it grabs multiple bots with different methods on each is the most effective and keeps them away for the longest time.
Anything whack a mole does not work.
Explain how a bot could detect it was shadowbanned without a real account in the area and part of the script thereby making it a bot account that can be shadowbanned too?
It would definitely cause more than 30 seconds of issues if done correctly.
It is an intriguing idea, but not entirely sure it would be effective. Blizz would know.
That’s true. They were able to get more than one bot program in a wave. Your explanation makes the most sense to me.
Here’s how i would address it, initially. I would develop, into my client software, a timing metric… one that watches and records constantly the amount of time it takes for actions (key presses etc) to occur. There’s no way a human could be precise every single time with the amount of time it takes to generate an action. For instance if starfall is being pressed EXACTLY every 2000 milliseconds it CANT be human
1 line of code to put a random xx milisecond delay before each action and that is bypassed.
Bot makers , while being the scum of the universe of gamers, are not stupid and know how to code and bypass simple fixes.
Well, you have the benefit of foresight. Im TELLING you thats what i would do. I wouldn’t be announcing it in real production. All they would know is that they are getting disallowed from continuing to be online. Eventually they may figure that part out, but by then im sure i would put a range that is equally as impossible for human reaction.
I wish I was that emotionally invested in a game.
Well, first of all. I know for a fact that normal players run bots while
the are at work, or sleeping. One of my co workers was banned for
most of the year due to his continuous botting a few years ago.
Only difference is he admits he was botting and deserved the ban.
I also know botting is not ignored by Blizzard.
For one, my coworker. For another, three days ago I reported
a massive group of Druid bots. They were in a certain area
for two days. Keeping real players from being able to even do
the quests in the area.
After reporting them, and getting a thank you from Blizz telling
me that action was taken on multiple accounts. I went back to
the area and looked yesterday. Not a single bot was there.
I multibox herbalism. I run 3 instances of WoW on one laptop, in windowed mode. My desktop is a mess, but it works. While I’m peacefully gathering herbs (which I both sell on the AH and use for professions) I report every bot account I see. I have gotten in-game mail telling me my reports have worked. Just keep reporting what you see and once Blizz has confirmed it’s a bot, they will take action. Sometimes they let the bots keep working while they figure out what programs they are using so they can put up defenses against them.
TL;DR - keep reporting. Even us honest multi-boxers are doing it. 
Can’t do that, most internet service routers don’t use a static IP. You could end up banning someone that has never run a bot, like you.
The MAC address would be a better target.