Like in any business, Blizz is making a calculation. Will they make more money with bots or without?
Remember in the movie Fight Club?
The main character’s job was to determine if paying the wrongful death settlements for a fatally faulty automobile was cheaper than a recall of the faulty car.
See the Ford Pinto for RL example.
Same thing here --is an improved gaming experience for players from a bot ban more profitable than keeping bots?
I think we know what the answer is.
Someone is paying or has paid for the account.
If the account was actually compromised, then there would be an action by the person with the hacked account. Either way, the spice must flow.
All weekend saw the same names from the same servers with Dks from level 71-78 bg after bg.
So let’s say your account was hacked on Friday.
How long would it take for you to report this to Blizz and how long would Blizz act on that report?
And how are bots in BGs farming gold?
They aren’t. They are leveling to become gold farmers in the future.
Blizz knows who they are and what VPNs they are using. Period. This isn’t 2009.
Blizz’s AI knows.
Do you know what a chargeback is? Read the blue post I just linked.
Are more people who are playing actually supporting bots than those who would quit due to bots?
Again Blizz knows who they are. Believe it.
I’m not stating any disbelief; I’m stating that there are likely so many people supporting bots that they outnumber those who do not and/or who would quit as a result of bots.
This is on Blizz to ban bots. Check out this post. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/i-just-spent-the-last-hour-reporting-bots-and-didnt-even-get-bored/1526931
I have witnessed this myself. An unending stream of bots making this trip. You think Blizz doesn’t know this?
Go buy some gold – the next day they will boot your butt. They booted my idiot brother the same day!
They know. And like others have said in the ToS, botting is a bannable offense, but Blizz has the last say in who they ban and who they don’t.
I read once that on one of the big private Vanilla servers, before Blizz made Classic, the admins were in business with the gold farmers, getting kick backs.
Not saying Blizz is doing this but it makes more sense than them NOT KNOWING who is botting, or that it is the fault of people who aren’t reading the CC statements.
I find it very hard to believe that all these bots are on compromised accounts. I thought authenticators were required. How are this many accounts hacked to support the endless bot armies?
You just broke the first rule of Fight Club…
Bots are not from stolen accounts or unaware people of their inactive ones. They are actual accounts running by bots only.
Blizz is playing the blind eye here because it not only serves as an income from the bots and the indirect gold selling/paying for their sub, but also because it’s a great way to inflate monthly active users, active accounts and playtime to show to the shareholders in their monthly meetings.
To the silly suit guys that has no idea what a bot is, they only see that “people” are playing a lot every month and income flows. It’s a great way to lie about the health status of your online game.
All the horrific allegations about Blizzard in the last year and a half and yet no whistleblower has ever come forward to corroborate your conspiracy theory about bots. Just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean every single Blizzard employee who has ever given statements about botting is lying. If Blizzard employees were being forced to lie about the botting situation, it would have come out by now.
What’s really funny is the amount of real subs they’re losing in favor of the bots. What are they gonna do when half the real player base is gone, and it’s like 66% bots, 33% players, then because there isn’t enough players to meet demand, bot subscriptions start expiring without renewal because it’s no longer worth it for them?
I have a theory that the botting situations hasn’t gotten as bad as people say… now before you jump down my throat, hear me out. I have a feeling it’s not that the botting situation has been made WORSE as of recently, but rather, there’s just considerably less real people playing recently. This means botting seems a heck of a lot worse because you see far more bots than real players. Think of it like this, if 2 month ago there was 300k real players and 60k bots, you had higher odds of running into other real players. However, if only 100k real players are playing now, and there’s still 50-60k bots, you’re much more likely to run into a bot over a player. In other words, the botting situation never changed, we simply notice it more often now because there’s less real people playing.
Again you are saying I do not understand while ignoring the obvious.
Blizz knows the bot accounts.
They can easily ID those accounts.
They can push a button and their AI can generate a list of bot accounts a mile long.
You know this. I know this. We all know this.
They make more money by keeping the bots.
Whistleblower? LOL! No one’s life is in danger.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
yea, no. That post was from retail. Not applicable to Classic. Try again.
Gitcher tinfoil hats here! TINFOIL HATS FOR SALE!
Oh yeah? Why don’t you go ahead and explain how this magical button works then? Since you clearly seem to know more than all of us here, including Blizzard representatives themselves. 
My guess is you don’t know the first thing about computer science or the technical hurdles of designing software to counter malicious actors, especially when your team is understaffed and feel that they’re underpaid.
Where did you see the sourcecode, friend?
Based on what, exactly?
I spammed AB all weekend and the alliance lost 90% of those matches because we 5 capped their bot team. Games lasted like 5 minutes tops.
Reported probably 50 bots. Kept seeing them all weekend.
To play here they need a VPN.
Block VPNs and they go away.