The bot problem in Hawthorne's Plot in Drustvar is out of control

Stormrage server and cross server, etc. This area is CONSTANTLY full of bots. Please god do something about the insane number of these guys out here. Just one quick look on any of the realms would land Blizz easily 100+ bot accounts to look at and potentially ban. It is absolutely ridiculous how this is being allowed to continue. Do GMs not exist anymore???

Right-click the suspicious ones and report them for cheating. Blizzard will get them in due time.

I would also suggest dispelling the notion that something is done immediately. Whack-a-mole only alerts the bot maker that they’ve been detected and it prompts them to change the code to elude Blizzard that much longer. It doesn’t work and actually gives Blizzard more work.

And maybe also read up on how they “allowed” the 74k accounts that they hammered in Classic recently.

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Right click, report and move on. It is not just one server, it is all servers and it takes time to research how they’re operating so that they can break them. A minor moment of Devil’s Advocate but it may well be real players multiboxing, you honestly do not know as you do not see the behind the scene logs. It could be hacked accounts. There are various scenarios that it could be.

Raging at Blizzard does little good when these bots exist because players keep purchasing illegal services and items, therefore there is incentive to keep botting. When there isn’t a market for it, there won’t be bots. But hyperbole and conjecture does nothing here, so please. Just keep reporting them and they will be sanctioned and handled in Blizzard’s time. Not at the snap of a finger every time someone comes here to complain.

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I am not able to say whether those characters are bots or legitimate players (either multi-boxing or doing 2x4 groups), but I do know that is one of the best spots for farming Blood-Stained Bones and thus is well known by farmers. So it is going to be heavily farmed by players.

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Existing in game doesn’t equate to being allowed in game. Exploitation is an unavoidable part of having any online service with even moderate popularity. The more people using the service, the more exploitative users there’ll be. But that’s sheer numbers, not a percentage relative to the size of the userbase.

The fact is WoW has a userbase larger than the populations of some countries, which far outstrips the size of WoW’s entire staff. So the idea of being able to 100% block all exploitative accounts is impossible. It’s also very inefficient to ban accounts as they’re detected (sometimes they do this, sometimes they don’t; they have to keep the enemy guessing) because it’s akin to trying to plug holes in a breaking dam, and has a high probability of false positives.

The method Blizzard uses; studying exploitative programs, stopping them from functioning, and banning in huge numbers, is actually far more effective and efficient and has a low chance of false positives (though they still occur). And right-click reports are very helpful due to the amount of data they capture.

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Allowed?

And for the rest of the replies yes obviously I right click replied, obviously its just more than one server, but this place seems to be a pretty big hotspot (along with the blood troll area in nazmir) that would be a pretty easy solution to observe and take care of if there was, you know, ingame GMing … but hey what do I know, wanting the game not to be full of this crap.

@Kyz: No they were definite bots. Bot behavior, repetitive patterns and timers. I watched them for about 10 minutes, attempted to communicate. They moved very little and it was on a set path that was the exact same each time they did.

Love all the excuse making for why there is apparently “nothing to be done”. If lil’ ol nobody me can find them, Blizz can find them.

Yes, allowed. You claimed Blizzard was allowing the behavior. I pointed out the recent ban that hit 74k accounts that was, per your words, allowing it to happen.

I also haven’t done the math lately, but I could be convinced to pay an extra $30 a month (likely more) for Blizzard to employ a GM to sit in every instance of every zone of every shard of every realm of every region. Could you?

There was also no claiming that nothing can be done or that Blizzard can’t find them. That’s the entire purpose of the hacks team. Everything that can be done is being done, shy of completely shutting off the portion of the game that these dirtbags exploit. You can bet there will be a larger outcry if that were to happen, given the various other legitimate uses it presents. They just aren’t doing it to your timetable, is all.

They’ve been fighting this fight for the better part of two decades. You’d think if smacking down the bots individually was better in any way, they’d be doing that instead of making their lives hell by waiting forever and smacking thousands of bots at once, but what do I know.

/shrug

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I don’t see anyone making those assertions. I know I did not.

I was merely pointing out how that location is one of many farm areas for blood-stained bones. More so there because it is a hyperspawn farm and the mobs are constantly respawning (if the groups are done right). Therefore it makes it a very popular spot, for legitimate players and for botters. Like the old saying goes, “Follow the money”. If a farm is found to be lucrative, then you can bet that botters will be attracted to it as well.

I have ran across many a character that I have suspected of botting. I always right-click report every time I see something suspicious. But I am fully aware that all I can do is suspect. Only Blizzard can know for sure whether something is a bot or not.

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Legitimate players can resemble this, which is why it’s meaningless with regards to actually dealing with the situation. Another aspect of the botting problem is people who think they know what bots look like, but are only relying on what they think and what they see. And that’s not enough for Blizzard. The only way to know an exploitative program is to be able to see the logs, which players cannot do. But when players become committed to their own confirmation bias and pareidolia, they spread false narratives based on those flawed assumptions, a false narrative that is actually beneficial to those attempting to bot, because it spreads apathy and encourages not reporting. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind that you don’t actually “know” if what you’re seeing is illegal, generally.
And even if it is obvious (e.g. people are no-clipping), that might just be a very obvious use of a program that has more subtle uses and you’re just seeing the ones who’re very dumb and bad at hiding. Additionally, while the effects of the program may be obvious, how the program is operating is typically less so. Considerably. And that’s where Blizzard really focuses their efforts.

Nobody claimed that. And I’m using this as a jumping off point, because what you’re suggesting is woefully ineffective. We’ll assume that this is a person using an automation program. If this person fits the bill of the majority of such users, then they’re likely a criminal with connections to actual crime syndicates (mafia, bratva, triads, lesser ones). So here’s what happens with your approach: these accounts get banned, the criminal operating them realizes they’ve been detected, they shrug it off and boot up more stolen accounts, and get back to work. They have plenty of these at their disposal. They can repeat this basically indefinitely, and they’ll make whoever made the program know that it’s been detected, so it’ll be modified.

Blizzard’s method stops the programs from working and boots anyone who was using it. It’s not a permanent solution, but causes a much larger setback to criminals when their hackers have to suddenly work out how they got detected and fix it, and have a very large number of illicit customers suddenly unable to do their dirty work. This hits much harder. And this takes out people who weren’t reported too, and possibly not even seen until Blizzard patched their systems to stop the bot. It’s a patient method, but it hits like a truck.

Blizzard doesn’t want it either. It’s their property that it’s happening on, and their game that’s being exploited for money that does not go to them. It also angers players, such as yourself, and loses them money that way. It also potentially incurs chargebacks when someone notices that they’ve been billed for a game they don’t play because their credit card or card info got stolen. Blizzard loses a lot from exploitative users. But it’s also, realistically, an inevitable side-effect of popularity. People buy gold, or powerleveling, they create a demand, and people are more than willing to provide for that demand.

But just because it’s impossible to fix the issues 100%, doesn’t mean it’s impossible to fight.

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thats pretty much what 2x4 farmers do, you mark spots for each member, wether its a farming group or multiboxer and you spam the mobs for like 2 mins not moving, then loot. They are often chatting on discord while they do it, mindless yes, not always botting tho, just efficient farming.

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You may have strong suspicions, and you may even be correct, but you cannot definitively say whether any character you see is a bot. Blizzard can.

Your part in the process is to right-click report the suspicious characters. Blizzard’s part is to investigate, determine definitively whether the players are botting, then study their behavior to determine how to break the bot software.

If they were to just ban them piecemeal as they’re reported, it would alert the botmakers and allow them to stay a step ahead of Blizzard’s efforts.

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