Multiple times I have been questing and come to a complete stop because the area is being farmed by a whole group of bots. Their movement isn’t natural and they are tagging everything in the area as soon as it spawns. I’m unable to progress because there’s groups in these spots 24/7. Are the GM’s doing their job or is botting okay now in wow?
All you need to do is report and move on. Blizzard will deal with the situation as necessary.
Please be aware, that lightning bolts will not shoot from the sky to smite the offender. Investigations take time, but Blizzard will handle it as they see fit.
As they are the only ones capable of handling this, reporting and moving on is the best method of action for players.
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Yes, Game Masters continue to do their jobs, which is not actually bot hunting. Our Hacks team are primarily the ones that focus on finding and dealing with various kinds of exploitation.
So no, botting is not okay. Saying that doesn’t mean that we can instantly catch everyone who may be exploiting. It is a constant war, and investigations tend to be lengthy as we are working to deal with not only the bots that you may have come across, but also the ones that you have not.
Please use the right click report option to report those you can for “Cheating”. The information gathered from those reports is very much appreciated and goes a long way to helping us deal with this kind of exploitation.
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I always find this sort of cognitive dissonance so damn weird. Did they not see bots at all for a period of time so clearly now that they see them again suddenly GMs don’t do their job?
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There’s always a word of banwave when it happens. Many afk bots vanishes and player who cheated starts complaining about unfair ban.
I have reported players a lot in recent time. When I go to Isle of Thunder (MoP) to farm Nalak for a chance at rare mount, I often see 5 or 10 moonkins running around moonfiring everything. They always moved in the exact same path like a fixed railway. I also saw once in Azsuna to the west of Academy bunch of moonkins running back and forth, also exact same pathing, killing murlocs. They are all leveling to 120 for farming.
Often time I see the characters with the same names I’ve reported before, in Drustvar farming herb and mine. They flood AH with cheap herb and ore to make gold which they then sell.
I figure by now I’d have unlocked the achievement “5,000th reported players” due to how obvious they were moving like afk bots.
Know what would hurt the bots the most? If Blizzard took away all the gold the players illegally bought from verified afk farm bots, the players would be forced to file chargeback to take their money from afk farmer and the farmers would start losing too much.
It’s your lucky day because I am happy to let you know that Blizzard does do this.
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Also I want to point out, a path that seems unnatural to me or you may be the most efficient farming path out there. There are some players that enjoy a style of game play that maximizes every second to make the most gold.
Or it could be multiboxers farming a mount.
Point is, we don’t know. This is why right click report is so important. If you were wrong no harm no foul. But you still did your part in speaking up. If you are right appropriate actions will be taken.
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Hey, it’s been about a week now and still all the same spots are full of bots. I AM TIRED OF PLAYING WORLD OF BOTCRAFT DO YOUR JOB
Vrak is doing his job. The forums here are his purview, not the hacks team.
This is like telling the school principal to go clean the bathrooms.
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I’ve spent a week right clicking and reporting and still the game is full of bots. If nothing changes I’ll just have to upload the footage of all the bots to reddit and youtube. Maybe once everyone see’s wow is okay with botting then maybe they’ll actually do their job. I’m not paying a subscription to play with bots.
A week? Such child’s play. I’ve been doing this since I came back for Legion, doubtless that there are others here that have been doing it far longer than that. The botting problem will never go away as long as there are other players out there willing to buy from illicit sources and compromise their accounts. Sad fact of life, unfortunately.
To prove what, exactly? Everyone who knows anything about MMOs knows that bots are an inevitable fact of life. They exist in every one in some fashion, this is nothing new.
As evidenced by the countless banwaves that go out, right? The bot forums that are flooded with salty players when Blizzard finally breaks one? The CS forums here plagued by those very same players? I entreat you to go visit the old CS forums and do a little research.
No one’s forcing you to.
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Yes, we all get that. What you seem to be not understanding is that there’s a process for a specific team who handle bots. They don’t come to the forums, they only look at in-game reports.
Nobody is forcing you to report anyone either. If it’s that upsetting to you, move on. Multiple reports from the same account don’t tend to stack anyway. Just report and move on.
You’re welcome to. It will accomplish nothing. That’s like showing a police officer a video of someone speeding as though they didn’t know it happened. They know. Let the right teams do their jobs.
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If your goal is to “Prove that there is botting in World of Warcraft”, Tomokoh, you might save yourself some time and just search for the terms on youtube yourself for some of the older recordings. If you think by exposing the not very hidden truth, that botting exists, that we’re going to change our tactics and investigation methods though, it simply won’t.
There has been botting and exploitation off and on in World of Warcraft since it began. Over the years our Hacks Team has gotten pretty good at hunting them, developing various protections that help prevent many of the known botting and exploitation techniques used as well methods to detect it when they are used.
This isn’t a simple task though, as we learn more so do the botters. They develop different and more evasive programs that try to remain undetected. It is a constant back and forth and one that we usually win, but it takes time and effort to make sure that we’re hitting the right folks and not mistakenly getting those that are legitimate players. As much as we’d like it, we can’t just snap our fingers and remove them.
If you feel like taking video that would be helpful though, feel free to submit those links through the Hacks Webform. That certainly would help in their investigation.
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People get shot in the world every day. That doesn’t mean the world is ok with people being shot. Logical fallacies will get you nowhere.
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