The root of the bot problem

[Negald-aggramar]

The root of the bot problem is players buying gold.

[Humborger-herod]

the root of the bot problem is the authority not doing anything when a crime happens.

[Rautaketju-herod]

@Contradictus-westfall

Even if blizzard bans them, the botters will just make new accounts and boost new bots to 60.

… because

@Rautaketju-herod

Blizzard doesn’t ban them quickly enough.

If they got banned immediately, they wouldn’t even get to level 2, let alone level 60 with full pre-raid BiS and thousands of gold to their name.

@Delimicus-heartseeker

“Additionally, the last action was not several months ago. We have various actions happening all the time, often throughout the month in both games.”

Well, those “various actions” clearly don’t include bans. Read what I said. It’s entirely true, and nothing in the blue post discredits it.

[Rukkles-fairbanks]

Hiring the bot developer and paying them to fix your system is how to do it. But what are the chances that Activi$ion pays money on development?

But seriously, it’s software 101. The best hackers often make the best security consultants.

[Sedryn-feathermoon (Sedryn)]

Yep .

/10char

[Amelioratus-aegwynn]

@Contradictus-westfall

mage aoe and hunter kiting

Any class can kite when they can FLY due to hacks.

[Delimicus-heartseeker]

@Rautaketju-herod

Read what I said. It’s entirely true, and nothing in the blue post discredits it.

Alright.

@Rautaketju-herod

It takes several months for an account to be banned after being detected for botting.

Bots on Rattlegore

I’m sorry, Sokajoo, but that isn’t accurate. Of course we want to remove exploitative behavior as quickly as possible, that hasn’t changed, but a lot of these investigations take time. Several weeks is not uncommon, as we are often working to discover how a particular program may work and how best to detect it on a whole so that we can deal with the bots that may be reported but also the ones that are not. So that we can hopefully prevent their use entirely. That is the same today as it was 10…

Several weeks.

@Orlyia

You have zero idea how often that happens, Chaosnachos, I’ll positively guarantee you woefully underestimate what is done.

You can choose not to believe Blizzard. I’ve seen the lists of banned characters on the Chinese realms. I’ve seen the 100,000+ names they posted. If the bot bans took SEVERAL months here, I’d actually see bots on Heartseeker. There’s currently 11 unguilded Mages in Stratholme on Heartseeker. There’s 32 Mages in ZG, every single one of them are in guilds I’ve heard of.

Heartseeker has one of the highest Alliance populations in NA. Where are the bots here?

[Rukkles-fairbanks]

@Delimicus-heartseeker

Heartseeker has one of the highest Alliance populations in NA. Where are the bots here?

If we’re taking testimonials, they’re all over Fairbanks in the open world. Notably in Tanaris / Feralas I have seen a ton.

I’ve also seen hunters fly below the world outside DM:N (presumably) because level 58 hunters will appear from below the world’s surface in front of the portal and zone in; presumably to engage in flying inside the instance to farm the trib. Apparently they just wanted to skip the elite trash outside so they submerge and fly to the instance.

[Delimicus-heartseeker]

Most are sub 60 then? Is it possible they’re sub 60 because their 60’s were recently banned?

[Etoile-frostmourne]

Bots, like drug runners get replaced as quickly as they are taken out. banning bots is hardly addressing the root of the problem.

The root of the botting problem is the demand for what the bots provide. Gold or levels in exchange for real money. It’s not really any different from the demand for drugs.

Eliminating bots is like eliminating the poor farmers growing the coca plants.

These poor farmers, coca or gold (bots) aren’t able to sel directly to the end user, and are making the thinnest of margins. The people facilitating the product/money transfers are raking in the margins.

Imo, the call to ban bots is very appealing to ones sense of fair play and justice, but completely stupid.

The best minds can be hired to ban bots, but how much will these minds be paid relative to the profits that can be earned by people who have a demand to feed?

When money is the ultimate incentive, I will not be putting money on the employees hired to ban bots.

[Rukkles-fairbanks]

@Delimicus-heartseeker

Most are sub 60 then? Is it possible they’re sub 60 because their 60’s were recently banned?

I can’t speak to who is banned and who is not. But the pace at which bans are taking place definitely isn’t keeping up with the legions of boost that create replacements by the hour.

[Donkles-bloodsail-buccaneers]

I mean… it’s not like the other classes are hard to script.

They’re going to roll whatever is most effective. Nerf mages/hunters, then they roll warlocks, etc.

[Rautaketju-herod]

@Delimicus-heartseeker

You can choose not to believe Blizzard.

Your argument can be rephrased to “You can choose not to believe your lying eyes.” I’m willing to believe Blizzard when I have no evidence to the contrary, but in this case…

I’ve seen the same bots for months. Several other people have seen the same bots on their realms for months.

@Delimicus-heartseeker

Where are the bots here?

@Delimicus-heartseeker

11 unguilded Mages in Stratholme

???

@Delimicus-heartseeker

There’s 32 Mages in ZG, every single one of them are in guilds I’ve heard of.

Bots join and even create their own guilds now, if you weren’t aware. One of the most obvious signs of a bot was usually being guildless. Joining a guild and inviting legitimate players to it is part of the script’s efforts to conceal itself.

That’s not to say all those Mages are bots, mind you, but that being in a guild isn’t proof they aren’t botting.

@Delimicus-heartseeker

Is it possible they’re sub 60 because their 60’s were recently banned?

It’s a possibility, sure, but a recent ban doesn’t discredit the claim that bots are banned in infrequent waves.

I’d wager many of the bots are sub-60 because they’ve amassed enough wealth to start running more accounts at the same time, or people realized how ineffective Blizzard is at banning bots and decided to start botting, as well.

@Etoile-frostmourne

Bots, like drug runners get replaced as quickly as they are taken out.

If you ban bots quickly enough, like drug runners, they don’t actually do any harm.

Imagine if every drug runner was arrested on their first run and none of their drugs every actually reached consumers. Now imagine if every bot were banned before they could farm any gold.

@Etoile-frostmourne

Eliminating bots is like eliminating the poor farmers growing the coca plants.

These poor farmers, coca or gold (bots) aren’t able to sel directly to the end user, and are making the thinnest of margins. The people facilitating the product/money transfers are raking in the margins.

Imo, the call to ban bots is very appealing to ones sense of fair play and justice, but completely stupid.

Oh wow, you’re actually going for the “the poor cheaters” argument. Incredible.

[Rathia-deviate-delight]

@Rautaketju-herod

The root of the problem is Blizzard doesn’t ban them quickly enough. It takes several months for an account to be banned after being detected for botting.

This and Blizzard has taken a back seat in moderating their own game.

People have been posting videos of themselves solo AoE farming in raid instances for months. In many cases; some of these farms involve abusing pathing: hopping on a ledge or a bridge to exploit the pathing for lots of trash mobs or a boss so they can be killed when (normally) they wouldn’t be solo’able.

This type of gameplay ought not to be possible. It is blatantly exploitive in that you as a thinking person know the boss or trash mobs are limited by their pathing programming and that’s what’s being exploited often times to kill tons of trash mobs in chunks, or solo bosses by re-setting their attack animations by abusing pathing.

At a minimum, Blizzard Entertainment should be going through various dungeons and raids and implementing fixes so that it’s impossible to do this.

Back in Vanilla WoW, there used to be GM’s that monitored servers and would pop into dungeons and raids while this type of activity was going on. Players who were abusing the pathing / terrain repeatedly were often times told that if they continued to do so, they’d receive a suspension or a ban.

That type of intervention didn’t stop BOTS, but it did send the message to players who were abusing certain mechanics that if they continued to do so their account(s) would be in jeopardy.

Banning bots may happen in waves (as Blizzard alleges) but they aren’t transparent about how many they’re banning, and at what frequency.

It’s like when Blizzard Entertainment used to say “We ban people who cheat in rated battlegrounds / arena”. Back when I did rated battlegrounds years ago; there were definitely teams with players who cheated using various exploits. Some of them used kick-bots etc (and those are apparently still a thing).

Even when some players were eventually banned for cheating, it was usually at the end of a rated battleground or arena season. The problem with utilizing such a slow approach is that for weeks and months prior to that…you are allowing the rest of your customer based (who’s paying to play your game and are abiding by the rules) to be taken advantage of by other people who are cheating. It ruins the experience for those legitimate players…and because corrective action takes so long…often times it doesn’t actually repair any of the damage suffered by people who were cheated against.

The lack of communication from Blizzard Entertainment (not just on this issue; but other other issues that have cropped up during Classic) supports the allegation that they care very little about the game’s player base.

A critique I see all the time on these boards is that players are ‘too tough on Blizzard’. It’s true that players on the forums are very harsh at times with regard to their critiques of Blizzard. Critiques have become progressively more harsh over time because Blizzard Entertainment goes for lengthy periods of time without communicating with their community at all.

They ignore the player base for months and allow situations to deteriorate to the point where the player base is then practically screaming at them on the forums, and engaging in social-media campaigns in an effort to publicly shame them into some type of useful corrective action.

[Zhanli-wyrmrest-accord]

@Contradictus-westfall

Is mage aoe and hunter kiting.

[Scrubs] - Wrong wrong wrong wrong!

[Akumetsu-bigglesworth]

Now what if, hear me out on this one, they implemented a system that automatically detected botting/hacking and banned them BEFORE they could get those bots to 60? What if while they were taking them through deadmines for the first time they all started getting banned?

[Sitstraight-illidan]

the root of the problem is the players buying gold with real money. if players stop buying all of this ends period

[Sniffed-illidan]

Wow tokens just increased the bots in retail we see heaps in areas that insta spawn mobs just aoe farming. The reason you can turn tokens into bnet balance then use that to buy games, expansions, in game services ect and sell them for real money to someone else using the “gift” system. They have a website up right now selling them for 75% of the cost of what the bnet store is

[Rautaketju-herod]

@Sitstraight-illidan

the root of the problem is the players buying gold with real money. if players stop buying all of this ends period

“The root of the problem is people commit crimes. If people just stop committing crimes, there’d be less crime.”

[Khlause-kurinnaxx]

@Contradictus-westfall

The root of the bot problem is

That Blizzard does not ban the bots fast enough and fix their hackable client.

Part of the problem is their posture in the early days of classic wow not being active enough to crush the hackers and botters with an iron fist, and the continuation of weak state into the present day opened them up to being viewed as weak and ripe for the taking, and that is exactly what the hackers and botters are displaying for us by brazenly playing openly cheating.