If Blizzard was serious about identifying bots and removing them then I think having “trusted” players in game (per server) that can report players in such a way that the player will be removed a lot quicker
These mini GMs will be regular players but have gone through a lecture on how to properly identify bots and how to use their own reporting system
You can find these players by either having a public signup or asking popular guilds to see if anyone is interested
edit: These “trusted” players are not banning anyone Blizzard still does their usual investigation. Let’s say 100 people reported 100 different people for botting the people who were reported by the “trusted” players will be investigated first
These “trusted” players are not GMs
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That’s a decent idea.
Create a positive list where players who’re more accurate than not get prio on reports that are more direct to GM’s to eliminate bots and RMT.
That can be the vetting process to get things started.
I thought more people would be in favor of this, I think this is a really good idea
Its a great idea, until the trusted players abuse their power like they often do. So nah.
10 Likes
Players GUESS wrong. And players have to GUESS. The way you actually identify bots involves things that players don’t have.
It is not acceptable to GUESS. If you ban 100 bots but you also ban 5 perfectly honest players, that is unacceptable.
I agree. How do you decide which players to trust? What is the “vetting” process that Blizzard has? And once other players know that THESE players have special banning privileges, there will be a TON of pressure on them from other players (less trustworthy ones). “Hey, I saw Abracadabra and he’s obviously a bot. Help me out – ban him. If you do, I’ll give you my gear drop tonite”.
No way! Players are not GMs. GMs are not players.
Same way jagex vets their pmods I guess
I wouldn’t trust any of you with my sandwich while I go to the fridge to get the mustard.
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You’re overestimating the difficulty of banning bots. It’s very simple to do so and doesn’t require any extravagent ideas. Blizzard just doesn’t care/weighs the cost of players leaving because of bots against the subscription fees bots pay.
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Completely false. The situation is incredibly complex and there’s no popular MMO that has defeated botting because it isn’t possible. Blizzard doesn’t make money from bots:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/herbalism-bots-plaguing-bfa/6981/28
Blizzard makes tons of money off bots. Stolen accounts aren’t early as common as they were fifteen years ago. It’s far cheaper to pay for a $3 account in Argentina than it is to social engineer someone enough to steal their account just to have it shut down three days later.
You should contact a gaming “journalist” and let them know this big scoop of yours. That Blizzard has been consistently lying about not making money off bots for years!
Or you know, they’re not lying about it.
There’s no such thing.
Protip: Blizzard isn’t required to tell you the truth about the demographics of their customer base. In other words, they lie like a rug.
Vrakthris has been employed as CS at Blizzard since Vanilla. Are you going to tell me that he consistently told the same lies to the playerbase for the last 15 years?
That’s a pretty awful accusation to a person who is employed to help people. It’s so funny to me when people claim to care about how Blizzard treats and pays their employees and then in the same breath claim those employees are liars and can’t be trusted.
Sad world.
Yes.
He’s not employed to help people, he’s employed to keep people paying their monthly subscription. If you’ve never been lied to by a customer service rep, you haven’t to many of them.
These “trusted” players are not banning anyone Blizzard still does their usually investigation. Let’s say 100 people reported 100 different people for botting the people who were reported by the “trusted” players will be investigated first
This method will allow Blizzard to identify the botters faster and if someone is “abusing” their powers (as in making Blizzard look into accounts that are clearly not botting) then that individual will be removed from the program
There really is no downside and these “trusted” players have little to no power
The problem is still that bots are in dungeons 24/7. Would need a method of watching their dungeon run.
Blizzard gets hundreds, maybe thousands, of botting reports having trusted players Blizzard can identify botters in semi real time and deal with them faster
It would give a better impression that Blizzard is doing what it can against botters and people botting in the real world will have a real high chance of being identified and dealt with a lot faster
They ban in btaches… this has been stated many times and having , trusted players report them will not speed things up as it would not be till next batch that they get banned…
You realize, of course, that the Venn diagram of the people reporting bots now and your “trusted” players is a circle, correct?
Absolutely nothing would change.