What do we have to do to get a bot banned?

[Lockzilla-thunderfury]

@Bladewise-herod

No the real problem is that the multibillion dollar company doesn’t care enough to ban the bots as fast as they should be. That’s the REASON everyone is able to buy gold. If Blizzard was actually doing their job, the bots would be banned before that gold ever hits the marketplace and gold prices would be so high nobody would buy it.

They can’t afford in game Quality Control people…

Yea i didn’t type that with a straight face…

[Lockzilla-thunderfury]

@Delimicus-heartseeker

Here’s some reading to do if people here actually want to learn something, instead of conjuring up false narratives based on absolutely nothing but their own disdain towards this company they continue to funnel money into:

https://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/215264-blizz-mining-bots-are-everywhere-again/

https://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/254071-where-are-all-the-gms-in-game/

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/many-druids-botting/29147/24

If I have just a tiny portion of what we invest in fighting this I could retire, easily - and in style. - [Orlyia] Support Forum Agent 2012/01/04 05:26:00 PM

In game, game masters were the mitigation to all this. Obviously they shouldn’t ban a bot that I know is 100% a bot just because I watched him long enough to know that he is in fact botting. They should have a hired team of people to be in game to respond to tickets and check the botters out themselves. I know A LOT of people that would sit on wow for 8 hours a day from home for $15 an hour taking care of the botting and hacking that is out of control currently.

Botting was so bad years ago that they had to fight the developers of honorbuddy to shut that wow bot down. Here we are years later and light years ahead with hardware and software technology. The hacking and botting is only going to become more prevalent the longer they allow it to go on. I say they allow it to go on because they’re literally doing the VERY least they can do… Expecting a player base to police your own game and then spitting on that very base at every turn is not good policy.

[Voidheart-earthfury]

Here is what I do not understand a few servers recently had a massive banwave overturned due to some type of internal error and yet the ones illegally hacking and hitting are getting away with it daily

I’ve reported and camped the bots many of times. I’ve yet to see results of the reccuring bots

[Treesap-herod]

@Delimicus-heartseeker

Of course not, why would Activision be enforcing rules for a game they have nothing to do with?

How dense are you? Activision-Blizzard is the company that resulted from a 2008 merger of Activision and Blizzard. Based on the way this company manages it’s games these days I find it much more accurate to call WoW an Activision game than a Blizzard game.

[Delimicus-heartseeker]

@Vrakthris

I know this is a popular and fairly trite quip to throw out, but to be clear… Activision has zero to do with the development of Blizzard games. Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, but has little else to do with the running of the company. Our Developers determine the content of our games.

[Lockzilla-thunderfury]

Yea because they never say false things… Like how the blues and the blizz twitter dude said them mass bans were legit huh?

LoL Activision has been calling the shots on big game changes and it 1000% shows since they took over majority shares.

[Delimicus-heartseeker]

I suggest you do your own research because you’re not likely to believe any facts I tell you.

[Gaige-hyjal]

you dont have to do anything, all your reports get put into an automated deletion box.

[Vrakthris]

@Lockzilla-thunderfury

Yea because they never say false things… Like how the blues and the blizz twitter dude said them mass bans were legit huh?

Didn’t say they were legit, they said they were intended. With the appeals that were submit the folks who applied the actions in the first place realized an error had been made in that application and overturned them. That didn’t make what we said on the forums or on Twitter false.

@Lockzilla-thunderfury

and it 1000% shows since they took over majority shares.

Feel free to believe whatever narrative you wish, it is an unfortunate truth that it is easier to believe the contrary when you don’t otherwise have insight to the process. Especially when anything said to the contrary is brushed aside as a company line, or white knighting, etc…

@Bladewise-herod

Blizzard seriously what is the deal? Your report feature does nothing, it’s a literal running joke at this point. I’ve been reporting the same guy for a week and he is CLEARLY a bot (running a loop the EXACT SAME WAY every time in a way that no human could/interacting with NPCs the exact same way every time/still killing the NPC even if I tag it/putting in inhuman amount of hours ect).

It generally isn’t as simple as “See person who looks like bot, ban person who looks like bot”. Yes, we can and have suspended or closed accounts like that, it is part of our normal practices. However, overall doing that on an individual level has very little to no impact on the overall practice.

The goal is to have the most impact we can by finding as many of those who are found to be botting as possible, while also masking our methods so as not to let the creators of those programs figure out what we may have found. It is a constant battle, and one that we care a great deal about.

The report feature itself collects data and provides that data for our Hacks teams. They run multiple investigations based on that data to accomplish a number of things.

• First, would be to work to identify potential botting and exploits.
• Second, would be to use those investigations to find ways to break the programs or somehow automatically detect and/or block them.
• Third, to penalize those accounts found to be violating our policies.

These investigations take time. Sometimes a few days, but often several weeks. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about them, or the impact that they have on the community. This is a battle we’ve been fighting since the game launched and it likely will be part of our game as well as many others for a long time to come. We have our victories, some minor and some more lasting, but that a bot exists doesn’t mean that we don’t want to do everything we can do eject them from our game as quickly as we can.

Please continue to use the reporting system if you come across someone you believe might be botting. It does help far more than you know and it certainly is appreciated.