Why Input Broadcasting Software was Banned, and How long does it take

So I came across a player yesterday clearly using input broadcasting software. I observed him several times while mounting his sky golem, oddly enough a druid multi boxxer who was trying to pretend he wasn’t using this software to multibox. Yet, when you see the Sky Golem’s all mount at the same time and you witness in your chat box these 6-7 players/accounts all pick the same herb mere seconds apart, thanks to timestamps using Prat.

So after reporting the player as well even sending an email with a list of all the players/characters associated with this account and screenshots. I check on my widowbloom auction this morning and noticed I had been undercut and some one had 1775 Widow Blooms on the auction. I went to check on who the seller was and sure enough the name of the player I reported was the seller. I took my auction down and reposted undercutting by 10g, then this person also took theirs down and matched my price. I had a total of little over 200 widow bloom up and with him matching my price with 1775, there is no way mine would be the first to go on the AH. I was farming yesterday early in the morning prior to reset as well as last night before logging off and was able to manage to get 400 widow bloom in these hours, compared to 1775.

The issue of the Nazjatar herbing is one of the reasons I left the game during the 8.3 patch as well as the whole fiasco with corruption. I’m happy that Blizzard has taken a stance on this input broadcasting software and making it a bannable matter, but honestly it shouldn’t take long in my opinion to observe a player doing this once it has been reported and to take action.

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It’s possible he was using a hardware solution to duplicate the inputs. I personally don’t think it’s fair to ban one and not the other. Seems to be saying it’s ok to cheat if you have a lot of money to spend, but it is what it is.

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Nothing about what you describe seems to indicate a player using input broadcasting. Mounting at the same time does not require input broadcasting and there is a popular addon that uses a part of the ingame API to do it - a blizzard-provided function. And the fact that the characters were picking the herbs seconds apart from each other rather than at the same time indicates the player is cycling the windows and controlling each character individually - this can be done very quickly with current tools and is in total compliance with Blizzard’s policy regarding input broadcasting.

Now, if instead you think the set of characters were exhibiting behavior like bots (automated by software) - such as running the exact same route over and over without any deviation. Well, that’s certainly not allowed, but is a totally different issue than input broadcasting.

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I dont get why people spend time farming mats like this. I made over 1,000,000 gold the first week of the expansion selling BoE items on the auction house.

Reports on input broadcast software will take time to process. I doubt we will ever get an official timeframe as Blizzard is tight lipped about all aspects of actions taken against account.

Why undercut by 10 gold? Simply cancel and relist at the same price if you are trying to sell your’s first.

Finally I know it’s frustrating to hear but the actions you observed could be produced with hardware and not software. I’m not sayin you are wrong just that you could be.

Keep tabs and report folks like you did. The more VALID reports a person has the harder they will be looked at. I say valid because “my guildy told me his good friend saw this same person acting badly” reports undercut both the validity of genuine first person reports and simply clog the system.

I think it was more of a logistic issue that people were using software solutions to mask botting… and nothing to do with whether blizzard consideres multi-boxing cheating (they don’t).

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Multiboxing isnt agains blizzard ToS, you dont need broadcasting software or a hardware solution to do it complying with the ToS, just saying.

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The more boxes you add the less likely they aren’t using something.