Reignwolf
New Member
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2012
- Messages
- 173
- Reaction score
- 1
Players Botting
But why would Blizzard ban bots?
They have a active subscription and pay money.
Why would any company reduce their own income on purpose?
It doesn't make sense... Allthough I don't like so many bots either.
But for them to actualy ban most of them, and lose out on so much money
from the botter's subscription.. Would they realy do that. I don't know.
I think Nevalistis summed this up quite well: This is one of the biggest misconceptions we have, and I genuinely wish we could permanently clear it up. I'll provide a few hypothetical situations (mind you, these numbers are ENTIRELY made up).
Let's say 90% of botters were compromised accounts. This means that 90% of these botters aren't paying accounts; they're stolen accounts, which are generally fueled by stolen credit cards. These payments usually get disputed and taken back, which actually costs us money. If we're looking to make a purely fiscal observation, it makes no financial sense to let these continue (aside from the fact that we don't like compromised accounts to begin with - we want our players to be playing their own accounts safely and enjoyably).
Let's go on the other side of the fence and say 90% of these botters were otherwise legitimate players paying for their accounts, as you purport. When players bot, other players are inconvenienced by this behavior (and trust me, you guys outnumber the botters, even if you may feel it's the other way around). The inconveniences range from normal players having difficulty farming on their own to struggling to keep up with an economy that's being forcibly fluctuated via unfair advantage. When players are inconvenienced in this manner, they submit petitions.
Every petition submitted goes to a Game Master for review. A living, breathing person that is paid to provide customer service looks over it, does what's necessary for the situation (in botting cases, usually forwarding the info on to our exploitation/hacks team), and provides a response. Let's say 1-2 people are inconvenienced by a single botter (in all likelihood, we probably get many more petitions per botter than that). This would mean each botter is inconveniencing at least as many, and likely more, players that are positive to the community (the kinds of players we like and want to continue to play our game). For each botter we allow to continue botting, we potentially stand to lose more than we gain for a single subscription, just out of the sheer inconvenience it causes other players.
Even if you change those numbers around of legitimate players versus compromised accounts - we only stand to lose more if we don't take action on bots (which we do, regularly).
And that's probably the problem. If I can stand in front of a guy who's botting who has about as many achievement points as me, then the only reason why he dares to bot is because he does not feel there is a risk of losing anything by doing so.
And the worst part is that right now it's difficult to say that he isn't right.
Those who choose to believe they are above detection range far and wide, I?m sure. Possibly because they may have been getting away with it for a time. However, we investigate every single bot report that comes in. We don't usually deal with the reports immediately because the underlying issue would remain in place.
What we do is study the bots, see exactly how they do what they do, and fix it so that they don?t work anymore. Once we?ve applied the fix, then the ban waves take place. By doing it like this, we can also come up with better methods of detection, and devise systems that are more effective against bot detection and removal.
Having said that, it's an on-going fight. Botters develop new bots by working out what we detected and fixed, and it starts all over again. In the process, we?ve ruled out one way of cheating the system though. I can?t go into much more detail without providing botters with information that would help them.
Captcha to report and automagically disconnect botters - Forums - World of Warcraft
But why would Blizzard ban bots?
They have a active subscription and pay money.
Why would any company reduce their own income on purpose?
It doesn't make sense... Allthough I don't like so many bots either.
But for them to actualy ban most of them, and lose out on so much money
from the botter's subscription.. Would they realy do that. I don't know.
I think Nevalistis summed this up quite well: This is one of the biggest misconceptions we have, and I genuinely wish we could permanently clear it up. I'll provide a few hypothetical situations (mind you, these numbers are ENTIRELY made up).
Let's say 90% of botters were compromised accounts. This means that 90% of these botters aren't paying accounts; they're stolen accounts, which are generally fueled by stolen credit cards. These payments usually get disputed and taken back, which actually costs us money. If we're looking to make a purely fiscal observation, it makes no financial sense to let these continue (aside from the fact that we don't like compromised accounts to begin with - we want our players to be playing their own accounts safely and enjoyably).
Let's go on the other side of the fence and say 90% of these botters were otherwise legitimate players paying for their accounts, as you purport. When players bot, other players are inconvenienced by this behavior (and trust me, you guys outnumber the botters, even if you may feel it's the other way around). The inconveniences range from normal players having difficulty farming on their own to struggling to keep up with an economy that's being forcibly fluctuated via unfair advantage. When players are inconvenienced in this manner, they submit petitions.
Every petition submitted goes to a Game Master for review. A living, breathing person that is paid to provide customer service looks over it, does what's necessary for the situation (in botting cases, usually forwarding the info on to our exploitation/hacks team), and provides a response. Let's say 1-2 people are inconvenienced by a single botter (in all likelihood, we probably get many more petitions per botter than that). This would mean each botter is inconveniencing at least as many, and likely more, players that are positive to the community (the kinds of players we like and want to continue to play our game). For each botter we allow to continue botting, we potentially stand to lose more than we gain for a single subscription, just out of the sheer inconvenience it causes other players.
Even if you change those numbers around of legitimate players versus compromised accounts - we only stand to lose more if we don't take action on bots (which we do, regularly).
And that's probably the problem. If I can stand in front of a guy who's botting who has about as many achievement points as me, then the only reason why he dares to bot is because he does not feel there is a risk of losing anything by doing so.
And the worst part is that right now it's difficult to say that he isn't right.
Those who choose to believe they are above detection range far and wide, I?m sure. Possibly because they may have been getting away with it for a time. However, we investigate every single bot report that comes in. We don't usually deal with the reports immediately because the underlying issue would remain in place.
What we do is study the bots, see exactly how they do what they do, and fix it so that they don?t work anymore. Once we?ve applied the fix, then the ban waves take place. By doing it like this, we can also come up with better methods of detection, and devise systems that are more effective against bot detection and removal.
Having said that, it's an on-going fight. Botters develop new bots by working out what we detected and fixed, and it starts all over again. In the process, we?ve ruled out one way of cheating the system though. I can?t go into much more detail without providing botters with information that would help them.
Captcha to report and automagically disconnect botters - Forums - World of Warcraft
