Blizzard and bots

[turueno]

Do you think that blizzard dont mind about bots and we will not have any ban wave nevermore because they are losing too much people for boring?

 

[Gilderoy]

We will have another banweave, eventually it's just in the natures of things, we just do not know the time or the mode, this bot is as secure as he can be, still botting is not for the faint of heart

 

[LiquidAtoR]

They can't close their eyes to bots, since that would mean they loose the customers that are actually playing by hand if they don't take actions against them.
There will always be the cat and mouse game between blizzard and botters.
It's just who's smartest in the end that survives.

 

[Megser]

We will have another banweave, eventually it's just in the natures of things, we just do not know the time or the mode, this bot is as secure as he can be, still botting is not for the faint of heart

Well, you don't really know that do you.

 

[imfat]

Well, you don't really know that do you.

Until Blizzad gives up on WoW there are gonna be ban waves.

 

[Gilderoy]

yes we do, there will be, we do not know when that's all

 

[turueno]

only ask because too much time passed since last banwave and usually the only people that i find in some zones are bots P

 

[zuabros]

Some bots acutally "help" blizzard.

For example: BG bots that "look" human (trick players that they are real players) but play badly (as any bot), will make the few "real" players in battlegrounds to get a much higher HK rate, as there a lot of bots to farm... Those players will indeed feel more competent and BGs will be really easier for them. Those bots HELP real players, and blizzard.

Some bots are bad to blizzard: a bot that farms tons of ore and herbs and put them massively at AH will make prices drop, flood the market (abusing of the economy) and make mining or herbing too hard for a real player to be. Eventually all ore and herbs available at the AH will be botted, and real players will be left with crafting professions. it is very hard to undercut a botter that does not give a damn if a stack of elementium is sold for 20g or 50g (the bot does not care much).

If bots were not fought against, we would soon see a wave of botting and the game would eventually finish (just like happened with counter-strike before Valve anti-*****).


Just as a blizzard PHD bot analyst said... "Would everyone bot if allowed to?" the answer is "Yes.". That is the "Prisioner's Dilemma"...

Botting, or any other for of ***** can ruin any game.

I'm glad im a botter anyway...

All of these is exposed at blizzard document:

"The effects of bottin in World of Warcraft" below

http://virtuallyblind.com/files/mdy/blizzard_msj_exhibit_7.pdf

 

[zarlia28]

I would not be supprised is a banwave came very soon. Bots are getting out of controll! There are alot of people complaining about them, so blizz will have to do somthing. If not, people will move to a game with less bots. People don't like other people having a very unfair advantage, it's just human nature.

If Blizz decides to let bots get out of control then WoW could suffer the same fate as other games that have been overan by bots. When there becomes to many bots, it takes away from legit players.

 

[MrB]

I'm amazed that when you sell gold, only the account that makes the transaction to the buyer is banned. It really can't be hard to work out where the gold came from in the first place.

 

[zuabros]

in fact, it seems to be easy to make an algorithim that would detect SOME bots for sure...

if blizzard makes a team of experts, that will buy and test the most used bots, visit foruns, download most used profiles, it would be easy to make an heuristic bot detection scheme based on botty behavior. Blizz would then ban SOME bots, and that alone would be scare a lot of botters, and that alone would reduce number of bots to some degree.... or at least botters would get more discreet.

For example: most people will keep botting no matter what happens, but the recent "soft banwave" of grind and PVP bots, made most people avoid grinding with bots.... and migrating to less risky forms of botting (archeology, gathering, etc). Tha does not remove the bots, but a "common" player wont get annoyed if a bot is doing archeology all day long... and blizz then would not lose too many players.

Allowing bots to get their gold without flooding the auction house could also, in some extent, help legitimate players to put their products for sale (if we could keep obsidium shuffle, most botters would not flood the AH with obsidium). It would then be an issue on how to control server inflation.

Blizz is currently focusing on hardcore botters (e.g. goldsellers), and keeping "small fish" alone (personal use only bots) untouched.

If you bot your main and only account while you sleep, and play it by hand at your free time, and does not bother other players, blizz prob wont ban you... for now.

But of course...

BOTTING IS NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED... hahaha

 

[Botanist]

IMO.....there are only ban waves when the actual bot is detected......hopefully a thing of the past. From my own experience, having lost 6 accts to ban, there are mini-banwaves/suspentions weekly. I had 4 accts (all farmers) banned within 30 seconds of each other 2 days ago. Oddly enough, the banker/AH account associated with the 4 farmers wasn't banned. One of the 4 farmers was a lvl 21 vanilla account that had been botting less than 24 hrs grinding lvl 1-21. It seems to me that Blizz is more focused on grinding than farming. Bot coders/devs are much more experienced than they were during the ban waves of the past. It seems to me, that now, most bans are issued on a case by case basis.

 

[Wongtai]

I got almost-banned once, not sure when it gonna be banned for real and I think that day will be the last day I see wow in my life but anyway
"if you worry then dont bot, once bot dont worry" LoL and maybe we can think it like this:
botter- AI players is what Blizz need right now since a lot of game and players sicked of PVE PVP
well, HB would like to introduce you a new game mode: PVB (Player vs Bot). Yes am asking you what game can have this officially ? lol and what game can have a high AI like this ?
PVB is some time more challenged than PVP (PVN-player vs noob sometime is boring) =))
HB should get a big time reward from Blizz to be honest
LFOL

@zuabros I totally agree with you, since casual botter just bot for fun, they bought the game and just bot as lvling, buy stuff. They don't sell gold or do anything that affect the community and such. like me, I just bot for time-killing cuz I got bored, thats all and am paying for it. Of course botting is against the rule but, can people just accept it as a playing style ?
just IMO please dont rape me

 

[Gatherit]

It will never stop as long as they are making money off the game.

 

[lostsk8r]

I feel like lately they are getting stricter, I mean it seems like it's only me and my friends but there have been other people losing 5+ accounts at once in the last few weeks.. I even changed into VM and proxies, using new accounts and yet just had three banned lastnight(two on one comp on their own VMs with diff proxies, one on another comp in a VM on a diff proxy than other 2).. without even selling gold. I had three other friends lose 6 accounts each.. just seems impossible anymore. I dont know how anyone bots 24/7 and gets away with it now, even then I see people doing 10-12 or 8-10 and getting banned. I usually can get them back from being compromised but then they watch them after.. so its still a loss.

It seems dumb to always use abuse of the economy too, considering I havent sold gold on any of them, but then change it to compromised account or third party software.. cant wait to see my AH account get compromised AGAIN and they rollback my auction house toons.. fucks

 

[CodenameG]

look, the bottom line is that blizzard needs someone to blame, and since were pretty much faceless we've turned into that dumb guy that robs the bank and superman was there to catch him and toss him in jail. the subscribers think oh, well blizzard is doing something wonderful because bots are evil and don't do anything good, and most of the time its not the case.

as far as the recent 72-hours and full on bans going, its not that they are enforcing more, its that we have a lot of people all running the same profiles. recently maybe within the past 6 months or so, they started doing data mining on things that are happening, since we dont know exactly what data they are mining, it makes it extremely hard to combat, but not very effective since normal players can get caught in that crossfire. when you just look at the data and nothing else, and you find patterns theoretically lets say your walking from goldshire to westfall, a bot might make the same path between these two places exactly the same 90% of time where as if you had a human, even running the same path, the data would be off because its not able to follow the exact precision of hitting those WoWPoints. it call comes down to what data they have and what they are doing with it, there's nothing going on client side.

 

[Chrispigen]

Dont people from US get banned alot more then people from EU? I been botting since vanila, and I have never been banned, i been using macrogoblin, wowsharp, wowglider, aio, and now Honorbuddy, only for 2 days so far.
Chris.

 

[Pbnew101]

I had 4 accts (all farmers) banned within 30 seconds of each other 2 days ago. Oddly enough, the banker/AH account associated with the 4 farmers wasn't banned. One of the 4 farmers was a lvl 21 vanilla account that had been botting less than 24 hrs grinding lvl 1-21.

You farm w/ lvl 21's?