DEV'S IS MoP GATHERING SAFE STILL?

[hitmanace]

Hi i am not coming here to call it a ban wave or not, although i feel its a semi wave and maybe a one step towards more in the future i feel. Lately blizzard has been getting more and more bad press from not controlling bots and i think pressure has been put on blizz to do so. To keep their main player base i think they had to prove they are not scare to use the muscle that they have. The reason i say this is that there was a blue post that was up on MMO-Champion where a CS rep replied that they where in fact sorta ready to attack bots soon. Ill try to get that link in a bit and edit the post.

But anyways i got 3 accounts banned all of them where gather's if you see what happened yesterday most of the people where gathers, the nerfing of nodes and the un-nerfing them a few patches back has me thinking this had something to do with it. Although i can sit here and claim theory all day, but in the end we will never know what blizz does, we just think we do. But yea most people that got banned was for gathering and its strange as i just had 1 account that was activated like a week ago only and had just started farming. Now i know you guys can say well you botted to long you did this, maybe player reports, maybe to many nodes gathered ect. ect, Well that's right all are possible and like i said before, we will never know why, but its just odd that none of my bg bots,fishing,bot,questing bot,dungeonbuddy accounts didn't get touched only farmers.

Im not here to claim ban wave or conspiracy theory i just want to see everyone's own input on what happened and to get a whole group outlook on the situation. Is it safe to bot gathering still?, any precautions we should take?, is blizzard working on a new technique to track gathers?, what do the devs and the rest of you have to say or think about the situation?

Thanks please no flaming im not here to do that nonsense.

 

[Hawker]

Sorry for your losses. What we are seeing is that there are more bans after a long quiet period. Blizzard does do this from time to time.

 

[hitmanace]

thats fair to say, but it still does not answer the core question to as to why majority of gathers got banned yesterday, and for the shocker how did blizzard detect gather bots? and this time are so confident that we botted. they wont even consider an appeal, so that proves to me that they have very sufficient evidence that we botted, but it seems only on gathering accounts though.

 

[Violatio]

I cannot say what is in Blizzards mind, but I can tell you that I bot on 1 account and it is the only account I play. I gather every day while I am at work and I quest / farm while I sleep. I have never been banned for botting. I did get a 72 hour suspension for abuse of the auction house but that was just me being greedy lol. I think blizz watches a lot of different variables when they ban accounts. I tend to mix up my play and actually hand play things a lot. I recently moved servers and I have seen a significant difference in the economy on my new server. I think that lower population servers are more prone to bots getting banned. I used to fight my way through gathering and things only to be reported by another player because i was using the same botting profile they were. Now that I am on a much higher population server I dont seem to see a ton of bots everywhere. Dont ask me why, the math would suggest more bots on higher pop servers, but the economy is much stronger as there are more buyers, and I dont think blizzard can track things as easily when there are more players on a realm. Hell maybe they dont ban me cuz my wife is addicted to blizzard store pets and I spend money, I dont really know, but I think from what I did read the people who got banned were on "botting acounts" meaning thats all they ever did on that account. To me that seems like painting a target on your back. If you log on, farm some herbs or whatever, mail them to an alt and then log off again EVERY DAY, that gets suspicious imo. There are way too many things to do in WoW and the blizz people know that. If you only ever do 1 thing it gets pretty obvious. That is my take on the situation, but everyone will have a different opinion I am sure.

 

[Conbon]

Its nodes per hour & reports , all it amounts to . A lot of people that use GB didn't get banned yesterday ... While there is no set formula think about it like this - Example - Filter = Player Reports 10+ & 1000 nodes per day = This week's ban list . Sorry you just made it to the shit list somehow , less reports &/or less nodes = good next week !?!

 

[initrd]

I cannot stress this enough, Gatherers:

If you want more safety when botting, make your own damn profiles!!!

Use common sense. Blizzard has more then enough storage space and computing power to look at exactly what your character is doing and when, and then to keep a database of such information. It would not take much after that to look and see what characters on what realms were doing exactly the same thing, flying exactly the same route, over and over and over and over.... Yes, real players do often fly in circles, however, those circles are never as precise and methodical as a typical GB2 profile. They would not even have to look at all the data, they could easily build filters to sort the bulk of it out as being "unrelated." The best way to avoid being grouped in with the majority is to avoid doing what the majority does. I know it's easier to just download a ready made profile and turn on the Bot. Making your own might require *gasp* thought and effort on your part.

Will making your own profiles keep you from getting banned? I don't know. I am merely speculating, but it is bound to be safer than using the same old tired profiles everyone else is using.

Edit: It is possible, using ZapRecorder to make profiles that follow non-standard routes. You can record multiple paths in the same area, do multiple loops. As an example, Instead of just making one circle and calling it good like so:



You can record multiple circles like so:



GB2 follows the path you record regardless of what other recorded paths it intersects as long as you have not set it up to "Bounce" or "Randomize Hotspots." This adds at least the appearance of randomness to your routes. At least, enough to bypass a simple filter, or simple player observation.

Final Edit: I do not know if this will give my post more authority or less, but I have been using HB for over 2 years and I have never been banned. Not once. And there have been times where I was gathering 24/7, but I have never, ever used a public profile. Mainly I use HB nowadays only to Gather mats as I need them(not to sell gold) or with LazyRaider to raid, run instances or Grind/Level. I use it because HB can execute a well written CR much better and more consistently than I can. I honestly don't see the point in things like Questing, BGBuddy and DugeonBuddy. I know some people would rather use full automation to support leveling and gaining honor, but I don't see the point since, to me, the risk is not worth the reward.

 

[frosticus]

i like to push the envelope. i got 2 accounts banned in the first month of botting. almost just to prove i could do it. as a result i slowed down, then received 2 72 hour suspensions 2 weeks ago. i was running 4 accounts that night, 2 were farming, the other 2 afk questing. i was watching movies on my other monitor checking the questers every so often. im getting a feel for when 'those quests that need help' are coming up. they suspended the questers. another piece of the puzzle that doesnt quite fit yet. i'll bot til they outlaw stop signs. GO GO SPEEDRACER

 

[Pack]

I got just spent 30 mins making my own epic gather profile ...Works twice as well as the ones you can get from here and I don't find myself flying same paths as others!!