Ever wonder if Blizzard watch this forum?

[beastlies]

I certainly wonder. And it leads me to be quite cagey with the sort of information I give when talking about bans. For example if I just had a 72 hour suspension reversed, would I come on here and talk about it, giving a potential onlooker the information they'd need to identify my account and have it looked at a lot closer next time? No, I would not.

 

[kayes]

I don't think so.

Members 59,553, Active Members 9,367 - 10.000.000 players?

Would you bother?

 

[Non Quixote]

I certainly wonder. And it leads me to be quite cagey with the sort of information I give when talking about bans. For example if I just had a 72 hour suspension reversed, would I come on here and talk about it, giving a potential onlooker the information they'd need to identify my account and have it looked at a lot closer next time? No, I would not.

No one (other than a Blizzard employee) can say for sure but why would they not? If you could just waltz into an enemy camp and gather all of the intel that you wanted at no risk to yourself, wouldn't you do it? It stands to reason that someone at Blizzard regularly peruses all of the bot forums gathering info, if for no other reason than to check to see if they are suspending/banning the correct targets. If I were in charge at Blizz, it would be a no brainer since it's simple and easy to do.

In fact, if you were Blizzard, why would you not do it?

 

[jacobhwrd]

No the thing that ppl dont consider is that blizz is a business. And a business is not going to pay individual ppl to surf the internet for ppl to say they just got suspended or whatever so that they can then try to sort through the hundreds if not thousands of ppl who have just received an account action. Plus they dont know if you received it 2 min from that post or 10 hours since botters are known for going afk and might have recieved the action a while ago. They are going to go for the most cost effective method of finding bots and that is through software detection. They are not on some kind of witch hunt. I use to think the same way when i first started botting but like you i still had the individual mind set and not thinking what a business would do. Yes i will admit that it is possible that they might look at the forums but the information that you give them is SO limited that its not in their best interest to hire ppl to pursue it.

 

[bonehand]

I have no proof, but I can say that "No the thing that ppl dont consider is that blizz is a business. And a business is not going to pay individual ppl to surf the internet " is completely wrong. It is very short sighted for one to assume that they don't keep up with hacks and bots.

If the Admin's watched for IP addresses from Irvine or other remote Blizzard offices, there would definately be hits to HB, mmowned, and other bot sites. You can bet that they have people seeing what they can do to stop bots and identify those using them. They probably already can, but whatever reasons they have to gimp Warden keeps them from banning, or actively scanning for the bot on home PC's. They may not be paying these people to directly look at what is going on, but the developers are definately using sites like this to identify what they need to work on to fix exploits and identify bots. The Archa banwave for a competitor product is an example, they had to purchase the bot to see what was going on, then when they identified the algorithm it was simple to see who was botting Archaeology using private chat channels.

Anyway, I'm not sceptical in any way that I am being watched. It's their jobs to prevent us from exploiting...and ignoring an open forum would be stupid.

 

[Kickazz006]

Blizz reads these forums, at least 1 person cruises here, mmowned, pirox, and other bots / hacks / exploits sites

<puts on tin foil hat>

 

[Relaeh]

yeah, at mmowned its pretty noticeable when blizz is watching (the exploit section mainly) so someone is probably watching us... lol.

 

[mezz0]

Network and server admins watch hacking and exploits sites too.
Same thing, different subject.

 

[xio8up]

i highly doubt it. They got better things to look at.

 

[Crowley]

Better things to do than to try and stop something that in their eyes is costing them millions?
Why would they not use all the hack/bot forums and the programs they contain to learn how to beat them would be a better question i think.

 

[Xume]

They are watching us now, one is even saying we are a scam

 

[Gentoo]

No the thing that ppl dont consider is that blizz is a business. And a business is not going to pay individual ppl to surf the internet for ppl to say they just got suspended or whatever so that they can then try to sort through the hundreds if not thousands of ppl who have just received an account action.

You don't think they have a anti hack/security team? Hell, the first thing i would do would be purchase the bot and decompile it to see how it works then a find a way to make it inoperable. I doubt they are browsing the forums to have a laugh at the people crying they got banned, but to say they wouldn't bother is rather naive. Hell, i'm sure they are a paying customer..

 

[mezz0]

i highly doubt it. They got better things to look at.

That's exactly what a blizzard employee would say *frowns*

j/k

 

[exmortis]

Wouldnt it be illegal for them to monitor this forum? banning someone through other means than theyre own game or security measures. "spying" on other people, by any means would hit them back. i dont know much about laws and anything, but it goes against our freedom and shit like that, they cannot try to take us down with things we do outside theyre game.

or something like that, and pardon my English, its late and i didnt bother correcting this.

 

[Zeewolf]

I have no doubt that blizzard has someone reading these forums, even if it is just one person and that might not be their sole job

Wow is a huge money spinner and it is definately a better use of their funds to pay developers to keep those 99.999% that dont bot happy with new content and features than focus resources on that 00.001% that do bot. Ultimately they have to have something in place though to deal with botters because some botters are harrassing players with spam, destroying in game markets etc etc.. essentially going to far and becoming enough of a problem that they have to do something about it because it becomes very obvious and more importantly has the potential to attract more people into botting.

Its a slippery slope, I can totally understand why they went after BG botters and archeology bots because frankly people hate grinding those things, but if people start botting those and realise that its not something that will immediately get detected and insta-banned they will start seeing what else they can get away with and before you know it you would have chaos with lots of kids thinking its fun to teleport hack and things to steal the flag before the match has even started

I wouldnt entirely blame blizzard if they saw HB as a tool to keep those lesser offenders paying, because we do still pay our wow subscription. I believe its a very very small percentage that bot only for botting itself and do not still play the game in some capacity.

I also think blizzard were wrong for shutting down glider, it didnt stop people botting.. they just split off into several different botting communities. By leaving glider up they could have continued to detect and banwave against 1 product. Shutting them down made everyone scatter in different directions and their job is now more difficult

 

[exmortis]

I have no doubt that blizzard has someone reading these forums, even if it is just one person and that might not be their sole job

Wow is a huge money spinner and it is definately a better use of their funds to pay developers to keep those 99.999% that dont bot happy with new content and features than focus resources on that 00.001% that do bot. Ultimately they have to have something in place though to deal with botters because some botters are harrassing players with spam, destroying in game markets etc etc.. essentially going to far and becoming enough of a problem that they have to do something about it because it becomes very obvious and more importantly has the potential to attract more people into botting.

Its a slippery slope, I can totally understand why they went after BG botters and archeology bots because frankly people hate grinding those things, but if people start botting those and realise that its not something that will immediately get detected and insta-banned they will start seeing what else they can get away with and before you know it you would have chaos with lots of kids thinking its fun to teleport hack and things to steal the flag before the match has even started

I wouldnt entirely blame blizzard if they saw HB as a tool to keep those lesser offenders paying, because we do still pay our wow subscription. I believe its a very very small percentage that bot only for botting itself and do not still play the game in some capacity.

I also think blizzard were wrong for shutting down glider, it didnt stop people botting.. they just split off into several different botting communities. By leaving glider up they could have continued to detect and banwave against 1 product. Shutting them down made everyone scatter in different directions and their job is now more difficult

true that, but i heard proxy bot or whatnot got hit pretty hard a litle while back. i havent been banned yet myself, cause i still do regular things with my accounts, i just use it to keep myself supplied with whatever i can, so im using it kind of safe, started just a few months after glider came out.

so yeah i think so to, theyre probably trying to at least get rid of all the ones ruining the economy on servers.

well anyway, bot safely everyone and good luck for now ^^

 

[15outland]

I wonder if Blizzard ever watch us on the toilet?

 

[A1l3n]

I can tell your for a fact blizzard can't buy the bot and reverse engineer it. They wont support bots by spending there money to stop it. Plus most bots and hacks have a legal agreement that you must accept that states if your an employee of x company and you buy it and reverse it they can do legal action against you.

 

[Zeewolf]

I dont know about a legal agreement but do you really think blizzard couldnt spare a couple of $ to buy a copy of the bot and try it, you really think it makes more sense for them to just have wild guesses about how it works when they can just try it, read the documentation and these and other botting forums and get actual real information rather than just guessing

You dont get where they are by being stupid

 

[Non Quixote]

You don't think they have a anti hack/security team? Hell, the first thing i would do would be purchase the bot and decompile it to see how it works then a find a way to make it inoperable. I doubt they are browsing the forums to have a laugh at the people crying they got banned, but to say they wouldn't bother is rather naive. Hell, i'm sure they are a paying customer..

Exactly. Just as they are paying customers for each of the other bots.

Decompiling isn't necessary, just using the bot in order to spot giveaways and weaknesses is enough. I'm sure that's exactly what they did with the archaeology bot that got so many botters banned. They bought it, used it and noticed immediately that it created a random chat channel and spammed coordinates into that channel. From there it was just a matter of creating a subroutine that read chat logs.

Boom. Banwave.