Greetings, Honored WoW Forum Guests

[LowKey]

Thank you for taking the time to leave the official WoW forums and slum it up in the seedy underbelly that is the botting community.

You'll notice I used the word "community," and it was very intentional. We have that sense of community that has been sorely missing from Warcraft since about the release of Burning Crusade. I'm sorry it's gone for you, but them's the breaks. It's not gone for us.

There is a lot of justified and unjustified hatred on the official WoW forums directed towards botters. Sure, many of us crowd up your favorite battlegrounds with aimless damage-dealing, but those who bot 24/7 allow you to get into a BG at 4 o'clock in the morning, any day of the week, and earn honor instead of sitting in the queue endlessly. Hopefully you don't miss being able to farm honor 24/7.

There's also a lot of discussion about why people bot. Plenty of people here have grown tired of the game after 10 years. Some only want to stay close to in-game friends or stave off the inevitable carpal tunnel that comes from playing a game like WoW which requires huge investments of time. Yes, we were cheating. And you were logged in while we were off showering or having sex with women. I completely understand your rage.

Perhaps, in some sense, it isn't even botters that you're mad at. Perhaps even a tiny bit of you understands the desire to skip the needlessly long grinds of WoW. Don't feel bad, we were all jaded at some point too, we just did something about it to make the game more enjoyable.

Now, there will be some elitists who get all high and mighty about how it's such a difficult game to play and that we lowly botters could never do what they, the real players, do. To which, I respond, neigh! I am you! I may not feel the need to manually level a character for 100 mind-numbing levels, but after 5 minutes of reading a strategy guide and 5 minutes on a practice dummy, I will be able to manually outperform your character.

This is what I used HB for. To grind out the unendurable parts of WoW so I could get to the good parts I wanted to play. High-end raiding isn't for everyone, though, so I completely understand if you don't get where I'm coming from.

Anyhow, I welcome you, honored guests from the official WoW forums. I hope you enjoy your stay here. Bask in our celebration of years spent enjoying each other's company, of having a tight-knit community of people who know each other, of a dedication to making the lives of everyone around us better.

Bask in it, until you return to the vile official forums to tear down some anonymous strangers in an attempt to make yourselves feel better about trashing your health, your social life, and wasting the limited time we're all given here on earth, all in pursuit of virtual items with purple text instead of blue.

 

[Khrx]

Greetings and thank you for your kind words:

I'm one of those players which you mention in your opening statement.
I've read a lot of cases, defenses, and stories in your forum. Why? you should ask?
Cause I trully want to understand what motivates you... How, if You may, a botter thinks...

It's clear to me now that the answer is fairly simple. You're just tired of the game. Of the grind, of the leveling, of the farming and of the time sink it signifies.
And that's fine by me. You can indeed be tired of something after 5-10 years, but in my book, that doesn't justify the usage of third party software to gain ANY kind of advantage in the game.

It all comes to a matter of risk vs reward. You thought the reward outweighted the risk, and went ahead with your choice, but again I ask myself... Why would you play something you're tired of? Friends, addiction? health problems? Whatever may be your case, You shouldn't force yourself to do something you're not fit/capable or simply not having fun with. That's not just a message from a random person over the internet, that a lesson for life friends.

Some of you claims to shortcut your way through all the grind and only used the bot for leveling puposes, but again... WoW is a Online RPG game, with a social component and with a lore component. I can't safely say (most people), but those who enjoy the game and who have fun with it, don't see leveling or grinding as a chore, but rather as a chance to improve your abilities. I for one skip quest text and rely on addons to consume the most of content I can within my time-frame slotted to play, but I've never considered leting anyone else doing it for me.

Personally I don't think leveling bots are harming the community or as you said just the "Game servers", but I do think that Gold making, CRs, and Kickbots are ruining the game. I'm a pretty avid arena player. I enjoy the queu sessions whatever they may bring, but it's really frustrating when you face Supra-human competitions... Being able to purge, dispel, reflect, and kick spells consistantly and instantly.. That's where I draw the line in what's acceptable.

I don't think anyone has a problem with your leveling bots. But the fact is some of you are gaining unfair advantages by skipping mechanics, learning curves and mostly the experience that's required to play at higher levels no matter if that's in PVE or PVP

Lastly I read something over these forums that really made me question what's going up in your heads. (I don't have the exact quote, but It went like this)

"They are going to wipe now and fail every encounter 'cause We are no longer there"

Dude!.... That's the meaning of the game. Wipe till you dominate mechanics, possitioning and other stuff that's scripted. It's not meant to be easy. It should signify Your mastery at the game, how high Your skill is compared to everyone else, but in this case is just an empty victory.

Keep your tittles, your gear and your way of approaching life, but I really hope you approach other life choices in a more wise manner. Cause I know that driving a cool car is Nice, but you know what's even nicer?
Owning it.

Best of luck

 

[Terrif]

Greetings and thank you for your kind words:

I'm one of those players which you mention in your opening statement.
I've read a lot of cases, defenses, and stories in your forum. Why? you should ask?
Cause I trully want to understand what motivates you... How, if You may, a botter thinks...

It's clear to me now that the answer is fairly simple. You're just tired of the game. Of the grind, of the leveling, of the farming and of the time sink it signifies.
And that's fine by me. You can indeed be tired of something after 5-10 years, but in my book, that doesn't justify the usage of third party software to gain ANY kind of advantage in the game.

It all comes to a matter of risk vs reward. You thought the reward outweighted the risk, and went ahead with your choice, but again I ask myself... Why would you play something you're tired of? Friends, addiction? health problems? Whatever may be your case, You shouldn't force yourself to do something you're not fit/capable or simply not having fun with. That's not just a message from a random person over the internet, that a lesson for life friends.

Some of you claims to shortcut your way through all the grind and only used the bot for leveling puposes, but again... WoW is a Online RPG game, with a social component and with a lore component. I can't safely say (most people), but those who enjoy the game and who have fun with it, don't see leveling or grinding as a chore, but rather as a chance to improve your abilities. I for one skip quest text and rely on addons to consume the most of content I can within my time-frame slotted to play, but I've never considered leting anyone else doing it for me.

Personally I don't think leveling bots are harming the community or as you said just the "Game servers", but I do think that Gold making, CRs, and Kickbots are ruining the game. I'm a pretty avid arena player. I enjoy the queu sessions whatever they may bring, but it's really frustrating when you face Supra-human competitions... Being able to purge, dispel, reflect, and kick spells consistantly and instantly.. That's where I draw the line in what's acceptable.

I don't think anyone has a problem with your leveling bots. But the fact is some of you are gaining unfair advantages by skipping mechanics, learning curves and mostly the experience that's required to play at higher levels no matter if that's in PVE or PVP

Lastly I read something over these forums that really made me question what's going up in your heads. (I don't have the exact quote, but It went like this)

"They are going to wipe now and fail every encounter 'cause We are no longer there"

Dude!.... That's the meaning of the game. Wipe till you dominate mechanics, possitioning and other stuff that's scripted. It's not meant to be easy. It should signify Your mastery at the game, how high Your skill is compared to everyone else, but in this case is just an empty victory.

Keep your tittles, your gear and your way of approaching life, but I really hope you approach other life choices in a more wise manner. Cause I know that driving a cool car is Nice, but you know what's even nicer?
Owning it.

Best of luck

I agree with you in most instances except for your first of why we do it. The game has become boring yes! they have implemented to many long boring busy work tasks and lost what the game was once about. We bot be it for financial gain but mostly because botting allows us to enjoy the game again! it takes away the stupid busy work and allows us to find someone in the game again that we thought we'd lost, be it in raiding with friends or in pvp. should the pvp botters have been stupid enough to set their reflect and kicks to instant... NO! that isnt fair your right and its stupid and they deserve to be banned but what people saying here is true! blizzard didn't win.. they set botters back a few days? weeks? months tops and instead to a HUGE hit to their sub count, monthly income and server economy's are about to take a drastic shift back towards vanilla days of being dirt poor in my opinion. i mean really though!? 100 levels along with all the other garrison crap that makes you wanna take your eyes out with a melon ball scooper!? its to much stupid crap to go through to finally hit 100 and be greeted with nothing but lazy ass garbage item models, dungeons, no pvp content, increase in sub prices, and what? a few more quests in a new zone and some rehashed old dungeons that have been dead for 6+ years? i honestly feel they brought out the wow token to get in on the gold buying and to give people a way to stay without paying real money cause they know what they are putting out isnt worth real money! its garbage!! the last time we've seen them put blood sweat and tears into a patch was wrath... we are 3 xpacks in and its only gotten worse. the question i raise is with how bad blizzard is hurting themselves, how can a company knowingly sabotage themselves so badly unless they are trying to pass the WoW mantle to another one of their games? my guess would be HotS given LOL's success in the gaming scene.

 

[vibrator]

I would like to point out blizzard really did nothing at all, sure i have 19 accounts that are suspended for 6 months 17 Hc bot accounts and then my main accounts I play on with all my titles since vanilla and my mounts all 270 of them and all the special boa gear and such rare mounts you cant get ever again from 10m ZA to plagued proto and the black proto drake all these things before i ever knew of botting. as soon as I learned about it I joined HB you can see my join date I started casually botting then. Even though everything is gone for 6 months if I really wanted to I can attach another battlechess/wod to my main bnet account and get everything back except my challenge mode armor from MoP (atleast for 6 months right?) I can start instantly with a 90 of my preferred class with all my upgrded boa items and be max level in less than 8 hours playing by hand and most likely back to 700 ilv in under 3 weeks I even get my ring faster because I already have it completed to level 715 so I get all the bonuses from having it already. So what did botters really lose? Buy a few new accounts bot on them for 6montsh then get the rest back to bot some more Botting will always be there. they didnt even get all CR's I have a different that still works and hasnt been affected at all even runs 64 bit instead of 32. They also didnt ban 1 of my HC bot accounts that was still online when it happened and still alive now they did take all my materials in the guild banks I have all the fish foods herbs potions flasks along with all the gold in the gbank i guess since it was all being dumped into it by bots. /shrug who knows. The only real fact is 100k+ accounts are gone and Blizzard will either have alot of people buy new ones or people will wait or jsut stop playing habits are formed and broken in only 21 days, don't believe me? If you dont wear a seatbelt(car/truck) or a helmet (bike) try doing it for 21 days straight after that you wont even realize you do it anymore. Much love to you guys and your adventures.

 

[LowKey]

Lastly I read something over these forums that really made me question what's going up in your heads. (I don't have the exact quote, but It went like this)

"They are going to wipe now and fail every encounter 'cause We are no longer there"

Dude!.... That's the meaning of the game. Wipe till you dominate mechanics, possitioning and other stuff that's scripted.

First, thank you for your response. I really do appreciate your approach to this. We've had a few people come here just to shame botting, and I don't feel like that's your sole purpose.

I don't think I ever found a CR that performed my rotation better than I could. I also wasn't willing to fork over $50 to buy one class or one spec.

However, for some of the dull crap like LFR, yeah, I wouldn't mind letting it handle my rotation. I think that's better than the people who are basically AFK, tabbing over only occasionally to cast 1 spell or set someone as a follow target to avoid being kicked. Maybe you do as well, as you seem pretty reasonable.

I completely agree with you that folks using kickbots and whatnot in direct player versus player competitions are pretty shitty. Very similar to people using aimbots in FPSs. Then again, I prefer to impact other players as little as possible when botting. Another example, I refused to use my bot for the auction house. Yes, I could compete with other auction bots that post 24/7, but it's extremely frustrating for sellers to know they can't humanly post as much and as long as a bot. Never did PVP at all either, again because of the effect it would have on my human teammates.

It is, I think, a mark of bad game design that it was at all rewarding to play these areas with bots. You could eventually get all the pvp gear you want by basically being AFK. You could get rich if you simply made 1000 new auctions every 15 minutes. There are ways of dealing with this stuff, but Blizzard refuses to implement them. That is not the fault of the botting community.

As far as risk vs reward, I'm still not banned. Maybe I will be, maybe I won't be. If I do get banned, it'll probably be while I'm doing something manually in game that I actually enjoy, like playing the garrison follower game, or flying around clearing old dungeons for xmog. There are parts of the game I enjoy, but they have become very limited.

To draw this long-winded post to a close, thanks again for your genuine interest in this topic, and I really appreciate your attitude and approach in your post.

 

[shelaine]

First, thank you for your response. I really do appreciate your approach to this. We've had a few people come here just to shame botting, and I don't feel like that's your sole purpose.

I don't think I ever found a CR that performed my rotation better than I could. I also wasn't willing to fork over $50 to buy one class or one spec.

However, for some of the dull crap like LFR, yeah, I wouldn't mind letting it handle my rotation. I think that's better than the people who are basically AFK, tabbing over only occasionally to cast 1 spell or set someone as a follow target to avoid being kicked. Maybe you do as well, as you seem pretty reasonable.

I completely agree with you that folks using kickbots and whatnot in direct player versus player competitions are pretty shitty. Very similar to people using aimbots in FPSs. Then again, I prefer to impact other players as little as possible when botting. Another example, I refused to use my bot for the auction house. Yes, I could compete with other auction bots that post 24/7, but it's extremely frustrating for sellers to know they can't humanly post as much and as long as a bot. Never did PVP at all either, again because of the effect it would have on my human teammates.

It is, I think, a mark of bad game design that it was at all rewarding to play these areas with bots. You could eventually get all the pvp gear you want by basically being AFK. You could get rich if you simply made 1000 new auctions every 15 minutes. There are ways of dealing with this stuff, but Blizzard refuses to implement them. That is not the fault of the botting community.

As far as risk vs reward, I'm still not banned. Maybe I will be, maybe I won't be. If I do get banned, it'll probably be while I'm doing something manually in game that I actually enjoy, like playing the garrison follower game, or flying around clearing old dungeons for xmog. There are parts of the game I enjoy, but they have become very limited.

To draw this long-winded post to a close, thanks again for your genuine interest in this topic, and I really appreciate your attitude and approach in your post.

Very well said, Sir.

Also, thanks for this topic. It's a great approach for grown up people who like to discuss, even if their views differ. I hope it stays clear of mind- and useless imputations from both sides.