Dear developers and writers of routines and plugins (and what have you),
I want to thank you all for all your hard work. I know it has been said plenty of times before, but you deserve all the praise.You have managed to create something that made a game with sometimes complex, or at other times downright boring mechanics enjoyable for a lot of people who wouldn't have enjoyed that game in the same way otherwise. I'll never forget just how nice and relaxing it is to start up WoW and HB and just watch the game being played for you, or to not have to pay attention to your rotation and be able to fully focus on positioning in raids. You made aspects of the game available to those who have a normal life (or at least something approaching that), for which you have my deepest gratitude.
Myself, I'm a very casual gamer, I don't need to play games on hard difficulty to enjoy them, I usually play them on the easiest setting just to dominate.
That's what I love about HB, it allows me to play some aspects of the game as though I had put in days of practising and perfecting my combat routine. On my own, I could never heal a LFR group, maybe a HC dungeon if I practised a lot, but I would probably need raid gear for that or run out of mana, but with HB and a solid CR I managed to always be in the top 3 with about 5-10% overhealing done (the lack of overhealing being the reason I wasn't number 1). I might be able to struggle some average DPS in LFR, but not whilst keeping an eye on where not to stand during encounters.
That's what HB did for me, it made me able to heal a group while making sure I wasn't standing in the fire. I do sincerely believe that I contributed to a positive game experience for all of tanks and DPSers in the raid, and probably for most healers too (if they were not too competitive), and I believe fun to be most important in any game.
True, Blizzard is in their rights to ban us. True, we all knew we were breaking their rules. However, without looking at PvP, where the matter lies slightly different, I do not think that any form of botting, as provided by HB, did any harm to the fairness and levelness of the gaming community as a whole. I have made an appeal for one of my accounts which has been denied with the usual mention of "use of 3rd party programs" and that the information cannot be disclosed, "as it is internal information."
What got me wondering, though, is that I got the email (and presumably the ban) more than 24 hours after I logged in to the account while having HB active. I know that I have logged in to the account after that moment (though I didn't log in to a character as I decided I didn't feel like playing after all), but without HB running at the time.
I am mostly disappointed about the ban on my main account. I did use it on my second account for gathering purposes and the like, but on my main only as a combat routine in PvE, and try as I might, I can see no downside to doing that. But more than feeling disappointed, I'm wondering if I will return to the game, and, in this, I'm torn. I love WoW, the world, its characters, its stories, and I was really looking forward to playing my way through the Tanaan Jungle, but I'm not sure if I would be willing to keep playing the game without a bot. For me, that would mean that the max level of content that I could play that would make me feel good would be DPSing and, just maybe, tanking in HC dungeons, or maybe healing or tanking in non HC dungeons. As much as I enjoyed being part of a raid group, albeit LFR, and although I might get my DPS high enough not to get complaints about that, keeping track of the mechanics of such a fight and my combat routine at the same time is just too much for me. This would also mean that I would have to miss out on the epic story quests. As nice as owning a legendary ring is, it pales in comparison to the story behind it. Of course I'll watch it all on YouTube, but that is far from the same as actually being part of the story and play it.
Yes, I'm addicted to WoW. Yes, my first thought was: "I'll just get a new account and start over". But I don't want to start over, not without my old characters. I've played two of them for over 5 years, there is no replacing that. But more than that, I don't want to play through Dreanor again. The idea of a garrison is great, but it felt like grinding having to run through it every day. With all those peons just lifting weights, you would imagine that they could pick everything up for us, but they don't so they make some of us feel forced to use a bot for it.
And as far as "We’re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft" goes, there is no such thing as an equal and fair playing field for everyone. Some of us will have more time to invest into this game then others. Some might just be better at playing it, understanding the deep mechanics of a certain class or spec. To my knowledge and to my experience as a user of HB, it does not make us "the best players in the game". Being an all-round bot, it is not programmed to look ahead. a CR does not think like a person does and often makes decisions that are good, but not optimal. This can be greatly improved by taking away some of what the CR does and taking back that control, but that doesn't change the fact that HB operates within the same spectrum as real players, though well above average (Once again, this might be different for PvP, but I have not done a lot of that). If "equal and fair" means that it does not matter if you are a noob or a top class raider, if you can spend only one hour a day or 16 hours a day, because, as long as you do not use a bot, all is "equal and fair", they might want to have a second look at that.
If botting meant that you would outperform even those top raiders with ease (personally I did not get beyond normal mode raiding, even when botting), *then* I could understand this argument. But, things being as they are, they have to come up with something better than "equal and fair"
As a final note before I conclude this post, which is arguably the longest post I have ever placed on the internet, I would like to say that, reading through the first halve of the comments on this post, I noticed that I have not spent enough time on these forums. The sense of community I find here is heart warming. If I had had more time (or maybe less of a social life outside) I would have loved to get to know as many of you as I could. For now, though, with the six month ban, there is, of course more time, but fewer reasons for me to check up on these forums. I do want you all to know, however, that, although I don't know any of you, you do feel like family. Distant family, maybe, but family non the less.
I wish you all the best of luck with your appeals and I hope most of you will get their ban undone.
All the best,
Wearloga