My hypothesis on what happened with the bans

[julien]

I think what happened is Blizzard kept detecting bots for the last few months and didn't ban the accounts that were several years old just yet. They waited for the token to be implemented so these accounts would buy several months of subscription worth with their gold. They made tons of money with these account selling their gold. Once this was done and they had no more income expected from these accounts for a while they banned them all in one batch, making it look like they just launched a new detection tool when in fact they were just waiting to milk all those old accounts knowing these player would most likely buy ~6 months worth of tokens with their gold.

 

[Crowley]

Yeah. No. I got banned and done none of these as i am sure many people will tell you in short order but please.

 

[Naroha]

same as Crowly i never bought any tokens neither i had any subscribtion (just gametimecards)
If iam not wrong my gametime was endin ~27.5. , so well nah

 

[Darkdog72]

I think what happened is Blizzard kept detecting bots for the last few months and didn't ban the accounts that were several years old just yet. They waited for the token to be implemented so these accounts would buy several months of subscription worth with their gold. They made tons of money with these account selling their gold. Once this was done and they had no more income expected from these accounts for a while they banned them all in one batch, making it look like they just launched a new detection tool when in fact they were just waiting to milk all those old accounts knowing these player would most likely buy ~6 months worth of tokens with their gold.

I've already posted in another thread that this might be an explanation of the late bans, albeit a very speculative one. The logic behind this is; if they sell a lot of tokens for real money, they would need to have the gold supply to exchange for those tokens in the game, or their customers would be very unhappy getting a bad exchange rate or not even selling. Assuming botters overall (not everyone) would buy tokens for gold, it would serve two purposes; feed their real money customers, and making sure that money paid for the suspended subscriptions can't be refunded/chargeback'ed because they were bought with in-game gold and thus avoiding merchandise laws.

Once real money token purchases goes down, too much gold in the game is problematic for multiple reasons (as posted elsewhere in another thread) and taking out some botters from the economy would be a matter of balancing.

We could also dismiss this theory by the simple assertion that Blizzard could just print gold to fuel token sales, but that would be stupid as it wouldn't take gold out of the economy and just add to it, causing even more inflation. Not everything they do is rational. It's stupid to attribute brilliant ideas to them, when it also might just have been a side effect of something they did. Imagine if- scenarios can be fun mental exercises, but doesn't make all of them true even if you could rationalize them.

 

[Pierlala]

I never bought any game tokens either. I am botting casually so I never did any gold farming/grinding etc. The gold I got from doing selling stuff and professions I saved for buying stuff ingame. BMAH etc.

 

[tomcruise]

Why do people always think there has to be some complicated rationale behind everything. Have you considered the null hypothesis, have you considered that the reason it took until now for a banwave is because all their previous attempts had failed?

"Richard Feynman (a physicist) used to go up to people all the time and he'd say "You won't believe what happened to me today... you won't believe what happened to me" and people would say "What?" and he'd say "Absolutely nothing". Because we humans believe that everything that happens to us is special and significant."

 

[razer]

Why do people always think there has to be some complicated rationale behind everything. Have you considered the null hypothesis, have you considered that the reason it took until now for a banwave is because all their previous attempts had failed?

haha awesome quote!

 

[jdaugherty29]

I just hope they bring the bots back soon.

 

[Crazyd22]

I have botted on main main account for a VERY long time and run for hours on end, even during and after the Token release. Fortunately I was not botting when the ban wave happened. So if they were waiting then why didn't I get banned?

 

[Thecamel]

I have botted on main main account for a VERY long time and run for hours on end, even during and after the Token release. Fortunately I was not botting when the ban wave happened. So if they were waiting then why didn't I get banned?

No one except blizzard knows what the fuck happen... We know warden didn't detect it,

Could you elaborate your botting habits

 

[Thecamel]

And you spending habits on your wow licence that didn't get banned

 

[namook]

No one except blizzard knows what the fuck happen... We know warden didn't detect it,

Could you elaborate your botting habits

the time my friend was caught was with in a 30 minute time frame exactly one month ago, they logged in for only 30 mins bot quested and that was enough to flag her maybe warden? no player reports since she never logs in, besides that 30 mins to quest bot, she didn't play since tried to log in today suspended.

 

[baj2k]

Why do people always think there has to be some complicated rationale behind everything. Have you considered the null hypothesis, have you considered that the reason it took until now for a banwave is because all their previous attempts had failed?

+1

Occam's razor: The principle states that among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove to provide better predictions, but—in the absence of differences in predictive ability—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.

They turned something on that could detect HB, logged every account they detected, and slammed the ban hammer... until proven otherwise that's what happened. Way too many people were banned in a very close time frame for it to have been reports from other players. That may have prompted them to "build a better mousetrap", but I doubt it was the tool of our demise (well actually I didn't get banned - but I haven't played in 2 months either).

Or maybe they just bought HB, played WoW with it, figured out how it works and how to detect it, and then they did...

 

[klepp0906]

Yeah. No. I got banned and done none of these as i am sure many people will tell you in short order but please.

Cause rules never have exceptions /rollseyes