No doubt detected, no hammer? why? I'll tell you why.

[Travismbrountas]

If they came down with one hammer and killed us all, they'd make it more than clear that they have it detected, which would intimidate us all and scare half or more of us off. Now the smart thing, that they are clearly doing, is knocking off small chunks at a time, so that in are minds " Oh I got caught, might as well throw another 60 or couple hundred bucks back in and make some more. Let's say that 80 percent of us get a new account every time we are banned. They are making A LOT of profit off of botters right now. No as to what reporting players do, sure they buttoned down on it, but that's not the reason, my thought is they've had this detected for more than you guys care to think about. Blizzard is a multi billion dollar corporation, you don't think they found a way to detect bots without getting into our memory? think again. Anything is possible when you put a certain amount of money towards it. Bottom line, IT IS detected, but you have no reason to be SCARED. For if you get banned, it is as if you won the lottery, in a bad way of course. You take a small risk in being banned again in other words. ALSO IP ban, is most likely another factor, but do I think they are using it? no, because I am randomly banned every few months, I don't think they would wait an entire few months to ban me, they know i'm botting. Here's my advise, bot 12 - 18 hours a day, supervise or not, you will eventually be banned, whether you like it or not, might as well get the most out of it. Don't think about being shut down, save 60 bucks out of every account you make cause, hey either way you made your money back right? Continue to buy more bots off that one bot if you have had it long enough.

In the end I just said much more than I wanted and jumped around a lot, as well have others said it over and over again. But bottom line, keep botting, because I don't think, this program, will last for ever, make extra income when you have the chance!

P.s. I've been banned more than I care to count for, but how much money have I made over the money I've spent? 45 - 50 grand give or take.

 

[Soldiersbane]

If they knew you were botting they would ban you.

 

[bannhammer]

this article is filled with lots of good empirical, verified information from someone who is clearly an expert in this field. Yep, no speculation or unproven theories here.

 

[Macatho]

Well...Speaking from experience since I've actually been botting longer than 1 month.

Glider got detected = everyone got banned.
Archeology-buddy got detected `= everyone got banned (its fixed now tho)
Speedhack got detected = everyone got banned.

Btw @Bannhammer, I love your post. It clearly sums up 90% of the posts on this sub-forum.

 

[HipDrahve]

this article is filled with lots of good empirical, verified information from someone who is clearly an expert in this field. Yep, no speculation or unproven theories here.

all speculation aside, it's a fact that blizzard only bans active accounts - they wait for you to add gametime before they take action. If this pure demonstration of greed isn't enough to make you think Blizzard couldn't go one further and actually milk the botters for account money, I don't know what is.

 

[tokinterrorz]

Wrong dood my selling account was banned with no game time on it just before xmas

 

[markop]

Author's words make sense. It would be really funny if Blizz would not be able to detect you botting. It is just a matter of time when you catch your turn.

 

[subrand0m]

Blizzard can tell that you fly the same path 20 times, Yes, but They cant tell the program is running just that something is causing your account to act in this way. Please know the difference between Detected and stupid botting on the players side.

 

[DX123]

Do you realize how many people play this game? Do you realize how many tickets they must have to answer on a daily basis from people claiming to spot a "botter"?

If Blizzard "detected" HB.. they would drop a ban hammer on everyone detected and be done with it. They don't have the time, money or man power to be clever and sneaky.

 

[markop]

Blizzard can tell that you fly the same path 20 times, Yes, but They cant tell the program is running just that something is causing your account to act in this way. Please know the difference between Detected and stupid botting on the players side.

How would you that? Are you a blizz worker?

 

[markop]

Do you realize how many people play this game? Do you realize how many tickets they must have to answer on a daily basis from people claiming to spot a "botter"?

If Blizzard "detected" HB.. they would drop a ban hammer on everyone detected and be done with it. They don't have the time, money or man power to be clever and sneaky.

Would you kill a chicken that makes golden eggs?

 

[bannhammer]

Would you kill a chicken that makes golden eggs?

I dont know if I totally agree with this but it could be a factor, HB doesnt embed itself in wow at all and runs separately so they cant scan for it. They can definitely monitor some signs that can point to a bot, but im pretty sure to do anything definitive you have to get a GM to verify its a bot, which can be time consuming and costly. Its definatly a money /resource type problem but its not as simple as a strait "they pay for subs so let em keep at it". They lose money not having the subscription anymore AND paying a GM to look into it.

 

[Kyomu]

Well...Speaking from experience since I've actually been botting longer than 1 month.

Glider got detected = everyone got banned.
Archeology-buddy got detected `= everyone got banned (its fixed now tho)
Speedhack got detected = everyone got banned.

Btw @Bannhammer, I love your post. It clearly sums up 90% of the posts on this sub-forum.

When was Archaeology buddy detected? Can't find anything about it...

 

[ADB]

It became pretty indicative to me how much they actually know when the wave of multiboxers started receiving suspensions due to their new detection methodology involving /follow.

How you separate players from bots becomes rather tricky. It requires a huge amount of CPU resource to pull it off. Some for the client, a metric shit ton for the server. So the likelihood isn't strong that the detection methods have evolved much.

Most likely checking the following on previously or newly flagged accounts:

Uptime
Nodes per hour


Now the controversial part comes in where Bashiok explained how they were looking to remove /follow from BGs to get rid of the less sophisticated bots. The other side of that statement means they've got something else cooked up to catch all the other bots. Those that don't use /follow like HB.

Bashiok statement:

We chose not to communicate it beforehand in attempts to catch as many bots unaware as possible. Removing /follow in battlegrounds is one small change we can make immediately to stop a number of bots, and those that choose to transition to more overt botting methods will have a much higher chance of being caught and banned.

He explains above that they're looking to remove the basic bot to push the would-be botters into using the more involved bots. Those involving a hotspot and tile system possibly.

Now logically they wouldn't actually look at it unless the player was already flagged. The resources involved with doing this against millions of concurrent sessions I believe would be too much stress on the server.

As a developer myself I can say that there are some methods I would employ if it were my job to detect a bot. Some such as an enumerated list of hotspots collected out of combat. Then checking for successive patterns in that behavior. A basic example would be to collect 50 coordinates whenever the player stops moving. Then once a pattern starts to emerge, flag the account for suspension and pending review.

Bottom line is they are actually looking to do something like this. While it won't be completely fool proof. It does give them more headroom than they had prior with the reporting system. Maybe the coordinates are just for that client. It may be possible however that the coordinates are cross examined within each instance. After all BGs are instances. If two players show the same exact coordinates in movement then guess what. High likelihood they are both bots.

I've been thinking of setting up a bot to test this. Just pick a remote location and have the bot run in circles for hours on end every day. If it gets flagged then we have our answer.