Something I noticed

[erics56]

Hey Everyone,

This is my first post on the forums but I've been actively running through these forums for a few years now.

I personally have lost quite a few accounts in the past year with all the banwaves, including the past three.

One thing I have been noticing recently that I failed to have seen before is phantom nodes. I usually have two accounts running, one is herbing and mining in legion, the second was being run using CR only. Lately when switching to the farming account, just to monitor and make sure it's not stuck, I would notice that it would come across either an herb or an ore that isn't there, but would still attempt to pick it and then the loot screen comes up empty.

Could this be a way of them detecting botters? Placing phantom nodes that the average user can't see, but a program will pick it up for sure? Soon as it does, BAM, you are now flagged.

Just my opinion and wanted to see if anyone else has been noticing this unusual behavior as well.

 

[qztr]

Might be a way to flag for manual investigation, sure.
But the recent banwaves have been due to detection of the bot. Meaning that it banned people who were botting other things than gathering as well.

 

[frosticus]

everybody gets on the list, then all banned on one day. we assume its detection only. but honestly, no one knows for sure. we guess that the detection period is a couple weeks long. but no one knows for sure.

what we do know for sure. honorbuddy can be detected at will. its a cat and mouse game. blizzard is trying harder to catch honorbuddy. honorbuddy is trying harder to protect their customers.

be safe but plan on being banned every 2-4 months.

 

[Aion]

Yep, we have seen such "phantom" or even slightly underground nodes, which were not possible to be manually clicked ingame, but the bot had no issues farming them even from Cata and Pandaria.

This theory was quite popular back then, but we have no real tools, which could actually prove it, with those timed banwaves.

Considering majority of the botters were banned because they used the bot in the days after the ninja patch - 27-31 Jan, its expected to see bans only on those, but as always we see random pattern of people, who were offline for a while - 1-2-3 weeks, and still got banned.

On the other side, we too receive random reports about survivals, which were botting before 27th.

So the banwave could be indeed a mix of recent detection + queued bans from various kind of ban reasons in the last several weeks or so.

 

[JGreen]

...
be safe but plan on being banned every 2-4 months..

Yes, sadly this seems to be the case nowadays. This makes HB only suitable for gold farmers whom can recuperate their costs via selling gold - For casual users like myself, HB is unusable as we can't really afford keep buying new accounts.

I don't care much about the lifetime key thing, companies change their policies all the time - but for what you're charging and the detection rate, the product becomes unusable for me. Once the detection rate is fixed, I might come back.

Regards,
JG

 

[frosticus]

the loss of wow accounts is disheartening. we will always be in fear of losing account because we never know when we will get banned again. im afraid the fear will always be there from now on. that stress can be hard on a persons health and their wallet.

 

[Kuat]

Once the detection rate is fixed, I might come back.

How do you know when it's fixed?

It's the second time (that i know of) that people get banned by bot detection - just by having HB in the background, not even farming anything.

Who's to say there won't be 3rd time, 4th time, etc. ?

I can't risk my main like that.

 

[Aion]

How do you know when it's fixed?

It's the second time (that i know of) that people get banned by bot detection - just by having HB in the background, not even farming anything.

Who's to say there won't be 3rd time, 4th time, etc. ?

I can't risk my main like that.

It is a common sense on first place.

Blizzard are working 24/7 vs botting companies, so no matter what and when "is fixed", Blizzard can, and usually attempts new detection methods almost every week.

So this is dynamic "game" of mouse and cat.

We would never be relaxed enough that the bot is "safe enough" for casual botting. And obviously this scenario Blizzard wants from us!

And this is not the second, but actually the 6th detection vs HB in the last 2 years:

May 2015, Dec 2015, May 2016, 2 x Nov 2016 and now Feb 2017!

I would not risk my main account, if had any today (but since my Scarab Lord got banned 6 years ago, I do not care nowadays for "mains" but dedicated into profile development)

 

[Hatdred]

It is a common sense on first place.

Blizzard are working 24/7 vs botting companies, so no matter what and when "is fixed", Blizzard can, and usually attempts new detection methods almost every week.

So this is dynamic "game" of mouse and cat.

We would never be relaxed enough that the bot is "safe enough" for casual botting. And obviously this scenario Blizzard wants from us!

And this is not the second, but actually the 6th detection vs HB in the last 2 years:

May 2015, Dec 2015, May 2016, 2 x Nov 2016 and now Feb 2017!

I would not risk my main account, if had any today (but since my Scarab Lord got banned 6 years ago, I do not care nowadays for "mains" but dedicated into profile development)

Scarab Lord - Achievement - World of Warcraft very sad if u ask me

 

[Kuat]

May 2015, Dec 2015, May 2016, 2 x Nov 2016 and now Feb 2017!

Yeah, my first banwave by detection was in Dec 2015 (12 months ban, i only used CR routine for questing by hand)

After that I botted a little at the start of Legion (got the Legendary fishing rod) but then stopped playing. Now i wanted to get back, logged on the forums to get an updated HB so it would make my questing easier and see this shitstorm.

And yes, my main is the original 2008 Scarab Lord. So screw that, i'm not risking it.

 

[qztr]

From the moment I started using HB, I have never ever been banned on a account that I haven't botted on.
Both my perm bans has been on the same main account. Later got banned for defrauding GM, but that's not because of the bot.

I've been running at least 1 bot next to my main account everytime my main account has been online.


If you don't want to lose your main, simply don't bot on it.
Most people here can easily afford a battlechest and a HB key if they wanted to, and just running pre-wod content will get you enough gold to get another account if you're getting banned.

 

[Kuat]

If you don't want to lose your main, simply don't bot on it.

Then HB has no appeal to me, because i'm not a gold seller.

I want to bot on my main to make tedious in-game stuff a little easier.

I suspect many people are also like that.

 

[qztr]

Then HB has no appeal to me, because i'm not a gold seller.

I want to bot on my main to make tedious in-game stuff a little easier.

I suspect many people are also like that.

Then there's no reason for you to be here really.
If you can't handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

HB is unsafe either way though, but for suicide-botting it's still usable.

 

[Aion]

Then HB has no appeal to me, because i'm not a gold seller.

I want to bot on my main to make tedious in-game stuff a little easier.

I suspect many people are also like that.

As qztr said, botting on your main wow license is pure hazard now!

No difference if you use HB for sophisticated botting tasks, or use combat rotations like FH, SBR etc, because they are receiving their banwaves regularly too.

Need to mention the mourn from the SBR/FH customers not long ago, when Blizzard banwaved them with account closure, instead of the 6 months suspension, distributed to the HB banwaves.

But enough with the negative part!

Some people have already found some creative ways to minimize the impact of the banwaves to their "main accounts" in several creative ways:

1. Bot on different wow license within the same battle.net client as your main: That way people have grinded mounts/account-wide achievements/toys or anything, shared within the battle.net!

2. Using bots on different battle.net accounts, registered under the same name and power-gearing there characters to high ilvl, like 880-890ilvl via WQ, Pvp, boosts etc., getting the desired exalted reputations, then X-Fer the toons to the main account.
3. Parallel for "powering" the stuff above, people are botting few to several goldfarming accounts as well - best should be to run them on separate computer than your main account for extra security. And depositing the gold to guildbanks, "owned" by 3rd party dummy accounts (for extra security as well)