[Official] Statement about Arenas and Battlegrounds

[ccLoaded]

I'm sorry about your arm and I truly appreciate the sacrifice you've made for our freedoms. That being said, they aren't "singling out" Arena players. They never supported Arena. They allowed developers to create combat routines that took advantage of a loophole to allow arena play and looked the other way, for YEARS. Recently, in the best interest of the bot, his business, and the majority of the botting community, they've chosen to no longer allow the loophole to remain open.

It is a bummer, and I'm sorry this impacts you in this way. But the competitive Arena community is VICIOUS. We can't continue to have some of the most influential players in the game continue to rattle Blizzard's chain over our bot, or we're not going to have it, anymore.

And to all of you "if I can't have my way, I want the WHOLE THING shut down" people, it isn't happening. So, get over it. Go wallow in butt hurt self pity somewhere else.

LOLOL!!! Technically they don't support a lot of stuff as its community developers who create a lot of the content. As many have said maybe they never liked it but they did support it, they allowed pvp bot bases, combat routines and plugins to be sold on their store so they definitely supported it in one way or another.

 

[CalifRHCP]

This was a poor decision by Bossland and staff...there really is nothing else to say about it. It doesn't matter how you feel about bots in pvp, they shouldn't be policing it based on their own views. Bots ruin more than pvp in this game, so why not just disable the bot altogether? It destroys the econoomy for everyone, it destroys the competitiveness of raiding as well. Why is it PvP that gets singled out? Just because that is the personal view point of the bot developers?

Thats a bad way to run a company, making decisions for your customers. Its like selling the bot but refusing to sell it to black people because you don't like them. Its bad business.

 

[killajosh]

This was a poor decision by Bossland and staff...there really is nothing else to say about it. It doesn't matter how you feel about bots in pvp, they shouldn't be policing it based on their own views. Bots ruin more than pvp in this game, so why not just disable the bot altogether? It destroys the econoomy for everyone, it destroys the competitiveness of raiding as well. Why is it PvP that gets singled out? Just because that is the personal view point of the bot developers?

Thats a bad way to run a company, making decisions for your customers. Its like selling the bot but refusing to sell it to black people because you don't like them. Its bad business.

That may be the most retarded comparison I have ever killed a brain cell to read....

First off, BL made a decision to try and save HB. He isn't making decisions for you, he is making a decision about HIS business.

Second, how can you make that stupid ass comparison? That's basically relating PvP to being black and BL is the mighty white racist. It has nothing to do with personal likes, its a business decision.

If all you whiners don't like it, there are certainly other bots around.

 

[indk]

That may be the most retarded comparison I have ever killed a brain cell to read....

First off, BL made a decision to try and save HB. He isn't making decisions for you, he is making a decision about HIS business.

Second, how can you make that stupid ass comparison? That's basically relating PvP to being black and BL is the mighty white racist. It has nothing to do with personal likes, its a business decision.

If all you whiners don't like it, there are certainly other bots around.

It's a business decision that involves people(customers) who helped THEM make it INTO a business. When I first initially bought honorbuddy, I was lead to believe I could play arena with it. And guess what? I COULD! Now, I own 4 keys and countless PVP ARENA ROUTINES that are completely worthless. Hence, the only people who get screwed = (me, us) THEIR customers. Which are the people who HELPED them get to where they are today. I understand they don't want a BOT BASE automating arena, and that's fine! but the CR's should still be around and allowed. They really need to think hard on this one. It's not the reason for this banwave, I know it isn't. People want to play with REAL people. You can pull that off very well using just a CR. But when people see countless zombie bots running around, it's a huge turn off. That's where the problem lies.

 

[killajosh]

It's a business decision that involves people(customers) who helped THEM make it INTO a business. When I first initially bought honorbuddy, I was lead to believe I could play arena with it. And guess what? I COULD! Now, I own 4 keys and countless PVP ARENA ROUTINES that are completely worthless. Hence, the only people who get screwed = (me, us) THEIR customers. Which are the people who HELPED them get to where they are today. I understand they don't want a BOT BASE automating arena, and that's fine! but the CR's should still be around and allowed. They really need to think hard on this one. It's not the reason for this banwave, I know it isn't. People want to play with REAL people. You can pull that off very well using just a CR. But when people see countless zombie bots running around, it's a huge turn off. That's where the problem lies.

If you only use HB for arena, that's on you. It was never advertised as an arena bot...

 

[OhaiDur]

I think its a little silly too try and pull the "We just turned a blind eye too PvP CR's, We never fully supported them" Card after selling them on the buddy store and a part of that process was the honorbuddy team making sure the new updates was in working order and reviewed before being updated on the buddy store and taking a % of profit from the sales, Come on, you are being about as transparent as Blizzard at this point and its very disappointing.

 

[TheDrGonzo]

I think its a little silly too try and pull the "We just turned a blind eye too PvP CR's, We never fully supported them" Card after selling them on the buddy store and a part of that process was the honorbuddy team making sure the new updates was in working order and reviewed before being updated on the buddy store and taking a % of profit from the sales, Come on, you are being about as transparent as Blizzard at this point and its very disappointing.

When I first got honorbuddy I wondered why it didn't run out of the box in Arenas... I did a forum search and within 10 minutes I found posts by Bossland saying he didn't support it. so, when buddy store came out I simply didn't buy any.

 

[ntlntl]

No BG please. I love the game as it is. It should be fun and safe.

 

[arena_junkie]

So you buy a swimming suit. The suit is good for taking a sun bath and for swimming. Later the seller of the swimming suit tells you that you cannot use the suit for sun bathing, only for swimming, because sun bathing feature has not been advertised. And the suit loses all its color if you try to stay in the sun with it and falls apart. You try to return the suit to the seller saying that you are not happy with the suit. The seller refuses the refund. This is basically what happened with pvp routines in lamest terms. This is a blow below the belt for HB customers. This will make HB a lot less popular and many pvp-centric customers will move to another bot, which is roughly 50% of customer base. Not only user base will become smaller, but also some very well known developers will leave the community. Bossland is willing to take a hit, and they do not care what we, customers, think about it. Let me tell you a secret. Companies who do not care for customer base die. Business is like that. The end.

 

[CalifRHCP]

That may be the most retarded comparison I have ever killed a brain cell to read....

First off, BL made a decision to try and save HB. He isn't making decisions for you, he is making a decision about HIS business.

Second, how can you make that stupid ass comparison? That's basically relating PvP to being black and BL is the mighty white racist. It has nothing to do with personal likes, its a business decision.

If all you whiners don't like it, there are certainly other bots around.

I feel bad for you if you think arena botting is what detected HB or even made it a priority.

 

[killajosh]

So you buy a swimming suit. The suit is good for taking a sun bath and for swimming. Later the seller of the swimming suit tells you that you cannot use the suit for sun bathing, only for swimming, because sun bathing feature has not been advertised. And the suit loses all its color if you try to stay in the sun with it and falls apart. You try to return the suit to the seller saying that you are not happy with the suit. The seller refuses the refund. This is basically what happened with pvp routines in lamest terms. This is a blow below the belt for HB customers. This will make HB a lot less popular and many pvp-centric customers will move to another bot, which is roughly 50% of customer base. Not only user base will become smaller, but also some very well known developers will leave the community. Bossland is willing to take a hit, and they do not care what we, customers, think about it. Let me tell you a secret. Companies who do not care for customer base die. Business is like that. The end.

Companies that don't care for themselves die out too. You all act like this was a direct attack on arena, when BL is just trying to save HB from getting killed. He could have just shut it down.

BTW, you can still use HB for PvP, just not in the arena. Get over it. It was a sound business decision. Sacrifice the want of the few for the good of the many....

I feel bad for you if you think arena botting is what detected HB or even made it a priority.

Can you use the search function at battle.net? If so, go search arena bot and tell me why there are thousands of posts bitching about arena bots....

 

[Jamesbeam]

So you buy a swimming suit. The suit is good for taking a sun bath and for swimming. Later the seller of the swimming suit tells you that you cannot use the suit for sun bathing, only for swimming, because sun bathing feature has not been advertised. And the suit loses all its color if you try to stay in the sun with it and falls apart. You try to return the suit to the seller saying that you are not happy with the suit. The seller refuses the refund. This is basically what happened with pvp routines in lamest terms. This is a blow below the belt for HB customers. This will make HB a lot less popular and many pvp-centric customers will move to another bot, which is roughly 50% of customer base. Not only user base will become smaller, but also some very well known developers will leave the community. Bossland is willing to take a hit, and they do not care what we, customers, think about it. Let me tell you a secret. Companies who do not care for customer base die. Business is like that. The end.

First of all your comparison is not accurate. HB never stated anywhere that it can be used for Arenas specifically, the only feature that was ever mentioned by Bossland was in the User Manual (Battleground Botting (BG Buddy));
If you buy anything from a 3rd party, in this case a Combat Routine that allows you to play Arenas with it, you know that this is a) not supported by Bossland as there is or were no official support for Arenas ever.

And that you do it at your own risk. I think Tony and others often made it clear that they are not responsible for anything 3rd party related.
Also you can't blame the Routine writers. Many of them didn't promise you anything at all. You donated money to them and they in return out of the goods of their hearts gave you exclusive access to their combat routine.
Now if that author gets a new job or simply doesn't want to continue working on the routine, its his goddamn right to do so. You never paid for a product.

"This is a blow below the belt for HB customers. This will make HB a lot less popular and many pvp-centric customers will move to another bot, which is roughly 50% of customer base."
I'm pretty sure Bossland is aware of eventually loosing a portion of its customer bases trust, but if you ever run a company you get used to that customers come and go, some might use your product for years and every product you develop afterwards. Some just find something that does the job better or are simply fed up with how you might handle customer care or whatever.

Now you mentioned "roughly 50% of customer base are pvp centric customers". Can you give any proof for your numbers? Because i see people sling that kind of shit around here every day but nobody can back up their bullshit facts.
Just because you put a percentage sign behind a number doesn't make what you say any more true.

And last but not least "Companies who do not care for customer base die. Business is like that. The end"
You have no clue how business is run, because the only truth is nobody cares about you.
I'm a customer here since 2012, i've used other products before and I'll use other products after HB is gone at some point like the ones before them.

But I think 25 bucks for a lifetime license, updates and support for a few years now is a great fkin deal.
Now tell me what other comapny does that? And then think again about your statement on not careing for your customer base.

 

[Machinist8989]

Granted your not an older user of HB I'll just say you misinformed and clearly not someone who has used arena CR's since 2012. Community Developer titles must of been randomly thrown around for Glad Suite being one of the more popular ones but I was using Sir Lars rogue CR seasons ago. Mindless troll I am not. Active botter for years I am. I cringe seeing goobers run their mouth trying to point a finger on how they may have been banned but if you never ran arena CR then clearly you were banned for something else cough the bot itself. Trying to single handed point fingers at bg botter or arena botters(as far fetched as ever) is hilarious. Almost as hilarious as an official honorbuddy store supporting arena CR's saying that they don't support Arena CRs.

well said

alot of hypocrites about these days, its pathetic, its dumb the PVE HB users/fanboys are bashing the PVP side, you can see alot of the same guys in every single thread

No one really thinks that BG Botting was the detection method, since people who had never botted a BG were banned. But the visibility the Bot received given the Viral Youtube videos showcasing BGs with 19/20 people botting...that may have pushed blizzard to be a little more aggressive in their attempts to detect HB. But that can be said for the instance grinding and the videos of 100s of Bots running in and out of the Botanica in an endless flow.

There is a difference in Blizzard's motivation to ban botters and their actual method, which is really the distinction that needs to be made when considering the argument that BG Botting was the primary incentive of such an aggressive ban wave.

ah so a video is to blame, bg's have been like that for quite sometime, its well known, blizz even has a fast report function built into bg's, bg bots aint nothing new, i will admit though arena was getting a bit stupid with kick botting but its harder to prove than a afk guy using a bg bot for hours upon hours on end while being quickly reported ingame by players.

dont you think the gold farmers messing with the release of the wow token is more logical a reason? it messed directly with form of income for blizzard and the balance of the token, it even had to be relaunched which was around the same time as the new detection was introduced by blizzard to warren, its like botters ruining the ingame shop.

considering the state that PVP has been in for a while from a game mechanics POV and the general game direction it would blow my mind if the banwave was caused directly and solely by arena/bg.

 

[TheDrGonzo]

well said

alot of hypocrites about these days, its pathetic, its dumb the PVE HB users/fanboys are bashing the PVP side, you can see alot of the same guys in every single thread



ah so a video is to blame, bg's have been like that for quite sometime, its well known, blizz even has a fast report function built into bg's, bg bots aint nothing new, i will admit though arena was getting a bit stupid with kick botting but its harder to prove than a afk guy using a bg bot for hours upon hours on end while being quickly reported ingame by players.

dont you think the gold farmers messing with the release of the wow token is more logical a reason? it messed directly with form of income for blizzard and the balance of the token, it even had to be relaunched which was around the same time as the new detection was introduced by blizzard to warren, its like botters ruining the ingame shop.

considering the state that PVP has been in for a while from a game mechanics POV and the general game direction it would blow my mind if the banwave was caused directly and solely by arena/bg.

No, I don't think the tokens had anything to do with it. Botters = more expendable gold to buy the tokens, driving up the prices... giving the people paying 20.00 for a token more gold for their dollar.

 

[nooblet]

I was raging massively the other day when bossland announced this (I spent money on combat routines), tbh I was more annoyed with the censorship by mods than bossland himself. When he came out and said look this is why we've done it I guess I can't be too angry upon reflection.

Bossland is trying to protect the community and his business.

Now i've calmed down I understand his move, i'm disappointed because botting in general is just fun. I've made it to 2.6k rating myself without scripts but used to script occasionally.

I can't hold it against him that he wants to put an end to arena bots, as he said that was never the goal of honorbuddy. It was to allow automation of boring tasks and give users more free time to actually enjoy wow minus their mindless grinds. The arena is based on the spirit of competition and fair winning.


PQR's goal was to allow cheating of the arena, that was built specifically for that. Honorbuddy has not been built around allowing cheating in arenas, do I think bossland should have put an end to it faster? yes he should have disabled it long ago if he was concerned. I believe he just let it go because he thought well there seems to be no risk so we'll sort of allow it and just let it go unsaid.

But now they've been hit by a massive banwave and there are a lot of arena complaints I see his point.

Removing battlegrounds would be a bad move and that would REALLY cheese me off. Because honorgrind fucking sucks..... now do I think they should improve bgbuddy? yes they should. It's a bit rubbish and needs work.... if they improve it's logic it'll be far better and much less noticeable. How about putting in emotes? how about putting in a tripwire if someone says bot it exits bg? how about putting in some options to talk. Allow custom BG waypoints / profiles?

Millz has already done this with his botbase, it's excellent and often times It used to deal MORE dps than other players lmao.... so my bot was better than humans and contributed more to the BG.

So just to clarify, you think the bot trains in BG's isn't an issue? But arena pvp is?

 

[TheDrGonzo]

So just to clarify, you think the bot trains in BG's isn't an issue? But arena pvp is?

Bot trains can be fixed with AI tweaking... on the official WoW forums there was outrage the day the bans happened with how many people got caught in the top 100s....every time you win in arena, you're hurting a legit players ranking.

 

[toliman]

I suppose there's 3 or 4 alternative options, but,

removing pvp functions would basically cripple the point and name of honor buddy.

Perhaps having the CR by itself, but no functional bot to AFK rBGs would be enough at this stage.

Losing in battlegrounds to players is what made me realise that bots existed in the first place.. Later, it was the prevalence of people walking into walls for 2 hours, bot armies in alterac that couldn't win, so they floundered around. Etc.

Removing BGs is perhaps an olive branch at best, because the other problem of grind/farming was endemic, but it's always going to be something that triggers the community concern.

At this stage, blizzard is going to believe that the community needs to see bots punished. However, it's not in their business interests.

It's a sore argument though. I don't believe that bliz is in a position to negotiate terms, and neither is bossland. The damage caused by rampant bg farming has been systemic to the credibility of the game, and while its not particularly any one fault, there's no way around the result.

If HB removes any possibility of PvP functions in rbgs, instances and arena, people will demand refunds for their CRs, and that's fair enough.

If bossland chooses not to refund people who bought the product honor buddy, based on the name of the product, that's going to cause friction. Disabling HB in arenas and rbgs, people will have the right to a refund. If they bought PvP products from the store, this should apply as well.

I don't believe that there's going to be a detante if bossland creates a neutered version of HB for PvE, and creates a different name for the product, and changes keys to match the new product. Bliz won't respect there being any difference between farming dungeons and farming honor, or grinding fish/mobs/dailies. It's not an argument of harm to others, it's a choice between militancy that they can't be seen to be complacent,and the cost of losing community support for the game.

In the end, it's numbers. If they find that the numbers drop below 5 million due to the impact of tokens /bots and after 6 months the numbers come back due to botting, it's going to be bloody.

Bossland is damned by its past decisions and it can either accept that, or step back and appease bliz. Neither will work IMHO, because it has lazily and ultimately changed the way people see bots in the community. Even if they remove most of the default free bots, and have 3rd party addon / store products handle automation, it's still not going to change things.

 

[acended]

I know people are entitled to their opinions but as the cliche goes "at the end of the day" there is no more pvp on this bot.
You can wing and moan but its the owner of HB that decides what he does and i agree seeing him and his staff are the peopel that actually own and have used there coding skills to make it.
So plz stop being cry babys and get on with it, your like kids moaning to mummy or daddy cos they wnt buy you the best football boots!!

 

[DaSoul]

So you buy a swimming suit. The suit is good for taking a sun bath and for swimming. Later the seller of the swimming suit tells you that you cannot use the suit for sun bathing, only for swimming, because sun bathing feature has not been advertised. And the suit loses all its color if you try to stay in the sun with it and falls apart. You try to return the suit to the seller saying that you are not happy with the suit. The seller refuses the refund. This is basically what happened with pvp routines in lamest terms. This is a blow below the belt for HB customers. This will make HB a lot less popular and many pvp-centric customers will move to another bot, which is roughly 50% of customer base. Not only user base will become smaller, but also some very well known developers will leave the community. Bossland is willing to take a hit, and they do not care what we, customers, think about it. Let me tell you a secret. Companies who do not care for customer base die. Business is like that. The end.

This is only your personal opinion, which we thank you for, but non-representative for us all as a community. Buddyteam always said, and i clearly remember this since i joined ages ago, #1 goal is safety, that's why most of us are here. We trust those guys as they always deliver!

 

[Goshinki]

This is only your personal opinion, which we thank you for, but non-representative for us all as a community. Buddyteam always said, and i clearly remember this since i joined ages ago, #1 goal is safety, that's why most of us are here. We trust those guys as they always deliver!

Lol if that was true BGBuddy would of been updated 2 years ago...