I wish the 2nd time offenders were perma banned and not 18 months. Maybe 1st offense should be a year. I don't know. All I know is that it isn't doing enough to combat the rampant cheating from some of the playerbase.
The 6 month ban is perfect if you think about it, they have to buy the game and legion before there ban is done. Genius
When you said "most people don't come back after 1.5 year bans" I figure its actually the opposite. Seems like people come back and bot again or just come back with a lesson learned but I'm not sure, either could be right but I do see plenty of the same people coming back after long bans to bot again.
With everything else I was referring to pets, achievements and mounts which are still accessible. That hardly qualifies as "pretty damn permanent" to me when it's being made so easy to wait out the time.
Seems legit. I'd presume all cheating scum doesn't want to get permanently banned on first offense.
Dudes is there no bot users here who want to have a serious discussion? Leaving it as "uh there are those dudes and... they use magic.. and they got banned lol - me better".. is just boring.
Apparently you don't play rated. It's a sickening mess and quite pointless. Titles, ranks, achieves mean less than nothing, and the asshattery is rampant. You might as well go to Kharanos or Brill and gank lowbies, then try to brag that you did something.
I'll post here from a string on Blizz forums:
Posted by Angelatore
Okay, so is it just mere coincidence that you just removed WoD from the Battle.net shop and made it a part of the battle chest for a much cheaper price? Are you trying to drive product sales, because you know fullwell most of these peopel are just going to drop a simple $19.99 for WoD and get right back to what they were doing.
You banned people for 6 months (too short) and just made it cheaper for them to buy WoD and immediately install a fresh game on their Battle.net account (or a new Battl.ent account with a different email address and the same contact information).
This ban wave effectively did nothing make you more money through product sales and then push them into over drive to bot back to 100 and continue doing what they always have been.
Here's what you need to do:
1. Permanent ban the entire Battle.net account from World of Warcraft.
2. Permanent ban the email address(es) and contact information from the Battle.net account where action was taken.
3. Permanent ban the payment type(s) used for World of Warcraft.
4. Permanent ban the hardware used to connect to the Battle.net server using a hardware hash identifier created server side.
Congratulations, if you did the above you have now done something real to stop botting in your game.
For all those asking "why 6 month bans and not permabans", the Devs actually posted a long explanation for it when they did their last bot ban wave. I wish I'd bookmarked it, but I'll summerize. The key word is Recidivism.
Consider the outcome when someone gets permabanned. According to Blizz if they buy a new account they've very like to bot again; partly because they need to catch up to what they lost, partly because the worst has already happened and all they can suffer is a second permaban on a less valuable account. By comparison, if someone suffers a temp ban, they're statistically unlikely to continue botting upon their return. Not universally, of course, but apparently a majority of players get the message after one temp ban and desist with botting rather than risk lengthier or permanent bans to their valuable main account.Recidivism is one of the most fundamental concepts in criminal justice. It refers to a person's relapse into criminal behavior, often after the person receives sanctions or undergoes intervention for a previous crime.
So yes, some botters are botters for life, just like some people are career criminals IRL. But most will actually learn their lesson if they're not driven into a life of crime. The level of recidivism after 6 month bans is low enough that Blizzard considers them the best solution for first time offenders.
I am not sure about memes, no I really think people who use them are influenced by illusions. I am vaping a lot more than this pic, I have a hat much more cool and the beard is outclassed by anything random dudes without education watch. The edited words look like frail and weak... So yes. Your clown and meme - are nothing to me and my superiority. My greatness. Fight these simple words - show me your biggest meme god, nemesis - anything will do to show me how low you are to not use words.
Sure while that makes some sense it isn't doing enough to stop botting in this game. It is far too easy for them to start up a new account and even cheaper than before with the addition to WoD to the battlechest. The fact that they can continue to use pets/mounts/etc from previous accounts is beyond stupid. Just 'suspend' that access until the ban is gone or just stop them from getting access to everything. There are just not enough punishments in line for stopping people that want to cheat.