Bot banwave, is it helping?

[Korkk]

The day the ban wave was announced I bought up all the cheap mats/flasks/pots I could to sell them at a profit. I'm sure there are many other players who did so as well. Give the market time to readjust.

[kaganpwnz]

bots definitely hurt the economy. because you are leaving the guy who farmed his mats with his own time only 500g per flask. when bots leave yo see it drift back up where it should be, time vs gold.

if i farm herbs for an hour i should be looking at 8-10k for my time, not 4-5.

[Drusin]

If you guys don't like farming I will share my secret.



This will help you with anything in game. Gotta fish? Doing Archaeology? Farming mats? Soloing raids on 20+ alts? The captain is there for you. Also something playing in the background you can listen to, I'm personally a fan of stand up comedy.

[Deleted]

It helping or not helping the WoW economy is irrelevant. It's about fair and equal gameplay, and botting goes against that.

Fair and equal gameplay went when Blizzard starting selling boosts and gold.

[Pantalaimon]

Fair and equal gameplay went when Blizzard starting selling boosts and gold.

How is somebody forking over a fairly large sum of cash for a game service to cap their toon giving them an unfair advantage over others? It isn't like certain people are getting boosts for free, they are still having to sacrifice something for it (ie money). Same thing goes for the gold. Plus anyone can pay money in order to benefit from the so-called unfair gameplay.

[Lucetia]

Prices seem to have gone up by an average of 500g per flask.

I am certain it has to do with bots getting banned etc.

Of course its a good thing that you are dis-allowing people from cheating in the game.

Is it really helping the economy though?

I mean if you as blizzard know that will ban lets say 100k bots that carry mats and consumables on them, you need to find a way to compensate for it or else the economy is screwed.

The consumables economy is so weird and generally mats during legion. I mean as an example on my server flask of the whispered pact started on 3k. Then dropped to 2k and eventually around 1.2k. Then the Blood vendor came out and flasks dropped to 700k per piece. Then a banwave came and jumped up to 1.2k and of course its gonna go even higher. This is not a healthy economy really and hence you are making consumables very important to the game. I don't mind farming flasks etc and spending time in order to make my character produce better results. Although I have to farm pots and many more in order to compensate.

This post is just a masked attempt at either stating botting is ok or Blizzard needs to balance the economy. Neither are true. Just because they ban bots and everything doesn't mean they need to compensate for anything. If there isn't enough material in the market for prices to stay low then it isn't Blizzard's fault the player base is too lazy to farm more material. Bots shouldn't stay because of this. Basically you (and many others) are saying botting should stay because it keeps prices low, even though you'll mask it by saying botting isn't ok.

To sum it all up, keep banning the botters, no Blizzard shouldn't compensate anything and people need to stop being so lazy and farm more materials to input into the market.

[Tharkkun]

It is helping to keep WoW cleaner of Bots, however It won't help when Innocents get caught In the cross fire more and more. Innocent people who were caught In the ban wave, supposedly for botting but were not bot-users at all. Acceptable casualties of war for Blizzard, so to speak. Which are unacceptable though and should be done something about them. Problem Is, like I've kept saying their Investigation process and other detection process' are automated, It will sometimes think you act bot-like, or Interrupt so well you may be a bot, It'll ban you regardless and no GM will dispute that or care enough to Investigate further beyond what the automation process says, which Is either "Guilty or or not" and Gms go by that... no investigations go Into the true Innocence of someone. If so I'd be playing WoW for the last year and a half myself. (Not due to Bot-using, but still)

You got banned for harassment which was either done by your multiple personality or your little brother. Either way it's harassment and account sharing which was against the TOS. Every person in my guild who was wrongfully banned whether by making too much money, transferring gold, etc had it overturned with a simple phone call to Blizzard. No one executes "bot like behavior". You're either at your keyboard and playing the character or you aren't.

Blizzard has decompiled the popular bots and has the ability to scan your memory using warden to look for pieces of the code while WoW is running. That's how they find and detect bots. The code is unique enough that it's easily found now.

[Ankou-WOW]

Doesn't seem to help much

[Onikaroshi]

Everyone is always so up in arms over bots. I see them, I chuckle, I move on. They don't bother me and I really don't care that they exist. I actually like them, they keep mats from getting insane in price (not cheap, just not insane). I would never report a bot, doesn't affect my game in the least.

[Vorselia]

If you guys don't like farming I will share my secret.



This will help you with anything in game. Gotta fish? Doing Archaeology? Farming mats? Soloing raids on 20+ alts? The captain is there for you. Also something playing in the background you can listen to, I'm personally a fan of stand up comedy.

Oh yes. The best way to farm anything in WoW. Takes the pain of it away.

[Septik]

i feel like they are already back, or there was some that werent affected by the banwave. just saw a rogue fly/jump away after gathering some dreamleaf while i killed the mobs by it

[Lucetia]

doesn't affect my game in the least.

Except they do effect the game. The difference is you enjoy the effect they have on the game so you don't care.

[BananaHandsB]

Most of the banned accounts were second accounts. People have already created new accounts and begun botting again. No level 110? They bot level a char to 110. It hardly makes a dent.

[Flurryfang]

Of course it should! read my post. Although blizzard should act a bit like a government and compensate after such a banwave until people have farmed those mats that are missing from the market.

Imagine as a real world example every time they caught a big criminal that had a lot of money and lets say he was controlling the food industry, the price of your launch went up by 3$. So instead of paying 6$ you are paying 9$. Then it drops to 6$ and then 9$ again. Its just not healthy.

The market will always survive. Just because a good amount of people with mats on their person is banned, does not mean that people find more value in the items.

The people make the price. If the price only gets lower because people cheat in the game, then the price is meant to be high.

[Teri]

Ah the good old days of farming black lotus for flasks, there were like 2 up in the vanilla world at any given time. (no flying mounts)

And then came burning crusade with the big row of potions/elixirs/flamecap etc on every tier5 progression pull.

Now flasks are super easy to make regardless, just going by availability of herbs in the world, sure starlight rose is 1 per pick but it's so abundant, and there's always the herb/fish shoulder enchant to give more of certain materials.

Bots = cheating, and I'd rather pay some crafters more knowing its an actual player, then giving a bot half of that.

And even so , botted gold can go even further and pay indefinetly for playtime or illegal sales so that makes it even worse.

In current day's economy if black lotus were still around for the only viable flasks, I'd expect like crazy prices like at least 25000 per.

[Jewsco]

I like the myth the bot excuse makers use that they help the economy. Do they lower prices? Because when the botters are out there in full force they make it harder for the non botter to get mats and thus someone that would of made the stuff for free now is buying these "cheaper" mats and thus what would be free now costs them. How is that cheaper? Add in the inflation the botters costs the economy and how everything else thus raises in price like mounts,pets, gear etc... Who is botting helping or benefiting but the botters? Keep the myth going though

[Kuja]

They should remove all mats as well that the bots farmed if they still exist. Prices have nothing to do with the TOS you accepted.

[Deleted]

Of course it should! read my post. Although blizzard should act a bit like a government and compensate after such a banwave until people have farmed those mats that are missing from the market

Eh no.
Ban all the bots, it's good for the game.
If that makes consumable prices soar, then let them soar - that's the design. Bots are currently ruining it by flooding the market with cheap mats.
Flasks/pots are not supposed to be popped like candy, they're supposed to be rare and expensive resource - this was said in the dev interview by Ion.

So let the prices soar. They're supposed to.
Banning bots and removing cheaters shouldn't have anything to do with this. They should be banned regardless.

[Deleted]

It helps no one. Any damage that botters do is done between waves. Professional botters care fuck all for ban waves, their toons and accounts are fully expendable.
The only people truly punished with banwaves are semi-legit players who botted to avoid spending too much time farming for necessities. At the same time, there is no upside to them altogether. I banwaves were weekly, then perhaps botting business would suffer. Perhaps.

[Ahovv]

Prices on my server doubled after the announcement, but have recovered by a healthy margin.

As far as effects on the economy go, you should be looking at a different way. Without bots, let's say prices rise. Rising prices mean regular players can also get more money for their time spent gathering. In the end it balances out. What bots end up doing in the long run is reduce the potential for the average player to accumulate gold, and perpetuate this constant desire of players to buy gold from bots and account phishers, etc.