Blizzard laying waste to the botting community

[Kyanion]

Of course they are taking the fight against bots now. They have to. You will soon be able to add battle.net balance via WoW gold (tokens) and buy other games, services, etc. Bots would basically make all Blizzard games and heroes, card packs, crates and so on "free". Not ideal.

Hmm that is a fair point, I didn't think of it that way. Buying game time was one thing but funneling gold into Bnet balance will be awful for legit players if bots can go crazy and buy up a lot of the supply.

[Xarian]

It took Blizzard two years to figure out how to detect the new bot when the old one was destroyed. It's cat and mouse, new bots will be made and Blizzard will have to spend a couple years figure it out. It will never end.

A lack of effort should not be confused with an attack plan.

Looking at the past 2 years of banwaves clearly shows Blizzard know what they are doing, bot developers have tried to avoid new banwaves after each successful banwave, and they have only been able to do so for a max of 6 months at a time, and now they are being caught much more frequently.

Shadow bot, Rebot, Anthrax, Pirox all former wow bots that have quit and no longer exist, there is only 1 real bot in the game right now that have a working foundation, and it is being hammered as of late.

Botting in wow has largely been "safe" prior to 2014, thus resulting in many bots on the market, bots were a profitable business because users were kept in the game thus increasing sales of the software. Would a new bot take over if the current banwaves proves to shut down the current top bot on the market?

I dont think so, the time required to develop a bot should not be underestimated, a profitable future for a bot that has to fight an actively developed anti cheat system looks dull, users will not stay with a bot that often gets their accounts banned, no money, no bot.

[demonyaa]

Yeah that is a good question. So he thinks that 25% of all bot bans are innocent players? I would bet that number is far far lower.

Agree. And to top it off Blizzard has an appeal process. If anything they should be harder on the botters.

[markos82]

This used to be true, because banwaves were months apart, so users that were botting just to gather and make gold, would be able to buy new accounts, level them up and sell enough gold to make back what they spend on purchasing new accounts.

With banwaves like this, 3-4 times a year, and if they keep up, several times each month, it will simply be impossible to make back what a new account cost in the time you have before a new banwave.

This new hands on strategy can prove to be really effective, theres only 1 public WoW bot left, in recent months 3 alternative wow bots all shut down due to legal issues with Blizzard.

Victory for blizzard is not far off

Tou can get entire game with all expansions for 50e or less. you can level a character to max level with maxed out gathering professions in 2 days or less, and atm you can easily make 15k-20k gold each hour depending what herbs/ore you farm.
If they bot 10 hours each day, but i think they bot for longer, they can make 150k easy each day. in a month thats more than 4 million. So even if they get banned every 3rd month they will still have sold 16mill gold in that time while spending less than 200k on sub. Nkt sure about the sell prices bht if its 0.13$ for 1k gold thats more than 1800$ profit

[dope_danny]

Good, the salt is always the finest quality.

[Protean]

The only problem is that without bots consumables stay super expensive(too expensive for most players)

The price only goes up because bots generate gold and then sell the gold, causing inflation normal people can't keep up with.

[Xarian]

Tou can get entire game with all expansions for 50e or less. you can level a character to max level with maxed out gathering professions in 2 days or less, and atm you can easily make 15k-20k gold each hour depending what herbs/ore you farm.
If they bot 10 hours each day, but i think they bot for longer, they can make 150k easy each day. in a month thats more than 4 million. So even if they get banned every 3rd month they will still have sold 16mill gold in that time while spending less than 200k on sub. Nkt sure about the sell prices bht if its 0.13$ for 1k gold thats more than 1800$ profit

This might be possible by hand, but will not happen using the bot, the time is not far off but we are probably looking at 4 ish days for the whole process, i know because ive used it myself.

If we are talking months between banwaves, then yes there is room for profit despite many accounts being banned between banwaves from player reports, however the pace of banwaves are picking up, and we have seen 2 banwaves this month alone, this is completely ruining profit of botters running for profit within the game.

[Cæli]

please continue adding 6 months each wave and to each account of the owner, not just the one that used a bot

[Sting]

Fucking a, it's about time they start banning more aggressively.

[KYH]

No. No there isn't.

As for the OP, doesn't matter what they do. The botters will figure out how they're being detected and adapt.

you sound like you're one of the botters lol

[Cherrytie]

And I was wondering why suddenly everyone participated in my bgs

[Ferozan]

They are finally getting the job partially done.

[Ambulatory Cube]

With banwaves like this, 3-4 times a year, and if they keep up, several times each month, it will simply be impossible to make back what a new account cost in the time you have before a new banwave.

That assumes that botters are paying for their accounts purely with botting profits. Not all of them are goldsellers, too. A lot bot just to get an edge or automate boring grindy crap while they're at work making money the old fashioned way. Never underestimate the power of disposable income, lol.

I agree though if Blizzard did manage to get out more banwaves it might put a hefty dent in things. I just don't think they'll ever truly be rid of ALL bots forever.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Sadly all they have done is make the botting community rotate to a different account while the current one is banned. By the time the next wave comes around account number 1 will be unbanned and 2 will go banned and we repeat. At least this is what is happening to the botting community that is making a massive effect. Sure a few mom and pop idiots are getting banned too but the people flooding the market with farmed goods just move on.

[Hulm]

The same guy from Stormrage in the guild EPAEL still farms gold at conquerors terrace in Isle of Thunder with about 6 boomkins botting for the past month or more even though I report his characters every day I'm there doing dailies.

[dakalro]

So what? Maybe some of those people can go get their own mats, use cheaper options or *gasp* do without. And really that is a BS argument. So some things are cheaper. However, OTHER things are more expensive because bots will use that gold to funnel to their real accounts and buy things like mounts and certain rare items and drive the price up of those. So what if you get a few mats cheap if you get screwed out of buying a mount you wanted because the price is astronomical because cheaters bought them up.

WoD made sure consumables will be massively expensive. When raiding there is no "cheaper options". As someone who missed most of WoD and did not send my army of alts on garrison missions for years I entered Legion with <100k gold, that was nowhere near enough to sustain even casual mode consumables. I'm not broke but I cannot stay on 0 because there's so much gold in the game.

[Xarian]

That assumes that botters are paying for their accounts purely with botting profits. Not all of them are goldsellers, too. A lot bot just to get an edge or automate boring grindy crap while they're at work making money the old fashioned way. Never underestimate the power of disposable income, lol.

I agree though if Blizzard did manage to get out more banwaves it might put a hefty dent in things. I just don't think they'll ever truly be rid of ALL bots forever.

For sure, but people that dont bot for profit, bot to play the game, they lose more then those that bot for profit. If banwave happens every month, twice a month or ever 3rd month, that player needs to deal with AP again, gear up again etc to be competetive.

This is far more time consuming than leveling a char to 110 and farm herbs, i think these botters specifically will quit the bots all together, its simply not worth it as Blizzard are picking up now.

Sadly all they have done is make the botting community rotate to a different account while the current one is banned. By the time the next wave comes around account number 1 will be unbanned and 2 will go banned and we repeat. At least this is what is happening to the botting community that is making a massive effect. Sure a few mom and pop idiots are getting banned too but the people flooding the market with farmed goods just move on.

Well, i think not. First offenders are gone for 6 months, and banwaves are happening more frequently then every 6 months right now, people are losing accounts left and right at this point

[Sting]

Sadly all they have done is make the botting community rotate to a different account while the current one is banned. By the time the next wave comes around account number 1 will be unbanned and 2 will go banned and we repeat. At least this is what is happening to the botting community that is making a massive effect. Sure a few mom and pop idiots are getting banned too but the people flooding the market with farmed goods just move on.

The solution is easy, permaban the fuckers.

[Shudder]

Do you really believe it takes Blizzard two years to figure out how to detect a new public bot? It probably takes them less than two days, remember for any public bot they can simply download and analyse it.

Believe? I know for a fact they did. There was a rotation bot in MoP that was super popular and it got detected, it took them YEARS to figure that out and when the waves started going out in mid SoO they closed it down. A few months later a few new bots popped up with a new engine. They remained undetected till the end of WoD. These botters are now working on new bots. This is how it goes. It takes Blizzard a long time to figure this out.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Well, i think not. First offenders are gone for 6 months, and banwaves are happening more frequently then every 6 months right now, people are losing accounts left and right at this point

So you have 3 accounts. Or 4. Or 5. You cancel accounts when they are banned. You end up only paying for the one you are botting on. Also they are not losing the accounts. They only lose access to them for a short time. It really isn't that hard to science around bans.