Botting is allowed now?

[Gadzooks]

Botter poetry. But yeah I get it the least of your problems is that you are a botter.

On topic: Anyone who bots is someone who doesn't care for the game or the longevity thereof or for progress etc. By botting one simply admits they are incapable of playing the game at the level its meant to be played. And no botting doesn't make the botter smarter than the rest it just proves how petty and low humans can be and how hard wow can be to progress legitimatelly.

And please don't come up with stupid arguments like "but I don't have time to herb I have a life". Everyone has a life and they handle it. Resorting to illegal means = incompetent to survive otherwise.

But sure go ahead waste your life buying new accounts struggling to gather 2-3 herbs more than you would by normal means and pray the rest of the time that this week's banhammer won't get you. Sad life really.

Never forget the number of raiders who were banned early on with that one particular bot, the crying on the forums that they "didn't do anything!", and demanding their characters back because their raid was starting.

That particular bot does a LOT more than automate herb gathering and skinning. It automates play for raiders, and PvP. It's cheating. You can rationalize it all you want, but I suspect a large segment of the community is playing WAY over their skill level thanks to bots - and running to forums to sneer at "newbs" who didn't use rotation bots in Mythic and raids to get their gear and achievements.

It doesn't effect the game? Yes it does, when PvP is riddled with it and legit players lose to them, especially in ranked play, and then cheat their way to rewards and fill up guild slots and block players who actually play the game, and have some skill at it. (And don't bother with the "3 button talent hurrrrrrr nonsense)

[Charge me Doctor]

Never forget the number of raiders who were banned early on with that one particular bot, the crying on the forums that they "didn't do anything!", and demanding their characters back because their raid was starting.

That particular bot does a LOT more than automate herb gathering and skinning. It automates play for raiders, and PvP. It's cheating. You can rationalize it all you want, but I suspect a large segment of the community is playing WAY over their skill level thanks to bots - and running to forums to sneer at "newbs" who didn't use rotation bots in Mythic and raids to get their gear and achievements.

It doesn't effect the game? Yes it does, when PvP is riddled with it and legit players lose to them, especially in ranked play, and then cheat their way to rewards and fill up guild slots and block players who actually play the game, and have some skill at it. (And don't bother with the "3 button talent hurrrrrrr nonsense)

I would add that large segment of the community is playing way over their skill level thanks to addons. But i don't think that it's as bad as a bot, because, well, you actually have to do stuff for stuff to happen instead of your character spamming rotation by itself

[Strawberry]

Well its not illegal per se but as a bot would probably step into the boundaries of copyrights, trademarks, reverse engineering and could cause disruption of internet communications, loss of income etc I can see a lot of charges coming for the creators of bots.

I don't see the end user (the player) facing criminal action obviously but if gaming companies were as strong as the music industry they could probably make equivalent cases like this: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06...tml?eref=ib_us

So its a really grey zone what is or is not "illegal" until someone sues.

One of the big bots have been sued by Blizzard many times through its 6-7 year lifetime.
Blizzard couldn't win. So they turned to shady tactics of focusing on one of the developers who live in the US, and blackmailed him (the bot in question is based in Germany). That's how they got a hold of the bot source code and managed to "crack" and suddenly there are banwave every 2-6 months.

[Deleted]

Guess what ladies and gentlemen. New bots already farming MoP dungeons.
That temporary ban a few days ago really showed them!



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Source: EU Kazzak, horde side.

[Neony]

What's so interesting in there? Am I missing out for not farming Shado-Pan monastery?

[Evilmoo]

What's so interesting in there? Am I missing out for not farming Shado-Pan monastery?

My question exactly, should i log now instantly and run to farm Shado Pan? Is there some rarest transmog in Wow thats sells for millions?

[Deleted]

What's so interesting in there? Am I missing out for not farming Shado-Pan monastery?

Good question, actually.
It doesn't really seem lucrative at all.

another one is; why does it irk the OP that much that others run a seemingly useless dungeon over and over again?

[chipwood]

They take a while to prove they are true bots, and act like bots.

In fact, they've stated on several occasions that they purposely let them go on for a while so that they can figure out ways to detect them and stop them in the future.

[dexx]

It has effect on my gameplay and yours too. The economy part of WoW, which is big part of this game.

Its trivial. Get some perspective.
Now, real life high speed currency trading bots - those should be banned.

[cFortyfive]

That temporary ban a few days ago really showed them!

Of course they'd be back nearly instantly. It's once again full of bots here from the same server as the last time around.

Good question, actually.
It doesn't really seem lucrative at all.

Not lucrative for a normal player but bots are really cheap to run if you already invested in the infrastructure.

In fact, they've stated on several occasions that they purposely let them go on for a while so that they can figure out ways to detect them and stop them in the future.

Didn't really help anything aside from guaranteeing decent roi for the botter.

[Deleted]

Get ready to see a lot more as the token prices go up.

[Deleted]

My question exactly, should i log now instantly and run to farm Shado Pan? Is there some rarest transmog in Wow thats sells for millions?

What's so interesting in there? Am I missing out for not farming Shado-Pan monastery?

It's not just Shado-Pan. That was just an example. It's other dungeons as well, not limited just to MoP dungeons but from older and newer expansions too. Meanwhile other bots are mostly gathering and fishing.

[Seranthor]

It's not just Shado-Pan. That was just an example. It's other dungeons as well, not limited just to MoP dungeons but from older and newer expansions too. Meanwhile other bots are mostly gathering and fishing.

I am confused... are you upset that these 'bots' compete with your bots? or are you trying to convince these people to buy your botting software?

[Deleted]

I am confused... are you upset that these 'bots' compete with your bots? or are you trying to convince these people to buy your botting software?

Is it really that hard to believe that I have no secret agenda? Those are bots. It gives unfair advantage to those who are using them and it's destroying the economy which is one of the reasons why some of us even play this game.
It's now even more important than ever since you can use tokens for battlenet balance.

Let me ask you the same question. Why are you so upset?

[Seranthor]

Is it really that hard to believe that I have no secret agenda? Those are bots. It gives unfair advantage to those who are using them and it's destroying the economy which is one of the reasons why some of us even play this game.
It's now even more important than ever since you can use tokens for battlenet balance.

Let me ask you the same question. Why are you so upset?

as vocal as you are, as fervently as you want to publish their names and based on what is clearly a great deal of time and heartache its hard NOT to believe you have some secret agenda. I'm not upset, I'm laughing at you.

[Tharkkun]

It's not just Shado-Pan. That was just an example. It's other dungeons as well, not limited just to MoP dungeons but from older and newer expansions too. Meanwhile other bots are mostly gathering and fishing.

It's a cat and mouse game which you obviously haven't figured out. Blizzard bans them, they modify the bot, blizzard catches them again, bans and they repeat the vicious cycle. There's certain bots that are detected instantly by Warden and you're banned fairly quickly such as speed hackers. Others have to be reviewed.

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as vocal as you are, as fervently as you want to publish their names and based on what is clearly a great deal of time and heartache its hard NOT to believe you have some secret agenda. I'm not upset, I'm laughing at you.

Or he's just really passionate over removing bots from the game. It's not that hard to see he's quite OCD over it.

[Extremity]

There are many problems from a technical perspective. Anybody that does any sort of programming/development on a product where botting can provide an advantage and has had to block/discourage the use of any sort of automation can vouch that it's not always easy to DEFINITIVELY determine when somebody is botting. There are of course times where it is extremely obvious, but people that really don't want to be caught have a multitude of ways to make it difficult to detect, or to definitively confirm once a flag has been raised. Whether it's a situation where there's an installed client (and even a secondary Warden-type piece of software) or it's a web-based game, it's much more difficult than people expect.

Even on a web platform, I've developed/worked on browser-based games where botting was, of course, against the ToS. Unfortunately, there is absolutely NOTHING a person can do that a bot cannot. Even after building tools to specifically detect and discourage the use of automation, there are few circumstances where you can be 100% sure somebody is violating your terms.

The main issue is that false positives are terrible. You never want to ban somebody that was playing legitimately due to a false positive, which is why it takes so long and so much extra care to ensure your data is accurate. This is also why these cases are generally handled in waves and not on a per-case basis, to ensure there's an appropriate amount of time to analyze and collect further data, and to continue monitoring the subject/s once you suspect foul play. On top of this, you need waves to get as many as possible in one swoop. Handling one case at a time or even in small batches gives a warning to others abusing software/scripts for an advantage, allowing them to stop their use for a time until they feel it's safe again. The longer you can go without people suspecting they've been detected (or that bans are actively going out at that time), the more accurately you can determine who is utilizing such tools. Even with the massive ban waves going out in WoW, many people that slip through the cracks stop botting immediately after a ban wave; it's a warning to them. The same would happen on a much larger scale if there were more smaller, but more frequent, bans.

As much as botting can hurt a game's economy/sense of fairness/etc, it's almost always better to take slightly longer and ban 5 people that were genuinely botting than it is to attempt to quickly ban 10 and get 3 legitimate players in the process.

[Deleted]

It's a cat and mouse game which you obviously haven't figured out. Blizzard bans them, they modify the bot, blizzard catches them again, bans and they repeat the vicious cycle. There's certain bots that are detected instantly by Warden and you're banned fairly quickly such as speed hackers. Others have to be reviewed.

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Or he's just really passionate over removing bots from the game. It's not that hard to see he's quite OCD over it.

Last banwave was a week ago. Usually it takes 3+ months between each banwave (there were some exceptions).
Botters expect to be banned, but if they farm for 3 months 24/7 that brings them a lot of profit until ban happens again. Also the stuff they farm is put inside the bank and it's not removed when they get banned.

[Frolk]

Should just reject their credit card info for repeat offenders so they would need to get a new card each time they get banned

[Deleted]

Should just reject their credit card info for repeat offenders so they would need to get a new card each time they get banned

Not sure about that Bot money is as good as real player money. I think Blizzard should get their money but ban them slightly faster. Monthy banwave should work fine.