Botters, The Locusts of World Of Warcraft

[Vaulton05]

Is this issue ever going to be rectified? Are we ever going to see resolution on this? I have posted a few videos here of a couple perfect examples of what we are dealing with here, as well as my recent ticket in game. I don't have time to write up an entire book on this, but to name a few things to look for.
1. Toons Flying Like Reindeer In The Sky (Pathfinder Pt.2, not Until 7.2) ^_^
2. Toons Herbing Flowers Mounted On Mounts Other Than (Sky Golem)/Scaling 90 Degree Cliffs.
3. Not Finding 1 Herb Node For An Entire Path, All While Seeing Lines Of Deathknights/Demon Hunters named ''Hksjzhd''.
4 Walking Up And Whispering ''Hi or Hey'' And Person Vanishes In Midair! (Mount Stealth AMG!! When Did Blizzard Stealth Buff Mounts?? No Pun intended).

So just going to leave this here..
Thank you.


Edit* Game Master replied to in game ticket, Was indeed just the generic ''We are doing what we can, but we can't say what it is
because then the terrorists would know we are coming!'' garbage..With a lame GM joke on the end to boot. Maybe he mistook my patience
and respectful demeanor as an invitation to make jokes? Sorry Blizzard, I appreciate a good joke, but not a joking matter this time bud.
Not when your players have to spend an extra 10 hours collecting herbs, just to finally give up and waste, yeah waste, 200 Blood Of Sargeras,
because they do not have 24/7 to run around collecting the crumbs. Bots are literally Locusts to the game. I still wrote ''Lol good one'' at his joke.
Probably made his day. But I'm still looking for resolution Blizzard, not seeing any results here. Thank you.

[Darsithis]

You're welcome to discuss this topic but please do not use it as a platform to link your own personal videos and channel. Advertising isn't allowed here.

[Vaulton05]

Understood, are we allowed to link videos other than our own or?? I guess a better way to word it, What videos are we permitted to link?

Seems like I can't do anything on MMO Champ without a moderator popping out the woodwork..

Also, where does it say that these are videos from my personal channel? I believe that was assumed on your part. Just to quote ''I have posted a few videos here of a couple perfect examples of what we are dealing with here'' and in regards to my in game ticket ''Recorded over 10 hours of video''..Where did it say that the videos I posted are my own or from the footage I recorded? When posting videos do I need to post evidence or proof that it is not my personal page? Just want clarification here as I do not want to link another vid and possibly get an infraction..

[FelPlague]

they ban hackers in waves
because if they ban them one by one, the others will be warned, stop botting, and wait a few weeks for the next build of the hack to come out, that fixes whatever blizz used to detect it


rather catch thousands at once, then one or two a week

[Vaulton05]

Do I need to clearly write in the post when linking a video something like ''This Video does not belong to me, Nor am I associated with this Channel.''...Would really like some clarification here before linking any videos. I'll try and do a google search in the meantime..

[Adoxe]

What does the second point have to do with botting/hacking?
http://www.wowhead.com/item=136708/demonsteel-stirrups

[Vaulton05]

Oh wow, so after reading the rules, I guess even discussing the deletion of the videos in my post aka a Moderators actions, is an infraction :O...Is there anything we can do?

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Nothing against Stirrups, but in the videos that got removed, you could clearly see them being used in combination with running up 90 Degree Cliffs.

[Fat Mac]

botters gonna bot

[Volitar]

I know people will rip my head off but botters are good for the average raider. They drive prices down. The only people that should be mad are the guys that try and control the AH

[MakeMeLaugh]

they ban hackers in waves
because if they ban them one by one, the others will be warned, stop botting, and wait a few weeks for the next build of the hack to come out, that fixes whatever blizz used to detect it


rather catch thousands at once, then one or two a week

Yea, too bad those waves take what? 6+ months to happen? Yea I bet the botters feel really bad about being banned after a long lucrative farm.

[Fat Mac]

Seems like I can't do anything on MMO Champ without a moderator popping out the woodwork..

have you tried shit posting against Trump, my friend? they will happily join you then.

[Gorgodeus]

I know people will rip my head off but botters are good for the average raider. They drive prices down. The only people that should be mad are the guys that try and control the AH

Which means the price of goods crafted with botted items goes down, which means you make less gold. You lose more gold than you are saving, and the only ones benefiting are the botters.

[BellicoseAxe]

4 Walking Up And Whispering ''Hi or Hey'' And Person Vanishes In Midair! (Mount Stealth AMG!! When Did Blizzard Stealth Buff Mounts?? No Pun intended).

The bot's last line of defense. You can force many of them to log out by simply interacting with them.

The more advanced bots might reply to your whispers/trade requests with canned responses (much like Blizzard GMs) then go back to being pests, but the 'Hksjzhd' bots will most likely just play it safe and log out to avoid being reported.

If you're guild also believes that this is a problem, you might be able to organize some kind of sweeping effort. Organize a raid and tell people to socialize with every suspicious-looking character that they see, in order to force them to log out. It might do a number on your guildies' self-esteem, but on the other hand the two or three auction house tycoons who control your server's economy will be grateful. They might even mail you one of those limited edition 12th Anniversary Molten Core Corgis for your troubles.

[FelPlague]

Yea, too bad those waves take what? 6+ months to happen? Yea I bet the botters feel really bad about being banned after a long lucrative farm.

again better to get thousands, then to get a few every week, yes its sucky, but it gives them time to reduce chance of false bans and gets more people overall

[Vaulton05]

@FelPlague, Yeah that makes sense. Thanks for clarification on that. Moving forward, in regards to World Of Warcraft's current state with botting being out of control and clearly impacting many aspects: What changes do you think could be made to improve the system?

One idea I suggest is implement a full time bot catcher, similar to MMO-Champion's very own Scrapbot. Something that floats around the area looking for certain patterns/algorithms? Just for relation purposes, something similar to how Forge Mode works in some games where they float around the map freely. Maybe they already have something like this, or maybe there are foreseen/unforeseen outcomes that would come with implementing this system.

[Divinexve]

Honestly after seeing so many botters on my server (malganis) I kinda wanna start doing it myself. Saw a demonhunter the other day named some shit like "sfnmafsfg" or some shit like that riding around on a purple wyvern (the default mount that gets put on your action bars) and he was wearing full dh starting gear at level 100...normal right? Until I saw him like 4 days later still in aszuna herbing wearing that full set of gear and still herbing and now he was like level 106...probably herbing for all of those 4 days straight.

[Vaulton05]

@Volitar ''I know people will rip my head off but botters are good for the average raider. They drive prices down. The only people that should be mad are the guys that try and control the AH''

Call me ''Old school'' but after clearing through pretty much all content in a tier, and whilst working on Mythic progression, I enjoy a good farm, running around, herbing flowers, mining nodes on off time vs. auction house. Lets just say we lived in a perfect world, where there were no bots. The economy would be much better, and I'm pretty sure it would actually solve the gold inflation issue. Yes AH prices would drop, but the value of gold will increase. Yes that means people will actually pay more for consumables on auction (Wait a minute auction house buyers, let me explain, this isn't a bad thing!). With 0 bots technically you would be paying an up charge for having someone else farm it for you, aka time invested. But with botters, their time is not important, so they will post for dirt cheap, driving prices overall down. Basic cutting out of the middle man. There is probably a much better way of explaining this but here is an example in real world terms. There is already a lack of jobs to go around correct? Imagine if we replaced every farmer, doctor ect, with a robot (Which is already being done in some places), imagine how many people would be out of jobs. But moreover, companies would cut out the extra cost of paying employees by using robots, and sell their services/products cheaper to the public, putting competing companies out of business, or forcing them to match/undercut to sell their products. The company using robots would have to spend money to maintain the robots, but that is about it. See the parallels? This is basically how Botting companies work in WoW. So in the big picture, botting destroys the economy. Makes it very unbalanced.


@MakeMeLaugh ''Yea, too bad those waves take what? 6+ months to happen? Yea I bet the botters feel really bad about being banned after a long lucrative farm.''

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@FelPlague ''again better to get thousands, then to get a few every week, yes its sucky, but it gives them time to reduce chance of false bans and gets more people overall''

This is the right mentality of the current system. But this system has proven to be inefficient, as you said it's sucky, letting 1000 botters run around for 6 months before ban waving is obviously not a good answer, and I agree neither is banning 3 botters a week. So there needs to be a system that monitors botting 24/7, across the board. It is something that is within the realm of possibility I believe, it can be done, I mean with current technology. I think it really comes down to Blizzard making the decision to invest in this, they have to figure/weigh the pros and cons, the forseen/unforseen impact on the community and game itself when implementing something like that. Oh and for the conspiracy theorists out there that think ''Well Blizzard wants botters, they help the economy!'' That could not be further from the truth. Blizzard tried to kill botting with the new token system, but it seems like that only stirred the bee hive so to speak. Perhaps the botters answer to the new token system was, make more bots?

[FelPlague]

@Volitar ''I know people will rip my head off but botters are good for the average raider. They drive prices down. The only people that should be mad are the guys that try and control the AH''

Call me ''Old school'' but after clearing through pretty much all content in a tier, and whilst working on Mythic progression, I enjoy a good farm, running around, herbing flowers, mining nodes on off time. Lets just say we lived in a perfect world, where there were no bots. The economy would be much better, and I'm pretty sure it would actually solve the gold inflation issue.


@MakeMeLaugh''Yea, too bad those waves take what? 6+ months to happen? Yea I bet the botters feel really bad about being banned after a long lucrative farm.''

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@FelPlague ''again better to get thousands, then to get a few every week, yes its sucky, but it gives them time to reduce chance of false bans and gets more people overall''

This is the right mentality of the current system. But this system has proven to be inefficient, as you said it's sucky, letting 1000 botters run around for 6 months before ban waving is obviously not a good answer, and I agree neither is banning 3 botters a week. So there needs to be a system that monitors botting 24/7, across the board. It is something that is within the realm of possibility I believe, it can be done, I mean with current technology. I think it really comes down to Blizzard making the decision to invest in this, they have to figure/weigh the pros and cons, the forseen/unforseen impact on the community and game itself when implementing something like that. Oh and for the conspiracy theorists out there that think ''Well Blizzard wants botters, they help the economy!'' That could not be further from the truth. Blizzard tried to kill botting with the new token system, but it seems like that only stirred the bee hive so to speak. Perhaps the botters answer to the new token system was, make more bots?

i dont get what you mean by a"24/7 bot monitor" i dont get exactly what you mean by that... do you mean as soon as somone bots they are banned? i dont get it.... if so then that would A. cost alot, and B. ban even more innocent people as false positives come up all the time

[Vaulton05]

In Laymans terms Imagine an invisible entity (Program) that floats around detecting botting activity. EI: If bot detector software was to find a toon running the same exact geometrical lines through a zone for hours at a time, running up 90 angles, defying game mechanics. There aren't any ''False Positives'' when seeing game mechanics clearly being violated, It defies in-game physics, and it is easy to detect. Yes the bot programs will adapt to try and prevent detection, but that is where Blizzard stays ahead of the game, and updates the bot detector accordingly. It comes down to who is better funded, and where those funds are used. Yes FelPlague, it probably would cost quite a bit, as I stated, and that is something Blizzard would need to assess. Your definition of ''A lot'', let's say it's an upwards of 10 million or more, again this is where Blizzard has to look at their budget among many other things. And yes, I would say the bot detector should instantly drop the ban hammer, that is exactly what I'm saying. The bot detector could auto log/screenshot/video all evidence in case of a dispute, and these logs could be accessed easily by who ever handles disputes. This frees up players from having to ''Right Click, Report, With option of adding a screenshot''. It lets the player do things pertaining to the game instead of trying to police it. Not to say the Right Click Report system would not be a great backup. It could be used to alert the bot detector, any report sent, goes straight to said detector, it watches for patterns, if no patterns arise, nothing to worry about. This is where it gets technical, of course there are questions that arise such as: ''What if the detector punishes an innocent individual because of trolls just spam clicking reports''. Well that is for the technical team to dig through all of the ''what if's'', figure out what sets Players and Bots apart unmistakably, such as scaling mountains, running in patterns that even RNJesus himself couldn't run on, ect ect. I believe this would in turn eliminate most, if not all of the false positive issues that the current system has.. Of course it is not as easy as I am making it sound, it never is, there is a considerable number of factors that are probably beyond me, but is this concept possible? Would this concept work? I don't know. It starts with an idea though, and I'm just looking to get the juices flowing on this topic. If someone has an idea, possible solution, or your general experience/opinion whether you love or hate botters, I'd love to hear about them. Thank you.

PS. My intention is not to suggest a system that digs itself out of one hole, at the expense of putting others in one. For example, more false positives, that would suck. It's about taking all of the negatives of this current system into account and trying to suggest ways to fix them all, a universal system, an adaptable system. We may not succeed, but this needs to be talked about. Lets get some ideas everyone.

[rda]

EI: If bot detector software was to find a toon running the same exact geometrical lines through a zone for hours at a time, running up 90 angles, defying game mechanics. There aren't any ''False Positives'' when seeing game mechanics clearly being violated, It defies in-game physics, and it is easy to detect.

If only this was so simple.

In reality the detection either misses nearly every bot or has a big ratio of false positives.

Detecting bots automatically is hard. Yes, you are right that it comes to who puts more effort - botters or bot detectors, but there are tons of things a bot could do to require a hundredfold comparative effort from the detector (ie, you put just a couple of lines into your pathing code that inserts random coordinates and random pauses and smoothes both the trajectory and the speed to make your movement look natural, and that essentially makes any detection by pathing impossible - there is too little data left in the path to detect that it is automated, the detector has to look for places where your pathing collided with the terrain, etc, and that is much more compute-intensive and much less certain).

I wouldn't say Blizzard are doing a good job at bot cleaning (especially in BGs), but in the end it *is* a hard problem. There are no easy solutions here (or at least I am not aware of any).