Why is Blizzard so hopless against botters ?

[Resentful]

Even if Warden is a all powerful detector, it still doesn't help that this still is happening. :-/

It's not as powerful as before unfortunately; The bots I'm sure get banned in wave after wave and obviously I'm SURE they are doing something I mean really diablo progress is there to even mark them

I mean CMON LOLOL Person X with 300k+ Kills and EVERY single slot is a gold find + and gold find radius + JEE I WONDER IF HES A BOT HURRRRRR

[chazus]

However Wardens strengh isn't as ''OMG amazing'' as it use to due to ''Privacy concerns'' so from time to time hacks can still get through

A lot of my work with Warden was originally due to the fact that it scared the crap out of me. I don't like knowing what's going on with my computer or network. I think it's most prevalent feature isn't so much its 'protection' as it is the information value. Blizzard gets a LOT of info through it regarding botting and hacking, and 6 months down the line, can make sweeping fixes. It is literally impossible to track,fix, and prevent things on a day to day basis, but if it wasn't there, WoW would have shut down years ago. Unfortunately, WoW suffers the same problem Windows does with malware. When you own a large market base, you become a large target.

[PenguinChan]

I mean CMON LOLOL Person X with 300k+ Kills and EVERY single slot is a gold find + and gold find radius + JEE I WONDER IF HES A BOT HURRRRRR

Naaah, just some gamer with an abnormal amounts of redbull.

[chazus]

Even if Warden is a all powerful detector, it still doesn't help that this still is happening. :-/

It definitely does help, however just not in the way people expect it to. It's not like the police where it sees something bad, and boom, handled. It's more like a passive CCTV on all the game, silently collecting info and passing the important stuff up onto the engineers. EVERYTHING must be investigated, and with so much information, only the most obvious stuff gets investigated first. After that, it's a matter of stacking up similar reports and software evidence.

[Deleted]

Just keep on living in your fantasy world warden is serious business right ? and u call me stupid
get a clue mate

---------- Post added 2012-08-11 at 08:46 AM ----------

I'm honestly having a hard time understanding what you're saying.
Regardless, Warden is still very much active, and doing what it has always done and then some.
Renaming a bot a different name doesn't change what it's function does. That's like putting a BMW sticker on a PT Cruiser. Are you really gonna think it's a BMW? It's effectively the same thing. The name of the software wrapper means absolutely nothing.

i already said before i seriously doubt warden can detect bots , writing a bot takes a few hour detecting it takes months if they even can detect it , they see it when the character has made 200mill gold thats all,
fact is blizzard needs botters while at the same time it needs the mainstream to believe warden is active , warden is as bad as vac punkbuster u name it

[Deleted]

I am not sure what you are trying to prove about warden other than possibly scaring people who are reading this and thinking ' sod it i may as well go find a bot'. It took me less than 5 mins on google to find a forum with links to several working bots, all of which have been working since Diablo 3 's release. In fact from reading some of the posts on the forums i found, it doesn't appear that any of the working bots available at release have been in anyway restricted in the functionality by any patches from Blizzard to date. Things may have been worse if warden wasn't around (although that's pretty hard to imagine) but its hardly preventing any of the botting issues the game has had since release.

[chazus]

Just keep on living in your fantasy world warden is serious business right ? and u call me stupid
get a clue mate

No, I didn't call you stupid. I've actually deleted a few of my own opinionated statements in order to keep this both informative, and polite. You on the other hand have proven to be not only lacking experience in the topic at hand besides vague, broad ranging statements, but have also been insulting, rude, and generally douchenozzle-y.

i already said before i seriously doubt warden can detect bots

It does. I know this first hand. Regardless of what you 'think' or 'believe' doesn't change what IS.

writing a bot takes a few hour

No. It does not. WoWGlider took an entire team of people to manage, as well as require constant updates.

detecting it takes months if they even can detect it , they see it when the character has made 200mill gold thats all,

This, actually, is correct to some extent. They will not ban someone right off the bat, because banning one person quickly allows many more to get away. The problem is, you want "I dont like this, please fix it" blizzard wants "We need to ensure this does the minimal amount of damage overall"

fact is blizzard needs botters while at the same time it needs the mainstream to believe warden is active

Sigh. I really only can defer to Billy Madison, for this.

Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

I am not sure what you are trying to prove about warden other than possibly scaring people who are reading this and thinking ' sod it i may as well go find a bot'

I'm not advocating that at all. However, just like any other criminal activity, just because one person won't get caught, doesn't mean you won't. You CAN go do that, and enjoy it while it lasts, but when you get caught, and lose EVERYTHING (Including your wow account)... You can't say a single thing against it.

[Deleted]

This thread was never about whether or not you would get caught 'eventually' it was about the vast number of botters that were (and are) botting 24/7 and getting away with it (and ruining the economy for everyone else). It doesnt matter if warden collects enough information so that 6 months down the line Blizzard can do a patch and mass ban people. The people botting who cause the problem wont care as they will have made a huge amount of gold / money by that time and dont have their botting accounts on their main battle.net accounts - they just go buy new keys. The people that do and are caught are 'casual botters' who were only looking for a quick way to level their new class character or enough gold to buy that new shoulder piece, and they were not the problem for the wider community in the first place.

[chazus]

The people botting who cause the problem wont care as they will have made a huge amount of gold / money by that time and dont have their botting accounts on their main battle.net accounts - they just go buy new keys. The people that do and are caught are 'casual botters' who were only looking for a quick way to level their new class character or enough gold to buy that new shoulder piece, and they were not the problem for the wider community in the first place.

And this, unfortunately, is the perspective of most people. And while I sympathize, it's not the case. Remember when Blizzard banned a tens (or hundreds? I forget) of thousands of accounts about a month or so ago? That was a wave. And software has modified since then (The botting things you saw have been updated, or revamped entirely, most likely). But there are other things going behind the scenes that Blizzard does not tell people about. I'm not sure if there's actually an NDA regarding it or not, but they definitely do work with authorities when the 'big stuff' happens, handling paypal and credit card accounts (I know this first hand as well). There is waves like these every so often. Sometimes they are silent, sometimes they are not.

Unfortunately yes, the 'casual botters' are also caught up, but they are no less culpable in it. Just because they aren't hurting the economy much doesn't mean they aren't doing wrong. Also unfortunately, the smarter criminals sometimes get away with more.

The fact of the matter is this. Blizzard, and its resources, are not perfect. A MASSIVE amount of money (a lot of it stolen) is being dumped into the botting industry. Just like the virus and spyware industry. Virus protection and malware protection groups are literally grinding away at C-130 loads full of data on an hourly basis to keep up. The criminal aspect of it is lucrative. Just the same, botting is lucrative.

The issue is that Blizzard is caught between a number of rocks and hard places. First, they cannot be too heavy handed, as it will infringe and upset the players. Even worse, certain infringements risk violating actual country privacy and information laws (which are different in every country, so oftentimes they must conform to the strictest ones). Secondly, they only have limited funding to go into security systems. Certainly, an easier option would to be to raise the cost of the game to fund an actual 'cybercrime investigation department', but again, that would be crippled from the get go due to the First statement.

The 'happy medium' is that actual cheats and hacks are kept to a minimum, while keeping costs low, and having a 'tide' system of push and pull that never makes progress in either direction. No game, ever, will be 100% safe. And hopefully it won't fall apart due to a collapsed economy to the point where people don't play. You might say that D3's economy has collapsed, but it most definitely hasn't, since there is obviously still enough players playing and using it for Blizzard to determine not to just shut the whole thing down and call it a day.

EDIT1: It should be noted, on the 'Tide' comment, that while Blizzard suffers from hacks, cheats, and botting, the people using them benefit. Not just from having better stuff, but for money. So it's actually in their favor to not over-saturate the system and cause a complete failure. While I don't know this first hand, but I imagine that there is a 'happy medium' for the botters too, where a 'cleansing' of systems and bans is actually beneficial to them, in that it prevents super-saturation and over-supply, and also creates a checkpoint for where security stands. Think of it like a forest fire destroying a forest, but that leaves room for the new seeds to grow from the ashes. Notably, I will be taking a Microeconomics and Macroeconomics course this year, and it would be interesting to see if I could investigate and research just how these things might function.

EDIT2: There ARE other ways Blizzard deals with botting, at least for the casual person. Making gold easier to get (dailies) and making levelling easier (heirlooms, RaF, etc) were NOT just to keep players happy. It was to give them incentive not to bot, and statistics have shown that this works VERY well. It doesn't change the botters who do it for a living, but it allowed the normal players a means to reach their goals without resorting to those methods, and effectively protecting them from making a poor decision.

EDIT3: Darsithis, I don't know if you are still watching this thread, but please let me know if I am overstepping my bounds in discussing Warden, and Botting. I would rather redact my statements than risk an infraction.

[Glurp]

You can never "beat" a bot just by banning accounts 1 by 1. You need to do directly to the source and either take legal action against the people making the bot program or to pay them out to stop creating bot programs. Blizzard did this with Pirox which had a massive effect on WoW, prices of trade goods like herbs and ores went sky high. But then another bot program was released and it's now in the same cycle.

Bots will never go away, unless some game developer works out some sort of legal way that makes using 3rd party software illegal by international law and botters get thrown in prison. Which will never happen.

[chazus]

some sort of legal way that makes using 3rd party software illegal by international law and botters get thrown in prison. Which will never happen.

Believe it or not, things are very much moving in that direction. Remember the Q2 Activision Conference, where 1.1 Million Subscribers were lost? And that most of them were asian accounts? Part of that chunk was a few things. 1) Botters, 2) Accounts being closed due to people getting caught, and 3) Asian country legislation on playing online games. China in particular is criminalizing cheating at online games as well. However this has a double edged sword of Jimmy trying out his friends new program that makes levelling easier, and ending up in friggin prison.

Notably, if Botting accounts are closed, they STILL have to report those accounts. A botting account is still a paying, subscribed account.

[Howard Moon]

400 thousand elite kills, that's 3 elite kills every single minute since game release, 24h/7d.

Wtf, how is it even possible to find 3 elites per minute?

[Deafknight]

chazus is probably the person most full of crap in the entire forums.
Warden does not scan out of D3's memory Range, they are actually not allowed to by law after a lawsuit some years ago.
Bots dont need to inject alot to be effective, you can get away with very very few injection points and put them in placed not where they cant be found but in places where legit programs do.

On Topic:

[Deleted]

I am not sure what you are trying to prove about warden other than possibly scaring people who are reading this and thinking ' sod it i may as well go find a bot'. It took me less than 5 mins on google to find a forum with links to several working bots, all of which have been working since Diablo 3 's release. In fact from reading some of the posts on the forums i found, it doesn't appear that any of the working bots available at release have been in anyway restricted in the functionality by any patches from Blizzard to date. Things may have been worse if warden wasn't around (although that's pretty hard to imagine) but its hardly preventing any of the botting issues the game has had since release.

warden wont detect u since the bot does not interact with the memory section of diablo therefor warden cant detect u u probly will get detected cause of ur 21-26seconds games since thats what all public bots are or u will get banned cause u made like 19mill a day for 10 days straight butt no way warden will detect u

---------- Post added 2012-08-11 at 10:09 AM ----------

and lose EVERYTHING (Including your wow account)... You can't say a single thing against it.

hahah this alone explains how clueless u are maybe do some research before u act like u know stuff
ps: first rule on botting is dont bot on account u dont wanne lose second blizzard just bans diablo not ur entire battlenet account u can always pay for wow even if diablo is banned.
FYI writing a bot takes a few hours u can adjust it to perfecty many more hours butt basic bott not more then a few hours go write a mincraft bot ul see simple as fck

---------- Post added 2012-08-11 at 10:12 AM ----------

chazus is probably the person most full of crap in the entire forums.
Warden does not scan out of D3's memory Range, they are actually not allowed to by law after a lawsuit some years ago.
Bots dont need to inject alot to be effective, you can get away with very very few injection points and put them in placed not where they cant be found but in places where legit programs do.

On Topic:

thank u for explaining these clueless guys exactly what i'm tryng to do

[Grummgug]

I almost never traded in D2. I strictly used what I found except in rare cases, and never anything hugely character-defining like an enigma or anything like that. I found my game experience to be VASTLY superior to those who traded for all the best items.

I think D3 would be much better off if they removed trading altogether. Make everything soulbound, or account-bound. I think its WORLDS more fun, and it would destroy all bots for good. No point in botting when you can't trade what you find.

I suggested this for years in D2. I suggested this all through the D3 beta. I still recommend it. Its just a better way to play. Way more fun and rewarding.

[kel]

its not the fact there are so many bots in diablo, its just that gold selling is legal in diablo, so you just see more of the bots influence

[Grummgug]

The only 100% sure-fire way to stop botting is to go the WoW/MMO route. You don't see bots running end game 25 man raids. Why?

1. You need 25 players. Its a massive time investment to build 25 accounts, each with a toon with raid quality gear.
2. Lockouts mean you only get to run once per week.

(let's ignore the fact that most items are soulbound)

The only way to allow trading AND kill bots would be to follow that model. It should take something like 6 months to level and gear up to farm. And there should be lockouts on top of that such that you could only farm things once per week. Those sort of restrictions would make bots largely pointless. But, I don't know if people would be willing to accept not only a drastic change in gameplay, but a move towards wow-style gaming in Diablo 3, to fix botting.

---------- Post added 2012-08-11 at 04:18 AM ----------

Basically, if you want to kill bots, you need to do one of two things:

1. Items and gold are soulbound / account-bound.

OR

2. Redesign D3 to make it more like World of Warcraft, with 6 months to build a toon, and weekly raid / farming lockouts.

No warden-style security will fix the problems D3 has. It must be one of these two.

If I was head designer, I would make it an option to make all items soulbound for that account or toon upon toon creation. It could not be switched off. Such toons would get a special tag to denote their status, like "legit". So you could be a hardcore legit barb, or a softcore barb. That way, if you want to play on relams without bots, you can go legit. If you like bots and the auction house, you can go that route as well.

[Deafknight]

[/COLOR]Basically, if you want to kill bots, you need to do one of two things:

1. Items and gold are soulbound / account-bound.

OR

2. Redesign D3 to make it more like World of Warcraft, with 6 months to build a toon, and weekly raid / farming lockouts.

No warden-style security will fix the problems D3 has. It must be one of these two.

If I was head designer, I would make it an option to make all items soulbound for that account or toon upon toon creation. It could not be switched off. Such toons would get a special tag to denote their status, like "legit". So you could be a hardcore legit barb, or a softcore barb. That way, if you want to play on relams without bots, you can go legit. If you like bots and the auction house, you can go that route as well.

Uhm, you understand that bots can do more than farm gold right ?
6 Months to build a toon -> botting becomes even more valuable.

[Deleted]

What about the poe way no gold simple as ?

[Resentful]

What about the poe way no gold simple as ?

Personally D2 way where gold was pretty much technically worthless