Why do people bot?

[Barnabas]

This, pretty much. The current design for PvP gear progression is pretty awful. In PvE you gear up by facing gradually harder content. In PvP you gear up by spending a few weeks losing to people you can't possibly beat (unless they're horrible), simply because they're done with their weeks of losing. It's a pointless entry barrier, and I'm pretty sure it's costing the PvP community quite a lot of potential players who simply don't bother. It made me simply not bother with PvP in Cataclysm, and I probably won't waste my time on it in MoP either.

Yep the way you get gear in pvp is really horrible initially. PvE is much faster and more efficient. Both have severe factors of rng but the rng will always be better for PvE gear, example you win every roll for the items you need for each slot. It's extreme if you get that lucky gearing for PvE but that would take a matter of hours or one evening to get geared. In PvP in the same amount of time you'd get maybe one or two cheap items if you didnt get bad teams. Speaking of bad teams if the same shit that goes on in bg all the time happened in 5 man dungeons a lot of threads would pop up with people really flipping their shit. You can't kick anyone from a bg like a 5 man either if they don't heal you, aren't completing objectives to help win the game or you don't like the color of their toons hair.

[Deleted]

Lazy people who have no sense of pride in what they actually worked for.

Not too sure about that.

'Pride' is a relative term. I once played WoW on a competitive LvL (PVE) and had one of the top geared rogues in Europe, and damn, was I proud. If I think about that now, I just feel silly. I would never again be 'proud' of anything achieved in a game. Glad, maybe, but pride is misplaced imho.
So, yeah, it's about perspective. I know we're talking about PVP, but still, fuck pride, no one cares about my ingame achievements in RL.

They're lazy and don't want to put in the effort anymore, but if someone doesn't enjoy the game and resorts to botting that's when I think it's pointless to continue playing.

Lazy yes, not enjoying the game, no. Just aspects of it that they have seen over and over and over again. It's quite understandable, isn't it? I thought about botting a while ago, too. But it isn't even worth the initial effort for me, since I don't play with a specific goal anymore. I just enjoy dungeoning and even LFR.

[zingar]

no one cares about my ingame achievements in RL.

a little off topic but just because your mom and gf dont know about games that shouldnt mean you shouldnt be proud of what you did, especially if it was hard and it took some effort on your part (then again pve is kinda a meh thing to be proud of imo xd)

[Deleted]

People bot because it's a fakkin honor grind. Getting raped over and over in battleground's isn't fun at all.

[Thelxi]

Honor and HK's mostly. In any case they are gaining something while not doing anything, and that alone is motivation enough. Unfair advantages can be very addictive.

[Deleted]

I understand why people bot but that doesnt mean i support it.

People bot because the honor grind is boring, takes too much time and after you have geared up your third character you
become insanely burned out because if you want to do arenas you need to have full honor-gear or you will have nothing to say.

Blizzard could fix botting by rewarding more honor for battlegrounds

[Deleted]

a little off topic but just because your mom and gf dont know about games that shouldnt mean you shouldnt be proud of what you did, especially if it was hard and it took some effort on your part (then again pve is kinda a meh thing to be proud of imo xd)

Which is exactly why I said: 'Pride is a relative term'.

Just wanted to make clear that for a lot of ppl it's not about pride, b/c they don't care about ingame pride. They just wanna have fun and grinding is no part of that (for them). You get me?

[Deleted]

If the real reason Blizzard doesn't ban all the bots is because they're paying customers... Even if they've irrefutable evidence to show that they are botting...
Why don't they just reset all HKs, conquest, titles, pvp achievements and all honor from the offending player. I mean ALL of it, not just some that they gained during their short/long botting period.

Known botters could be put on a "known botting list" making it far easier for the community to identify such players (list would be account-wide, not per character, so botters couldn't just swap characters and continue).

[Deleted]

I think a lot of people forget that people that bot usually play the game too. They just bot things that make them want to die and play the parts of the game they enjoy.

[Deleted]

Give us Unrated Arenas to earn honor from. Gives you some basic practice before you jump into the rated ones + you don't have to play bgs which pretty much is the most boring thing you could do.

[Deleted]

People who hate the gearing part are playing the wrong game, plain and simple.
There are alternatives out there, even from Blizz. Games that are more balanced, more focussed on competitive multiplayer. Stop complaining, stop cheating, stop hoping WoW will change to Guild Wars or LoL. It won't.

[Nyaldee]

People who hate the gearing part are playing the wrong game, plain and simple.
There are alternatives out there, even from Blizz. Games that are more balanced, more focussed on competitive multiplayer. Stop complaining, stop cheating, stop hoping WoW will change to Guild Wars or LoL. It won't.

LoL requires even more farm thought. And stop hoping ppls will stop cheating. They won't, unless Blizz will start baning for real but they won't ban their customers. So far the only measures from many of my friends were aimed on me - for using mouseclicker script to auto-queue and avoid afk on AV weekend. They baned me for... 12 hrs, wrote me a threatening letter but didn't take a single item or honor point from me. By then i was missing item or two.

Also my method of afk farm was extremly obvious but from dozen of ppls in my guild who were afking the same weekend i was the only one to take a mild punishment. So i simply don't see Blizz wasting resources on searching for bots (hell i reported many many bot gold farmers starting from tBC and not a single one got a ban - they kept farming the same place for wholle expansion). I only assume 3 things: Blizz cba to actively fight bots, Blizz can't reliably counter new bot programs, Blizz understand that some ppls without boting will quit (like my brother did once when he couldn't endure to farm honor, shame he didn't have bot (or lucky he didn't hehe)).

[SuperSecretAccount]

Why..?

This is something that's been puzzling me lately; why do people use bots in battlegrounds? What do they gain from it?

You already know what we have to gain from it. And we do it because botting is efficient, obviously. That's why I got into programming: when something is tedious and/or repetitive, I prefer to have a computer do it for me. I've played since day 1 and primarily PvP'd until recently, so I was pretty sick of BGs by the time arenas were released. Arenas became the endgame, and BGs were just an annoying obstacle on the way there. Botting was the best way to avoid getting bored with the game while making the most out of the limited time I had to play.

For the record, I never used a 'dumb' bot that stood still and cast one spell repeatedly. I'm not sure if any intelligent bots still exist because I stopped botting a while ago, but they're probably out there and you don't even know it. People who use shit like Glider or simple anti-AFK bots are just lazy, unintelligent assholes.

[Deleted]

Lazy people who have no sense of pride in what they actually worked for.

i totally agree with that. their main thing is they get honor points and as a consequence the gear for free. i wonder if some guys have the same opinion in rl - "getting stuff without doing something for it"

[SuperSecretAccount]

i totally agree with that. their main thing is they get honor points and as a consequence the gear for free. i wonder if some guys have the same opinion in rl - "getting stuff without doing something for it"

I sense a tinge of jealousy/resentment.

It's called working smart instead of working hard. Gonna be very tough to get ahead in life if you have a problem grasping that concept.

[Volitar]

Why? Because grinding takes way too long and is generally very unfun. Most people know the risk and are okay with the possibility they might lose their character.

If Blizzard doesn't crack down why would people ever stop botting?

[Eliot123]

Bleh. Atm bracket 85-90 is practically unplayable for non-bots. >_<
I really wish all the ppl who bot would have their computers blow up in their faces.

[Netherspark]

I can't see it being hard to get a first set of PVP gear.... I recently did enough battlegrounds to buy a full set of Dreadful gear and I did it all in PVE gear. It hardly took any time at all.

It may just be me, but I prefer to earn the things I get. I wouldn't want them if I hadnt earned them, they would be meaningless.

[Dcruize]

I wouldn't want them if I hadnt earned them, they would be meaningless.

Honor gear itself is meaningless, but it is an important step towards getting the good stuff. I don't think anyone ever feels a sense of achievement when they buy it.

I don't bot, but 85-90 was the worst game I've ever played - having my two characters level through PVP while I'm working/sleeping would have been a great sanity saver. Can't see the point of doing it at 90 though, BGs are at least a place to L2P and try things out while you get to grips with new game mechanics/imbalances. Perhaps if I suddenly needed another character on a different server I'd think differently....

[SuperSecretAccount]

I can't see it being hard to get a first set of PVP gear.... I recently did enough battlegrounds to buy a full set of Dreadful gear and I did it all in PVE gear. It hardly took any time at all.

No one said it's hard. It's repetitive, boring and time-consuming, which makes it the perfect candidate for automation.

It may just be me, but I prefer to earn the things I get. I wouldn't want them if I hadnt earned them, they would be meaningless.

Yup, just you. Gear has no meaning, it only has stats. The stats are the same regardless of whether or not you botted.