Blizzard Covering Up botting issue?

[Glurp]

All the threads on the forums have posts mentioning things that encourage people to bot, there was a topic on mmo-c asking why people bot bgs and most the responces were "because blizzard does nothing and they get away with it easy". If Blizzard keeps those threads around on their forums they are pretty much allowing people to talk good about bots and encourage them to bot.

[Xeraxis]

So here I was sitting on the Eu forums in the Battleground section browsing Bot complaints threads. Suddenly as I refresh the page I start seeing locked threads. Then deleted threads. I have read atleast half of those threads and seen nothing lock worthy in either. I get the slight sensation that Blizzard is getting rid of the "sensitive" threads make the problem seem smaller somehow...

Like if we ignore enough people the complaints will just go away.

Notice how you said threads and not thread. That's why they are locked and deleted because people feel the need to post multiple threads about the same issue. It's about like what you did here. Instead of searching for threads with Blizzard conspiracy theories you created one.

[Iite]

Botting is pretty rampant, shouldn't be that hard to catch.

[Danishgirl]

As usual, Blizzard does not communicate to the community and does not take immediate action for a very good reason.

It helps them catch hackers more effectively.

The moment a ban wave starts, hackers know they've been caught and change their program to try and make it undetected again. If you're banning them immediately, you enter into an arms race with the hackers. Blizzard has decided (probably correctly) that it's easier to let the hacks flood the market, get everyone who's going to cheat using them WHILE you can identify their accounts, and then do a massive banwave and catch them all at once.

The same reason is why they don't communicate. Any communication informs the hackers as much as it informs legitimate players. The goal is to keep the hackers in the dark so they don't know they've been caught, or how, as much as possible.

This is the explanation I've seen from Blue Posts in the past as well and I do understand their choice of action - to some degree. But the choice comes at a cost and there's only the player base to "pay" for it. Cause I have to agree, that botting seems worse than ever before. I thought the launch of Cata was horrible but the current state of random BG's between midnight and noon is a complete joke. The bots make up 95% of the team (if not more) during this time and unless you queue as a premade, you might as well not queue at all. The problem with this is, that it's making it more or less impossible for normal players to do BG's 12 hours out of 24.

And while the bots get their gear, probably their Conquest cap as well, the rest of us just have to suck it up and face that the bots are flooding the BG's.

Just a little "eye candy" to round off my post.

[naturetauren]

You know what would scare people botting? If Blizzard hired a few people to watch over the BGs. Ofcourse they are so greedy so thats out of the question.

This actually caused some botting sites to implode in other games.

[Calzaeth]

You know what would scare people botting? If Blizzard hired a few people to watch over the BGs. Ofcourse they are so greedy so thats out of the question.

This actually caused some botting sites to implode in other games.

Just curious, but do any of us have any idea how many separate BGs are run at any given time, on average? Because I can't help but think that with 10m players worldwide and 20-80ppl pr. BG, the "Have dedicated people watch them"-option would either require a couple million dollars on wages, or it would barely be noticeable at all. Remember that 'other games' are pretty damn happy with a 5th of the consumerbase WoW has.

[StationaryHawk]

Blizzard has admitted that there's a botting problem several times.

[Thelxi]

Having their game's forums flooded with complaints about bots is terrible business for blizzard, so of course they prefer their forums to be clean.

They delete and lock most topics with the reason that it is easier for the CMs to prepare feedback reports from 1 thread, so they got a valid excuse.

[naturetauren]

Just curious, but do any of us have any idea how many separate BGs are run at any given time, on average? Because I can't help but think that with 10m players worldwide and 20-80ppl pr. BG, the "Have dedicated people watch them"-option would either require a couple million dollars on wages, or it would barely be noticeable at all. Remember that 'other games' are pretty damn happy with a 5th of the consumerbase WoW has.

Im pretty sure similar minor things used to shut down cheating back in WOTLK just because of knowing that people get banned randomly.

Captcha then? Reporting doesnt work. My friend hacked this game and reported himself and he didnt get banned.

[Itisamuh]

What? I've seen tons of blue posts admitting that botting is a problem that they're trying to work on. What else are you expecting from them? It's not an easy thing to fix.

[blackblade]

Half the problem is that there are entire parts of this game's reward system that simply give you points for showing up. if they had made bottable content complex...

[sabe]

Bots are paying subs too.

If their population is high, i don't think blizzard will ever try to prevent them.

[Danishgirl]

What? I've seen tons of blue posts admitting that botting is a problem that they're trying to work on. What else are you expecting from them? It's not an easy thing to fix.

I think most of us know, that they're trying to fix it and that we have to be patient. But it is really frustrating, that BG's are more or less impossible to do atm.

[Mooboy]

Spamming the official forums with threads that are basically all the same helps, it creates pressure.

Rubbish, it creates locked threads and nothing more. If you want pressure use the button they give you and just report them.

That at least goes somewhere, is counted or added to stats, your locked thread does none of those things except eventually gets you banned from the forums.

[Raldazzar]

one thing I find interesting is, bg's are more populated then arena (I would suppose bearing in mind the smallest team is 10v10.. yet they make no effort to fix botting issues. rbg win trading is rife... yet no effort has been made yet..

but arena?! oh god, lets fix that..

id rather they found a better way to sort bots out then worry about which russian/chinese farmer is sitting at 5k rating..

[Karlz0rz]

I botted for 1 week back in TBC, just to see what the fuzz was all about. I got my account perma-banned in a big ban wave!
And guess what? I am ok with that. I did something against the rules, so a perma-ban should be the punishment .

[warcraftmew]

Pretty sure a blue said they know bots in BG got worse since MoP launch, in other word they are not covering it up.
Probably repost or something.

if they know, why arnt they getting rid of them cos they wont cos they lose subs and money

[Cirque]

If you have a bot issue, report it through the correct means. Creating endless threads about it doesn't help it at all and most of the time they don't provide any relevant info about the botting, but just random complaints that won't help in any way dealing with it.

Of course, if you forget about the bigger picture and isolate only the fact that they lock and delete those threads , you can imply that "Like if we ignore enough people the complaints will just go away." That's what most people do anyway, so don't feel bad.

This, and furthermore, there's often already 1 big topic where Blizzard wants people to go so all information (read: pointless complaints) is condensed in 1 topic instead of 100.

---------- Post added 2012-11-24 at 04:42 AM ----------

Half the problem is that there are entire parts of this game's reward system that simply give you points for showing up. if they had made bottable content complex...

Sure, but remember: even if you'd get only half the points, or even 1/10th of the points, for doing nothing yourself and botting every night while you sleep, you honestly think those botters would stop?

[Endus]

if they know, why arnt they getting rid of them cos they wont cos they lose subs and money

If it gets too bad, they WILL lose subs and money from people quitting over frustration.

And they DO get rid of botters. People are confusing anecdotal "there's totally this one dude I think might be botting based on completely circumstantial evidence, and because that one dude is occasionally online, they're not taking any action." It assumes a ton of things that the player making the claim can't know.

Again; I got a ban about a year ago, in error, over suspicion that I was botting. They DO take action. Just not on your schedule, or according to the rules you're inventing for how it should work.

Sure, but remember: even if you'd get only half the points, or even 1/10th of the points, for doing nothing yourself and botting every night while you sleep, you honestly think those botters would stop?

The issue there is that WoW is not a zero-sum game. The intent is to provide everyone SOME amount of reward regardless of their skill level. It's meant to cover people who are terrible/new, but it also covers bots. There's no real way to work around that without creating a system where a third of the people in a BG will not gain any appreciable honor, because they performed too badly to earn any. The issue with that is then you have complaints that people stacking BGs with premades is unfair and prevents normal casuals from earning any rewards, because they just get stomped.

[Lumikor]

I also feel they are doing nothing about it, things got much worse in the recent months and casual BGs are just unplayable. This morning I had group in twin peaks with 8 bots. GMs refuse to handle mass botting, so the player must sit and report them one by one.

I'm not a great fan of PvP and I only do it now and then, but looks like I'll stop doing it and do only PvE