I will quit wow now thanks to bots ;(

[Mithgroth]

I have never botted myself, but I think positively of bots.
They are much better than "I'm awesome, but you all suck, I'll keep farming HKs in the mid while you lose the flag" kids around.
They are obviously smarter than some human players, hopefully will be even better on next generation of them.

And if you have like 40% of bots in your team in a map like Arathi Basin, I think you can command them by yelling out base names in bg chat.
I witnessed dozens of times, an army of bots came to my help when I called out "incoming farm". Much better than some players around, no offense.

[Leothas]

Either the bots in-game are so good that I don't notice em, or else I just never see alot of bots in-game?

I play on EU auchindoun and neither in BG's nor the World I see any bots normally.

[Holofernes]

bots have become better.
u notice it by them taking the same route, gathering in the same area, mounting up on the exactly same time, clicking the lightwell instantly and all at the very same moment, in generall their movement pattern , behavior as a swarm, responce to beeing attacked and their rotation. And sometimes their routine brakes, and they gather at the same spot and do nothing for the rest of the bg. Too they tend to keep hanging an small obstacles, and running against them like ... bots

They are not as obvious as they used to be, as many of the d3 botting routines (where real life money is involved, and therfore much more effort has been put into bots) have been adapted to wow. They all function under 1 common prinicple: a mouse move program called autit, which only works in 32 bit environments. So either forcing 64 bit client or disallowing click to move will get rid of bots instantly.

[Elvispen]

You can actually run RBG's and Arenas.. Where you won't find any bots at all. And blizzard actually has ban waves.. I guess once every month

[Danishgirl]

I have never botted myself, but I think positively of bots.
They are much better than "I'm awesome, but you all suck, I'll keep farming HKs in the mid while you lose the flag" kids around.
They are obviously smarter than some human players, hopefully will be even better on next generation of them.

And if you have like 40% of bots in your team in a map like Arathi Basin, I think you can command them by yelling out base names in bg chat.
I witnessed dozens of times, an army of bots came to my help when I called out "incoming farm". Much better than some players around, no offense.

Yes cause clearly bots don't stand in the middle of WSG either..... And even if some of the bots do respond to "inc Farm", it's useless if it only means that they all leave say BS unguarded - cause bots can't think you know.

---------- Post added 2012-11-27 at 07:19 PM ----------

You can actually run RBG's and Arenas.. Where you won't find any bots at all. And blizzard actually has ban waves.. I guess once every month

And that's not really a solution is it? Plus ban waves once a month - you kidding me?

[shamozzle]

You can actually run RBG's and Arenas.. Where you won't find any bots at all. And blizzard actually has ban waves.. I guess once every month

I wish that was still true. I have a friend that has offered to carry me with his bots for a better rating.
He runs his warrior with a resto druid script following him and charges people crazy gold his "services"

[Verain]

I guess I never really notice the bot problem, maybe its not as prevalent in North America? I don't random BG much, and when I do - it's with guildies. But shouldn't the number of bots be roughly equal per faction - resulting in the relative power of players who are actually at keyboard rising? Like, if half of each BG is botting - you can just go do the objectives and win?

You can, but it is frustrating to lose because your team has more/worse bots, and lame to win because the enemy team has more.

Also, bots now move forward, follow players, and can run an attack cycle, and even trinket. Bots used to simply be the anti-afk bots- now it will take you a bit to spot all but the crappiest bot programs. We were in a winning Gilneas once where the enemy team had six bots on it. We joked about it, but when I was solo defending WW and an undead mage came cruising by with six bots in tow, it was pretty scary! He didn't know his buddies were bots, and being that they had melee in them, he held back for a bit. It was a dawn of the dead moment. Eventually he crossed the Rubicon, or whatever that dumb river is, and I had to open. The bots stayed idle. Then he blinked and attacked me- the moment he attacked, all the bots started wailing on me, because they had finally been given purpose in their electronic lives.

I think the argument that there is no MMR balancing in random BGs would make more sense - allowing gladiators and full malevolent wearing players to fight people in quest greens should be much more whine-worthy than allowing players to fight AFKs (unless the AFKs were complaining, but they aren't). Unless your getting outplayed by the bots or something?

I think the mere fact that you have to play against a bot is annoying enough. There's already enough play versus computer, and having to do it in a BG too is just dumb. The bigger issue isn't that, of course- it's the bots on YOUR team, who are profiting from YOU.

You are correct that, overall, the issue is not faction specific. But when you remember that these bots are all there to get gear that you are having to complete activities for... the entire situation feels icky.

Honestly I don't mean any offense - I just don't get how bots are a problem - both because I don't see them (maybe like 1 bot per BG per faction - on average?)

Well, part of it seems to be item level related. I think there are more bots in the lower ilvl bracket. But I do see quite a few even when I'm in the high ilvl stuffs, so who knows.

Sure it would suck to get queued into a team consisting entirely of bots when the enemy team had no bots - but you are equally likely to get queued into an enemy team entirely of bots when you have no bots.

And the first game resolves as a loss through no fault of your own, and the second as a hollow win against nonexistent opponents. Both games sucked. Now take the bots out, and both games are good.




Blizzard's stance on botting is clear, but their enforcement is halfassed and dumb. Yes, they ban players. Yes, the bans can be permanent. But by and large Blizzard is less and less willing to ban obvious botters, and they don't have the GM force they did at launch, where a GM could literally just be spying on a raid or BG just to make sure everything is ok. So the botters aren't banned individually much, they get them in stupid waves. There's plenty of players who have been botting for years, and on other forums you can even find them bragging about it. IMO Blizzard is backwards, throwing the law around at people who have done nothing wrong (they got a bot program declared illegal, and of course they shut down bnetd, an open source reimplementation with no stolen code), while failing to handle the mountain of cheating players. From their perspective it probably makes sense- if you can attack the stuff fueling the cheaters, then the cheaters can't cheat. But the RIGHT thing to do is to toss the cheaters out because they don't deserve to play with the rest of us, and then it doesn't matter if some clown tries to sell you a bot program- as long as you get banned for it, you won't use it unless you are a very special balance of clever and stupid.

It's not critical mass, and it doesn't impact much of the real play, but you can bet this is a part of why you can't queue rated individually, or queue random arena. They just can't put any of the meaningful rewards behind bottable content, because the bots WILL happen.

[Asmodias]

Once again if someone is standing still they are not a bot but are hoping to AFK honor farm. Hopefully you are more informed now.

AFK honor farmer... bot... in the end, they are both useless and both a detriment to the game. Hopefully this helps you to understand why people use the term "Bot" to describe anyone being utterly useless in a BG.

[Verain]

There's still a big difference.

An afk player should be penalized, but it's entirely reasonable to go afk for any of many reasons. The game shouldn't REWARD you for having the fire-poops, but neither is this an offense that should require account action. Afk or tabbed out players should receive reduced rewards or no rewards, and we should probably have a better way to flag this, but at the end of the day, lazy players don't anger me.

Bots are cheaters. Get the hook, ban them all. I don't think they deserve to share the same pixelspace with me.