Yes, Blizzard ban bots.... For 3 hours

[Machomaije]

So, my friend got caught for using a bot. My first thought was "Oh, maybe blizzard do ban bots in waves like they say they do".
But then he told me he only got a 3 hour ban.............. Are you fucking serious, Blizzard?

How does it help to give them a 3 hour ban? It makes no sense at all. Banning people in waves every 3 month, giving them a 3 hour ban. Woho, totally solves the bot problem.

Lost faith in Blizzard a long time ago.

[Nest]

No news there.
Bot users really only got a small chance to get banned if they get caught moving lots of gold between bank, guild bank or another person. Blizzard really has no way to detect bots.

[Zogarth]

Well... the bots pay too. And Blizzard only sees cash. Why remove a source of income?

[Magnadon]

Source?

Also, kinda pointless to complain if you already lost faith, no? Think that sort of kills the purpose in still giving a damn.

[Howlrunner]

Well... the bots pay too. And Blizzard only sees cash. Why remove a source of income?

Yes, companies never ever look at reputational loss, or customer satisfaction ever. What are you? 12?

Sheesh, as always the know all nothings come out and ramble on with the same BS over, and over.


Bots are usually compromised accounts, and it takes investigation. It would be unfair to perma-ban a player how got their account hacked and then was on bot loop for 10 hours farming. So 3 hours for a hacked account seems fine. Long enough to change things, notify the user and deter the bot from being used.
If it transpires to be a player using it, they will escalate up the pyramid I guess. Persoonally, not privy to the inner workings of Blizzard, but it's sure as hell not the "Oh they want money" crap people spout all the time.

[Bernardblack]

Source?

Also, kinda pointless to complain if you already lost faith, no? Think that sort of kills the purpose in still giving a damn.

You want a news source from his friend?

I could maybe open up my-friend-got-a-3h-ban.com if it makes you happy.

[Exileos]

The ban is stupid and doesn't help an inch, but regarding actually detecting bots, Blizzard relies us to register bots for their ban waves.

The bots just make an injection to the WoW files, which they can't detect.
The bot programs themselves hides in RAM, where Blizzard can't detect them.
Blizzard got in trouble because of Warden's privacy breaches, so they can't make Warden more effective.

I really can't get of a permanent solution for Blizzard's bot problem that does not get them in bad light.
We throw shit at Blizzard for not doing anything about bots, and if they did do something about it we would throw the shit even harder because now they invade our privacy.
They rely on band-aid fixes and futile ban waves to keep the game running.. ahem bot free.
And the 3 hour bans obviously help so much.

Sucks to be Blizzard.

[Friyn]

Yes, companies never ever look at reputational loss, or customer satisfaction ever. What are you? 12?

From a PvP point of view, yeah it sure does feel that way. And it's been like this since...well ever since Cata launch. (experienced)PvPers are mass quitting pretty much, so much for the customer satisfaction.

P.S. Lol @ the 3h ban.

[Machomaije]

Yes, companies never ever look at reputational loss, or customer satisfaction ever. What are you? 12?

Sheesh, as always the know all nothings come out and ramble on with the same BS over, and over.


Bots are usually compromised accounts, and it takes investigation. It would be unfair to perma-ban a player how got their account hacked and then was on bot loop for 10 hours farming. So 3 hours for a hacked account seems fine. Long enough to change things, notify the user and deter the bot from being used.
If it transpires to be a player using it, they will escalate up the pyramid I guess. Persoonally, not privy to the inner workings of Blizzard, but it's sure as hell not the "Oh they want money" crap people spout all the time.

We are talking about a player who used the same bot for pvp for about 3 years here. Wouldnt be that hard to investigate.

[Nyaldee]

Wtf i got 12 hrs ban for using anti-afk script couple years ago. Blizz became too soft i tell ya.

Imo they're asking for it themself with item upgrades + after they failed to sue "censored myself" company, they probably made a deal with them - half of bot price goes to Blizz and they barely touch boters in return. In result - "censored" business thrives, Blizz gets even more money, "censored" clients are save. Everybody are happy i guess exept sore loosers too greedy to spare bit of cash on bot hehe.

P.S. Some bot scripts are playing better then some players so dunno why so many complaints about bots ruining BGs are flying.

[Rectitude]

No news there.
Bot users really only got a small chance to get banned if they get caught moving lots of gold between bank, guild bank or another person. Blizzard really has no way to detect bots.

This is complete and utter tripe, and also part of the reason botting is out of control. People have no fear of consequence, there is no visible deterrent as things stand or at least not one most "players" seem to concern themselves with.

Whilst bots have been an issue for many years, the problem is now at total epidemic levels and if people think the majority are compromised accounts you should take the time to do an AV or IoC on an 85-89 toon. It's not uncommon to have 35 bots every single game, all day. People botting now are just regular ordinary cheats.

What possesses someone to pay for a program to play a game you pay for, is beyond me. Maybe the fun is no longer actually playing the game, but botting so you get max level so you can grind dailies? Or perhaps so you can raid and then sit in SW/Org with your purples and a 2 tiers old title "on display". Idiocy at it's finest.

[Seranthor]

This is complete and utter tripe, and also part of the reason botting is out of control. People have no fear of consequence, there is no visible deterrent as things stand or at least not one most "players" seem to concern themselves with.

Whilst bots have been an issue for many years, the problem is now at total epidemic levels and if people think the majority are compromised accounts you should take the time to do an AV or IoC on an 85-89 toon. It's not uncommon to have 35 bots every single game, all day. People botting now are just regular ordinary cheats.

What possesses someone to pay for a program to play a game you pay for, is beyond me. Maybe the fun is no longer actually playing the game, but botting so you get max level so you can grind dailies? Or perhaps so you can raid and then sit in SW/Org with your purples and a 2 tiers old title "on display". Idiocy at it's finest.

And I'd be willing to bet that the other humans in YOUR BGs think YOU are a bot... should you be banned if they think you are a bot? What say you?

[traen]

Well, permaban for using bot is the same as Capital punishment for stealing.
Thats why you don't get one after first issue.

Its good to say theoretically "lets kill all thieves" and "lets ban all bot users", but a lot of them are 12-17 years old kids who don't have brains yet to understand what are they doing.
I bet most real players stop using bots after first ban, no matter how short it is.

No bans would stop goldsellers who use bots to make money from the game.

[Nyaldee]

What possesses someone to pay for a program to play a game you pay for, is beyond me.

I'll tell you buddy - bot does completly unfun things for you, whille you get to play game actually for fun and not becouse you need to pass random utterly boring X, Y, Z phases to finally be able to enjoy yourself. If you'll take a close look ppls aren't doing Arenas, Raids, RBGs on bots becouse they're fun (for each their own though). And Blizz forces issue with increasing unfun factor.

Take valor points for example, for no obvious reason they nerfed valor gain to the ground making it much harder to maintain alts, to catch up for raiding, to reroll. What purpose it served exept forcing ppls to spend more time doing completly unfun stuff? I can't find a reasonable answer to this.

[Rectitude]

What I say is simple: I'm not mistaken for a bot.

Your comment suggests you have no idea how most bots behave and don't notice (or don't pvp/pay attention to your surroundings)

A great example is when a warlock places a Soulwell. 30+ players instantly grab a healthstone, and do so at the very same instant but there are many many others.

Since when should someone be banned because "they might be a bot", in comparison to someone actually botting. You comment is nonsense. Or perhaps you are a botter and somewhat angry when a stance against this stupidity is openly made.

[risingforce]

The 3 hour ban actually makes sense, in this case.

It is not a compromised account, implied, and the ban will serve two purposes:

1.) Deter the botter from carrying on botting.
2.) Deter the botter's friends and botting community from botting; no doubt the botter will post his ban in the botting forums and tell his friends.

Now, those that hear of this will either refrain from botting knowing that Blizz are 'on to them' or simply continue. I would argue those that will just continue would continue any way regardless of banned accounts or temp bans. Specifically to this case, I think we can assume the level of botting discovered was non professional as steeper bans have been issued in the past.

Let's all just apply a little context shall we ?

[RoboA]

And i get 6 hours for insulting someone????????

[savvasp]

The amount of bots right now is way too big. Blizzard let it go out of control and now it's pretty hard to ban so many of them

[skrump]

Well, permaban for using bot is the same as Capital punishment for stealing.
Thats why you don't get one after first issue.

Its good to say theoretically "lets kill all thieves" and "lets ban all bot users", but a lot of them are 12-17 years old kids who don't have brains yet to understand what are they doing.
I bet most real players stop using bots after first ban, no matter how short it is.

No bans would stop goldsellers who use bots to make money from the game.

Rules/laws shouldn't discriminate by age or IQ but instead be enforced among all equally.

The thing with bots however is often times they are used to operate stolen accounts so a perma ban with no questions asked and a no appeals policy could very well cost blizzard a lot of revenue so shorter ban durations 3-14 days makes more sense for accounts who have not been consistently reported for a period of less than 1 month.

That said if someone is consistently reported for botting over an extended period of time aka 1 month or more I would assume that even if the account had been compromised the owner would of already contacted blizzard over the smaller bans to resolve any possible issues of hijacking.

Then of course I assume blizz is capable of tracking which Ip address the login comes from and could varify it anyway and if that is the case they could verify ownership and ban immediately if they so wished.

---------- Post added 2012-12-05 at 05:54 AM ----------

The amount of bots right now is way too big. Blizzard let it go out of control and now it's pretty hard to ban so many of them

Not, really Just slap each of them with a 2 week ban and remove any honor/conquest gear obtained during that pvp season.
as for pve bots same ban and remove all gold from the account.

Either way they should not do mass bans in waves because it gives botters ample time to prepare for it to happen.

[BGHunter]

The problem and bots is much bigger. When do BGs and meet a lot of bots, some, because we are humans, will say "why to be stupid and do BGs myself, when so much already use bots". And they grows up, at this point even I think how much will be BG queue, if there is no bots And other point, there is double standard, farm resource bots are OK, but BGs bot are bad.