The Botting Simply Must Be Stopped!

[Axxis178]

I qued for quite a few Random BGs this week, and ended up having a record of 6-39.

I refuse to believe that it was simply "bad luck" that I was paired with this many losing groups, but rather that most of my teammates were bots, as evidenced by their behavior, and lack of communication in the chat window.

I can't detail how humiliating it is to have to wait for 14 losses before you have enough honor points to upgrade a piece of the crafted PVP gear to an honor piece (Malevolent). I truly think it would be quicker/easier to just run random heroic dungeons and convert the justice points to honor, but I don't think that is the intent of this game...to take the easiest path go obtaining gear....or should I say the least frustrating path by avoiding the botters.

First Person Shooter (FPS) games have had anti-botting technology built into them since the 1990s. If you load a botting program, within minutes you are disconnected and/or banned.

Blizzard really can't come up with a way to determine whether a player is being moved by an input device (mouse/keyboard), or a botting program??

I'm told over and over again to "report" these players, but that is a fulltime job. I don't want this game to feel like a job, as I play it for FUN.

I sincerely wish the developers would talk to the developers of the First Person Shooter games and find out how to code anti-botting technology into World of Warcraft, instead of putting it on the playerbase (who pay to play their game) to police the game themselves.

I'd give anything for a developer to explain why the bots cannot be stopped.

#pleasehelpus #botsareruiningbattlegrounds

[Ultima]

Someone has to lose. It can simply be bad luck. It can simply be you or other players under-performing.

I rarely experience botting, being able to account for two encounters. Having AV and IoC blocked might help, but certainly didn't do anything before this was implemented.

I am sorry you have bad luck. I am sorry for those who seem to inexplicably encounter bot after bot, you are the vocal minority.

edit: And it is quicker to spam Random Heroics and convert. Probably only beaten by AV weekend if you are the right faction. It also helps to do LFR and use that gear which is superior to Malevolent.

[ShimmerSwirl]

I think the problem is que times would go way up, and subs would go way down if Blizz actually banned all the botters.

[Deleted]

First Person Shooter (FPS) games have had anti-botting technology built into them since the 1990s. If you load a botting program, within minutes you are disconnected and/or banned.

Who on earth bots in FPS when there is nothing to gain? If you mean anticheating, then you need to understand that is detection of foreign programs that interact with the game. Botting is a program that just give/copy keyboardcommands and doesn't directly interact with the game, therefor undetectable.

[Axxis178]

I played the Unreal Tournament series (PC) competitively in the CyberAtheletic and TeamWarfare Leagues, and "aimbots" were quite prevalent. They were also quite prevalent when players just wanted to join a server and grief people by just destroying everybody, with the assistance of an aimbot.

I'm sure you've run across "trolls" and "griefers" in your World of Warcraft endeavors. I wouldn't put it beyond these people to load up bots just to grief people who actually try to win Random BGs when they que for them.

[MiLLeR]

First Person Shooter (FPS) games have had anti-botting technology built into them since the 1990s. If you load a botting program, within minutes you are disconnected and/or banned.

Most Anti-cheats in FPS do not act immediately, rather they do delayed mass bannings. You can cheat for weeks in FPS thinking you are getting away with it, until you are finally banned. Im not sure, but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that WoW uses a similar system, but I could definitely be wrong.

[Naughtt]

There is a court case currently going on involving Blizzard and honorbuddy. They are working on thing, just perhaps not the things that frustrate us in game.

[rcgn]

Try premaking teams with friends or use oQueue to find groups. Plenty of CTA farms.

[kosechi]

i've run a lot ( and i mean A LOT, my paladin is closing in on 4k, and my warlock has a good 1k) of random bgs, mostly solo, and i just don't see this botting problem everyone keeps talking about.

at most i'll see 1 or 2 bots per match and most will be afked out within 5 minutes of a match starting.

are you sure you are not mistaking plain terrible players for bots?

i don't think i've ever gone 6-39 doing randoms, unless i'm queueing av as horde or somthing.

[Axxis178]

Just did 8 Random BGs since making this post. Went 0-8. I paid particular attention to some of my teammates and would watch them spawn, mount up, run straight to the flag (that was protected by at least 4 enemy players), insta die, and repeat the process indefinitely. There were 2 such players doing the exact same thing.

I felt bad for sitting there and watching them, rather than helping my team, but I had to do it in order to really observe the routine of these players I suspected to be bots.

I just can't believe that a real player would take such actions, over and over again (with the same outcome), without modification of behavior.

[Ogawdspider]

Axxis i do therefore believe that your battlegroup could possibly be infested with botters.. maybe you should try and que dodge those botters?

I agree with a lot of the people on here that i do not see a major problem involving botters.. from time to time i might see a couple.. but nothing that would seriously impact my team as a whole.. There are usually 1-5 baddies in there anyways and i don't think they are doing much better than the people you claim are botting.

[Deleted]

Basically you can't spot a bot definitely during daytime (at least in Europe) but once it's past midnight and all the way to around 6 am it totally is a huge bot fest.

A bot is easily detected how it acts. I see a pile of 8 characters running on mount, then stopping to kill 1 enemy player, then mounting back all simultaneously and continuing this. If you play at night time (unusual work shifts), you're going to have terrible time.

Edit: My battlegroup is Misery which is pretty perfect name to describe the level of enjoyment when you play there in the mornings.

[Nicola]

Well, if people stopped the whole "Oh noes, I need my privacy, Blizzard is not allowed to know I'm using internet explorer"-bullshit and we allowed them to check for whatever tasks we are running, the problem would be fixed pretty much instantly.

But since that doesn't happen and you can't just ban everyone that behaves a little funny, the problem wont get fixed in 1 2 3.
I believe I actually made a pretty decent post about why they can't just ban anyone that behaves a a bit weird a while ago in a similar topic. The guy you see as a bot might as well be someone that's just plain stupid, someone with absolutely no life farming herbs for 48h non-stop, someone using a hacked account, etc...

If a bot is undetected, the only way for Blizzard to find out who may be a potential bot is by reporting them. And just as they get reports of bad players, I get reports of bad posts here. I can't just trust every report and instantly hand out infractions, I have to check what's actually going on and see if it's a valid report or not, and so does Blizzard. Figuring out if someone is a bot takes time and those "Dis guy stole ma herb, he must be a bot"-trolls ain't making it faster.
And trust me on this one, it's better to let a bot go unpunished than punishing someone that's innocent. The bot will just get reported again, the innocent guy will complain and give bad reputation.

[Deleted]

Well, if people stopped the whole "Oh noes, I need my privacy, Blizzard is not allowed to know I'm using internet explorer"-bullshit and we allowed them to check for whatever tasks we are running, the problem would be fixed pretty much instantly.

But since that doesn't happen and you can't just ban everyone that behaves a little funny, the problem wont get fixed in 1 2 3.
I believe I actually made a pretty decent post about why they can't just ban anyone that behaves a a bit weird a while ago in a similar topic. The guy you see as a bot might as well be someone that's just plain stupid, someone with absolutely no life farming herbs for 48h non-stop, someone using a hacked account, etc...

If a bot is undetected, the only way for Blizzard to find out who may be a potential bot is by reporting them. And just as they get reports of bad players, I get reports of bad posts here. I can't just trust every report and instantly hand out infractions, I have to check what's actually going on and see if it's a valid report or not, and so does Blizzard. Figuring out if someone is a bot takes time and those "Dis guy stole ma herb, he must be a bot"-trolls ain't making it faster.
And trust me on this one, it's better to let a bot go unpunished than punishing someone that's innocent. The bot will just get reported again, the innocent guy will complain and give bad reputation.

I usually recognize bot by the synchronous behaviour of multiple characters, like: 1. lightning speed reactions to unmount and run to pick up a soulstone when it's placed in start and then synchronous mounting and moving back to original waypoint or 2. moving through exactly same waypoints, moving back and forth a flag doing nothing if there is no detectable action near Eots towers. The synchronous actions and exact sharp repetitive actions are what I really put my eye to.

If only bots were the only problem in BGs. If the bot problem ever gets fixed, there is still bad players and the BG whiners. Not to forget bad team spirit and purposedly lost games, trolls etc. List can continue to end of the time.

[Deleted]

Aimbots for FPSes function differently to bots for MMOs. Most bots for WoW don't manipulate game files. Aimbots usually manipulate files or graphics system processes and can be detected that way.

[Nicola]

I usually recognize bot by the synchronous behaviour of multiple characters, like: 1. lightning speed reactions to unmount and run to pick up a soulstone when it's placed in start and then synchronous mounting and moving back to original waypoint or 2. moving through exactly same waypoints, moving back and forth a flag doing nothing if there is no detectable action near Eots towers. The synchronous actions and exact sharp repetitive actions are what I really put my eye to.

Yes, but nonetheless, how many people do you think that get reported for botting but ain't botting? Everyone that gets reported has to get checked manually and with a game as big as WoW, that takes a ton of time. I'm fairly sure that there are enough people that will report that random tauren druid for botting if they lose 2 herbs in a row to him.

Also what I think what might be a problem is that reports are often incomplete. A report that looks like the following: "arthasdk was botting in this wsg game I played today" is not going to be helpful when there is someone with that name on every server and you've been doing battlegrounds for the last 10 hours.

[Deleted]

Yeah blame the bots, surely they all play on your side but not on the opponents side.

[uopayroll]

Just did 8 Random BGs since making this post. Went 0-8. I paid particular attention to some of my teammates and would watch them spawn, mount up, run straight to the flag (that was protected by at least 4 enemy players), insta die, and repeat the process indefinitely. There were 2 such players doing the exact same thing.

I felt bad for sitting there and watching them, rather than helping my team, but I had to do it in order to really observe the routine of these players I suspected to be bots.

I just can't believe that a real player would take such actions, over and over again (with the same outcome), without modification of behavior.

So that was you!?!?! I was in 8 random BG and there was some prick just standing there watching while a couple of us were trying to take back a flag. the odd heal or some added damage would of made the difference and I could of gone 8-0 instead of 0-8

[Vzz]

So that was you!?!?! I was in 8 random BG and there was some prick just standing there watching while a couple of us were trying to take back a flag. the odd heal or some added damage would of made the difference and I could of gone 8-0 instead of 0-8

Bot builds the team spirit. He always fight till the end.

[Deleted]

Blizzard needs to hire a few ppl that will check every damn report, go to the reported player asap, and just insta ban them on the spot if they're botting.
Atm it looks like theyre doing nothing when the same bots have been farming for months and months