Friend who bots

[Geckoo]

The reason I came up with while typing this for one is "The same amount of time put into farming materials by a human player nets less in game profit because the players who use bots have a stronger control of the economy"

At this point the damage botting has done to the economy is so damn big that the only possible solution would be to reset the whole economy and remove all the gold from the game. I don't think people realize how much damage botting or dupe bugs have done and still do.

Almost every rich player you might know in this game has become rich with the help of bots, some of them by using bots, others by buying and selling stuff obtained by others with bots, there is even a bot for the auction house!. Some people bought duped gems and then sold them, maybe the gems where removed at some point, but the gold those transactions moved was never fixed.

[Stacie]

Let him be, ask him for advice and Bot yourself and make some gold. Fishing bots are kinda cool and very low risk.

[Anzen]

ask him for advice and Bot yourself

RIP
Here lies Mr Chaos,
A fiesty little scamp!
Encouraged the use of botting,
On MMOChamp.

[Migraine]

I pretty much only play the game to raid so I like the fact that people run farming bots, they do a really good job of keeping the cost of consumables down throughout the expansion; it was really noticeable with the price of herbs around the time of the last big ban wave.

Farming bots should do nothing to inflation as the gold they make would have been made by other players and when it is sold it merely redistributes that gold. I can understand it being frustrating if your primary gold source is farming as this is going to have a negative impact on you as you are going to make less gold for the same time investment, but for a server economy it has no impact.

A big impact on server inflation was when Blizzard started giving people back items from account hacks, in essence every time someone was hacked you were doubling whatever they had in their bags. In my opinion Blizzard should have stopped this policy once authenticators became readily available.

I haven't encountered any LFD bots on my travels I'm not sure that they could be any worse than some of the players we have all met in LFD. PVP bots are generally poorly scripted and damn annoying, even the well scripted ones are rarely scripted in a way that is going to be for the better of the team rather than just farming the most honour possible for the owner. Blizzard have demonstrated that they can't keep up with banning people who use pvp bots so I think they again need to look at the reward structure in pvp to try and make bots less attractive to use.

In summary

I like farmer bots
I haven't experienced LFD bots to make a proper judgement
I dislike pvp bots
I have never botted myself
I would not report anyone that I knew if I saw them botting.

[Gandrake]

Report his ass. Id report my own grandmother for botting.

in a game where 80% of the content is just mindless grinding that anyone who can press number 1 on their keyboard can be rewarded for?

botting obviously has a detrimental effect on the game, but I don't think you can blame the botters for everything.

[-Skye]

Then you are just as bad as the bot

Guess I am too, I know a few people who bot and I couldn't care less what they do.

[Rumblecrush]

I would kill any friends or family with my bare hands if I caught them botting. You do wrong by Blizzard, you pay the ultimate price

[Airlick]

I wouldn't bother reporting him, the chance he'll get banned is so incredibly slim it's not worth the 2 minutes you'll spend writing a ticket. I know what I'm saying, I reported that one botter in my guild several times over the course of, I don't know, 2 years, and he NEVER got banned. And it wasn't just fishing bot he was using, he was using actual farming bots, the ones Blizzard is claiming to be banning on regular basis. So yeah...

[Anzen]

Blizzard isn't going to ban anyone for botting. If they did they'd have to ban more than 6 million of their subscribers. How is that going to look on their quarterly report? "Yeah, erh... we banned botters, our subscriber numbers went down from 7.6m to 500k, but at least there's no more botting going on."

Since you are obviously an analyst for Blizzard, or have some connections within Blizzard, mind also telling us the release date for WoD?

[Deleted]

Wouldnt report him, bots are actually better than many human players in dungeons nowadays.

[torment3d]

I haven't encountered any LFD bots on my travels I'm not sure that they could be any worse than some of the players we have all met in LFD. PVP bots are generally poorly scripted and damn annoying, even the well scripted ones are rarely scripted in a way that is going to be for the better of the team rather than just farming the most honour possible for the owner. Blizzard have demonstrated that they can't keep up with banning people who use pvp bots so I think they again need to look at the reward structure in pvp to try and make bots less attractive to use.

You'd be surprised. LFD botting done by a certain program I have experience with look just as good if not better than the average player, especially if they're healing which I would have to imagine is the most commonly used role for that purpose. They use a mixture of positioning relative to the other group members, a mesh of the actual dungeon maps, and relative object detection. Their ability use is flawless. The only way you would detect one in a typical situation is if you're the tank and you purposely play with them by moving your character to weird spots to make them try to keep up with you and even then you would really have to go out of your way.

[Anzen]

You'd be surprised. LFD botting done by a certain program I have experience with look just as good if not better than the average player, especially if they're healing which I would have to imagine is the most commonly used role for that purpose. They use a mixture of positioning relative to the other group members, a mesh of the actual dungeon maps, and relative object detection. Their ability use is flawless. The only way you would detect one in a typical situation is if you're the tank and you purposely play with them by moving your character to weird spots to make them try to keep up with you and even then you would really have to go out of your way.

This. Bots usually "follow the tank from 10-20 yards away" which is what normal players also do so it's actually hard to spot them out.

[Deleted]

I bet you have played with bots in dungeons without knowing it, most of the time people dont talk in dungeons anyway.
And they perform real good if not better than majority of players at their role wether its dps keeping you alive or holding threat.

[Anzen]

I bet you have played with bots in dungeons without knowing it, most of the time people dont talk in dungeons anyway.
And they perform real good if not better than majority of players at their role wether its dps keeping you alive or holding threat.

Four tell-tale signs whether someone is a bot or not:

1. Are they doing less than 30k DPS?
2. Are they AFK at the start of the dungeon?
3. Are they ninja pulling mobs?
4. Are they swearing or saying "swag" in chat?

If the player isn't doing any of the above, it's a bot.

[Vargur]

Okay so, I have a question and I haven't found any answers at all no matter what I google.

I recruited a guy from the official WoW forums, and we've been RaF'ing for a few days now. I recently found out he uses a bot for the dungeon running - not all the time, but when he's going to be AFK for a bit. I also know that he creates new accounts that get banned because he ends up using them to gold sell.

I KNOW it's not morally right or anything not to report him, but I'm extremely broke at the moment (baby on the way, partner has been off sick, rent arrears etc.) - and with all the stress, WoW is the only thing that keeps me sane (my lovely parents have given me my subscription fee for the month during the hard times because they know it helps me) - so it's very helpful to get the free month RaF from him. I'd rather NOT be judged on what actions I'm not taking, but there's my back story anyway.

I was wondering, because he openly talks about it in party chat, to which I just reply a "lol" or don't even acknowledge it, will Blizzard possibly ban me as well for being an accomplice or something? Even if it's just for my benefit of harmlessly RaF'ing without any sole intent to help him after reaching 85? My account means a lot to me and I've had it for around 6 years or so, I'd rather not get it banned.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I know it's long - but thanks for your time

"Friend" who bots. You forgot the quotation marks if you've gone as far as creating this thread.

[Deleted]

Four tell-tale signs whether someone is a bot or not:

1. Are they doing less than 30k DPS?
2. Are they AFK at the start of the dungeon?
3. Are they ninja pulling mobs?
4. Are they swearing or saying "swag" in chat?

If the player isn't doing any of the above, it's a bot.

I bet someone just read that and is coding a bot with that exact behavior right now just to blend in better.

[Stockers]

My mate got banned for the 3rd time on his account for botting, first was glider back in tbc, then again twice for honorbuddy once a few months ago and again last week. It was meant to be a perma ban, he just opened a ticket, within an hour, it was a 72hr ban.

I myself, have never been caught. I don't leave it alone, I just do other things, like study or play another game, all the whils its farming and making me ingame gold, or getting epics from timeless isle.

Report him if you think it will do any good, WoW is only £9.99 atm up to level 80.

Worth?

[Darkfriend]

I simply don't care. It doesn't impact me, and frankly I don't believe it's unethical.

[Anzen]

I don't know. The Blizzard TOU's (which everyone agreed to upon installing the game) are fairly clean-cut:

All rights and title in and to the Service (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, “applets,” transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games) are owned by Blizzard or its licensors. The Game and the Service are protected by United States and international laws, and may contain certain licensed materials in which Blizzard’s licensors may enforce their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.

No Ownership Rights in Account.

NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY HEREIN, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU SHALL HAVE NO OWNERSHIP OR OTHER PROPERTY INTEREST IN ANY ACCOUNT STORED OR HOSTED ON A BLIZZARD SYSTEM, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF WARCRAFT ACCOUNT, AND YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ALL RIGHTS IN AND TO SUCH ACCOUNTS ARE AND SHALL FOREVER BE OWNED BY AND INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF BLIZZARD.

Account Suspension/Deletion.

BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF WARCRAFT ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU.

[Deleted]

People make hundreds of thousands of USD per year selling gold by botting dozens of accounts at once.

Many of them HAVE real jobs. Why do you think they bot? They don't have the free time to play themselves. Plus, it's free money, and a lot of it.

Doesn't change the fact that they ruin large parts of the game for the people that do normally play it, the people that the game was made for. To break the rules (in this case: the rules of the game) and cause others damage (ruin battlegrounds for those who like PVP, for example), solely for personal profit, is not a nice thing. Of course they do get money for being an asshole, but they're still assholes.

Naturally they do it for the profit, and to skip on the grinding processes, free money... I get that. But having selfish reasons for hurting / ruining something for other people doesn't justify doing it (or at the very least, it doesn't make it "right").

If you're a person who wants some extra money, you could quite simply go and become a burglar. You could steal from rich people - "that are insured anyways" - and take their money for yourself. Of course, they would have to go through the hassle of fixing their home and going through that whole insurance process, and they'd probably be upset, but hey - you got your free money. Having your selfish reasons for hurting other people doesn't make it right.

If you'd try to be reasonable you'd realize that bots actually help the average casual by keeping raiding consumables in high supply and prices down, but whatever, think what you want it doesn't really matter to me.

Slightly cheaper consumables on the auction house doesn't make up for the loss of fun from botted dungeons, botted battlegrounds, and the increased competition from bots if you choose to try and grind some mats for yourself.

Personally I love PVP, but the cheater infestation really sucks the fun out of the battlegrounds for me.