Blizzard laying waste to the botting community

[Jessicka]

explain please as overwatch isn't my type of game im just going going with the info i get from the net

People figured out how to set up a new account and circumvent hardware bans within hours of being banned. There hasn't been a banwave in a few months either, and there's increasing amount of evidence of cheating becoming more common and in many cases more blatant with it, because the fear is fading.

[ExtremelyCrusty]

Ban them permanently. Oh wait, Blizzard would lose money that way so it won't happen

[Chaelexi]

Not really sure why they get an additional 6 months, they should just be permanently banned if they keep on botting after their first 6 month ban.

Blizzard previously explained this. When the perma-ban someone they just go grab a new account and start playing that one and bot there. When they ban someone for a period of time they have attachment to that character(usually) and will come back on that character and frequently behave because they do not want to lose the mounts, achieves and everything else they worked for. Yes this does not work in all cases but if they can rehabilitate 50% of those people that is more customer that fall into the good category than ones that are in the bad.

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They should also ban the accounts that had a money/item transaction with the bot account.

And all items, gold, gear removed from those characters as punishment.

That will not work due to economy in Blizzard, and how do you know if you are buying from a bot while purchasing from trade or the AH?

[Arcanines]

Really are you serious here? Yeah no one was botting the starlight rose the single most sought after commodity in game? Nobody was, not at all. Please tell your story to someone else that might buy your bs.

By using the numbers of TM I can tell you, starlight was indeed a waste. Need rank 3 for proper drops at the start. But on my server x3 stormheim was worth more then Starlight. And you could get 300-450 if your slow per hour nonbotting. Bottimg is faster and I'd happily have them at launch.

[Deleted]

Why don't they ban IP instead of an account? Botters just swap to another account after ban.

IP Bans don't work anymore - you pay a shit ton of money for a permanent IP(v4) address these days.

It's very common that your provider assigns you a new IP every time you connect, and you even share that IP with other customers of said ISP, as there is a shortage of IPv4 addresses (which means - more potential clients than technically possible IPv4 addresses)

Which means, if they ban a IP, they do not only ban a botter for max. 24 hours, but randomly block a handful of people which happen to have the same ISP as some botter.

[Targom]

Agree. And to top it off Blizzard has an appeal process. If anything they should be harder on the botters.

I'm not sure I trust a Blizzard appeal process since a lot of what I've seen of their responses don't indicate that they actually do anything. Unrelated to bots and these banwaves, numerous people have shown that the appeal system for Heroes of the Storm silences is a joke. People have been silenced, appealed and been told the silence stands with "exact phrases they used", went over their replays and posted pictures on reddit showing that the things Blizzard accused them of saying were attributed to the wrong player and only got it overturned because it got noticed by a community manager. The end story is the appeal process utterly failed, they didn't even compare the Bnet name in the report to the Bnet name on the chat. They looked at whatever logs were attached to the ban, copied out a few occurrences of ANOTHER player saying bad things and upheld the punishment.

[rosebull]

I don't even play WoW.

Thats because you bot bro.

[Luckx]

The only problem is that without bots consumables stay super expensive(too expensive for most players)

Apart from bots in Economy, there is also botters who usign botting for Leveling via quests and stealing money from Blizzard instead of buying Boost from Blizzard store.

And bots who doing PVP and Random Bgs nearly non stop

And Archeology and Low Level Dungeon bots who farm rare mount drops from dungeons

etc

[demonyaa]

I'm not sure I trust a Blizzard appeal process since a lot of what I've seen of their responses don't indicate that they actually do anything. Unrelated to bots and these banwaves, numerous people have shown that the appeal system for Heroes of the Storm silences is a joke. People have been silenced, appealed and been told the silence stands with "exact phrases they used", went over their replays and posted pictures on reddit showing that the things Blizzard accused them of saying were attributed to the wrong player and only got it overturned because it got noticed by a community manager. The end story is the appeal process utterly failed, they didn't even compare the Bnet name in the report to the Bnet name on the chat. They looked at whatever logs were attached to the ban, copied out a few occurrences of ANOTHER player saying bad things and upheld the punishment.

The fact that the appeals process for silences in HotS is, like you pointed out yourself, totally unrelated to WoW.

If non botters were being banned for botting I am sure the noise on social media, mmo-champ and the official forums would be legendary, so I have confidence that false positives are extremely rare.

[Yunru]

Blizzard previously explained this. When the perma-ban someone they just go grab a new account and start playing that one and bot there. When they ban someone for a period of time they have attachment to that character(usually) and will come back on that character and frequently behave because they do not want to lose the mounts, achieves and everything else they worked for. Yes this does not work in all cases but if they can rehabilitate 50% of those people that is more customer that fall into the good category than ones that are in the bad.

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That will not work due to economy in Blizzard, and how do you know if you are buying from a bot while purchasing from trade or the AH?

Mailbox transver of money or trade player to player. Its easy noticable if you do multiple trades betwen 2 accounts.

[Tharkkun]

So it has only been about a week since the last major banwave hit the largest rotation bot on the market, aswell as the largest bot on the market.

The largest bot on the market recently released a new version of their bot noting "We made changes to our protection system, but cannot promise it will resolve the banwaves"

Today another banwave went out, hitting the same rotation bot and general bot with massive bans across the board.

Prior to 2014, there had been no reports of banwaves for this bot since its launch in 2012, since 2014 Blizzard appears to have been ramping up their game and striking down these bots

In 2014 there were 0 banwaves(only play reports)
in 2015 there were 2 banwaves, first offenders recieving 6 month bans, 2nd repeat offenders recieving 18 months
In 2016 there has so far been 3 banwaves, each repeat offender receiving an additional 6 months on top of their previous ban length duration.

It looks like Blizzard is paving the way for a bot free game, these public bots cannot possibly stay in business with the loss of sales being a direct result of their customers being banned

That's because the source code for said bot was handed over to Blizzard by a contractor working for the bot maker in the US. Blizzard has the core code so unless the bot is rewritten from scratch it's never going to evade detection. Even then it will probably be easily found because Blizzard knows how it hooks into the game.

That bot maker is committing fraud by saying it's fixed. I hope stupid people continue to give them money and lose their accounts.

[Deleted]

So it has only been about a week since the last major banwave hit the largest rotation bot on the market, aswell as the largest bot on the market.

The largest bot on the market recently released a new version of their bot noting "We made changes to our protection system, but cannot promise it will resolve the banwaves"

Today another banwave went out, hitting the same rotation bot and general bot with massive bans across the board.

Prior to 2014, there had been no reports of banwaves for this bot since its launch in 2012, since 2014 Blizzard appears to have been ramping up their game and striking down these bots

In 2014 there were 0 banwaves(only play reports)
in 2015 there were 2 banwaves, first offenders recieving 6 month bans, 2nd repeat offenders recieving 18 months
In 2016 there has so far been 3 banwaves, each repeat offender receiving an additional 6 months on top of their previous ban length duration.

It looks like Blizzard is paving the way for a bot free game, these public bots cannot possibly stay in business with the loss of sales being a direct result of their customers being banned

Funny to call cheating trash "community".

[Tharkkun]

What do you mean it's "accident"?. I have been playing World of WarCraft since 2007. I have never been banned. I got once a warning for vulgar language during Hallow's End (I have to say I was really creative and no better time than Hallow's end) and that's it. There are no "innocents" unless they truly are.

About your 2nd chances - I agree but isn't 6months fine sentence to serve before getting 2nd chance?

He posts this in every thread because he (or his invisible brother) harassed a female in game for months until he received his last warning and was perma banned. Either way someone broke the rules either through bad behavior or account sharing.

[Chaelexi]

Mailbox transver of money or trade player to player. Its easy noticable if you do multiple trades betwen 2 accounts.

I had a standing agreement with a character that I would buy all of a couple types of herbs her gathered. Why should I be punished if I am just purchasing from the free market if he ended up botting to get these herbs.

[Jewsco]

Mailbox transver of money or trade player to player. Its easy noticable if you do multiple trades betwen 2 accounts.

Or you just dump it into a personal guild bank and never use the mailbox

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By using the numbers of TM I can tell you, starlight was indeed a waste. Need rank 3 for proper drops at the start. But on my server x3 stormheim was worth more then Starlight. And you could get 300-450 if your slow per hour nonbotting. Bottimg is faster and I'd happily have them at launch.

So the herb needed to make flasks and potions was a waste to bot? I thought they helped the economy by having consumables for the players? If they aren't botting for the consumables then they are just doing it for personal profit which is it?

[Deficineiron]

This used to be true, because banwaves were months apart, so users that were botting just to gather and make gold, would be able to buy new accounts, level them up and sell enough gold to make back what they spend on purchasing new accounts.

With banwaves like this, 3-4 times a year, and if they keep up, several times each month, it will simply be impossible to make back what a new account cost in the time you have before a new banwave.

This new hands on strategy can prove to be really effective, theres only 1 public WoW bot left, in recent months 3 alternative wow bots all shut down due to legal issues with Blizzard.

Victory for blizzard is not far off

combined with token inflation, I assume using public bots for farming will become unviable at some point. it certainly pushes the margins down substantially.

has there been a sale on wow licenses on battle.net timed near either of the recent banwaves?

[Yunru]

I had a standing agreement with a character that I would buy all of a couple types of herbs her gathered. Why should I be punished if I am just purchasing from the free market if he ended up botting to get these herbs.

Because in that case you support botting. If you trade with same person who bots non-stop.

No normal human *works* for others like this, unless they bot. If its once or twice, fine. But if its non-stop trade like each week, then its a bot for sure.

[Deleted]

How to tell if herbalist is a botter: he still can't spell fjarnskaggl.

No, I'm not serious, don't worry. Or am I?

[WowIsDead64]

At some point bot programs will become so advanced, that bot and game itself will be run on two different virtual machines, so game physically won't be able to detect bot program, that will be able to magically modify all data and code literally from nowhere. Can't detect - can't prove - can't ban. At that point Blizzard will most likely release their own bot or just allow players to buy everything for $$$.

[Chaelexi]

Because in that case you support botting. If you trade with same person who bots non-stop.

No normal human *works* for others like this, unless they bot. If its once or twice, fine. But if its non-stop trade like each week, then its a bot for sure.

There are other options for this. I know at one time it was with a Chinese farmer that played 18 hours a day, another time it was with a casual player that did not want to waste time with playing the AH and just wanted to sell what he got from the garden in MOP. He asked me what I wanted planted each week and I purchased what he had from 6 characters. So no it is not as black and white as you say, but hey I guess you are too closed minded to see this.