Botting while farming

[Loonatek]

Back on the days when i wasted my time farming for low drop pets i've met tons of bots and reported them all.Gm responded they will investigate and will take further measures.One lvl 60 hunter in vanilla gear still farms the bog needlers ( or w/e they are called, forgot their name ) from Zangarmarsh.That was i think half a year ago and saw him still running his route while i was lvl-ing a tauren paladin right after 4.0.1 hit. So yeah, dunno how much reporting helps or when are they finally banned.

[Deleted]

There's a very good reason for not banning bots on sight.

Investigation.

I'm not talking about "oh, we got to make sure this really is a bot before we ban it, let's sit and watch for a few weeks what he does". I'm talking about "so this is a bot, huh? Let's see who he interacts with, trades stuff to, who they trade stuff to and follow the network of goldsellers". That way they get both the small fish AND the bigger ones. And while it may feel inefficient, it is way more efficient in the long run. I could link a report from another game , but it's easier to find it yourself if you want to (just google Unholy Rage, first link should be to an EVE Devblog). While the two games, eve and wow, may be quite different, the impact is essentially the same. If you ban them all in one go, they lose access to everything they have on the server already. Speaking in WotLK terms, that's no more choppers or primordial saronites or battered hilts and no characters to farm them. If you ban them one by one, they still have the choppers etc to sell, still making them lots of gold to sell for real money, as only the farmbots are banned. And it's very hard (trust me, it is) to locate every single bot on every single server if you ban on sight. They will always have some other bots operational to keep them supplied with stuff. But if you take the time to follow the supply chain, you eventually find the way to the top. To the characters where all the goodies are stored. And THEN you ban them. THEN you eliminate a huge problem. Sure, it starts up small again and grows bigger, it always will. But it's the more efficient way of doing it. A quote from the Devblog:

We strive towards driving their operating costs to unsustainable levels.

Individual banning won't help there. Mass bans will.

Interesting read, thank you

[Airlick]

Reporting them doesnt work. I've followed a dk around who's been on nearly every time I logged on at the same zone farming ore, I've tried whispering him, and such no reply so I reported him. That was 3 or so weeks ago, he's still farming.

I was in a guild with botter, he was just a social. After few weeks of him bragging about how much gold he's getting, I decided to report him. I didn't hesitate a moment, I am wondering why did I wait for so long. I don't think I was the only one in guild who reported him. But no, he bought like everything there is to buy in WoW over the months. In the end he just quit, he didn't get banned after months of botting.

[Adlian]

Today i saw 8 bots in all of the Vashjir zones... all of them are 70-75lvl and using hacks to teleport under herbs and mines. Reported them 3 times this week and still nothing Atleast they managed to ruin the herb prices ...

[GodTier]

The amount of time it takes to get something in this game is astronomically low in comparison to what it was in vanilla or early TBC. The playerbase that came in during WOTLK and even a lot of people who used bots that were banned are all the same sort of player... they can't be bothered to play the game for what it is and enjoy all aspects of it. These players deserve the bans that they get, they are lazy and lack any sort of brain power or motivation in order to advance their wealth or whatever they are botting for. The main thing that people argue is that "i don't have the time" and that is the single worst excuse you could possible make, if you do not have the time to put in to "make the game fun" to you then DON'T PLAY!

They ruin economies, they ruin PVP in a lot of senses and just make someone look pathetic.

"I have a life" Sure you do... and your morals that you apply to the games you play online carry over to real life, at least a majority of the people who play this game for what it is meant to be ENJOY THEIR TIME SPENT PLAYING IT!

As far as reporting goes.... Blizzard loses money if they ban a casual botter, they gain money if they ban a botter who is doing so for real life monetary gains and will just buy another copy of the game to continue making money. For over a year there were two ret paladins in the area off of spinebreaker post killing the undead humanoid mobs for runecloth/greens/coin... before i left illidan they were still there after being reported over 30 times. The only time I was ever able to get bots banned is to actually know a GM and play with them on a day to day basis...and that was just out of luck that i found that person who was able to deal with the problem.

If you want to find out some bots on your server just /who botanica

[Lazur]

I was actually contacted by a GM about the suspicion of me being a bot on my warlock. My lock is still in all 10.5 icc gear but i've gotten him to lvl 85 by just herbing and mining. I guess a few ppl kept seeing me farming and seen i was in all lvl 80 gear so they thought that I was a bot and reported me. After explaining to the GM that I farm alot and primarily only use this toon to farm atm, and I do type to other players and in gchat, he was fine with it. He also noted that with getting xp by herbing and mining it is harder than ever to catch bots because most of them are current level already, making it less obvious. So if you see a lvl 85 farming nonstop, and is in all lvl 80 gear, it doesn't mean he or she is a bot. That being said, I did encounter a bot lastnight in twilight highlands using the underground hack. It was fun camping him for 20 min or so until he logged out. I reported him but got the same old message back from the GM saying that they will "look into the matter and further investigate it". /lol

[ComputerNerd]

It will work. Usually Blizz does huge massive botter bans once or twice a year. I know because I was part of one on my old account because my buddy decided to use my account I let him barrow to do it. They banned thousands of people in that wave.

Once or twice is year is just not good enough.
Blizzard claim to be taking action against botting, and other exploits but the truth of the matter is they are a low priority.
I have seen pvp exploits abused on a daily basis, often by the same players and weeks later they are still abusing them despite replies to tickets saying they are looking into it, thank you for the ticket blah, blah, blah ...
Blizzard are too slow to react to those activities which actually ruin the game, but instead quickly revert their own change to tol barad because it was not having the intended effect, when it was pretty obvious in the first place what would have happened.

[Deleted]

imo reporting is a waste of time, i know so many ppl on my realm who report constantly these hacking/botting bstrds then 2 or 3 months later they are still at it, meanwhile ore/herb prices have gone to shiit so waste of time farming them for a bit of gold, blizz could easily put gms in zones to monitor this themselves but they wont, i dont know what has to happen before blizz listens to us and sorts this out if they even care.

[blackblade]

imo reporting is a waste of time, i know so many ppl on my realm who report constantly these hacking/botting bstrds then 2 or 3 months later they are still at it, meanwhile ore/herb prices have gone to shiit so waste of time farming them for a bit of gold, blizz could easily put gms in zones to monitor this themselves but they wont, i dont know what has to happen before blizz listens to us and sorts this out if they even care.

yes, blizzard is lazy by not putting a GM in every single zone of every single server. 24 hours a day. thats like ~80 zones by 241 servers (in us alone) at 24 hours a day (3 8-hour shifts) thats like, just shy of 6000 people. just for US.

Probably not the most efficient method of moderation. nevermind that they still need a staff of people for those who have had their account compromised for the 7th-or-8th time and are still not getting an authenticator, and various other CS concerns.

[Jaded5542]

I bot, 6 different toons, does that give me major street cred?
IM IN YOUR ZONE STEALING YOUR NODES.

No but really, its annoying to see these newbie botters that have one bot and farm for 3 hours,and sit there on the PC watching their bot, like why bother?

I used to be one of those people that would be all like "OH MAN BOTTINGS BAD" Who really cares people its a game, i can tell you one thing, blizzard doesnt care.
Look at it this way, im paying for 7 accounts, thats 6 more then a normal person, blizzards just goin to sit there laughing while they take the money from my subs.

I know people that smash down nodes 24/7, no real issue, you get a few people that sit there and go "LOL REPORTED"

Get it through your heads BLIZZARD DON'T CARE.

If he reports me for blackmailing blizzard will find out that he bots and he also get banned.
So they never report =)

Do it, a standed gather bot uses key inputs, so unless his botting for a stupid amount of time, theres no real grounds to back a ban.
Oh and FYI, ive had someone do that to me, i said go for it, i got a warning, replied to the email with the fact that he was blackmailing me, he got banned and i got off with a warning.
Warning/24hour/72 hour then a ban.


Moderator Edit: Botting is against Blizzard's rules. Saying they don't care and it's ok to use bots is against ours. This post resulted in an infraction.