100% bots in EotS Battleground - It can't get any worse now...

[Deleted]

Long post

They key difference is that Blizzard has an option (a costly(ish) though) to monitor BGs if they wanted. With your burglar analogy it would go like this. You call a police and say that every night burglars are robbing the same house at 12:00. Cops don't do shit and the robbing continues for 4 months. The next days you bitch and moan for everyone how the police allowed that house to be robbed.

[Deleted]

They can't ban the bots unless people report them. Once reported there needs to be individual investigations for each character, then waiting for a ban wave. The problem is (1) that people just don't bother to report them and (2) that more and more people start botting all the time.

Ideally though Blizzard do need to provide a better way of reporting. Clicking "report player AFK" doesn't actually 'report' them, it just tags them afk. To report a bot you need to either contact a GM or use the <report player for cheating> ticket. None of which are really viable because when in a battleground you don't have the time to write the tickets.

Reports should not be the only thing they need, they got warden which should detect bot programs running , so either warden is broken and can't detect the bot software which i doubt, or blizz is being really slow with the bans this time around for what ever reason.

They key difference is that Blizzard has an option (a costly(ish) though) to monitor BGs if they wanted. With your burglar analogy it would go like this. You call a police and say that every night burglars are robbing the same house at 12:00. Cops don't do shit and the robbing continues for 4 months. The next days you bitch and moan for everyone how the police allowed that house to be robbed.

Also with the burglar analogy , Blizzard should ihave a silent alarm (warden) which alerts the police (but, seems like they're all out eating donuts and ignoring the alarms though ) ^^

[Stormgnoef]

Same here joined av,ab,eots at lvl 87 full of bots.Tried rift pvp over the weekend.Did +50 warfronts and not a single bot.

[TOM_RUS]

Looks like there's a lot more bots on EU realms than on Russian realms. Never saw more than 3 bots in team yet.

[Thelxi]

I smell a huge banwave coming. The forums will be flooded with tears of joy and gratitude from the fans, telling smart people "I told you so, Blizzard cares!".

Nevermind that the botting starts again the next week, and a year later you can take exactly the same screenshots again.




As long as Blizzard is not willing to invest significantly in battling and lighting a fire under the bots, there just won't ever be an end to this. It has been going on for years, and if anything Blizzard is all about downsizing and milking every last dollar they can for last couple of expansions.

[Resentful]

I had 4 people follow me in EotS ~ Dropped my portal and walked off a cliff / ported back and all 4 of them died; Least It's entertaining to mess with them lol

[NatePsy]

Talks about D3 but it's still valid. The words that struck me were: "The problem is always going to exist if you allow it"

[Deleted]

I usually says that i have a friend that tries to prove that Blizzard do not ban cheating players because they need them cause they are desperate. That means, 90%+ of the players in this game are cheating and Blizzard are not doing anything for it.

My friend posted videos about him cheating, getting himself banned from the forums but actually got no action for it. He paged a GM while he was cheating (flying thru WSG with the flag and capping it, or, just fly up the sky with the flag after a score so the opposite team cannot win) and bragged about it. The respons seemed to almost be auto. He did it three times with three different GMs but no actions were taken.

To tell you the truth, im lying. Yes, about that my friend did so. Someone else did it. Take a wild guess.

[Posokhov]

Talks about D3 but it's still valid. The words that struck me were: "The problem is always going to exist if you allow it"

It's easy to say "The problem is always going to exist if you allow it". It's hard to actually find a real solution. No offense to Kripp, but saying, "The problem is always going to exist if you allow it" is naive. His idea of putting a hard coded time limit on how long you can be online wouldn't prevent crap. 4 days online = auto-ban? Bots will log out after 3 days. 3 days online = auto-ban? Bots will log out after 2 days. He makes the assumption that the people who makes bots wouldn't be able to deploy a patch to their botting program (and their clients' botting programs) more quickly than Blizzard could deploy a new patch. Blizzard would have to hotfix this feature in, and it would only be a temporary fix. It would also hit a very, very minute amount of players. As I said earlier, if you get banned by botting in WOW (once again, I know the vid was D3), you can generally call up Blizzard, talk about how your account was compromised, and you get it back.

Here's an hour long video from the perspective of the hackers/botters themselves. Be warned, it isn't the most enjoyable presentation, although it does give you an idea of how they go about their business. The one person on the panel is a former WOWGlider guy. Nothing really specific or "how to". Just generalities, including some of their favorite hacks / exploits in MMORPG history.

[OneSent]

I have never, in 6 years, seen anything like that. Pretty impressive that it's even possible. Back in the day, you'd see maybe 1 or 2 bots per month in BGs, let alone multiple bots in the same game.

Something has got to be going on. Either the botting programs have become more sophisticated and more difficult to detect or Blizzard just really doesn't care anymore, because I have never seen so many complaints about botting as I have with this expansion.

[Cirque]

And this is the best, most well informed post out of this whole worthless thread of people arguing about percentages. We seriously need more people like you around here >.>

Hit the nail on the head. And as blizzard has stated, fuck, probably a million times or more, they don't usually ban the botter - they try to take down the whole botting program, which will hit several people at once. It's just more efficient. That whole argument of "Blizzard doesn't ban botters because they'd lose money" might have SOME weight to it, but I'm pretty sure blizz would rather keep the REST of their paying playerbase happy. They do what they can. And if you had any inkling of what was going on, you'd know they DO do things about it - not to drop names or anything, but one of the biggest US bots is currently fighting for its life with blizzard's legal department.

In other words, blizzard doesn't do 'death by a thousand cuts', they go straight for the jugular.

Though sure I agree with you and the guy you quoted, and I understand the benefit of getting the software down and not just individuals, in the meanwhile, legit players suffer. And for how long still? Botting has been an ongoing issue in WOW, and there's always been a lot of complaints. Be it gatherers, bgs, leveling ones. We're not seeing results, and especially now when the problem is completely out of hand, we should see results.

While all this theory about proof and what not is sound and fine, it is too SLOW. Mind you I'm not saying "ban at random and hope it's a bot". I'm just going to trust Blizzard's word on it that they're working on it, but in the meanwhile it's been months since I have been in a healthy BG and as far as anyone knows, the end is not in sight yet. THAT is the problem. The players don't give 2 shit how Blizzard fixes their problem, they just want it fixed. And currently, whatever method Blizzard is using is not effective enough, because we continue to be unable to do fun bgs. Bgs are a huge chore right now.

You cannot tell me that investigating botting software takes THIS long. It's honestly not hard to find said software that everyone is currently using on the internet and look at it. It's not hard to make a selection of reported bots and look at their pattern non stop every night for a week, so you know how it works ingame, and how Warden can therefore block it. It is not hard to, based on this information, start banning players structurally. It's not hard to then issue action. You cannot tell me Blizzard programmers do not have the required skill and knowledge to counteract a specific botting program within a week (which is what we're talking about now, currently there's at least one botting program quite popular and widely used). All I can deduct is that they do not have the department for it, they do not have the manpower for it, or they simply don't see why this is a priority.

Furthermore, banning in waves has to end. It's not effective. Why? Because players don't notice it. I won't wake up one morning and BGs will be magically clean of bots. I won't wake up one morning and resume my herbing routine to find out all bots are gone. I'm just gonna ask myself, hold on, why am I not botting myself? There's no repercussions! This is how more and more bots appear, there is no fear of action taken against their account. Furthermore, banning in waves is too late. While some bots do so for individual gain (get pvp gear faster so they can start some arena, for example), tons of bots do so for financial gain. Mind this is NOT just chinese farmers - they're players like you and me. They have several accounts running on proxies, botting and selling their shit, selling the gold for irl money or selling the account. By the time you finally ban them, they have made their profit and can just proceed to a new account. I know this because I actually know some people who do this.

[Deleted]

bring back skirs, so people can do other things than just bgs at late night.

indeed. why were they even removed in the first place?

[Orange Joe]

as long as you belive it and makes you feel better...keep dreaming



i dont belive it anymore that blizz bans players for botting

i have a guy in my guild botting since release he got banned 1 time oh yeah and he did not even get perma banned.. it was not even for botting he got banned but for some exploiting and account buying...
he got a perm ban wrote a few mails and got unbanned..

so nope i dont belive blizz one sec that they do care about bg's

So he got banned ONE time yet he was not perma banned his first time and got his SECOND ban which was permanent removed?


You sure you know how to count?

[Cirque]

I have never, in 6 years, seen anything like that. Pretty impressive that it's even possible. Back in the day, you'd see maybe 1 or 2 bots per month in BGs, let alone multiple bots in the same game.

Something has got to be going on. Either the botting programs have become more sophisticated and more difficult to detect or Blizzard just really doesn't care anymore, because I have never seen so many complaints about botting as I have with this expansion.

That's not completely true either. Bots became harder to spot and not everyone knew what to look for. Most bots started to look like very bad players, they no longer were autoqueue/afk or follow bots, they started running simple paths (like running the same circle in wsg, making it look like they were productive if you didn't stop and watch what he was actually doing). Then they started casting a simple path and casting 1 spell (like a mage or warlock who would follow players into the base and when attacked would start casting frostbolt no matter what). Then they started following more complicated paths and cast 2 spells. This is really simplified but you get where I'm going. Now we're here, bots that are actually using various spells, are actively attacking players. Before we know it, we'll have bots who actually jump and run away when their HP is low. There's quite some old vids on youtube on how to recognize bots, it's interesting to watch.

[Orange Joe]

If I was a GM with GM tools, and I was pretty sure a player was a bot. I would use the tools and follow that player to the next battleground and maybe move the player to a new location. It would take maybe 2min to go from pretty sure to 100% sure if a player is a bot or not. That mean that you can ban 30bots/hour for the one you are not 100% sure of. Let's say in average, 10bots/hour. Thats 80ots/day, 400bots/week, and 1600bots/month. Now put 5 GM on this for 1month and you will ban a big chunk of all bots and people will know that if you bot, there is a likely chance you get banned. Today, everyone know that if you bot in BG's, you simply will not get banned.

And by doing this you learn nothing about how the bot works. The botters know to change their program and make something different. In the end you solved nothing except making bots harder to detect.

[Heltoray]

banned accounts don't pay subscriptions. Easy as that.

[alemaite]

Same here joined av,ab,eots at lvl 87 full of bots.Tried rift pvp over the weekend.Did +50 warfronts and not a single bot.

Thats because no one cares about that terrible game

[Tehstool]

There are more bots playing this game now than humans.

I just came from a Eye of the Storm Battleground were horde had 100% bots.

Do anyone believe Blizzard any more? I don't...
OBVIOUSLY Blizzard do not ban players for botting in battlegrounds. Probably because they don't want to lose that money.

Screenshots:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vmluey6celv2mh0/nwwUSUNtXo

I just did an eots and i felt as if I was the only player XD.

[Milkyz]

First thing that comes to mind whenever I see someone saying that dealing with bots is easy and straightforward is that they shouldn't be sharing such information freely here. If anyone really knew how to do that (both in theory and practice), they would be rich by now.

[Deleted]

If it was 100%, doesn't that mean you were a bot?
So this thread was started by a bot?

Maybe idiots like you should start reading his post before writing a retarded comment. He clearly stated 100% of the horde team.

Since I don't do BGs I never come across a bot, didn't realise it was this bad. Feels like blizzard got a hard time catching them.