Yes, Blizzard ban bots.... For 3 hours

[Deleted]

Experienced pvpers are not quitting because of bots in random bgs.

Blizzard are trying their best to remove threads but looking at the forums even arena master people are saying they had enough of Blizzard.

A copy/paste response Blizzard use when unable to directly chat with a player is hardly any evidence of anything.

As for the 3 hour ban, it's too low. But then again, it builds up. Next time it will be longer and in the end, permanent.

They said they reviewed it?

And by the way, shouldnt he be banned permanently for now because of every people that reported him? Because, all he got was three hours for months of cheating and replying death treaths to anyone whispering: hey reported *.

[SDMF]

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%B6rtal

You know that's an entirely different thing? It's like comparing murder to a mild assault.

[slime]

A ban for 3 hours kinda makes sense. Might bring him back in line with how much time actually farming whatever he was farming might take.

[Deleted]

You know that's an entirely different thing? It's like comparing murder to a mild assault.

The whole thing started from the word insult. And depends how insult is done it can fall under that. Nuances duuud.

[Nest]

Bots you see in BG's are most likely not compromised accounts.
I also like how people think that everyone is botting in BG's when people are just reading internet or doing something else while the honor keeps on comin'.

These days when you get banned you can just call Blizzard and say that your account got hacked to get it back.

[Detheavn]

The whole thing started from the word insult. And depends how insult is done it can fall under that. Nuances duuud.

I understand why people think this, but insults and slander are 2 different things.
I can call you, your mother and your cat an asshole ... that's an insult.
Slander is when I tell the entire world you touched a baby murloc in an inappropriate place.

[Nefastus]

Wow... 3 hours? And I used to bother calling in chat to report bots... Blizzard never surprises to amaze me.

[mercutiouk]

As far as punishment goes, I'd agree that flat out "for ever" bans are going to do Blizz no favours now, it's got far too out of hand. Ban in increments. 3 days, 1 week, 3 weeks, 6 weeks etc. Have it clear that the ban time must run alongside active subscription (so if someone decides "ok, I'm banned for 6 weeks, I'll stop paying" then the ban is paused too).
Should solve it. People won't bot but most won't be all "omg, not bothering leveling again".

Detection wise - yeah, much harder. I'd guess that it would require a lot of re-working of code (maybe encryption in memory? dunno QUITE how all this works) which would probably either cause issue on slower machines (maybe) or just headaches in the amount of work involved.

[Freia]

Blizzard are trying their best to remove threads but looking at the forums even arena master people are saying they had enough of Blizzard.

No. They might be quitting because of the fail balancing or another season where people exploit the mmr system, but they are not quitting because of bots in bgs. Most veteran pvpers are into actual rated pvp don't really give a crap about bots in randoms. Especially considering some of them botted alts themselves.

[Anjerith]

I dont know why im pretending that guy for being someone else. It just doesnt fit my character to break the rules.

I wasn't saying YOU are pretending to be "Bob", I meant that a malicious user can steal an account and then report the account, or someone elses account, simply for the sake of being a dick. So they can't just take "I'm a bot!" or "This guy is a bot!" at face value. Hope that helps explain it a bit more.

[shamozzle]

In another bot thread there's a dude who made a an account for nothing but botting during a good sale. He's been reporting himself regularly for quite some time now and hasn't received even a slap on the wrist. This isn't tinfoil hat territory any more. Blizzard does not care about bots UNLESS they use compromised credit cards (and won't be able to collect the funds).

[Deleted]

Back when i played WoW i botted non-stop for around 4 years, no bans. So yeah.

[MasterHamster]

Well... the bots pay too. And Blizzard only sees cash. Why remove a source of income?

I think Nevalistis summed this up quite well: This is one of the biggest misconceptions we have, and I genuinely wish we could permanently clear it up. I'll provide a few hypothetical situations (mind you, these numbers are ENTIRELY made up).


Let's say 90% of botters were compromised accounts. This means that 90% of these botters aren't paying accounts; they're stolen accounts, which are generally fueled by stolen credit cards. These payments usually get disputed and taken back, which actually costs us money. If we're looking to make a purely fiscal observation, it makes no financial sense to let these continue (aside from the fact that we don't like compromised accounts to begin with — we want our players to be playing their own accounts safely and enjoyably).


Let's go on the other side of the fence and say 90% of these botters were otherwise legitimate players paying for their accounts, as you purport. When players bot, other players are inconvenienced by this behavior (and trust me, you guys outnumber the botters, even if you may feel it's the other way around). The inconveniences range from normal players having difficulty farming on their own to struggling to keep up with an economy that's being forcibly fluctuated via unfair advantage. When players are inconvenienced in this manner, they submit petitions.


Every petition submitted goes to a Game Master for review. A living, breathing person that is paid to provide customer service looks over it, does what's necessary for the situation (in botting cases, usually forwarding the info on to our exploitation/hacks team), and provides a response. Let's say 1–2 people are inconvenienced by a single botter (in all likelihood, we probably get many more petitions per botter than that). This would mean each botter is inconveniencing at least as many, and likely more, players that are positive to the community (the kinds of players we like and want to continue to play our game). For each botter we allow to continue botting, we potentially stand to lose more than we gain for a single subscription, just out of the sheer inconvenience it causes other players.


Even if you change those numbers around of legitimate players versus compromised accounts — we only stand to lose more if we don't take action on bots (which we do, regularly).

[Anjerith]

Yeah, I was hoping someone would post that Blizzquote. Not that they will read it, but that is the reality of the situation.

[Deleted]

"my friend". Riiiight

[NaRk]

I just want to say to all those who claim to identify BOT's on spot, just looking at them even before the battle begins just to the way they "pickup" healthstone...LOL
You are far from the truth my friend. I bet you that 80% of the time you are reporting legit players, that are on the phone, talking to some friend while playing, has no clue about this game (a 11 years old brother playing on the older brother account), etc.
I bet you that blizzard learned to ignore your complains because they know you abuse this report system and report anyone that in "your" yes are botting because they took the healthstone in a way that just a bot do...LOL
And you must have being reported already, or because you were on the phone and faced the wall for 1 minute, or went to answer the door and delayed your engage in battle.

And I just want to clarify that BOTs usually does more DPS, more HPS, more damage and healing, and respond better in battles with interrupts and silences just because they are a computer controlling their char, and their response time are much better than yours. So, in fact, you are reporting bad players or AFK players, not bots.
My Friend's DK is always top Kill and Top DPS in BG's, usually with less deaths than anyone (interrupts on spot) and he is botting 24/7, and if you have alreayd queued with him, you would be considered the bot near his DK, because you for sure was a worse player than him. :P

[Blupparen]

Strange, a few of my friends got permabanned about a year ago for botting. They didnt have any previous warnings or bans.

[shamozzle]

Let's say 90% of botters were compromised accounts. This means that 90% of these botters aren't paying accounts; they're stolen accounts, which are generally fueled by stolen credit cards.

The irony here is you no longer even have to use compromised accounts. Kind of knocks the legs out from under that whole angle.
Pay $15/mo and there is no risk unless youre moving huge quantities of gold at once (which is easily avoidable)...

[Tornainbow]

I'm told the "3 hour bot ban" is simply an automated thing for people who have been reported /afk too many times in BGs. It doesn't really have anything to do with botting. Whether this is true or not, who knows?

In vanilla/BC at least a bot was a permaban.

[Deleted]

The amount of bots right now is way too big. Blizzard let it go out of control and now it's pretty hard to ban so many of them

Funny thing: the plague of bots is one of the major signs an MMO is going to die soon. All dieing MMOs were infested with bots when the they unplugged the servers, last being City of Heroes aka City of Bots.