Would you bot if you knew for a fact you'd never be caught?

[Blackmist]

No, I'd stop playing.

If you can guarantee you can't be caught, everyone else would too. They'd all be botting and the only way to play would be to bot. So what's the point of playing and paying?

The whole point of botting is to give yourself an advantage others don't have.

I still think botters should be banished to a shadow realm. Nobody else would see them. Nobody would see their auctions or spam. They'd be ghosts who don't know it. They'd only be queued with other botters. Only other botters would see them. They'd think the whole game was just like that.

[Flarelaine]

Yeah I was main Horde as well at the time. And a tauren! How exactly do you hide a freaking tauren???

You cannot really hide any of the Horde races in IF (unlike Orgrimmar where there was a rock a gnome could fit behind for the other fish). Funny thing is about a quarter of Alliance players who spotted me just /laughed and moved on. The rest made sure to either gank me or (if low level) get guards spawned on me.

[therealstegblob]

Why would I?

That's like going to watch Star Wars, and having your cat watch it while you go to sleep.

If you don't want to go and see the movie, don't go and see the movie - it is pretty simple.

While I would never use a bot for WoW (why would you need one? Unless you want to hardcore gold farm, it's a very grind un-intensive game), this is a very stupid comparison. People bot to avoid grind investment, which is something they don't want to do. It's not like "putting a movie on and then going to sleep".

[bowchikabow]

yes i am only good at fishing after I click the bait 1000 times. How does it make me a better player if I manually send people on missions vs using a bot to it. How is levelling hard? I dont think I have heard anyone in the history of wow not able to get to max lvl, if people from *those* servers can get to lvl 110 then it shows it cant require that much skills

I separate the categories. Not to mention, there is the aspect I didn't even bother to include.

Things like Honorbuddy were the worst because it had actual externalities. Meaning that someones use of honorbuddy actually had an impact on other players, by virtue of that player using it. That is the part that really digs at me. The effect that different bots have on the players around you and the game itself.

[Deleted]

Botting in a multiplayer game is probably the most selfish thing one can do. Every time someone bots to achieve any goal they take away from other people who do the activity. Ever been in a battleground where some people just run into walls? Ever seen the prices get so low on the AH that you don't really see any reason to farm materials anymore? It's not that the activities themself are boring and unrewarding, it's people who bot to do the activities that devalue it for others that make them tedius. To those people saying "I would bot to get fish" the answer is "you can just get gold in other ways and buy fish from people who actually do fishing".

The whole reason I even stopped PvPing was because bots started runing rampant at one point and you'd have 2-3 bots in every 10man battleground. There's just no enjoyment in pvp for me and I'm sure it's the same for other people and that's because of bots. I don't farm materials anymore - heck - I don't even have any gathering professions anymore, because bots make auction prices so low that anyone with limited time, be it 4 or 14 hours, just can't hope to make worthwile money off AH gathering materials now.

If you don't want to not bot for selfless reasons, here's a selfish one - life has to be a rollercoaster. Without the mundane you wouldn't be able to appreciate the fun things in life. If fun goes from 1-10 you actually feel when you reach those highs of 10 and look forward to them while doing the mundane 1-4 things. If you turned the fun dial to 11 all the time then while it's the greatest fun level it would also be the average and it's human nature to grow tired of the average. It's the same reason why drug addicts destroy themselves - be happy all the time and suddenly it's the norm, so you up the dosage until it kills you, but how would you up the fun in wow after only doing fun things has become mundane. It's the same with good music too - memorable songs are usually ones where the song builds up over it's duration before reaching a peak and you can just listen to the peak only, but it's just not as impactful as listening to the whole song.

For all I care the botters should get banned permanently or as someone suggested, be put on their own shadowrealm with bot PvP and bot Economy and bot WoW token prices and bot LFR. Then have timers removed from their battlegrounds so they get stuck in an endless loop of battle when none of the team wins because they're all just fighting in the middle.
EDIT: also have resource nodes always be active and not despawn when looted, but have neither resources, nor any other drops have a sell value and all you can do is delete it, but to delete an item instead of typing delete you have to solve a captcha.

[melzas]

I voted no but then I realised I could farm gold for battle net balance I could later use for hearthstone packs or hots skins (or maybe actually buy OW), so yeah, I would bot to farm gold (not for WoW benefit though).

[ro9ue]

100% yes. Everything I want is behind a bullshit RNG or grind system. If I could have a bot do all my WQs and get caches/paragon caches or grind out Tusks of Mannaroth or any 1% drop chance mounts left I need... fuck yeah I would. Because I literally don't do it anyway becuase it's not fun. If a bot could do it, sure.

[Martymark]

Grinding is gameplay.

Some grinding is "gameplay". Some grinding is just grinding. I'm ok with us disagreeing on this. You can grind it and I will skip it.

[huth]

I would in a heartbeat. Need something to farm gold while I'm at work so I can play WoW for free every month at a minimum.

By selling it to the vendor? Because if everybody could bot without repercussions, the market would effectively be dead for anything that can be farmed by a bot.

[Deleted]

No, I wouldn't.

Because I'm capable of earning gold and gaining rewards through playing the game.
People saying "I bot/leech/buy real money boosts because I only enjoy some parts of the game" are just pathetic and should go over to a game where they enjoy themselves enough to not be a burden on everybody else.

People skipping the game through buying gold in the shop is perfectly OK though?

[Logwyn]

Got that macro running mod back in UO to "grind" out skills...... did it game lost its appeal. Quick playing soon after.... Same would happen in WOW

[united]

I would, without the slightest bit of hesitation.

Keep in mind, I'm NOT asking if you'd not if botting were ALLOWED, because in that case it'd essentially be required. I'm asking if you'd bot in a hypothetical world where you knew for certain you'd get away with it.

hahahahaahahahahaahahaa

[Queen of Hamsters]

People skipping the game through buying gold in the shop is perfectly OK though?

Well, not sure why I'd have to explain this to an adult, but here goes.

The token system is an official system which prevents fraud and allows players to either get gold through a "legal" system, or paying for everything Blizzard related through gold without having to spend real money through that same official exchange.

Since the system is allowed and seems to be working, I'd have to say yes, it is perfectly OK? Of course, I don't have any official say in that and wouldn't if they one day decided that the system should go.

[Martymark]

If you could bot and knew that you'd never be caught, I don't think we will ever be at the same place m8. I wouldn't even play that kind of game and I especially wouldn't play it with assholes who don't know the meaning of words 'fair play'.

I've done light botting since Vanilla, so I guess it's time for you to cancel your account. I wouldn't recommend it though, WOW is a fun game.

[mauserr]

Not even a question, of course I would. I'd bot whenever I wasn't raiding or doing m+, no need to grind my ass off, let the bot do it.

[Cwimge]

I absolutely would. For fish, AP and it'd be the only way I did any pvp

[Zuben]

Yup. Grinds are something you want to work through, but they are not engaging. Like eventually with mundane work in real life, I might as well leave that to a robot.

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

Already do semi-botting through macro and other shit. Not as efficient but works just fine for some thing

Haven't gotten banned yet for being afk online during launches.

[nodq]

No because it is the most illogical thing to do in a game like WoW. Why do I pay monthly for a game to let a BOT play the game for me? I mean wtf is wrong with those people, it just doesn't make any sense at all. And I know some people will jump at me, saying "yes BUT..." and argue with, I've no time for this and that and I don't want to do this and that etc. pp. - do us all a favor and just don't come up with those excuses, it is just an awful excuse at the end.

Also from the cheating perspective, do people nowadays also argue in FPS like " I don't have time to learn and get good at this game, thats why I use an Aimbot" ?

[Taeldorian]

Nope. Playing the game, I don’t want it played for me. I’m not paying to have it played for me, that’s probably the dumbest shit I’ve heard.