We pay the money, they tell us how often to play. Classic move.

[Drusin]

If you're exceeding that, odds are you're either no lifing the game and probably should be cut off

I choose how I live my life

- - - Updated - - -

Spending 4 hours playing a game that I enjoy is too much and I should do something else?

For some reason people have a problem with people gaming for a long time. What if I read a book for 18 hours straight? "Oh it must be a good book" What if I decided to tear down and rebuild a 454 engine all day? "That's cool man, think you can help me with my car?" But not gaming, game for "too long" and you have a problem.

[Iamanerd]

So let me get this straight, they're implementing this to slow down the bots? Hmm must be hard to detect who plays literally 24/7, farming dungeons?(Hint, why not target those accounts running 24/7?) People can play however much they want, personally I don't play much but I can see this hindering boost runners and jump runs etc. Dumb change that solves nothing.

[Misshulk]

I couldn't care less. Very few people are managing 30+ lockouts a day.

It's pretty easy if you're farming for sgc. 30 lockouts is like 3 hours of play time.

30 lockouts is 6 hours, not 3....

[WaltherLeopold]

Easy. Bots can now only do (If you take 20minutes for a run) 30, from 120 Possible runs through a Dungeon. That halves their Profit, and stabilizes the Prices a bit more. It doesnt fix the problem, but it helps.

At which point, the bot who has now instance capped goes elsewhere, targetting some other commodity.

Righteous orbs and boosting isn't all that bots do and this IS a placebo effect, why is the goal to reduce the overall gold a bot makes rather than remove bots ability to function entirely?

[LanToaster]

At which point, the bot who has now instance capped goes elsewhere, targetting some other commodity.

Righteous orbs and boosting isn't all that bots do and this IS a placebo effect, why is the goal to reduce the overall gold a bot makes rather than remove bots ability to function entirely?

See what I´ve said after that, ... Which makes the Bot Visible and Reportable.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmm must be hard to detect who plays literally 24/7, farming dungeons?(Hint, why not target those accounts running 24/7?)

Yeaaaa, ..

People can play however much they want, personally I don't play much but I can see this hindering boost runners and jump runs etc. Dumb change that solves nothing.

Apparently not, ... Are people allowed to Play however much they want? Or do you want to set up a different "Restriction" where you think people bot and need to be Punished?

[Luihu]

This really just seems like "We are doing something, but not actually doing anything to fix the problem" kind of answer. In a few weeks botters will just have leveled other set of characters on different realm and will swap between to avoid instance limit. If anything, this only makes it more difficult to track bots and for people on a single realm to notice and report bots, because they will be changing between servers.

Change will only have short lasting harm for botters, but permanent on legit players even if those players might be 0,01% of population.

[Ghostile]

This really just seems like "We are doing something, but not actually doing anything to fix the problem" kind of answer. In a few weeks botters will just have leveled other set of characters on different realm and will swap between to avoid instance limit. If anything, this only makes it more difficult to track bots and for people on a single realm to notice and report bots, because they will be changing between servers.

Change will only have short lasting harm for botters, but permanent on legit players even if those players might be 0,01% of population.

The botting income per server will still go down as they cannot run 24/7 and building a bigger bot army will cost more and cut down their profits.

[WaltherLeopold]

See what I´ve said after that, ... Which makes the Bot Visible and Reportable.

You can very easily report the instanced bots wtf r u talking about?

Try going to epl and tell me they're not visible lmao

[Luihu]

The botting income per server will still go down as they cannot run 24/7 and building a bigger bot army will cost more and cut down their profits.

There are still limited amount of servers, so if botter 1 plays on A server and botter 2 plays on B server, after this change 1 will be 50/50 on servers A and B and botter 2 will do the same. Even if botting gold income would drop, chances are that they already have so much gold stockpiled that it doesnt even matter.
Botting already costs absolutely nothing when compared to profits, it takes about 1,5 weeks to get new group of bots ready to run stratholme. 1,5 weeks is nothing when you can bot for 3-6 months without a ban and gametime costs 5 dollars a month.

[Ghostile]

There are still limited amount of servers, so if botter 1 plays on A server and botter 2 plays on B server, after this change 1 will be 50/50 on servers A and B and botter 2 will do the same. Even if botting gold income would drop, chances are that they already have so much gold stockpiled that it doesnt even matter.
Botting already costs absolutely nothing when compared to profits, it takes about 1,5 weeks to get new group of bots ready to run stratholme. 1,5 weeks is nothing when you can bot for 3-6 months without a ban and gametime costs 5 dollars a month.

Do note that if the income goes down, the prices go up and less people will buy that gold which makes running a bot army even more PITA.

[Naraga]

The botting income per server will still go down as they cannot run 24/7 and building a bigger bot army will cost more and cut down their profits.

Wrong, they will up their scale and rake in the same amount of profit as before the patch. The only one profiting from this change is Blizzard as they have now roughly quadrupled the amount of subs botters pay them.

[chilipopper]

capping the number of instances per day to 30 just means the botters will need more accounts. This ain't stopping botters, its putting up subscription numbers.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Patch_1.11_(Evil_Patch_Notes)

April fools day patch notes from 2006

New Dungeon Visitation Limitation System

With the many improvements to end-game dungeons implemented last patch, we decided that it was necessary to limit the number of times a player can enter a dungeon per day. This was done to prevent the economy from being flooded with overly valuable items, and to ensure that players weren't acquiring too much gold during what we'd consider a reasonable amount of play-time. We realize that many players enjoy repeated trips to their favorite dungeons, so we've made this new limitation as least restrictive as possible. Each character on a player's account may enter the same dungeon up to three times per day, and may visit a total of five dungeons over the course of a twenty-four hour period. Keep in mind, each character on your account is flagged separately so with eight characters, that's a total of 40 dungeon-runs per day!"

We are literally dealing with a joke of a company right now... so sad.

[Ghostile]

Wrong, they will up their scale and rake in the same amount of profit as before the patch. The only one profiting from this change is Blizzard as they have now roughly quadrupled the amount of subs botters pay them.

The profit cannot be the same if their sales don't grow with the requirement of more bots.
More bots means higher cost, higher cost means higher gold prices.

[Nak88]

Who cares about botting. If you check r/ classicwow on Reddit, you will see hundreds of posts written by teenagers whining, moaning and complaining for everything. Such a toxic community.

[Brostin]

Let's look at some quotes from the OP shall we:
"I mean, they make you farm something and you guys lap it up, expansion is over and people are farming echoes like they are crazy. So is this Blizzard's way of controlling your mind, your free time, your money... or you going to pretend you enjoy it?"

"I did not. I am trying to understand the need and the addiction so many players display. It is worrying. Video game addiction is spiralling out of control. Locate the problem, admit the problem, solve the problem. I'm at stage 3, you guys replying so far are stage 1. I'm here to help you."

"Grinding is the game maker controlling you. If you think it is not, I am sorry about your views on this."

So grinding is really bad(according to you) but Blizzard should let us do it? Make your mind up buddy.

[Kalmah]

30 lockouts is 6 hours, not 3....

5 Arena runs take about 20-25min of actual play time, then you logout go do something else until you can do another 5 runs.

If you spread that over 10-12 hours, it's fairly reasonable to do more than 30 runs in a day. It's a lot, sure, but it's perfectly doable.

Ranking to r14 takes a lot more time investment than that and I don't see Blizzard implementing limits on that.

[Itori]

XD i thought it was we pay money and the streamers/elitists tell us how to play.

[kaintk]

i know some people think this change is futile, but i dont think so

it will be more easy for blizzard to check characters who do exactly 30 dongeon by day , which place and if it pphysically possible to do them without the noclip/fly hack we see on classic in just a few minutes

let say the bot do diremaul, blizzard check and see he make it 30 time each day and each time the guy took only 10 minute to do it, clearly impossible for anyone not using hack program, boum ban bot

[lollerlaban]

How do you Identify the Bots?

It's very simple. Full BOE gear, always.

[shade076]

Not to derail the conversation but is blizzard's inability to properly deal with the massive botting situation in any way related to the mass layoff last year? I understand it was a lot of "QA" people that were let go does that include GMs who would have been able to swiftly perform a bot investigation in less than three months?