Blizzard just suspended 74,000 accounts for botting.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

On Grob I was in felwood last night and was actually able to pick flowers without 6 bots standing on each flower node. Of course.. this is only a short term measure.. they probably already had back up accounts with 60s on it and more being created. Give them a couple weeks and the machine will be up and running at full speed again at most.

[Sinaa]

I agree 100% with botters, but multi-boxers, why? they are way more addict in wow
tbh if i had money and time i may multi-boxed too but sadly i exist in the (3rd) WORST country on earth were sub fee alone is 5% of minimum wage

Except multi-boxing herb farmers are 90% bots and 90% of the nonbotters are still using a LOT of automation for their satellite flightform druids. it's not just copying keypresses/clicks.

[Mirishka]

Good to see at least one with Common Sense around here.

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If there is a way to Permanently and without fail ban all the Bots, why dont you share it with us clearly uninformed and ignorant people?

Edit: And when your answer is: "They have Money", why dont you take that money and cure all the diseases and bring world peace while you are at it.

Likewise.

/10char

[Twdft]

quite unexpected that they put a line in there about how bans are just the cost of doing business for large scale botters and they can only do so much.

I think the important part of that line to us the players is mentioning "Real money trading drives third parties ...". Blizzard should say this a lot more direct: buy less gold with real money from third parties = less bots my dudes.

[trapmaster]

just only 74,000 bots..? That's it? Lol ok

[Polybius]

lol all the blizzard apoglisits trying to claim its impossible to ban botters and blizzard is the best in the world

You haven't played other games huh?

And lol at your CS:GO example, you haven't heard have you?

[Lochton]

That's freaking astronomical. Good to see they are doing things about botting in WoW, though.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...ameplay/558339

Was about time to sweep out the rotten apples.

[kaminaris]

oh it will probably yo-yo between 3 and 5 for the rest of its lifetime. will go up when a new raid is released then a month later drop again. that is the cycle.

Trend is downward ever since Cata and that is unlikely to change. Yeah each new patch means massive influx of new players but there is no saving dying game.
They can slow it down by releasing features faster tho.

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I think the important part of that line to us the players is mentioning "Real money trading drives third parties ...". Blizzard should say this a lot more direct: buy less gold with real money from third parties = less bots my dudes.

And this is correct. Selling gold for wow token is not nearly as profitable as getting real cash. But WoW token DID help a lot in this case.

[Hellobolis]

This feels like one of those things that you're giving too much thought to. They said what anyone with a basic understanding of this stuff already knew, not sure why that's noteworthy. And they've always been minimalist about how much they discuss their efforts against botters, as to not sabotage said efforts against said botters.

if nothing else had changed, sure it wouldn't be noteworthy. but blizz is quite heavy on the cost cutting these days.

On the other hand, the classic team has been a bit more open in their communications in general so maybe it's nothing.

We'll see in a few months.

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I think the important part of that line to us the players is mentioning "Real money trading drives third parties ...". Blizzard should say this a lot more direct: buy less gold with real money from third parties = less bots my dudes.

Ah yes true they could be setting up a "botting is so bad and there just isn't anything we can do about it! the _only_ thing left to do is introduce the token to classic" :P

[Huzzaa]

I mean OSRS dudes clean out 20K accounts per a couple of days.

These are pathetic numbers.

That number needs to be in the hundreds of thousands.

But oh wait, then you'd need to rehire the people you fired from the company to actually do the job. You know, back in the day when it was way better.


/who Botanica

104 DH
104 DH
104 DH

....


on Silvermoon EU.

Yesterday all those DHs were in the guild Alpha Male.
Today, most of them are in a new guild called Devi Group.


I find it amazing how this is somehow a bragging point.

This is entirely the opposite. You lot suck at your job @ Blizzard. I would've expected 300K+ not 74K.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Lmao.

So a small banwave happens every century and all the blizz whiteknights go full "oMG ThX bLizZ, gReaT Job!"

The effort blizz puts against botting is PATHETIC.

[Frolk]

Now have them do something about botting more than once per 10 month (Has it been a banwave since Classic came out before this?)

Doing ONE banwave shouldt be rewarded with praise, it should be a given that they ban bots.

[GreenJesus]

RIP sub revenue. $15 * 74,000 per month. OOF

Over a million dollars a month just went poof.

[Kyanion]

RIP sub revenue. $15 * 74,000 per month. OOF

Over a million dollars a month just went poof.

As if they won't be back instantly to continue botting with new accounts as people are already showing.

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Lmao.

So a small banwave happens every century and all the blizz whiteknights go full "oMG ThX bLizZ, gReaT Job!"

The effort blizz puts against botting is PATHETIC.

Yeah I've always hated the weak as hell effort Blizz has put into stopping botters, gold spammers and so on. In fact nearly all MMOs are total shit when it comes to doing anything about it.

[beanman12345]

"closed or suspended." why not close all of them? these 6 month bans for botting is bullshit imo.

[Sinyc]

Not sure why this is a surprise to you? It is literally impossible that they could ever fully eliminate botters/botting programs, much as it isn't possible for antivirus programs to fully eliminate viruses. There's always going to be people working around the clock to undo whatever protections are in place, like that is their sole drive, where as Blizz has to manage thousands of other moving parts.

While they won't get EVERY botter or hack, there is no reason for them to not be better at this after having 15 years of practice. All it takes is ONE developer to go to a known botter/hack site download the program and debug against it. Obviously it isn't THAT simple, and I can almost guarantee they do that to some extent but as someone who has played for most of the last 15 years I know of friends who bot or use hacks that weren't banned for months. Even though the underlying code of the bot/hack was nothing special.

I understand Activision Blizzard has a literal fuck ton of reports, requests, tickets, etc but for Classic they could hire just ONE GM per realm to drop in and take a look at suspected botters logs/gameplay and most of the time have enough information after a few minutes to either ban them or determine they are a legit player and move on.

The problem is that Activision Blizzard is trying to solve this issue by either not spending any additional money or by spending as little as possible. And that results in the infestation of bots that exist on retail and Classic (but to a lesser extent than on retail).

[Mirishka]

The problem is that Activision Blizzard is trying to solve this issue by either not spending any additional money or by spending as little as possible. And that results in the infestation of bots that exist on retail and Classic (but to a lesser extent than on retail).

"I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, literally none, but I like typin' words."

[kaminaris]

Amount of delusion people have is amusing. If you are so confident in your abilities go ahead and propose better way to deal with bots, you know, the one that actually detects bots not just dropping couple of bots that immediately returns.

[Sinyc]

"I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, literally none, but I like typin' words."

Great contribution.

Back on topic, it sure looks like they are trying to cheap out. Not saying it's what is happening, but how can someone draw any other conclusion? They fired GMs and CMs. The very people that would handle this, all to automate the process. Except the automated process just gets abused.

Again, thanks for contributing so much and providing so much information to counter my comments.

[LanToaster]

/who Botanica

104 DH
104 DH
104 DH

....


on Silvermoon EU.

Yesterday all those DHs were in the guild Alpha Male.
Today, most of them are in a new guild called Devi Group.


I find it amazing how this is somehow a bragging point.

Soo, how do you know they are Bots? Are they your Bots?