A VERY simple solution for the problem of bots and botting in general.

[Lucetia]

Remove "click-to-move". That's all it would take to kill 90% of the botting population.

Most mainstream (ie. readily available for download for around 10 dollars) bots and gliders for WoW use click-to-move to navigate the game world, in addition to heavily scripted macros. Without this function, it would be nigh-impossible to create any efficient botting programs, and thus less people would be exploiting the game. This is due to the fact that bots which try and navigate using keystrokes often / nearly always get stuck / lost / killed.

Furthermore, I've NEVER seen or met a player who actually uses this functionality (I've been playing since early 2007), so I don't think it would be that big of a deal for the players themselves.

Thoughts? Why hasn't Blizzard realized this? Surely it's easier than plowing through reports and tickets and individually banning people...

Because most bots move via key movement. Usually only time a bot attempts to click is when finding a mob/node/clicking res, etc.

[Syri277]

I have it enabled but never use it while in combat or something like that. I use it when flying for long distances, why press W all the travel time when you can click somewhere in the far distance?

[Deleted]

I have it enabled but never use it while in combat or something like that. I use it when flying for long distances, why press W all the travel time when you can click somewhere in the far distance?

Why click somewhere in the far distance when you can just autorun with numlock ?

[Seranthor]

That's a great idea and I've thought about that too. Why not Blizzard, it's so simple, right? Well no, because the 90% of bots will die off. That's 90% of the botting population, and I'm going to take a wild guess and say that at least 30% if not more of the population use bots. 30% of 10m subscribers is 3m which equals to about $45m a month. Blizzard doesn't want to lose that much. That's why they let the bots who just do bgs and farm maybe a little a day like an hour pass. They only ban the extreme users that make millions off of it.

So what you are saying is you are a bot and posting about it, right? I certainly would love to see your evidence for 30% are bots.

[Radoria]

Its far more complicated than this. Exponentially so.

If there was an easy solution Blizz would have done it by now. Even if click-to-move was the primary culprit, these bots can still target, execute spell/sequence macros, etc.

And the worst part is, these bot programs evolve and grow more complex right alongside the game, which means Blizz is always fighting an uphill battle. One of their blues compared it to anti-virus stuff... every time the antivirus guys update, the dicks writing the viruses make new ones to get around said update.

^^^^ This. I suck with computers, especially for someone who plays wow, but I just had to figure this was the problem. There's no way click to move is the only thing these guys are able to exploit. It has to be more complex than that. With as many people as there are complaining about boters in WoW, I think Blizzard would have happily disabled click to move in order to get rid of ALL boters.

[Zka]

There are millions of people who use click to move!

I really heavily doubt that

[velde046]

tbh, I doubt that bots make use of click to move functionality... Probably best way to prevent bots is by having more dynamnic environments. Have areas with moving walls or windy areas, that would put bots constantly in wrong positions etc. Just make it sure that there is decisions involved. A bot will not be able to track a wall coming towards him or rotating walkways for example, just to name a few.
Also having to push a key sequence at the spirit healer for getting back to life would make sense.... just like a Captcha... make it a 3-key combo that's random...

[Nevor]

Most bots use stolen accounts or stolen credit cards. Blizzard makes nothing off those. And the people they piss off leave the game.
But please, don't let me stop you from repeating this stupid crap until the end of time. OMG GREEDY CAPITALI$T SWINES!!!!![COLOR="red"]

not really... nowadays MANY regular players bot things they simply don't want to do. i know dozens of people who...

- level twinks by bot-grinding mobs cause they are bored of leveling again
- farm ore/plants by bot cause its a very boring thing to do
- fish by bot cause farming mats for buff food etc is very boring and time consuming
- farm skyshards by bot cause it takes forever to do it manually
- farm bgs by bot cause its very time consuming and annoying
- farm free money by bot-grinding

if they get caught they OF COURSE tell the gm... "someone stole my account and i didn't do it..."

[Saffa]

not really... nowadays MANY regular players bot things they simply don't want to do. i know dozens of people who...

- level twinks by bot-grinding mobs cause they are bored of leveling again
- farm ore/plants by bot cause its a very boring thing to do
- fish by bot cause farming mats for buff food etc is very boring and time consuming
- farm skyshards by bot cause it takes forever to do it manually
- farm bgs by bot cause its very time consuming and annoying
- farm free money by bot-grinding

if they get caught they OF COURSE tell the gm... "someone stole my account and i didn't do it..."

I do hope you report all these cheats you know

[Nevor]

I do hope you report all these cheats you know

sure... i reported all of them many times but guess what... nothing happened... all of them are still on my friendlist and online regularly