Gold Trades Between Realms, Factions or Games Now Prohibited

[Ereb]

The amount of people mentioning warbank and forgetting about Classic exist amuzes me.

Kinda tells you all you need to know about classic, eh?

[Mysterymask]

Kinda tells you all you need to know about classic, eh?

My takeaway is more retail fixed most of the problems classic is dealing with but classic diehards insist on "problem needs to be fixed but not like that"

[Sorrowseer]

You think they can combat bots with real world man power? AHAHAHAHA

Hello, you focused on one example? Thats weird, the point is they can combat it, various ways, use your imagination fella.

[Relapses]

My takeaway is more retail fixed most of the problems classic is dealing with but classic diehards insist on "problem needs to be fixed but not like that"

Average Classic fan: "Fix the botting problem but not with a Token because saying the saying the word Token causes my blood pressure to rise!"

::Average Classic fan walks away muttering something about 'pay to win' as his wife's boyfriend consoles him::

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Hello, you focused on one example? Thats weird, the point is they can combat it, various ways, use your imagination fella.

What if Blizzard spends all of their R&D on a machine that allows them to travel between parallel timelines and they just make everybody live in the one where botting never got invented?

[kranur]

Average Classic fan: "Fix the botting problem but not with a Token because saying the saying the word Token causes my blood pressure to rise!"

::Average Classic fan walks away muttering something about 'pay to win' as his wife's boyfriend consoles him::

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What if Blizzard spends all of their R&D on a machine that allows them to travel between parallel timelines and they just make everybody live in the one where botting never got invented?

How exactly is botting fixed on the versions of WoW that have a token?

[Relapses]

How exactly is botting fixed on the versions of WoW that have a token?

It doesn't fix it. I was (obviously) being sarcastic. But it does greatly reduce the financial profitability of running a bot farm. It also gives players a far less dangerous way to do something that they're going to do anyway. I do not consider it a perfect solution (nor do I support it), but if we're going to talk about ways to combat botting, it's the only solution Blizzard seems interested in exercising.

[Tech614]

Hello, you focused on one example? Thats weird, the point is they can combat it, various ways, use your imagination fella.

So please, educate us on how they combat it.

Your glorious idea was "log in and go to populated areas". ROFL.

[Sorrowseer]

So please, educate us on how they combat it.

Your glorious idea was "log in and go to populated areas". ROFL.

I said use your imagination, I see this is all you could come up with.

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Average Classic fan: "Fix the botting problem but not with a Token because saying the saying the word Token causes my blood pressure to rise!"

::Average Classic fan walks away muttering something about 'pay to win' as his wife's boyfriend consoles him::

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What if Blizzard spends all of their R&D on a machine that allows them to travel between parallel timelines and they just make everybody live in the one where botting never got invented?

At least you find yourself funny for saying inane things.

[Biomega]

I said use your imagination, I see this is all you could come up with.

The problem with answering the question of a solution to the botting problem with "use your imagination" is that the answer then forever remains imaginary.

There is no simple, workable solution to the problem that anyone's found; probably there isn't one, period. The reason being twofold: 1. it's an arms race in which one side (Blizzard) has to spend money to succeed, while the other side (botters) makes money when they succeed; and 2. players by and large want to buy gold which means it's almost impossible for Blizzard to choke it off on that end - unless they start selling gold, too.

Make no mistake: it'd be trivial to stop botting from one day to the next. All you'd have to do is remove WoW's entire economy and just get rid of trading entirely. The problem isn't "how can they stop botting", not if you're being precise about it. The problem is "how can they stop botting without altering the game substantially and at an economically viable cost". That latter one invalidating any answer along the lines of bro just hire 10,000 full-time employees to manually police the game economy, EASY!

When people ask you for your solution, that's their (perhaps overly abrasive) way of telling you there isn't one, and even if you think you got one, you actually don't.

This is not a new discussion. This has been going on for 20 years, at least 10 of which involved serious brainstorming. No one has found any solution that isn't either worse than the existing problem or a path into bankruptcy for Blizzard. A company remaining economically viable isn't a greed problem or whatever - it's a fundamental requirement of business.

If you think you do have a novel, innovative solution, then by all means share it. But don't just go JUST THINK BRO COME ON at people or USE YOUR IMAGINATION DUH?! because those don't go anywhere. People have thought about it. People have used their imagination. Reality said no. Forums are littered with threads full of people making facile, nonsensical, or economically underinformed suggestions going back over a decade. They don't work, because they're not viable - economically, legally, game-mechanically, whatever.

All cynicism and foul-crying at the capitalist engine aside, Blizzard really is not stopping bots because there's no way to feasibly do it. Them getting into the gold-selling game themselves was a mitigatory response to a player demand - players fundamentally want to buy gold, and rather than sending their credit card information to China and crossing their fingers, Blizzard would rather they do it safely and securely with them. And sure, they earn money with that. But it's nonsensical to argue that the sole reason they're not stopping bots is so they can keep selling tokens, or so bots keep buying accounts - the botting industry is, on the whole, still a fat net negative for Blizzard. If they had a magic button to press and delete all bots they'd do so in a heartbeat. But it just isn't that easy, unfortunately, and people claiming and coping with their conspiracy theories that Blizzard could but just doesn't want to are not helping the discussion move anywhere, really. And betray serious levels of lack of economic and technical sense and/or information in the process.

[Relapses]

I said use your imagination, I see this is all you could come up with.

At least you find yourself funny for saying inane things.

I promise you, I'm not trying to be funny. Your complete inability to understand the topic of botting, however, is amusing.

[Sorrowseer]

All cynicism and foul-crying at the capitalist engine aside, Blizzard really is not stopping bots because there's no way to feasibly do it. Them getting into the gold-selling game themselves was a mitigatory response to a player demand - players fundamentally want to buy gold, and rather than sending their credit card information to China and crossing their fingers, Blizzard would rather they do it safely and securely with them. And sure, they earn money with that. But it's nonsensical to argue that the sole reason they're not stopping bots is so they can keep selling tokens, or so bots keep buying accounts - the botting industry is, on the whole, still a fat net negative for Blizzard. If they had a magic button to press and delete all bots they'd do so in a heartbeat. But it just isn't that easy, unfortunately, and people claiming and coping with their conspiracy theories that Blizzard could but just doesn't want to are not helping the discussion move anywhere, really. And betray serious levels of lack of economic and technical sense and/or information in the process.

This is a considerate and thoughtful response, and to start with I never said it could just be turned off like a switch, it is a case of combating botting, an ongoing issue with escalating arms, no there is no magic button, but there are far more things they could do which they are not, mostly because they don't want to.

I promise you, I'm not trying to be funny. Your complete inability to understand the topic of botting, however, is amusing.

Very amusing indeed

[Relapses]

This is a considerate and thoughtful response, and to start with I never said it could just be turned off like a switch, it is a case of combating botting, an ongoing issue with escalating arms, no there is no magic button, but there are far more things they could do which they are not, mostly because they don't want to.

This is nonsense. For awhile, there'd be a Blue post announcing how many bots they'd banned; but, like clockwork, the anti-botting crowd would routinely balk at this information because, for them, anything less than 100% elimination of bots is unacceptable. They already are doing a lot. Blizzard wants to solve the problem but, as @Biomega explained, they also do not want to bankrupt their company with an arms race in the process. The only people who are unrealistic here are people who expect Blizzard to hire swaths of workers to press the "delete bot" button for 40 hours a week and those who will always use the fact that botting still exists as evidence that Blizzard is condoning the practice.

[Ereb]

but there are far more things they could do which they are not, mostly because they don't want to.

Like what?

[Sorrowseer]

Like hiring you guys xD

[Biomega]

This is a considerate and thoughtful response, and to start with I never said it could just be turned off like a switch, it is a case of combating botting, an ongoing issue with escalating arms, no there is no magic button, but there are far more things they could do which they are not, mostly because they don't want to.

Prove it.

Tell us what those things are, specifically, and why you think the most likely explanation for it is "they don't want to" rather than something else.

Unless you construe "they don't want to" to be equal to "it's too expensive", in which case fair enough, I'd agree that under that particular definition there are solutions to the botting problem "they don't want to" do. Because it would make no economic sense. Is that what you meant, though? Are you complaining they're not spending tens of millions of dollars to hire thousands of human workers to manually delete bots, or something? I'm not trying to be snide - I'm genuinely asking what specific thing you think they're intentionally not doing.

You've been vague and evasive and refusing to give concrete answers to far - so please don't do that if you choose to respond to this. I'm looking for a concrete, specific answer. Not some variation of "look, there's just gotta be A THING they could do that would fix it, okay" or some such.