Blizz not Banning Bots???

[MrSerious]

its crap when your team is full of bots but its fun when the other team have a bunch of them as well. In WSG I just farm bots for HK's its great fun. Given up on capping flags etc because that's boring just running back and forth. My suggestion to you is if you can't bet them join them and just farm honor kills. goodtimes!! ANd if you're alliance you can get instant queues so it doen't matter if you win the BG or not.

[Deleted]

I saw a lead guy on Warhammer 40k that had the right attitude but I can't find the quote.

There was also a lead guy on warhammer online, who told he received 5 digit offers of bribe money, only to let gold selling companies stay and run their bots....and (at least he said) he refused and instead would ban botters...

in my personal opinion, i guess it's similar with blizz...not sure if they refused those possible offers though...
and most likely, we will never know...

[bechill]

They say the don't ban bots right away because, usually the bot is not being ran by the account owner, and they want to observe how the bot works.

First, as far as BG AFK Bots go...I know a lot of people that have been hacked over the years here and there, and not once has someone said, "Oh yeah, they hacked my account, and leveled my toons up for me, and now I'm honor capped too. Being hacked was wonderful!

Secondly, unless they are doing some invasive memory monitoring on your computer, which would consume a lot of bandwidth of the customer, and which would probably be illegal somehow, they see no more or less information coming from the account than an actual player. Just packets that say, click this, move here, etc.

Conclusion, they're just lazy.

[razorshot]

can u report a bot? If so how.

The elementium ore bots are the most common that i notice.

Theres a bot on our server that puts up about 100+stacks of elementium just about every other day. Ive tried messaging the name numerous times with no response.

Open a ticket, list the name/faction/character level/server, say what you wanna say and gm will reply/forward it to some specialists.

[Gleiss1110]

I'm just confused again? How is 20-25g a stack ore ruining the economy? So let me get this straight you would rather farm for an hour, have (being generous) 10 stacks of ore and sell them for 50g a stack 50x10=500g

Or would you rather log on, buy the bots ore at 20g a stack, prospect/craft/resell back for more and do it all in 15 minutes for the same profit?

.... I can't be the only one not seeing the issue here?

PvP bots and hackers suck- but seriously go look at the popular gathering bot websites- 95% of the gathering bots are regular people. Why waste time farming when you can hack someone who just bought gold and get it all back in 1/100th of the time?

[pwnman]

Personally ive never noticed a bot ingame, but i see that someone eariler in this thread said that if caught, that account used will be banned. But, i was under the impression that if you got banned, you needed a "new pc" in order to make a new account (thought "warden" kept track of other systeminfo), to prevent people from just logging into another account right away (if caugt botting).

Edit: i dont understand, i mean, one should expect "warden" to "instantly" freeze an account if a characteron on an account is running underground from node to node, or using speedhacks. Doesnt seem like it does. Well, maybe, but they "ban in waves" instead. Hm.

[vaeevictiss]

i wouldnt say the botters are really getting rich anymore. Have you seen the cost of herbs? On my server at least, stacks are selling for under 50g, where as a few months ago they would sell for 200g+

To get rich you need to sell at least 4x as much as you had to a couple months ago. Its really mellowed down. Although, the only people i can really see complaining are the ones actually trying to make money selling herbs and ore. Find something new to do. The people buying the herbs and ore are probably happy as hell right now.

[Sepheroth]

Botters are still getting Rich because they have their bots farm so much and put it to use on professions.
Crafted items especially the cards for decks sell very well.

As for the comment earlier about JC's profiting off low ore Sales I have tried that but i'm not sure about your servers but on mine almost all Gems have dropped to under 50g each except Red ... All other colors aren't selling for much of anything and most gems are at about 20g now our servers economy is practically ruined already.

The only things that seem to make money atm are Truegold which is down to 450g a bar now Volatile Airs which are at about 20g each now all other Volatiles are at 8g a piece (YES ALL other Volatiles are that low) Our Herbs Varry but most are around 60g a stack Jasmine is remaining between 90 and 110g thats the only big money maker for herbalists atm.
Really the only form of economy is in Flasks which are dropping someone steadily at about 70g per flask where they were 180g a piece only a few weeks ago. Truegolds, Crafted Cards, and Crafted items other than Cloth .... Crafted BoE epic Cloth items are down to 900g

Its ridiculous. I don't know how other servers are fairing but Drak'Tharon is a low populated server and we have ALOT of bots running around.

[DoomOfMandos]

It should just be easier to report them ..instead of having to wait around for a gm to repsond to a ticket...

[Jaerin]

Ok, that's true, some people might bot on their main account.... those people are called "morons."

You do realize there have been 3 bot banwaves this month alone, right?

What banwaves are you talking about? The only one I've seen was for Pirox bot and that was for their new Archaeology bot. Not even for their farming bot. There are bans for bots all the time, but not usually for an entire program. There hasn't been a significant bot ban based on an entire program since Luaninja before Cata came out.

[Clouce]

You have to understand also 9/10 the people you see botting are hacked accounts, perma banning those users wouldn't help at all.

Also blizz recently field suit against the biggest of the bot making companies and lost, this would have been their original big killing idea.

My personal question is why cant more be done about the gold spammers? Blizz has gone as far as making it so you actually cant even type have the gold companies names in trade chat, try it, nothing will happen (idr what ones do it any more) so why not exercise that solutions to a stronger extent?

I understand if you have frustration with the bots but like people are saying would you rather them slowly fix it case by case while the bot makers build better and more sophisticated bots to combat the small solutions? Or would you rather blizz make a strong kick in the nuts to the bot builders and leave them MIA for the next 6 months?

We will never be rid of bots, they have been in every pc game I have ever played so you might as well go with the temporary solution that lasts longer, otherwise your just digging a hole in the river.

---------- Post added 2011-03-29 at 07:41 PM ----------

It should just be easier to report them ..instead of having to wait around for a gm to repsond to a ticket...

Ban the bot all you want, he will just jump to the next hacked account he has access to.

[Jaerin]

I understand if you have frustration with the bots but like people are saying would you rather them slowly fix it case by case while the bot makers build better and more sophisticated bots to combat the small solutions? Or would you rather blizz make a strong kick in the nuts to the bot builders and leave them MIA for the next 6 months?

What can they do that they aren't already doing? I highly doubt that Blizzard is just taking a blind eye to the activities. It's just not nearly as simple as anyone makes it out to be. If it were simple it would be done.

You make all the conspiracy theories about Blizzard supporting the botters, or getting paid off or whatever, but its absurd. The problem isn't easy and has huge PR ramifications if they do the wrong thing. Unless they start seeing people actually leaving because of the bots they won't really invest more money to do things about it. The safest thing for them to do from a business aspect is to continue doing what they are doing.

[purplor]

Bots are people too and they pay their subs......almost mechanically...at the exact time every month

[Janaa]

It's a horrible idea to wait and let them ruin the economy for months and months and then just all of a sudden hit them in waves.
If an account is used for botting, ban it immediately. I saw a lead guy on Warhammer 40k that had the right attitude but I can't find the quote.

This isn't done because it makes it easier for the bot-writers to identify (through elimination) what aspects of their routines are being detected, and immediately update their code.

Valve tried doing it that way against the OGC line of Half-Life hacks. It doesn't work. You're fighting a losing battle against the hackers (i use the term loosely, for simplicty's sake). Rather, they ban in blocks, for a multitude of very good reasons:
1) If people don't know their bot has been detected, then they'll continue to bot. Other like minded cheaters will also bot. The more cheaters you catch at once, the better.
2) The bot authors can't tell on a daily basis which aspects of their code is being detected. They write a bot, and after 3 months - everyone using it gets banned. They then have to analyse that ban and try and figure out what was detected. They can take a guess and "correct it", but will then have to wait another 3 months to see if they were right. If not - another huge wave of bans.
3) You can never ultimately defeat a bot. It's a privileged program running on a users PC. It will always be possible for bots to be updated to once again be undetectable. It's the same reason it's IMPOSSIBLE to write un-crackable client-side DRM. Thus, the best way of dealing with it is let people think they're fine cheating, get heaps of their buddies to do the same, then ban accounts en masse.

There's really no other way to go about it. If you ban people on a daily basis for botting, bots will only keep getting better, faster.

[DavidGX]

There was also a lead guy on warhammer online, who told he received 5 digit offers of bribe money, only to let gold selling companies stay and run their bots....and (at least he said) he refused and instead would ban botters...

I would have accepted their offer, taken the money and then banned the bots anyway. Fuck 'em.