Okay its time for some real talk from a guy who has been playing WoW since Vanilla(As if that gives me some kind of credibility)
This thread is about Botting and its solution as painful as it may be for Blizzard it is probably the best solution they will ever get if they choose to pull their heads out of their ass and realize that they alone are unable to stop botting without the communities assistance.
Before we get going, this may be a bit of a read get off the ride now if you aren't prepared, otherwise buckle your seat belts.
For those who want to skip to the resolution CTRL + F Solution!(Twice of course)
Vanilla: I had a friend who was High Warlord on my Server, I was mystified by how he accomplished it and as much as I could compete with him when gear was even I could never understand how he reached this level of prestige. He confessed to me in BC that he had botted his way to High Warlord using his programming skills and reading the memory to locate position and map accordingly, he was much more programming Savy than I was.
BC: I wanted the entry level PvP Epics but I could only commit to so much gaming while having other serious commitments. My friend pointed me in the direction of a Macro Recorder That I could use(in first person) to queue for Alterac Valley, join Alterace Valley, use my AV Trinket to port to base and spam my /target attacksequence macro. I proceeded to get all my Gear on all my characters this way.
As my friends started receiving bans for this type of behavior and losing gear I discovered a former bot known as Pirox as many of you may have heard of.
Wotlk: Pirox geared me and leveled me all the way through Wotlk grinding mobs with most of my alts as I showed up to the expansion late and was desperate to catch up. It automated my attacks and made me seem slightly more human to the unintelligent player. I got all my honor gear this way.
Cata: I skipped this expansion, apparently I have fantastic foresight based on what the communities general opinion of this expansion is, Pirox also got shutdown along with a plethora of Pirox bans, I was not amongst those bans fortunately due to inactivity I suppose.
Mop: Have been playing casually and noticing the immense amount of bots in this game which has increased substantially since Wotlk when I last played. It is actually quite disturbing to have >50% of players in a single battleground be bots I only imagine it must be nightmarish for the actual real players.
If you have read this far you are probably wondering what my solution is and it isn't anything new or groundbreaking, just a real simple and straightforward yet effective solution.
Blizzard needs to seriously come to terms with the fact that they aren't actually doing a damn thing to hinder the botting community as any sane WoW player has realized.
Most players are getting gear exclusively from cheating, so what should be done?
Solution: The counter strike approach, put the game in the hands of the players. Players can make their own Warsong/Ab/Insert BG here server on WoWs Server just like in Starcraft, Warcraft 2/3 & Diablo, and gains administrative control of said server for a consistent gaming experience where people who flat out do not respond intelligently like a human can be kicked/banned by people who are given authorized privileges. People can then choose which server they want to join, based on which map they want to play or choose random to be randomly assigned to a server that has open spots available.
- A sense of community will be built by people who repeatedly join the same server and actually get to know the other members who frequent their server, improving teamwork and the overall competitiveness of the game that was present in Vanilla do to actually gaining the opportunity to learn how your opponent plays consistently while gaining all the benefits of the modern game.
- Bots will generally become a thing of the past where you as a server can test the intellectual skills of new members to distinguish whether or not they are being controlled by an active human. Even if this function is abused you will always have another server you can join in the result of being unjustly banned, or start one yourself.
- Less dormant waiting in queues and more active searching, instead of waiting for blizzard to randomly find you a match, you could find one yourself even if it meant you were playing 5vs5 in a warsong or any other given map, at least you get to play right away.
Okay so by this point you are probably saying "BUT GEMINIEL THEN PEOPLE COULD JUST MAKE A SERVER AND WIN TRADE TO GET ALL THEIR GEAR!!!!!" You are absolutely right they could do that, but perhaps Blizzard, instead of focusing on botting could then direct their focus on Wintraders due to the fact that the community will be dealing with botting in PvP and Blizzard would have more active resources available to monitor these sorts of things, not to mention we could always allow the community to report servers for being guilty of win trading. It isn't like win trading isn't easily identifiable in the extreme setting anyways. The problem generally is that blizzard does not have the resources to monitor these things due to whatever reason, perhaps it is botting perhaps it is not I am not in a position to say. I am not trying to justify Win Trading, but would it really be a terrible tradeoff for botting? If I could remove botting in exchange for some wintrading (so long as gear was reasonably attainable) I would do it in a heartbeat. Especially if blizzard allowed us to report entire servers for win trading. As it stand currently bots coexist with Wintraders, nothing is stopping win traders currently, eliminating one is at least a step in the proper direction.
The Generic solution could also be, less honor for killing the same people over again(already implemented) and people just continuously play on the same server for fun(crazy assed concept) instead of just getting new gear, hell it worked for quake, counterstrike and many other games where the soul purpose it fun in PvP, I really can't see why it wouldn't work here.
I truly think this could only benefit the PvP Community and help people meet real people in this game. I wish blizzard wanted to help the PvP community really enjoy this game but it is really getting harder and harder and bots are the problem(I apologize for my crimes ) It isn't fun joining a game where sometimes <50% of the players aren't human.
I Want to stress that I understand that all potential solutions come with their share of issues, so I accept the fact that this isn't a perfect solution, I hope you can assist me in overcoming those adversities by letting me know what you think.
I hope you enjoyed this read if you endured and please comment below whether you agree or disagree.
I Am in no way shape or form talking about Rated battlegrounds