as someone whos a nocternal player it can be very disheartening/frustrating to see the same Bots running around that you have reported numeorus times still farming herbs and undercutting your auctions. I appreciate it can take some time to deal with botters.
the main reason for the post is around 4-5am this morning i returned to Org after farming herbs in winterspring (yet to see a Black lotus), and next to the bank a miltiboxer bot had got themselves stuck, 1 druid, 1 priest, 3 mages (we all know what for). me as well as numerous other reported them at this time for obvious botting.
i log off and go to sleep and log on again at 14:30PM to check if my auctions have sold. the bot is still there… in the middle of org… on a Full pop server… still running in place. the other 4 have logged presumeably due to being AFK and not moving whilst on /follow due to the druid being stuck.
i appreciate people are busy and these are difficult times but how hard isit for a staff member to notice this within 12 hours and take some sort of action?
It is clearly very frustrating, another example are the bot groups you described that are in Stratholme 24/7 (Triple Mage Priest Druid). A single GM per Realm could handle this (make them based in a low cost Country) but it seems just to much effort for Bli$$ard.
Also now when I am home due to easter holiday I recognize the same Hunter bots in zones farming herbs and ores also 24/7, they are always on when I go there to have a look.
During BC when you reported someone for botting a short response that the ticker is investigated was given in less than 4 hours with be bot being removed within latest two days (don’t know about vanilla I started with TBC). For me that looks like a better solution than this warden detection as people clearly botting still are there after several weeks.
Absolutely positive income for the botter as even if the Account gets suspended permanent tons of gold were earned within (worth more than license + sub fee), so botting will not stop. It will further increase imho because a lot of people will start botting on a second Account literally making the game paytowin from a certain point of view (buying edgemasters, lionheart etc.). It would be the same if speeding with your car would be punished with only 1 € and no police making Checks…more and more people would start violating the traffic rules.
2 easy answers to why Blizzard don’t take actions against botting:
They make more money since players who bot obviously have multiple accounts which translates into more money per player to Blizzard.
Considering how many people they’ve fired, they simply don’t have the money to hire GMs to locate bots. I mean just hiring one guy to sit outside Stratholme and /who is way too expensive and definitely won’t get rid of a minimum of 50 bots in 1 hour. Those 50 bots probably roll in a few salaries and Blizzard can’t afford having to pay people to enforce the ToS in WoW.
Yeah they don’t really have staff for banning bots. The do ofc sometimes, but they wanna automate the system and ban as many bots as possible with as little manpower as possible. That’s why it take so long time. Also it can make sense to leave bots alone and inventive where the gold is sent etc.
One thing is sure. They are banning bots and they are listening to reports but they will never tell you what, when and how they ban bots.
In the old days you would be contacted by a GM. I remember in Cata when I was reporting a lot of bots a GM would tell me if the account was hacked and thank for the help. Was nice.
I’m not seeing many bots in Classic though. It was much worse in Cata.
To blizzars credit, i reported a bot 1 week ago that had been only near everytime i logges, that i had also managed to kill like 15 times (same faction) by pullint mobs away and resseting them when he engaged a mob and they would then aggro on to him and kill him. Anyway it seems blizzard banned him around 3 days ago since i havent seen him logged in since.
I have no idea how well or bad blizz is dealing with bots but they are not going to remove bots soon after they are reported.
Bots are left running around for a reason. Blizzard is collecting data how different bot programs work so they can write automated detection software down the line. And bots are banned once big number of them has been detected: because once banned, bot writers improve their softwate to prevent further detection.
It probably goes something like: Player reports a bot. Blizzard collects data how the bot software works and tries to classify it. Uses the data to create auto-detection and waits for many bots of the same class/software to be detected. Ban wave of all bots using that software. Bot writer detects the ban and tries to improve bot software to prevent further detections. Repeat the whole cycle from the start.
Players manual report are only useful for Blizzard to discover new/recent versions of bot software.