Bots are ruining the experience for genuine players, especially when trying to gather resources. They take up the majority of resources in each zone for themselves with their multiple logins, leaving only scraps for genuine players.
I understand you allow ‘multi-boxing’… and that’s great… for people who actually play the characters they have logged in - it’s challenging to play multiple characters at once successfully. The problem is… people abuse this rule and log in on up to 10 characters, only actually playing one of them… the others follow the lead character around, copying it’s actions by using external software (they are bots). Why up to 10?.. because the limit for each resource node is 10 - if that was higher, I’m sure more bots would be logged in, to fully drain the node and prevent other players from gathering from it.
It’s pure greed, selfishness, disregard for the spirit of the rules and downright unfair on all genuine players.
I report as many as I can when I see them, but it seems to have no effect and is reaching the stage where it feels like ‘what is the point?’ because it is very time consuming… time people with jobs don’t have.
Going forward, I would like you to put notifications out to clarify the rules on ‘multi-boxing’ and crack down on those who abuse it by logging in with bots. I would like you to develop your anti-botting software to pick up on these kind of cheaters so that genuine players with limited play time don’t have to waste it filling in multiple reports every time we’re logged in.
I work in IT systems and can assure you, it’s not a big development but will provide so many benefits for the game and the community of it’s players.
Please pass this request on to whomever can action it so we can get some truly positive outcomes from it.
I never post on the forums. I’ve been playing wow on and off since vanilla days. I am currently trying to sadly farm for an item i have paid for… Disgustingly. To only yet again come across pack after pack of druid bots. Bots bots bots bots bots bots.
Always druids spamming instant spells and the aoe spells.
Sigh at this point i really regret renewing my subs for 6 months because i just don’t want to play anymore. I also regret buying the expansion because no matter how many bot i report, nothing ever gets done.
I’ve seen entire map parts in stormsong dominated by zandalari trolls for hours when i’m just trying to level and do quests. I level up new characters all the time.
I’m admittedly a “filthy casual”. I don’t raid, i don’t do mythics. I have seizures… Intense stuff causes stress = seizures. So no.
If i had known that i would’ve had to farm for the stupid transmog item, i would not have purchased that upgrade. I’m sat watching and listening to a pack of 5-6 druids doing an impossible constant, persistent spam combination in a very solid and exact routine that smacks of the old days where the bots used to run in the same routes… Lovely. The last time i saw this was TBC days… And i thought that was over. WHY have you let them come back blizzard? WHY?!
Sorry it’s a long post. I’m just venting my frustrations. At this point i don’t even care i purchased the expac. I don’t even want to check it out if this is the type of gameplay i will always be seeing in each part of the map. This isn’t just “multi-boxing” I’ve seen that. This is something else.
Sorry for your pains man There do seem to be a lot of swarms of druids blackening the skies.
This multibox/botting distinction isn’t really correct, technically speaking anyway. You may well be aware of that yourself, but just so others who are not do not get the wrong impressions:
Expand for: Difference between Legit Multiboxing and Botting
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The software that “copies” the action as you say, is exactly the kind of software that simple legit multibox players use, and that has always been explicitly allowed by Blizzard.
Software like that doesn’t really mimic the player’s main, it merely makes sure that when you press a key on the keyboard, that key-press-event is noticed by all the active wow clients, not just by the one with focus (which is what your operating systems normally does). That’s all it does, it doesn’t do anything wow specific.
If a player multiboxes 5 characters simultaneously, and all of them have the Moonfire spell bound to the Spacebar, then pressing the spacebar would effectively press the spacebar in all 5 wow clients, and indeed cause 5 moonfire spells to be cast, but it’s important not to confuse this with botting, as it is still the player pressing a key that results in an action.
Of course multiboxers can make use of the same in-game macro features that you and me can as well, which means they could instead bind the Spacebar to a macro such as:
That would cause the “slaves” to always cast their Moonfire at the same target as the main character. They’d likely also have some macros that /follow the main character and that activate their mount or Druid flight form.
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Effectively, these things
having more than 1 wow subscription
starting more than 1 wow client on your computer (usually one for each sub)
having external software that ensures that keyboard/mouse events reach multiple wow clients simultaneously
creating some simple in-game macros to make life easier
… Are the building blocks of (legit) Multiboxing.
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While it’s often fair to call all but one of the multiboxers’ characters slaves, calling them bots would be inaccurate/misleading.
Botting is what we call it once someone brings automation into the picture while playing (things beyond what in-game wow macros allow).
At that point, it is no longer the player pressing 1 key to trigger 1 Action button (per client), and it becomes unacceptable.
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This is very true, indeed. Them and the boosting spam in trade
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You are very likely correct that if the characters per node limit was higher, some multiboxers would play more characters.
However, i suspect (though i have no firsthand knowledge about this) it is likely not for such nefarious reasons.
From the multiboxers point of view, it is no more (or less) work to fly around and farm on 4 accounts simultaneously, as it is on 8 accounts.
But obviously 8 accounts all getting herbs from the same node, will result in twice as much herbs in the same time span, or the same amount of herbs in half the time, so it is a much more productive use of the players time.
For that reason, the way herbalism nodes are currently implemented effectively steer multiboxers to match (or get as close to) whatever that cap is.
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I agree on the greed and selfishness (and while i dislike that too, those things aren’t against the rules).
But when we’re talking about the legit multiboxers, i don’t think they violate the spirit of the rules.
There is no real difference between 1 multiboxer (with 10 characters) flying around herbing his route, or a premade group of 10 people doing the same (which also isn’t an uncommon sight).
The effect on other players is identical, and in both scenarios 10 subs are being paid for.
Of course, the situation changes a lot once we’re no longer talking about legit multibox players, but armies of automated bots.
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Yea unfortunately reporting even blatant cheaters (be it automated bots or otherwise) never has had much direct impact in this game.
And the players that are legit merely multiboxing (but still causing you grief with regards to herbalism) will of course not be punished.
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While i’d very much like the same to happen, botting in wow isn’t a new problem and there has never been much success that i can tell, in stopping it at the source.
The main friction point, is the way herbalism (and mining) currently function, and i think a lot more success can be gained if that was addressed.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Solution #1: Spawn herb nodes on a per-person basis (limiting their scope to the personal-level).
meaning you see X amount of herb nodes up, spread all over Nazjatar, and i see a similar amount up, but we’re not looking at the same herbs.
Me farming mine doesn’t in any way affect yours (and vice-versa).
Some of my nodes may be in totally different locations than yours.
You can’t see my spawns, i can’t see yours.
We’re basicly in different phases when it comes to herb/mining veins.
The initial amount of herbs (and the respawn rate) would be the same for everyone (assuming same time of day, same realm/shard, same warmode, etc) but could still scale up or down over time (affecting everyone equally).
Solution #2: The scope could alternatively be limited to the group-level
that would be similar to the above for everyone that is soloing in the zone.
but if i were to invite you to a group with me, you’d ‘phase’ and we’d now both see “my herb phase”.
each herb would be farmable by us both (despawn 30sec after first person plucks it).
Solution #1 (scope: personal) would:
ruin herbalism for many (but not all) forms of botting (good result)
ruin herbalism for legit multiboxers (mixed result, some will say good, some will disagree)
make herbalism competition-free for regular soloing players such as yourself (good result)
make herbing in a group with other players impossible (unfortunate result, im sure some people enjoy that)
Solution #2 (scope: group) would:
not directly affect botters too much (unfortunate result)
not directly affect legit multiboxers too much (good result, though some might disagree)
make herbalism competition-free for regular soloing players such as yourself (good result)
make herbalism competition-free for players who wanna herb with a friend in a group (good result)
over time multibox-herbing would likely snuff out or atleast become much less common/productive (mixed result)
In both scenarios regular herb-farming players will no longer suffer from botters nor multiboxers, and have a way easier time farming, as a result their herb output (onto the AH) would increase a lot.
With solution #1 the herb output of botters/multiboxers would drasticly drop (compared to now) on top of that, so they’d probably go from owning a large percentage of the market, to some single digit percentage at best.
With solution #2 The botters/multiboxers can still generate similar or slightly smaller quantities than they currently do, but they now have way more competition in the marketplace, the increased supply means the prices will drop, making it less and less productive to multibox (less profit per herb => more hours of herbing needed in order to make enough gold to afford wow tokens => less of them will consider it worth the effort)
All the tech for this is already in the game, but Blizzard would have to spend some time tuning the (re)spawn rates to prevent the overall supply from either skyrocketing or collapsing. Some additional details would need to be fleshed out in regards to how you prevent someone from farming all the herbs in their “phase” and then joining a group and doing the same in someone elses phase (bypassing the rate of respawns set by blizzard), i can think of many easy ways to fix that, but it’s not worth going into that much detail.
I’m afraid the devs never visit here, you’d have to submit it as suggestion in-game or get lucky on the US forums.
I don’t think the botting has ever stopped going on, it just varies if or how their path crosses ours generally. I’m pretty sure that during most of Legion for example there was always a truckload of bots heading in and out of Halls of Stone (or Lightning) dungeon, 7 days a week at all hours of the day.
There’s nothing wrong with that at all.
But ye it sucks more that you’re having a bad experience in the outdoor world then
There do seem to be a lot of swarms of druids blackening the skies.