Bots, bots, bots - all the bots, so so SO many bots

[Jaella-mirage-raceway]

And it’s disappointing, as usual, how unprepared Blizzard seem to be.

I mean, it’s not launch day. That was 15 or 20 years ago.

Uldum.

There are so, so many bots. You spot a herb that is literally spawning in front of you. The herb wasn’t there already, and you arrived at it. No. It spawns like right under you. But sometimes, you still won’t get it because there are so many bots.

You can be like 20 meters away from it, but it’s not enough. A bot will get it before you do. Because there are so many.

And this is hard to combat why? The bots have repeating routes. Data will repeat. Even I can see with my naked eye that it’s a bot by how it behaves. The height from which it dismounts. Always the same.

Don’t know if this link will show but it’s @stream.software at tiktok, not sure if it’s the man himself or someone reposting but it’s a former Blizzard employee talking about bots.

Where are the ban waves, Blizzard? When was the last one? Can’t even remember.

###.com/ZGenanPVq/

[Saneko-ragnaros (Saneko)]

@Jaella-mirage-raceway

@stream.software at tiktok

The guy in question I have included in almost every pasted message about bots. See his comments about banwaves below. He has an official verified YT and other links if you want to see his works too.

@Jaella-mirage-raceway

And this is hard to combat why? The bots have repeating routes. Data will repeat. Even I can see with my naked eye that it’s a bot by how it behaves. The height from which it dismounts. Always the same.

The thing is, usually they change the routine by a very minor margin to evade anti-cheat or delay detection. There is almost no risk for botters, they will recreate them usually with slightly different names and move back to the same zones they were farming prior and appear that nothing is being done to them.

The same goldseller I reported for example, reappeared 23 times before I switched game versions to play on at Classic Era at the same spot, nearly same message, nearly same name.

For example in another F2P game Valorant & League this is explained in more detail why it is so difficult:

/dev: Vanguard x LoL

The botting problem is prevalant in all games/MMO’s, not just WoW. If there was a solution there would be one by now.

An ex-dev that worked at Blizz:

Banwaves Are Smart

You may suggest any methods you may think of through the ingame feedback box but it is not likely that it will be groundbreaking new suggestion.

@Kaivax

We hear folks say things like “just ban the bots” a lot. We ban tens of thousands of bots a week. It’s not visible to you just how much we do, and that is absolutely another problem in itself; we need to be better at surfacing these actions (more on this later). The truth is we’ve never been better and more effective at identifying and actioning malicious accounts, and our Game Security Operations (GSO) team that handle these actions are iterating and innovating on a nearly daily basis.

Unfortunately, in the history of WoW, the people perpetrating this illicit trade have also never been better at coming up with new methods, schemes, farms, and exploits to work around our efforts. As much engineering and analytics effort as we put into this, illicit RMT “workshops” put the same amount in, or more, and there are hundreds, if not thousands of these workshops out there all working around the clock to develop new technologies and techniques to counter our new technologies and techniques. It’s an arms race, and it never, ever ends.

We will never completely beat “bots” or illicit RMT. It’s an unwinnable war as long as there is money to be made by third parties. The ubiquitous nature of this type of thing in online games is an objective fact. It has always been a part of WoW, and every other popular online game for the past 25 years, and it will always be a part of online games going forward. It’s frustrating to fight this fight, but we will not stop fighting it.

While we can’t completely “win” the war, what we can do is mitigate the impact it has on the game. Is WoW Token the be-all and end-all to solve this? No, but it is a tool. It’s just one tool, though, among many. There is clearly a demand for gold for certain types of players, and that demand is only increasing. So, we are engaging a tool that we’ve used before to help mitigate the impact that illicit RMT has on the game. The more tools we employ, and the less lucrative we can make it for third parties to do what they do to make a profit, the less likely it is that new malicious actors enter the illicit RMT scene, and the more likely that existing malicious actors will exit the business. Ultimately, it’s taking incremental steps and using a multitude of tools that will reduce how impactful those third parties will be in Wrath Classic and beyond.

Source.

[Jaella-mirage-raceway]

No I don’t have any ideas on how to combat bots, that’s not my occupation. Running an MMO for 20 years should have given them a few, honestly and they have every opportunity to download and study any bot software themselves without risking a ban.

Anyway, if this is work in progress, great, but it’s not very evident, no. No ban-waves announced, and the bots of Uldum are still zooming up and down the river on every single realm, every hour of every day.

But after watching the video, yeah let’s hope that’s what they’re doing

[Saneko-ragnaros (Saneko)]

@Jaella-mirage-raceway

Running an MMO for 20 years should have given them a few

As has many others in the game industry. None has permanently solved the botting issue yet, some managed to mitigate but then cost goes up for the “consumer” but effectively the illegal business remains there.

A classic example is the illegal wow goldselling price. After Blizzard introduced the WoW token on any game version, the price goes down a bit and the amount offered goes up a bit. But it still remains there. Players then say “but hey, I can buy it cheaper at a goldseller!” and then buy it there, causing additional bots to come, extra inflation meaning your gold is worth less today than tomorrow, and so on instead of just not buying gold in the first place…

@Jaella-mirage-raceway

they have every opportunity to download and study any bot software themselves without risking a ban.

I’m sorry, you want them to just walk up to a criminal syndicate and ask if they can download their current bot version to see if they can study it?

@Jaella-mirage-raceway

I was referring to the bots you can find openly online

Yea the free “try our trial” bots which isn’t exactly the same as the “premium” or even custom versions where only like 5-10 exists at once. If I can believe the CSGO aimbot stories anyway.

[Jaella-mirage-raceway]

I was referring to the bots you can find openly online, there are a few, a couple, no idea how many tbh.

[Triva-theradras]

The thing is, I dont think it has ever been worse than wow classic. Back in original wotlk/cataclysm, I have never seen as many bots anywhere. Sure bots existed, but it was something rare enough, that I would tell my friends about having seen a bot/group of bots, simply because it was not a common occurrence.

Today obvious bots are visible nearly everywhere in classic: battlegrounds, entering/leaving dungeons, open world ressource farming spots. It takes a minute to spot a suspicious character and another minute to confirm its a bot.
Even assuming the technology to spot bots does not exist at all, if Blizzard was interested, they could remove bots by manually banning them. Lets say to be totally sure, it takes a gamemaster 5-10 minutes to spot a bot, thats 6-12 x 13 EUR each hour, that the botters would have to reinvest to keep the number of bots going. That would be more than enough money to cover the costs for new “anti-botter” employees.

Once the number of bots goes down, because botting is no longer profitable for the botters, Blizzard can reduce the number of employees until, in best case scenario, only one employee is needed, because most of the bots are gone. If we reach that state, then bots would no longer be visiable, no longer be considered a problem.

As you can see, there are seemingly simple solutions, that should even generate money for Blizzard short term and make the game nearly bot-free long term. However, I dont see any improvement and ban waves have proven themselves to not be effective at all. This is because the botters can be sure after a ban wave, that the majority of their accounts wont be banned for a few months at least and creating new bot accounts will result in profit.

What leads to the common conclusion, that Blizzard is not really interested of reducing the high number of bots in the long run. As long as less real players quit, compared to bot accounts paying, bots boost player numbers and Blizzards income. Since Blizzard is a profit oriented company, not effectively banning bots can be considered reasonable.

[Fursen-firemaw]

Iranis, iranis, iranis- all the iranis, so so SO many iranis

[Twiggz-bloodhoof]

Just remove gold from the game entirely?

Have everything obtainable via tokens earned from actual participation in the game which cannot be automatically farmed.

[Jaella-mirage-raceway]

Many think it’s just gold selling businesses running bots. Ofc not. There are plenty of average joes running a bot for extra mats and gold. Some have a spare account for that, some don’t. Ownedcore forums. Go there and I think you’ll find the word is, it’s pretty safe to bot. Some have botted for years.

Tell me, anyone, when was the last ban-wave that was announced for Classic? Link or it didn’t happen.
Can’t remember ever seeing a single one in ALL of Classic but… I guess that can’t be right, can it

[Wkellar-gehennas]

You’re just better off killing mobs in dungeons like Botanica or karazhan or whatever has high mob density for raw gold.

[Saven-ravenholdt]

Just type /who Botanica and see the insane amount of bots there.

[Whitmane-mograine]

@Saneko-ragnaros

The thing is, usually they change the routine by a very minor margin to evade anti-cheat or delay detection.

Hi Saneko. I have an interesting idea mb u can give blizzard idea how blizzard can combat bots , if not get rid of them. Recently i found this interesting video

AI controlling a character in World of Warcraft

This video is about AI controling characters in more advanved lvl. I was thinking, why not blizzard use this project idea, and create an AI GM as hilarious as it sounds. Give this gm blue robre, and give him a command to track, lern, and kill bots constantly in open world for example hunters bots in fellwood (season of discovery) . I noticed 1 common thing about open world bots-they falsy mass report players when they kill them. So blizz can make this AI GM immune to reports, and give him to ban “players” that mass report him. This idea can combat bots naturaly. If bots will stop report blizzard bots for example, it will give regular players opolportunity to farm thesr bots without fear. Players get free honor, bots less revenue itc. What you think about it?

[Isêkáihêro-venoxis]

Deal with it, u wont see them banned. Did tons of reports with guildmates, i mean hundrends in last 2 month and got only 3-4 mails from blizz about bans, most of them still gathering nonstop every day, we just gave up.
All i see its same copium annoying posts from MVP’s.

[Rykkudo-gehennas]

Too much demand to buy gold. Especially if you look on twitch. That irani dude is going strong. I think he makes bank with selling gold.

[Yelyto-ashbringer]

Don’t worry, the ban waves are once in six months. No way the bots cause anything serious by then :DD (haha, sarcasm)

[Kryss-hellscream]

In Obsidian Forest, Twilight Highlands on Mirage Raceway there’s a small army of skinning bots active. Because of the insane number of bots it’s hardly possible to even do the q’s there. I know Blizzard is not doing anything against bots, but imo they should at the very least do something against the bots that are farming quest mobs 24/7!

[Péñañcè-golemagg]

It’s even obvious from the auction house. How come some player has hundreds of stacks of savage leather, elementium ore, cinderbloom etc. and posts it on AH every other day? Clearly a legit player who is playing 20 hours a day just to farm mats.

This is btw. the reason why gold has less and less value.

You can \who Botanica or Twilight highlands etc. you can even tell from suspicious random names who is a bot. You can /w these players “Are you a bot” and they wont answer. You can be 99.99% sure that it is a bot.
Yet nothing happens to them. HELLO BLIZZARD?