Botting is getting out of hand again

[Graudk-firemaw]

I’m sad that I feel the need to yell into the ether about this again since not too long ago I felt like it got better and that Blizzard did something about this. But as of writing this post its 09:19 in the morning on Spineshatter EU and I’m standing in Kargath watching trains upon trains of mages with similar gear run in the same exact path between a vendor, mailbox and flight path. Over and over again. It brings back memories from early SoD with the armies of bots in Stormwind outside of Stockades. This is a shame since not too long ago I got plenty of ingame mail telling me that my report of a bot ended up in a ban or suspension of some kind. But lately I’ve reported more of these obvious bots but haven’t received any confirmation of them being punished in any way. Add that to me seeing more and more of them and I have to assume they’re not getting effectively dealt with.

Again, this is really easy to find and deal with with the tools that Blizzard have. Literally just log in. Preferably during hours when most people are offline and just stand in Kargath and watch them come in one by one to offload just to go back out again. It’s so easy to spot that one has to assume that Blizzard is actively ignoring it.

I used to cope by thinking that there were so many servers and so many layers that it was hard for Blizzard to do something but these days on Anniversary there is like one or two servers with everyone on them. Like, come on? Application of minimal effort would sort this out in the matter of hours.

“but they just make new accounts and subs are cheap in poor countries”. Yes, you’re right. So hardware ID ban them. Caught botting? Buy a new motherboard. At least force them to spoof the hardware ID check. At least make it an effort to bot like this.

[Saneko-ragnaros (Saneko)]

@Graudk-firemaw

since not too long ago I felt like it got better and that Blizzard did something about this.

Yea that’s kinda correct, they did a banwave and then usually the botters will need to adjust their bots again (which they did by now) and recreate them. The problem isn’t ever going to be “solved”.

@Graudk-firemaw

But lately I’ve reported more of these obvious bots but haven’t received any confirmation of them being punished in any way.

It is not guaranteed to receive a confirmation, but it’s just an extra btw.

@Graudk-firemaw

It’s so easy to spot that one has to assume that Blizzard is actively ignoring it.

Weird, you just said in your opening sentence they deal with it and then “ignore it”. I recommend the banwave video explanation as that explains a bit of the behind-the-screens.

@Graudk-firemaw

Yes, you’re right. So hardware ID ban them.

@Graudk-firemaw

At least force them to spoof the hardware ID check

Oh so you also know they spoof their HWID’s. Kind of once again you know that Blizzard does in fact do something and that botting workshops also react back to it with their methods.

Since this subject comes back often I’ve made a sourced template with commonly asked Q&A if you want to read up more about it:

Other games like Valorant/League suffering from cheating and their countermeasures explained in detail

https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/

An ex-dev that worked at Blizz about the efficiency of banwaves

http://youtube.com/shorts/cADaFm__ApQ

I see often that people suggest that Blizzard profit off bots (Credit Fraud/Stolen accounts etc)

Do other games like Runescape or CSGO also “benefit” from allowing (aim)bots, using them for inflating sub counts or purchases?

Some accounts also get stolen with phishing methods or used with fraudulent credit cards, that incur chargeback merchant fees for Blizzard. The “paid” amount plus penalty costing Blizzard a lot more not to mention the damage the botters do ingame.

But wait “credit card fraud doesnt exist for games!!” Some people forget, that Visa stopped processing payments for Runescape because the occuring fraud was just that extreme at a certain point in history.

One of their last public numbers revealed close to 271k banned in December 2023 alone. I don’t think it was even the majority of them.

Poster mentioned fast bot instant removal problem and low currency accounts

Another poster mentioned they remove bots every few days after a report. They return ofcourse, proving that instant bot removals isn’t going to work.

Video 2 in this post mentions that the alternative to chargeback or stolen account type frauds is “currency fraud” where they pretend to be in that region and buy very low currency accounts to bot onto.

Better solutions?

There’s no game so far on a similar scale that has a solution. This problem is literally everywhere and anti-cheat development has yet to outpace the illegal bot development.

Kaivax statement on countermeasures against botting

@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.

If you have any good ideas don’t forget to submit them through the ingame suggestion box!

[Etly-argent-dawn]

They just laid off another 9000 people. I guess they barely have anyone in this building. It’s a miracle WoW works at all.

[Jarlath-die-nachtwache]

@Graudk-firemaw

I’m standing in Kargath watching trains upon trains of mages with similar gear run in the same exact path between a vendor, mailbox and flight path.

The same is in Darkshore and in the Elwynn Forest. Huge amounts of human mages are farming animals over and over, don’t react to whispers and have names that sounds Chinese for me. I didn’t report them because I’m sure nothing would happen.

[Shioban-draenor]

@Jarlath-die-nachtwache

I didn’t report them because I’m sure nothing would happen.

After you donated your brain did they leave you with 1 brain cell telling you that over and over again?

[Jarlath-die-nachtwache]

@Shioban-draenor

@Jarlath-die-nachtwache

I didn’t report them because I’m sure nothing would happen.

After you donated your brain did they leave you with 1 brain cell telling you that over and over again?

Logical thinking is not one of your strengths, isn’t it?

[Reconwarrior-azuremyst (Reconwarrior)]

pirate software linked lmao

[Businkaa-gehennas]

@Graudk-firemaw

So hardware ID ban them.

Botting bans are already hardware, but they use special methods (programs called “spoofers”) that change all ids of your hardware in computer without changing hardware itself. Also many of them using special type of virtual machines, that also hide hardware ids and they are different for every VM.