We all know blizzard isn’t really willing to spend money to fight bots, so why not create player mods to do the same job, like some games in the past have.
If you gave 2-3 trust players on each server a second player mod account with the power to perma ban bots, i bet it would be incredibly successful. If i was for example a player mod, i could /who stratholme a few times a day, check out all the guildless 3 mage, priest, druid runs and ban the ones that are bots. I could also check out the other hot spots once or twice a day, and if it was public knowledge on the server who the player mods are, people would regularly message them with reports they could check out. In that way it may be even more effective than paid employees.
While there is some concerns about abuse, i think it could be managed. I also think it would be really cost effective for blizzard in the amount of bots it stopped. i’m pretty certain it would make righteous orb farming impossible for starters.
In my opinion, it’s probably better on the long-run to stop with the “compromising” attitude coming from customers.
Just look what happened with servers : People are stuck in the false dichotomy of either having layers or queues because Blizzard isn’t willing to spend a penny to improve their servers.
and how would you check they are bots and not a multiboxer? Just being in one location is not proof someone is a bot. I would support a trusted reporter thing rather than this, which would mean people would get petty revenge, or even get paid to ban someone.
This is kinda good idea but I think giving option to perma ban is too harsh for players.
I think better option would be blizzard to track people’s accuracy to track and report real bots. And the people who tracks and reports real bots most accurately would gain like somekind status that would make their reports to weight more and the gm’s would react their reports more faster.
@all the people worried about abuse. While it is a concern, many games have used this system before, even MMO’s like runescape, where Player mods had the power to mute people. I never really hard of this being abused.
The player mods were carefully selected after having no offenses on there account, and having a history of very accurate reporting. If blizzard copies that model, adding in heavy punishments for any abuser, i doubt the 2 or 3 players who get this privilege per server would abuse it. Especially if they are for example trusted guild masters, with strong ties to there accounts, who would not risk getting them banned.
It’s already a thing used by Blizzard. They’ve used it for a very long time. It’s the same model for the VIP status on the forum. But giving administrative authority to volunteers isn’t really feasible, but giving such “VIP status” volunteers in the game a direct line to report suspected characters to Blizzard would probably help. The in-game report function is entirely automated, it’s more a metric for tracking characters reported more than normal to coalesce the data for banwaves, and when the quota for automatic punishments are met, then characters can get automatic suspensions/mutes.
Players can appeal the automatic punishments, which is the first time a human reviews the reports on an individual level.
But Blizzard have a non-automated way to report players, however it’s unknown how effective it actually is. It’s by emailing hacks@blizzard.com which goes to their US headquarters, but they never reply back. Ever. Just email what you suspect, time window, that it’s in the EU region, server, realm time (not your time, only realm time matters for logs), and who you suspect. You can also include screenshots and video recordings.
The more people using the email, the better it’ll be. It’ll show them that automated systems designed to placate the masses doesn’t actually get rid of the problems causing the right-click reports in the first place.
old days in other games that was norm.
Lets say GM gets 3 warnings and he/she lose ban option.
If gm got corrupted, ban his account. Before you sign on GM position, read rules. Its worked like a charm. Cos a lot of players would try their best, better then some of the paid employee.
Bots hardly have any impact in the game in most cases. Horders and those with countless gold manipulating the AH are worse.
Sure you come by bots while questing or farming and it’s obviously annoying. But most of the time players are faming like crazy and you can’t get your quest items because of them.
And sure you blame the economy on them but this goes both ways. And as almost everyone knows how to maximize the farm idk what impact bots really have on economy.
And sure they sell gold to people. But here is mostly the buyer to blame as many consider this to be cheating. Here I’m not sure what to say. As I am giving to my friends free gold so it’s basically the same thing. And even sometimes to people I don’t know. So they get gold without spending any time farming it.
But many bots are own by “legit” players who use them to farm some gold for personal use. And yeah, it’s frustrating. You farm like an idiot and they enjoy a beer watching TV.
All in all while bots are frustrating,but this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the game because of them. Blizzard will ban them eventually, report them and move on. Don’t lose sleep over this.
To suggest giving players the power to ban one another it’s just crazy. We are already at the stage where whenever someone walks funny or do something weird means is definitely a bot.
If they gave me this power, i seriously fear that i MIGHT end up abusing the system and booting the next idiot who mobtagged me and said okboomer, after id had a couple of glasses of red.
Thats coming from someone who IRL gets trusted with peoples kids for a living, so someone whos been vetted and checked to be trusty. - i do NOT think giving players that power is a good idea.
This is a bad idea, I will try to explain my pov. I moved one of my alt to Judjement server in order to farm some herbs in the outside world, I can’t do that efficiently on Noggenfogger and I farm around 1-5h a day, It depens how much free time I have.
I joined a guild called “juxxemxxtxx” (no shaming :D) and I even told them I was there to farm, not for raiding etc. After our (me, Fiore and some phoenix players) successfull crusade on the forum and various detailed reports to get rid of russians bots, some Judjememe officers asked me again why I was there. Funny fact I have already told many times: I want to farm in the outside world, I am tired of spamming DME/ZF etc; on Noggenfogger is very hard to farm efficiently in the outside world.
They went suspicious about my 1-6h day farm (kek?) and they banned me from the discord server, kick me from the guild and blocked me on discord. That was funny cause some of them are farming way more than me. Actually I do not care that much cause it is a meme guild and I was there for fun. One of them (the smartest) asked me: “are you selling gold”? “A guy who plays wow just to farm lotus 24/7 (actually 1-6 maximum a day). For real? After all the crusades I did on the forum to get rid of botters etc. on Judjement. Considering it was Saturday night, I guess he was drunk.
And do you want to let these “smart” players to decide the fate (doom) of another one? Kekw2. No thanks, they have no clue what botting / gold selling is and how it works. They seem very unexperienced about WoW.
CONCLUSION – SHORT ANSWER
I will always promote bans and susperions versus cheaters / bots / exploiters, I literally hate them cause they ruin everyone experience, BUT whatever happens, Blizzard staff should be the only one being able to ban players and to look carefully into the reports. Their team did good job on Judjement and I am happy with that.
