Does Blizzard support cheating?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

Bots are on the increase…on my server (mirage raceway) at least, and Blizzard don’t seem to be doing anything about it.
For the last 2-3 weeks there are more and more bots. It will soon be at a stage where it is impossible for certain professions to gather any mats at all. There are now multiple bots competing at the same area…

Every day I report these bots, and next day they are still there. I need to know if botting is tolerated by Blizzard so that I can go ahead google how to do it myself…that would be the only way I could compete with all the hunter bots.

So let me know Blizzard. I don’t mind competing with real players, but this completely ruins gameplay.

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2

good thing in pvp servers bots are being farmed so its acutally not worth to bot there lol

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There is no human oversight going through each report anymore. They implemented an automatic system a few expansions ago, and kept it that way for Classic. (Although they did add the possibility to add comments to the reports.)

Basically, it filters out the “noise” of having the individuals report anything and everything, by making them feel empowered even though it accomplishes nothing, so it appeases the masses.
But if there’s truly rulebreaking behavior, this system presumes that it will eventually reach the point where many people will report the cheater in a short window of time.

These days, it wouldn’t surprise me if many people gets reported daily for something. But it does nothing, because it needs more people to report them in a short window of time.

It has been abused in rated BGs for years, like for example muting a healer on the opposing team or getting someone disconnected like when the entire team reports a hunter’s pet for a bad pet name, which then forces a disconnect and a renaming.

Pretty sure it was hansol who got automatically banned over in NA for “wintrading” at 1600 rating, which was quickly overturned because since he complained to Blizzard they went over the reports and noticed it was done in “bad faith”.
(Might’ve been that ret pala instead of hansol over in NA, although I don’t remember his name. Either way, that’s what happened.)

Anyway, it has been a thing for a long time. It saves them money they’d otherwise have to spend on employees dealing with each individual report. Now they only go through the complaints of people who believes they’ve been punished unjustly.

And when you report someone for spamming, it removes the text from your chat window anyway so you don’t get bothered by it anymore. Which keeps the sheep happy, even though it doesn’t really accomplish anything more than that.

4

Interesting… So, is there a way to recognize a bot, other than by observing passive A.I.-like behaviour? I mean, some players are simply not reacting adequatly to ganks, or could be AFK, or what have you.

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Dude if you can’t distinguish a BOT behavior you are either unexperienced (in this matter at least) or you are just delusional

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They do. Multiboxers everywhere!

7

Is this how you address people in everyday conversations? When talking face to face, that is…

Anyway, I’ve killed allys who were autoattacking their mob, instead of turning their attention to me, but reacting adequately at a later encounter. People go afk, people get distracted, people fall asleep on the keyboard, people freeze up in pvp situations… I was asking whether there was a way (command, addon, etc.) other than observing the players’ behaviour, which is not always a reliable source of information. Useful answers only, please.

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I don’t know why it triggered you, being unexperienced is not an insult lol we all were so at a point. There are no commands to know exactly if they are. I have worked in 2 pservers teams and I know how to look at a character and what to look for when they are suspected being BOTs.
Sure in those situations it was easier because I would just summon them repeatedly 20 yards away and they would just keep running endlessly towards their ‘locked’ target without a single reaction (you don’t usually get summoned by a gm lol)

Not fighting back in PVP is not an indicator.

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Anyway, I’ve killed allys who were autoattacking their mob, instead of turning their attention to me

I used to do that on PvP servers too. If I get ganked while fighting a mob I die anyway but maybe I can still kill the mob to finish my quest / not get repair costs caused by the mob being the last one to hit me.

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Blizz ban them in waves - large batches - periodically

They don’t ignore reports as some have suggested - they collate the info and then take the trash out when the bin is full

Frustrating - but that’s the way it is

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They do ban them in waves, yes. Although they don’t always get them all (which has been seen in pvp seasons and known ladder cheaters with bot usage in the past).

But they don’t get that information from the right-click reports. They get that information from the anti-cheating software scanning in the background, as well as server data if it’s just an exploit like with the exp pots.

The right-click reporting is fully automated until somebody complains about being punished unjustly, which is the first time a human reviews the reports.

https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Warden_(software)

This is also partly why it occurs in waves, because they gather data of new bots within a time period, and then collectively creates ways to deal with them in the Warden all at once, kind of like sweeping a broom instead of picking up each piece of dust individually with your hand.

12

Call me jaded - I think they wait until a bot renews it’s sub until they ban it

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Over the past few weeks I have reported tens of cheaters/hackers/botters/exploiters. Single one out of those I track wasn´t banned and never will be. I am afraid Blizz actually not only ignores this problem, but actively encourages it…

Once I thought I´d seen everything in this game. After having seen a warlock blink…twice…in 4 seconds today…one can never be sure. PvP servers and PvP as a game aspect will be dead soon due to the insane amount of punishable behaviour being left without a single ban.

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@Bukanyrka Read the posts above.

15

probly.

16

They definitely support paying.

17

I haven’t seen any big reports of botters being banned, just exploiters. Blizzard don’t need to ban them altogether, reports of some being banned will stop others. Accounts need a permaban, not a 6 month ban for botting.

18

depand on the paying. if the cheater pay enough, BLZ will sell the immunity

like BLZ identify some bot as “muti-boxer”, then they are free to pay.

19

Maybe those are all Chinese bots.

I think we all know how Blizzard feels about China.

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The days of manually reviewed reports are over. League of Legends had the tribunal until 2014. It was an unique spin on reporting. Your chatlogs were posted in a sort-of online courtroom, with other players as judges. They could decide to punish the player, or discard the report. If enough people voted for punish, the player would get an actual ban/chat mute. Of course the system was flawed, most people simply voted punish to troll, but people were nevertheless dissapointed when they removed the system.

Ever since 2014 reports are handled by AI. It takes into account amount of reports within a certain timespan as well as known patterns of reports. For example, if your whole team reported you it was weighed differently than if only the enemy team reported you.

I doubt Blizzard does it any different now. Its actually a very good application for deep learning AIs.