Duskwood location: infested with bots. Is Botting an issue?

[Manaberg-silvermoon]

*Noob, new to SoD.
Basically wanted to know your take on this, guys:
Is botting really a problem?
I guess there are some people that are willing to spend money to buy gold → bots are there to satisfy a demand. Maybe it is ok? No harm?

Asking because as a new player it feels really weird, being surrounded by hunter-bots in all locations. (Duskwood esp, that i noticed.)

[Saneko-ragnaros (Saneko)]

@Manaberg-silvermoon

Is botting really a problem?

Yes.

@Manaberg-silvermoon

I guess there are some people that are willing to spend money to buy gold → bots are there to satisfy a demand.

Pretty much is a circular problem, as long as people are willing to buy illegal gold → more bots will come to create illegal gold. Even if they get banned they return since there’s still demand to fullfil.

@Manaberg-silvermoon

Maybe it is ok? No harm?

No, what happens is that:

@Manaberg-silvermoon

because as a new player it feel really weird, being surrounded by hunter-bots in all locations.

As well as it impacting realm economy through (severe) gold inflation. Imagine it like a money printer except it’s illegal gold ofcourse.

[Manaberg-silvermoon]

Just from my own observations, the amount of bots is astounding.
Just leveling 35+: i see lots and lots of bots in Alterac Mountains, Wetlands and Hilsbrad.

I assume Blizz don’t mind, since bots also pay for subs?

[Saneko-ragnaros (Saneko)]

@Manaberg-silvermoon

I assume Blizz don’t mind, since bots also pay for subs?

They often use either fraudulent or stolen accounts which has its own penalties once discovered. Another poster reminded me they bypass using low currency region locks to buy very cheap accounts, which doesn’t quite equate to a full USD/EUR account sub.

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.

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!

[Seeli-hyjal]

Newcomer to Classic here (been playing retail since 2005 tho… )

As far as I know, botting’s always been something in WoW. Gold sellers gathering stuff to be sold at the HV and then, delivering gold to the players paying for. That’s the postulat

I’m not saying it was ok back in the days, not at all, but still, for “real” players behind the screens, it was still manageable

But the situation right now in Duskwood? Man, it is way beyond acceptable. It is sometimes impossible to achieve quest goals as the mobs are instant tag by the bots.

Which sometimes leads to stupid but yet funny situation. Yesterday I pulled Eliza (Wife’s embalmer), I died, because I totally forgot Eliza was an elite 31+, sidewinded with 3 soldiers. No way I could solo it with a lvl 33 war. So I came back to my corpse, to find out that a lvl 25 bot, seeing a ghoul ready to be harvested, pulled Eliza and I delightfully watched this bot being depoped maybe 10 times in a row, because this stupid program was just keeping pulling Eliza again and again, until she vanished back in her grave

So yeah, i don’t know for the other areas (I will soon find out), but in Duskwood, the situation is critical, to the point, something should be done manually or the mobs should be tuned in a way the bots wouldn’t find any interest to farm them (which will only led to move the issue from Duskwood to another area, I know)

Really, you should go to Duskwood and have a look. The spectacle is pathetic and staggering at the same time. Bunch of hunter bots, all with a “Boar” (no name) pet, and a stupid name

EDIT: Of course, every time I cross by a bot, I report it, but the inner me feels like it’s like slashing water with a sword

[Manaberg-silvermoon]

I didn’t even realize how bad it is until i saw this:

Madskillz the bothunter got death threats irl

This is what the game has become [This Will Be My Last Video!]

So the company really does not care, since bots bring in money.
Amazing

[Seeli-hyjal]

Oh wow

Can you imagine, getting d*ath threats because you rise and fight IG against the bots, in a video game? How crazy is that?

[Dwarfbeauty-stitches]

@Seeli-hyjal

EDIT: Of course, every time I cross by a bot, I report it, but the inner me feels like it’s like slashing water with a sword

I wouldn’t say it better - I feel the same lol