I’ve been trying to farm herbs and mining nodes in high level zones, and honestly it is becoming pointless. No matter where I go, there are bots everywhere, running the same routes nonstop. Just during one farming session I ran into at least four different bots, and that’s only the ones I actually saw. There are probably many more in the same zones.
It is not that every node is gone, but the competition is completely out of control. By the time you reach a node, a bot has already taken it. Farming as a real player is turning into a waste of time.
And yes, I report them, but nothing happens. Blizzard’s response is painfully slow. We are constantly told that bots are banned in waves, but let’s be honest, this system clearly does not work. By the time those bots finally get banned, they have already made more than enough gold to be profitable.
This is a subscription based game. We are paying every single month to play, and this is what we get? If this was a free to play game, maybe expectations would be lower, but it is not, and this level of inaction is simply unacceptable.
This has been going on for far too long, and it needs to stop.
sorry but there is no fix for classic wow, as the fix would be -redesigning professions completely. Just for an example, New World profession crafting system can be said that it is designed for gold sellers, because you don’t need to have bots to farm nodes, you can simply buy and craft from RNG selling BIS gear, out of 1 session of crafting, you need lets say 50 crafts and you get usually 20-50 euro out of it, main problem would be getting enough gold to buy materials, but as they work in group they easily can gain advantage over whole server and have gold prepared for these big crafting. So instead of going against bot farmers, blizzard can design crafting so one person can gain a lot of gold for crafting and standing in front of AH, but again, not everyone will be able to do it.
Honestly it should not even be possible for a bot to reach level 60 without being caught.
The fact that they can do that and then farm for weeks shows how slow Blizzard’s detection really is.
Ban them early before they make gold and botting stops being profitable.
Simple as that.
Bots are the reason many players buy gold in the first place.
They flood the economy, drive prices up and make normal farming feel pointless, so people see buying gold as the only way to keep up.
It’s the other way around buddy. It’s the fundamental classic design that encourages buying gold. That is why bots exist to begin with, to satisfy a demand. I never felt the need to buy gold in TBC or Wrath, you get enough gold for your normal needs through encouraged gameplay - dungeon and boss drops from badge farm and gold rewards from dailies you do for rep.
In Classic tho, after you are done with quests in high level zones, there is no in game reason to log in outside of raids, yet raid consumes cost several times more gold than they do in latter expansions. Similarly you need full consumes plus loads of pots to do any sort of dedicated PvP. Entering a premade BG without consumes is even worse than doing it in a raid. Therefore you either do mindless grinding for multiple hours for each hour you intend to raid… Or you buy gold.
In TBC or Wrath the only reason to buy gold was for GDKP, which, if it remains banned, means there will be steep drop in botting as soon as TBC hits.
Insane raiding requirements are the reason many players buy gold in the first place. Raid leaders check logs, check consumables to ensure fast and smooth runs. So players must spend gold to buy best consumables, enchants and gear, or be dropped from the end-game altogether.
The gold income is definitely very different in Classic compared to later expansions, but I think this is where we simply play the game differently.
For me, Classic is not meant to be just logging in once a week to do your raid and then logging off. Farming is part of the game. My endgame has always been a mix of raiding, farming and PvP.
I do not buy gold, and I actually enjoy not having to buy everything from the auction house. I often craft my own potions and farm my own herbs. It is part of the experience. Honestly, I find it pretty chill to roam around a zone for an hour farming, maybe running into and killing an enemy player on the way.
That is exactly why bots ruin it for me. They suck the soul out of the game, not because farming is bad but because they make it impossible to play the game that way anymore. When multiple bots are running around 24/7 picking everything, there is barely anything left for you to pick yourself.
Yes, there are bots everywhere, mostly mages. Mining and herbalism are getting increasingly difficult.
But I have a question, because I don’t understand it. What, for God’s sake, are the players doing with the purchased gold?? Do they buy flasks or bufffood or something? Or do they do illegal GDKP raids? When I sell runecloth or herbals or something else I have gathered in the auction house, I will get only a few gold and silver because there is an oversupply of all things with low prices. So there must be an oversupply of everything and no one needs so much gold? And if more gold ist ‘mined’ by the bots, it will never cease to exist (except the respective player gets banned). So the result one day will be, more and more gold comes into the game and we will eventually have a hyperinflation.
Who get’s the point? Who can explain the way of the gold to me?
One week of raiding is 500-1500 gold depending on class. For every character. For fresh characters, expenses are much more. You need to buy boosts (like 5-10k gold), you need to buy crafts (1k-5k gold depending on class), you need to buy enchants for every new drop, and many enchants cost hundreds. You need to buy skill books. Last time I checked, heroic strike was like 3k gold. And god save you to loot legendary. The legendary craft prices are legendary.
So there are a lot of end-game expenses. You can save on some things, like spend a month leveling your character manually, if you have patience. But generally people don’t do that, it’s not time efficient. It’s faster to farm gold and pay booster.
I don’t know where did you find any oversupply. Flasks are around 150g. GNPP is like 10g and you need to eat them like a butter in AQ40.
I’ve heard, Naxx is much worse in that regard. So that’s probably another 1000 gold per week for plethora of protection potions.
I never payed and would never pay for a ‘boost’. But enchants are expensive, you’re true. If your heroic strike book was ~3k gold, there must be something wrong. For my book of rank 7 aspect of the hawk I paid 17g from the petty cash.
May be or not, I never crafted a legendary and I doubt that many players will.
Well, so it is the raiding materials that are so expensive. But what do the sellers do with all the gold? Selling for real world money?
Bots can’t farm high level nodes if they are not level 60 or close to it.
So HOW do they get to level 60 in classic . You can’t buy a boost in the shop like you would to in retail and leveling takes a very long time .
Are they using fly hacks or something else ? I can’t recall seeing a low level bot or someone glitching trough the terrain .
Which leaves only one option . They are boosting themselves in dungeons .
So instead of banning bots , we should be stopping dungeon boosts ?
Also for TBC there should not be a shop boost to level 60 .
I just described you all the things people can do with all the gold. Most sellers probably are selling herbs and buying flasks or something like that.
If you don’t have any better ideas where to put your gold, feel free to send it to me.
That happens for sure. But I don’t think that many people do that, as profits would be laughable even by my third-world country standards. Real profits happen in boosting. Mage can make like 500-1000 gold per hour, boosting people in Maraudon. Gathering herbs in my experience brings like 30-50 gold per hour on average. May be 100 if you’re lucky. That’s barely enough to cover expenses.
I think a lot of people here bring up good points
Honestly it would be quite easy to fix a lot of these issues by massively increasing herb and mining respawns so the market gets flooded and prices on potions elixirs and flasks crash, then everyone can afford consumables for raids without feeling forced to buy gold
Also remove boosting by adding a huge XP penalty if a much higher level character is in the group
Would this completely remove bots? Probably not
But I’m convinced it would drastically reduce the demand for gold buying
Will Blizzard ever do it? Probably not
Blizzard has become a slow and clumsy giant and by the time they make a decision it’s already too late
Sadly it feels like they’ve completely lost control of a game they once built so well
It’s honestly sad to see and I doubt we’ll ever experience WoW the way it was 20 years ago again
Yeah sadly that’s probably true
It’s just a bit sad that they don’t take better care of it
With just a few small changes the game could be so much better again
They can’t connect realms, because they don’t have developers for that. That’s the procedure they did many times both for retail and classic realms. So apparently they are severely understaffed.
Log in, go to AH, buy:
10 tender wolf 2g
10 black label 15g
10 mana pots 50g
5 LiP for wbuff safety 20g
5 fortitude 7g
5 spellpower 50g
5 frostpower (mc/bwl) 40g
5 firepower (AQ) 10g
5 mageblood 40g
2 bijous for Zanza 5g
2 wizard oil 30g
1 flask 110g
Edit: forgot protection pots and anti venom elixirs for aq, that’s another 50g+
Sum: ~400g, less if the raid went well and you have left on vers from last week.
Raid 2,5 hours (fun)
Collect new world buffs.
Log off.
I can’t sell boosts because I get reported by the mafia. I can’t sell enchants because I get reported by the players for spam and maybe enchant bots too. My options are solo farm 2 afternoons for one afternoon at raid or buy gold. Now I’ve been farming so far, but honestly I HATE it so much I’m seriously considering just unsubbing until TBC when the game actually becomes good.
Or you know, I can go to a site and spend one afternoon of my income to have enough gold till TBC and to buy an epic flying to boot.