How can Blizzard detects who is bot and who isn't?

Community General Discussion
1

Hello,
I apologize for my prev acting, because i was enraged and i agree my actions on forum deserved little punishment so i get relaxed.

I have a little question about bot detecting.
Take simple example. [ONLY THEORETICAL!]
You are player who farming for example murlocs in Wetlands. Around you there are propably 10 bots. (guildless, weird names, hunter, without any progress).
And some players decided to raid zone and report every single player in range. So you get reported for boting like 40 times.
Automatic report system will propably ban you after multiple reports.

How can you proof you aren’t bot to Blizzard?
Take in reality you are nerd who plays game more than 12h/day propably no gf, no job, no hobbies just WoW. And you for example farming these because you wan’t make some gold.

You now need to appeal. Good luck.

My guess:
You can prove it by some types of logs.
Propably bot will have same routes every single session. Absolute same and nothing changes so propably.
Log where are player position stored.
Propably bot never type in to chat.
Chat log …
Propably bot never interact with players with human messages
Another chat log …
Did you maked some super gold income by unfair way like buying?
Check AH log

Blizzard support is fully automated for certain things because AI is real moneysaver.
What can you do at this point?

My guess… this is so hard, because no-body believes you. But do they actualy take a time to look at logs and try compare them against bots? Or they trying to keep bans marked as justified. I hope there is some human behind propably reaching tickets after XXX declines by AI or escalation request.
In most cases you get unbanned and apologized plus some extra 14 days of Game Time.

For example, when they ban you for Unauthorized Programs (Cheating and Hacking) they should specify for example: bot, flyhack, wallhack, scaming and when and where you been caught.

This is my guess to this problematic, because as i googled there are a lot of players even veterans which had same problem most of them got apologized and unbanned.

And now for example you got banned… and failed at appeals because you had for example cracked Zygor, Rested XP from epvp, or you used cheat engine in another games and forgot to uninstall.
You wan’t play without any issues now. Can you make another wow license at your account? And if you weren’t cheated ever but still got ban by some magic… can you play in for example WoW 2?
What is best proof when they decide just ban you? Where you can record your gameplay 24/7 without consuming space at your PC, like you can stream your every play time on youtube so when they ban you, you have proof of every second of your gameplay.

Thanks for your attention :slight_smile: Have a nice day.

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They detect patterns. Bots behave in predefined ways. You have nothing to worry about

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I’m afraid they aren’t going to share detection methods as that would give bots programmes even more ways to avoid getting caught.

The sad thing is that for all the accounts they ban, new ones are created.

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Link
Not sure how they are discovering these but i feel like their warden system is really outdated not capable of detecting anything these days. It feels like they need to do things manually now.

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Quite simply magic.

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What an odd thing to ask…

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Paths, frequency of input commands and prompts, behavioural repetition, time and coordination logs, etc. Etc. Etc.

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If you will look from the business point of view you will find that Blizz has a good strategy with this.

  • They knows who is cheating from the very start,
  • They allows to ‘play’ a game a little bit so cheaters can earn some real money
  • then banning them in waves
  • so cheaters have to buy another accounts (that’s why they allowing them to play, so they have some money for buying new accounts)
  • cheaters have some profits but most important Blizz has it as well.

If cheaters would be banned from the very beginning they will never buy account again as this will not be profitable.

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The technical reason behind banwaves is, that immediates bans will cause the bot-programmers to test out the criteria. Create 100 bots with slightly different parameters, 75 get banned. Look at the difference and adapt. Simple method to test algorithms and filters.
The practice of ban waves is not only done by Blizz and not a financial decision, but to avoid having programmers to decode their detection quickly.

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Exactly. Ban waves are also used in social media platforms. In those cases, it is combined with a shadow banning, a practice that unfortunately is not possible in WOW (it will require making a bot invisible to other players, but while bots won’t notice that in social media platforms, they will do it in WOW).

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You do realize that the same can be done with ban waves right? make 100 bots with different parameters, 75 get banned in the banwave, they look at the difference and adapt.
Also if you let them bot for months or even a year before you do a banwave, what’s even the point of adapting?

Seriously it’s mindblowing to see how many are parroting these same idiotic talking points even when they have like a decade of proof this doesn’t work staring them in the face.

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EXTERMINATE!
/10char

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what needs is 1 gm per battlegroup just to ban bots and cheaters

then no bots in wow

we have bots becaues blizzard earns money from it…gold…token sales…subs…expansions

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But hiring a single gm on min wage would bankrupt bliz

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Check out @pirate software on YouTube, he got a lot of interesting videos and shirts about working at Blizzard.

He gives you at least some insight.

Also the dude is very genuine and entertaining.

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but its a net loss fighting bots…unless customers MASS quit/uninstall

hiring GM = cost
paying GM= cost
x30 (for all battlegroups in all world) = COST
loss of bot subs=cost
loss of bot expansion buys=cost

why would they do it?

capitalism in action

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anti cheat softwares are usually the way to go but with wow it’s mostly about who gets reported.

they don’t even use AI , i wish they did.

you don’t need to prove anything they can check everything and easily see if you’re a bot or not.

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like you say its idiotic but they have gotten away with it this long.

short term crony capitalism in action

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True, tells a lot.

When was it? Two , three years ago, when they cut of a whole office that was for the customer support.

(Which explains the horrible customer support we have nowadays.)

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First of all, i didn’t propose anything here, you’re making assumptions.
Secondly, you’re saying that instant bans will be worse, again another assumption upon which you conclude i’m defending incompetence. How exactly will it be worse and what are you basing this claim on?