There is a very simply solution to removing the bot problem one and for all . This does not apply only to Classic , but retail also .
Block addons and scripts from executing :
1: spells
2: buttons (such as task bar or queue buttons)
3: movement
4: key binds
5: Macros
This will effectively reduce any possibly of creating a bot by 90 % .
Addons should only be used for supplementing the game play , like showing timers or warnings , perhaps changing how you screen looks .
Addons should not be able to move your character and use spells .
Its not banning bots that is the issue , its that addons that allow bots even exist .
Fix the problem not effect .
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Neither addons nor weak auras can do that stuff, the bots are third-party software that controls the I/O of your computer (e.g mouse/keyboard) and is usually ran in a Virtual Machine.
/closed
Hm really ? And how would the interrupt bot work for instance ? How does it sense when to trigger ? I find it hard to believe that there isn`t anything inside wow that provides this information . Something is outputting data to the script outside , which allows it to do decisions . A script to move your mouse around or just press a w s d doesn’t seem reasonable .
Yeah, it’s a combat log, and you can’t really remove it from the game.
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Ok so it is the combat log than . Yea you can`t remove it , but surely you can block it from being accessible by outside API’s . Meaning for all intends and purposes the user is able to see and access only graphical information in wow . You shouldn’t be able to get raw output that can be scanned with a text scanner outside . The only API that can access the combat log is the blizzard API (eg outside scripts or addons cannot access the combat log also ) .
Also another solution would be to encrypt the combat log . This way even if outside API / Addon tries to read it , it gets jumbled and unusable information .
The whole point of having an API is to translate game information into data usable by different applications.
Regardless, even if Blizzard would completely remove combat log, API, support for addons and whatever you think allows people to cheat it would still be present because it’s a business. You can watch even old footage from events like Def Con to get some idea of how much time was invested into cracking through games like wow even 10+ years ago.
It’s an arms race as old as the internet. Anything starting with “Just do x” or “It’s as simple as Y” is never the solution unless you want to propose “just shutdown server lol” because that would actually work.
Bots aren’t run through any WoW API. You can write software to read your screen and execute commands that way, you can write code to play any game just by looking at the screen because that’s all you need, but that isn’t always the most effective way. You can easily write code to mimic keyboard/mouse movements with python or most programming languages really. There are loads of way to get process data from games (debuggers like x64dbg or check out the CheatEngine tutorial for example, but don’t attach it to your WoW proccess because they still look for that and will ban you…) which gives you more triggers for commands. Most of the bots don’t seem to be very well written, which is why they’re so easily detectable by humans and why they fail so often.
Writing bots has become much easier and people have gotten a lot better over the years and bot detection has become a lot harder. And computers are so much more powerful now that they can easily run these horribly unoptimized bots. Thats why absolutely every game has bots now and since they can make money in MMOs, they tend to be rather abundant in those. The most effective way to detect bots is to have a human look at them, but since humans are pretty much useless, there will be many mistakes and they become rather expensive so they’re not a viable solution.
And how would the interrupt bot work for instance ?
Well, you use the WoW addon API to create a visual trigger, like what you can do with WeakArua(you can write your own addon, this is just an example). So when you need to interrupt, you’ll have a red square at coordinates 24,24. You take a screenshot every 0.1s and look to see if 24,24 returns the color code for red.
Or you can make for example a 50x50 pixel pattern somewhere, take a screenshot of that pattern only, keep it black and white and decode it in your code, now you have an effective way to tell your bot whats going on in-game and what to do.
You can’t disable addons either, it wont help. The player will still need info on what is happening and what to do. Be it a visual or sound cue, you can detect it without ever having to get any direct info from the game process itself.
Also another solution would be to encrypt the combat log
Well it isn’t the combat log, but regardless, I’m still waiting on an encryption that works. You’ve downloaded they game, your game will still need to know what the encrypted stuff means, that means your game knows how to decrypt it, which means it wont be long until the person writing the bot knows. And again, they can simply bypass it by having their bot look at the screen.
Thanks , that’s quite informative and i get where you are coming from . AK if a human can do it ( access it ) , the bot can do it too . But honestly I can’t agree with the statement that you need to have people constantly watching . This contradicts the first notion . We are not 2000s . Even if I`m not in the “hype” crowd for automation , we do have stuff like CHAT GBT , which is a good example of an automated software .
Ok you need people , but it should be definitely possible to build an Ai , or a Similar program (in wow) to detect scripted behavior . After all , what is the human looking at ? That the bots acts scripted and repeating the same actions again and again . At the very least is should notify admins of suspicious behavior . You shouldn’t be forced to report every one of them .
Its extremely simple to spot bots.
just have some gms play the game regularly, visit hotspots for botting and just do minor research. GG
I mean, just placing a gm outside mara alone should net a hefty amount of bots.
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If every wow playing andy can see bots everywere surely blizzard can. But blizzard is making money of the bots because they pay sub.
If a bot makes enough gold to get back 13 bucks he already succeeded so bots needs to be banned fast.
2 Likes
Also to add to my above comment for the automation detection . There is something like this in wow already , albite weak . For instance if you prevent afk log out by clicking the jump key from time to time . At first it will give you warning that you will be logged out after x seconds . If you just hit the jump key every time you are flagged afk , it will automatically log you off without notification at around the 3rd time . Surely this can be expanded a bit to notify admins about bot behavior .
or hire more gm cen deal stuff like this did so chine gold seller hehe
Literally every single one of WoW’s functions lives inside your computers memory, your RAM basically. With tools like debuggers you can literally access any information you want from it, even information the developer doesn’t want you to see. Let’s say an enemy is “nearby” and is casting, his casting time information is somewhere in your RAM. It’s possible to obfuscate some of that stuff, but in the end there’s always a way to circumvent it. There’s pretty much no game that is safe to this, afaik.
At profits. Bot owners pay suscription as do human players and we don’t really know the proportion of bots in overall playerbase. STEAMDB has graphs showing real time number of active players (mostly in US and EU) in steam games. Most games have around 35% of playerbase that never sleeps even during night. So even if there will be 10% players who go to sleep late or play from different time zone there are still about 25% of bot on average. The record in Steam is set by ARK survival evolved, with number of sleepless “players” around 60%
Wow doesn’t show it playerbase numbers and we can only guess the real population of the realms. Even Ironforge. pro that is based on warcraftlogs. com shows all raiding characters, including alts, and is only an indicater of overall realm population activity.
The problem with bots isn’t that they took over most tedious parts of the game like farming, but rather:
- taking players slots, creating even more tight queues on megareams, especially during hupe waves of major patches.
- interference into player activities like BGs being infested with DKs leveling bots.
Well it is semi-easy for a human to detect robotic behaviour since we’re so used to seeing how humans act. Making a computer detect robotic behaviour is much harder. Sure, it isn’t a problem in simpler games, like tertis for example, far fewer inputs and conditions to look at. Looking at WoW is a big undertaking because of all the available functionality in the game.
- You can look at input delays, if they’re pressing their keys too robotically, then flag it for weirdness, but you can just delay+rand() in your bot and suddenly you have human-like keypresses.
- You can look at the travel path of the BG or mining bots, but you can just add a bit of deviation to each series of key presses, calculate the maximum and minimum times for each key to still get to the correct end location and you’ll beat that detection system.
- You look at online time and think there is no way you can play for 160 hours in a row, fine I’ll get 2 bots and have them take 12 hour shifts.
- All the BG bots use the same skill rotation? Again rand() is your friend, add all the skills to a list and choose a random one to cast. There is no rule against being bad at the game.
I implore you to think of how you’d go about detecting bots, what variables you’d look for in your bot detection. I’m sure you’ll realize how hard it would be. And a simple “use and AI” isn’t sufficient, someone has to program the AI since most AI we have are complete garbage and would take 20 years to learn what a character is in WoW. It is possible to make an AI for bot detection, but it is expensive, takes a long time and is very hard and most likely will be broken a few months later when the bot creators find a way to bypass it. So not only is it expensive, takes a long time and very hard, it is also a continuous process that never ends.
And to all the fools spouting off “its all about money”, I challenge you to write a bot detection system for WoW and I promise you will become rich because you’d have a large market for your product.
just have some gms play the game regularly, visit hotspots for botting and just do minor research
or hire more gm cen deal stuff like this did so chine gold seller hehe
Alright, lets do some math shall we… How many hotspots do we have for bots? 10? 10 gms online 24/7, 8 hour shifts, days off, part-time(?), 50 gms per realm. You want to pay 30EUR per month for WoW? I don’t.
Yes, Blizzard has money, but Blizzard is a company. The point of a company is to provide a service/product and make a profit. If you don’t like that a company makes profit off of you, then stop using their product/service.
Why do you think blizzard wants to remove bots?
Did you see them posting or giving any answer to the others 100 posts about bots?
I dont think blizzard wants to do something about bots, cant even imagine why are they doing this to the game.
And what exactly do you need them to say regarding the bots?
“Hi, we have bots and we don’t have a practical way to deal with them” you know, just to encourage more people to buy and run bots…
How does that help you in any way?
What about cloud gaming? You know, the thing that was all the rage a few years ago where the game is run entirely on the server and you only get a visual stream of its output?
Yeah, I wouldn’t pay to stream WoW, but this is a purely theoretical question.
No, you’d only get a UDP steam(just a video stream) and not actual access to the machine it is streaming from and most likely wont be able to send anything of any use back to where ever its streaming from.
I can provide some general guidance on how to restrict addons and scripts from executing certain actions in a game:
Disable Addons and Scripts: The most straightforward approach is to disable any addons or scripts that attempt to automate gameplay. This can be done through the game’s options menu or by removing the offending addon from the game’s files.
Use Permissions: If the game has a permissions system, it can be used to restrict what actions addons and scripts can perform. For example, an addon may be allowed to read game data but not allowed to manipulate it.
Use Anti-Cheat Software: Some games use anti-cheat software to detect and prevent cheating. These programs can also be used to detect and prevent bots and other unauthorized gameplay.
Regular Updates: Keeping the game regularly updated with security patches and fixes can also help prevent bots from exploiting vulnerabilities in the game.
It’s important to note that while these measures may help reduce the possibility of bots being created, determined individuals may still find ways to bypass them. Therefore, it’s also important for game developers to actively monitor and address any instances of botting or cheating to maintain the integrity of the game.