So, can a $68.7 billion company fix the bot problem?

[Kazhjin-ragnaros]

@Truevoid-sylvanas

then you can join them if you think they are doing better job

blizzard keeps suing and and forcing them to shut down…

@Uda-uldum

Sure… a server with 10 people playing where 1 admin can personally spy 24/7 on each of the 10 players sure represents a valid case.

Use your brain a bit…

Warmane has over 30k concurrent…

SoD and classic died because of bots, and all those players are on Turtle now…

Blizzard needs to get their sh*t together…

[Breaths-twisting-nether]

retail players dont care about bots tho, at least most of them. classic mostly died because of gdkps but that’s also tied to bots.
wotlk launch was horrible with 30/40 of bgs being dk bots lol
i think private servers are back at top amount of players because wow doesn’t offer a wotlk version anymore, that’ probably why classic fresh is progressing to tbc

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

nd it would be more than 537k players playing TWW,

were do you even get those number’s?

[Kazhjin-ragnaros]

@Álaric-mirage-raceway

were do you even get those number’s?

RIO, and the sh*tloads of data being collected by addons like WA…

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

I do not wish to sound mean or rude but you do understand not every player in wow does m+ ? some just pvp or raid or collect it is not a true number.

[Aellas-aggramar]

Blizzard cant fix the bots. The AI will just get better and better.

[Kazhjin-ragnaros]

@Álaric-mirage-raceway

I do not wish to sound mean or rude but you do understand not every player in wow does m+ ? some just pvp or raid or collect it is not a true number.

well, then let’s say 1mil… it’s still a joke… a really bad one…
you see, this ain’t a f2p game… but blizz pretty much treats it as one…

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

Only info i can find is this

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/78140-world-of-warcrafts-subscriber-numbers-and-trends-from-2016-to-2024-revealed/

And this is before China came back to the game in August so the numbers are way into the millions.

[Kazhjin-ragnaros]

@Álaric-mirage-raceway

so the numbers are way into the millions.

Yeah, that is exactly why we have cross-realm, and now even cross-faction, because there are so many players…

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

Well we had cross realm in WOTLK when we had 12.5 millions players so…

[Kazhjin-ragnaros]

@Álaric-mirage-raceway

Well we had cross realm in WOTLK when we had 12.5 millions players so…

that one was strictly to be able to invite your friends who may be playing on a different realm…
this one is to make the open world feel less empty, and it still fails

[Uda-uldum]

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

Warmane has over 30k concurrent…

30k concurrent players is nothing.

Just to give you some numbers here:

33k people did 15+ or higher key levels. Across all M+ levels its 31 Million keys. And those are not ALL the keys. Only the completed keys. The real number is much higher than that!

And those are KEYS. On each of those keys there are 5 people playing. Of course, there are not 5 different people playing each one of those 31M keys. But its also true that its not always the same 5 people.

So you could say were in the millions of players doing M+. Dont know how many, but millions.

And that is ONLY M+. Now count PvP, Delves, Raids, Casual Content, Collectors, Open World enthusiasts…

And that is Retail. Add to that Classic (all its versions).

And you can see that 30k people on Warmane, which was one THE biggest private servers out there dosent even come close to the size of WoW.

But that is not ALL: NOBODY cares about private servers. People in private servers dont buy gold or boosts ! If they had the money for that they would be playing retail ! So there are nowhere near as many bots in private servers compared to wow, where all the juicy $$$$ is !

So I will repeat my statement, but with a correction:

@Uda-uldum

Sure… a server with [30k] people playing where [a handfull of] admin can personally spy 24/7 on each of the 10 players sure represents a valid case.

Use your brain a bit ! And this time, make an effort please !

But il tell you anywais: What it means is that wow is so big there is no way in hell you can manually select bots and ban them. You need an automated system for that. And it turns into a battle of machine vs. machine. An eternal tug-o-war which never ends:

You ban bots by detecting them with a machine. The bots change the code to avoid detection and come back in bigger numbers. Then you find another way to detect them and ban them again… son on and so forth…

And that is what you see. And that is why even whole countries cant stop bots on a large scale. So WoW has ZERO chance of achieving it.

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

that one was strictly to be able to invite your friends who may be playing on a different realm…

If you remember you could do dungeons in LFD in the ICC patch.

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

this one is to make the open world feel less empty, and it still fails

You are thinking of CRZ and depending on what you played either RP/PVP/PVE the realms would be quiet.

[Kazhjin-ragnaros]

@Uda-uldum

Use your brain a bit ! And this time, make an effort please !

But il tell you anywais: What it means is that wow is so big there is no way in hell you can manually select bots and ban them. You need an automated system for that. And it turns into a battle of machine vs. machine. An eternal tug-o-war which never ends.

And that is what you see. And that is why even whole countries cant stop bots on a large scale. So WoW has ZERO chance of achieving it.

So, why did Blizz sue Nostalrius?

It surely did not affect their market-share, as most players are on official, aren’t they?

[Uda-uldum]

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

So, why did Blizz sue Nostalrius?

What does that have to do with bots?

Blizzard is a company. Not a charity. They got an IP and they sue people that infringe that IP. If you are really small you pass under the radar. When you are big enough to justify the salary of a lawyer your screwed.

Cocacola and RedBull does this too you know !

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

So, why did Blizz sue Nostalrius?

They didnt they handed them a cease and desist order and then worked side by side with them to make classic happen and even employed some of there staff.

The reason why they handed the order is because Nost started to ask for money from players.

[Kazhjin-ragnaros]

@Álaric-mirage-raceway

The reason why they handed the order is because Nost started to ask for money from players.

No, they have sued because Nost has achieved a player-base way into the millions… the only valid case blizzard had over IP was WoWScape

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

they have sued because Nost

Please i played on the realm i know exactly what happened.

And Nost couldnt handle millions of players so all this you are saying is hyperbole we managed to get over 200.000+ sigs its all out there for you to look up facts.

[Sowee-magtheridon]

@Saneko-ragnaros

@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.

See, when Blizzard are open and honest then their message lands. This message is a perfect example of that and I wish they engaged more with the community in this way.

[Uda-uldum]

@Kazhjin-ragnaros

No, they have sued because Nost has achieved a player-base way into the millions… the only valid case blizzard had over IP was WoWScape

Alaric is 100% correct. I just went into the Nost public statements and they (not Blizz) tell Alaric’s story.

It seems to me that you fell into the conspiracy theory bandwagon… you should jump out of it.