Classic era and classic tbc era were compromised with the rampant bots and gold sellers.
Almost all servers have been affected by this… even the low populated servers that are “dieing” and conveniently have had free transfers open for months to larger populated servers. You can imagine just how many bots have taken advantage of this situation to profit.
If we expect WOTLK to have any integrity at all, then this should be one of the main problems to try and solve.
Blizzard, you need to actively ban bots, gold sellers, and players who buy gold. If you don’t have the tools to help detect this, then those tools should be built as soon as possible.
Buying gold (whether legally or illegally) goes against the MMORPG spirit. Please find a solution to this problem (without introducing a token).
Its also against the TOS. I would rather see a total wipe of the gold everyone has and let everyone server wide start with nothing when wolk is released…problem solved.
What do teachers do when they know a large percentage of the class cheated but they don’t know exactly who?
They scrap everything and have everyone retake the test.
It’s not an outlandish idea, but it’s clearly unfair for those that played the game normally.
Edit: Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for this, I think Blizzard should target cheaters and ban them on a regular basis.
In the case of a test - if you did not cheat - re-writing your answers will not be too tough, unlike for the cheaters. Taking away people’s gold will hurt the honest people MORE than the bots because making money by fair means take longer time.
Wiping gold will even help the botters to make money more easily, because they are the first ones to farm raw gold and there is an increased demand. As long as Blizzards interest to ban bots for good remains as nonexistent, as it currently is, removing gold will only harm normal players, not botters.
I’m not advocating for it lol. You think I want to lose my hard earned gold as well? I agree Blizzard needs to target the cheaters.
Maybe, maybe not. People may be less willing to spend money for no reason.
But again I’m not advocating this. I think Blizzard needs to get serious and ban cheaters actively. A single ban wave isn’t sufficient, there needs to be more regular checks on a regular basis.
maybe if players like you start blacklisting those type of players it might have a bigger effect. If not, i see a server wide gold wipe as the only solution.
Well personlly I don’t care as I have no G worth mentioning. But as I said before, this will hurt honest plauyers way more that it will hurt the bots. Making money by honest means - and playing the game ta the same time - takes way more time and energy than botting.
Banning all bots, regularaly, repeatedly, and investigating all bot reports would help so much more.
It’s extremely difficult without the proper tooling to make objective blacklist choices. And there are many ways to bypass the blacklist, simply because the blacklist only affects a single character.
Gold buyers buy gold not to have it, but to invest or spend it. Additionally if Blizzard completely wiped the gold multiple times, it would discourage normal players at least as much as gold buyers. So if you reach a point where gold buyers are fed up, the overall community will be at least equally pissed.
The main problem: why should they ban bots?
Bots pay for boosts and subs. As long as the bots outnumber the players quitting over the bots, its a good situation for Blizzard. So why should they spend money to detect and ban the bots, just to earn less. Their first interest is to make money, making a good game is secondary. They only need to make the game about this good, that most people dont quit. If they are enjoying their time or not doesnt matter, as long as they pay.
The rare ban waves against bots are necessary, because they have to give players the impression they are not allowing bots and are active against them. They earn additional money, because most botters will buy new boosts for their characters. If they would ban the botters too often, they would quit once its not worth anymore, but thats not what Blizzard wants. They take the maximum profit.
Blizzard doesn’t make profit from botting, this was debunked time and time again:
Quick serch on the net will show You that companies like Blizzard have to pay back huge sums (eg. with chargeback), because botters pay for their subs with stolen/compromised credit cards.
I think “wiping out gold” is distracting us from the original topic.
We can all agree that bots and gold sellers are a big problem in classic and we would be better off without them.
To help ensure the integrity of the game, Blizzard should really make an effort to get rid of this problem. I personally think a company like Blizzard shouldn’t have too much issues being able to automatically detect suspicious activity and to review them manually.
This would help a lot. I started reporting bots farming eels in Silmyr Lake in Terokkar Forest regularly over a month ago and so far got 4 banned. Sadly, now there are even more of them. And some of the first ones are still farming the same spots. And frankly, it’s kind of demotivating to see them there…
If they really wanted to ban bots, they would have done so since the early days. I remember even normal players botting casually with honor body back in mop to such a degree, that at night only 2-3 real players were present in 15 vs 15 battlegrounds. That a player got banned for that was extremely rare and resulted in a 2week ban, that everyone was willing to risk.
If they were really as engaged as they claim when it comes to banning bots, either the situation would be different or it would be a prove that they are outright incompetent and couldnt improve their detection methods for nearly 18 years.
That is what Blizzard officially says. They just say what they have to say. They claim they ban bots every two days, but that is a disproven fact, because well known bots dont get banned for months and definitely not every two days or less.
We talk about a Blizzard that thinks that we think we want classic, but we actually dont and that gdkps are good for the game. We should all know whats up.
