I refuse to believe that is the truth. Maybe on the Firemaw cluster - but all other servers? I don’t think (hope?) this is really the case.
The PvE servers have proved you can have a healthy server without GDKP and boosting - and not too many bots.
I am willing to back down on my claim it’s the majority as hyperbolic, I refuse to believe it’s less than 1/3 of the playerbase though on SoD, ERA and anniversary.
I agree most will be repeat buyers.
I don’t believe blizzard puts enough effort into banning the bots, I don’t believe it is beneficial for them to do so. As long as they are not seriously banning bots I think it is unfair to punish buyers. The average wow player is 30+ (on classic anyway) , if blizzard allows an environment where you can buy gold for a small sum of cash from an army of bots or you can spend hours farming what will the average player do ? Unless they are strongly morally opposed to it.
I think most people if being honest have bought gold at least once in their wow career. I have myself, though suffered a ban for this.
I think a better solution for everyone here is to allow the wow tokens implementation into classic. This will keep bots low as it ruins their profit margins and gives the incentive for blizzard to try and ban them as they will naturally filter out anyway as they become less profitable to run. Blizzard will also make more money directly from players buying token and so this replaces their revenue from bots…
It also does not damage the economy as the economy is already destroyed on most of these servers, and similarly doesnt punish players who wish to RMT
One of the ways to buy gold is to sell interest-free items to the AH at extreme prices, the gold seller buys them as a result of the transaction on his site and the buyer recovers his gold in this way.
The auction house can also show these transactions.
Large tooth for 5k gold…hmm maybe I’ll look at the buyer/seller and take action on that.
As for the token, its a reasonable suggestion but I think giving players a legal way to get gold on tap would do bad things for the game.
Classic versions, or almost everything except retail and classic retail should be isolated from real world money.
If that means giving some strict punishment so be it. If you buy gold then here is the door. Tough luck. It’s not even a case of crying you got caught.
Blizz gave up on bots when they fired all their GMs 10 years ago.
They will never do anything to try to fix the issue so either you accept this and find a way to enjoy the game regardless, either you unsub.
Simple.
It’s insane that some represents of blizzard say they do a lot to combat the bots, when they fired all the GM’s and created a bot to do the job in a wave every now and then, giving time for bots to level up and making profit again before ban wave.
Im sure they could even see how long players have been online and check them out.
The Bots exist because players buy Gold outside of the Game in the real world.
You can control that - you can permanently ban any players buying gold - and that is easy for your systems to spot.
You don’t ban them because ;
The majority are Streamers who raise interest in your game
Bots pay a sub
An of course banning bots as you become aware of them doesn’t stop them creating a new account and paying a new sub
Its a circular economy - but it starts with players buying gold through external website services and then having it transferred to them in game.
Make Gold Account bound - prevent any gold transactions between factions using the Neutral Auction House - instantly ban Bot accounts rather than wave bans.
Lets face it - if bot farmers are back to level 1 daily they will give it up - especially if there is nobody to sell to.
You may also try banning players running 3 accounts for summoning services because it breaches ToS with automation software and all paid boosting services.
You have the power to fix most issues cause by toS breaches overnight - you choose not to and then defend that decision with nonsense
Shortly, No. Blizzard share some of ingame packets for addons. But a coder who knows about packet listening can listen those packets without Blizzard sharing them. There are tools for that job for example cheat engine.
In simple terms their server has to tell your computer whats going on. If they know where to read that information they can bot.
Its just a matter of a different skill set.
The gold buyer sells a gray item to AH for 500 golds, the gold seller buys it once the RMT transaction on their black market has been completed, and there is a gold exchange made.
And it’s all perfectly documented through the auction house. To the point that anyone selling buying junk for hundreds/thousands of gold can be seen before the transaction even happens.
Buying gold via an auction house item is like advertising yourself as a gold buyer and putting yourself in the permanently banned queue.
The point stand though that this cannot be defeated by tackling the bots. Blizzard need to remove the gold buyers, that removes the demand which removes the supply.
Lots of people do this on a daily basis on the neutral auction house to send items to the other faction, so at least here you would easily have false positives.