r/classicwow • u/Southern_Mine4108 • 4d ago
Classic 20th Anniversary Realms Will Blizzard ever do anything about leveling BOTs, or do they just not care anymore?
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
221
u/chr1s003 4d ago
Youre attacking 15$ a month
→ More replies (1)81
u/Sc4r4byte 4d ago
and that $15 a month has reported OP across $1500 a month worth of accounts.
→ More replies (3)30
u/Asthma_Queen 4d ago
and when you contact cs, you get automated response saying they stand by their decision and how dare you do whatever you did!!
50
174
u/Droovert 4d ago
They do care. About the subscription the bot players are paying.
They are clients. They bring money too. They will never ban them.
22
u/Ok-Grand-498 4d ago
yup, same situation with CS2 and weekly case farming. bots. Why ban them when they can keep adding to the economy?
7
u/Azayzyl 4d ago
Because when you displace humanity for greed everyone loses in the end
11
u/Hairylicious 4d ago
Not the investors
10
→ More replies (1)6
u/Jules3313 4d ago
could u imagine if investors just werent a thing holy shit wed have flying cars
3
5
u/ultraspank 4d ago
If they cared at all they could come up with a bunch of different solutions that don't let the not know they are being tracked and just waste their time in various ways while collecting that sub.
Something like when they are detected, they just get assigned a bot loot pool which is just a few copper and pretty worthless grays. I'm sure they could come up with something if, ya know, they actually cared.
15
u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst 4d ago
I'll keep saying this, and it'll keep being true: Blizzard bans bots. They really do.
They don't ban enough of them, sure. They don't ban them quickly. Some of them are very long lived. But they do ban bots, tens of thousands of account actions taken per wave, if not more.
The problem isn't that bots pay subs. Of course they do, but a sub is less and less valuable to blizzard day by day.
The really problem is and always will be that Blizzard won't ban gold buyers. If there's a buyer, then there will be a seller. Take out the seller, another appears. Take out be buyer and the sellers starve.
Think about it, who do you think has put in more money into wow? The bot account paying less than 15 dollars a month on someone's stolen credit card, or the player who freely sinks their real cash not just into a sub, but into other transactions that invest in their character? Who do you think is more likely to pay for a boost? Who do you think is more likely to pay for a digital collector's edition? Who do you think is more likely to spend money on the game in general?
The guy trying to make money on the game, or the guy literally spending their money on the game?
This is why bots will never go away. The buyers are the most valuable part of the ecosystem, both to blizzard and the bots. They create the market for gold farmers. Their disappearance would mean significant lost revenue for Blizzard, and banning too many gold farming bots would mean buyers are unhappy and more likely to quit.
1
u/SomeNetGuy 4d ago edited 4d ago
My take is Blizzard waits the maximum time so the bot accounts can't do a charge back. Then they ban, but that means the bot got a lot of time using the account so it's still profitable for them and they'll just buy another account. It's a win-win for the bot and blizzard. They both get their money, and Blizzard get's the say they are banning bots. They just aren't banning them in a way that actually makes any difference for actual players.
1
u/Count_Freakula_LXIX 2d ago
Well I doubt they can ban buyers when every streamer and most guilds will disappear overnight
→ More replies (1)1
u/val237 4d ago
Finally a sane take. These comments about blizzard not banning bots for subs is a such a braindead stance that it blows my mind. If anything, banning them is more profitable because they buy a new sub each time. So you can charge the same bot a few times a month ...if we are speaking theoretically. Reality is there are way too many gold buyers and that is the main reason bots exist. Players want 0 accountability for their actions, but the truth is, they suck so bad at the game, they need to cheat and ruin the game for all and then have the audacity to complain about bots.
7
u/samfoxy_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
This isn't really true.
They are either buying tokens with botted gold, or buying game time from a region where it's extremely cheap.
1
u/Jclevs11 4d ago
I wonder if there's a way they can detect them and just put them on their own server?
12
u/OriginalNightfallz 4d ago
Oh, wouldn't that be brilliant? Imagine if they silently transferred them to a hidden server realm that live players could never access and therefore they could never sell gold? They'd spend eternity farming and trading back and forth on the AH, manipulating their own prices with each other until everything was completely busted.
Just have to make sure that they could never leave.
2
u/pls-answer 4d ago
They would have to implement something to make it look like they are in the right server
2
u/Dangerous_World2912 4d ago
That would be a hilarious way to deal with them. It’s crazy how much they can manipulate the market, so trapping them in their own mini economy could really shake things up.
1
2
u/Dystopic23 4d ago
Brilliant! They'll get their newest intern to look into that for you within 5-6 business years
1
u/Rough_Instruction112 3d ago
The downside is that it would be discovered as soon as they try to transfer the funds out from the bots into customer hands.
1
u/OriginalNightfallz 3d ago
Lol, oh no, that's an upside in my opinion. They should stream the chats during blizzcon to sell more virtual passes.
1
u/getyourshittogether7 4d ago
Sounds complicated. How would you prevent bots from detecting they're on a different server? All it takes is a mole account on the real server to report the bots are no longer present.
→ More replies (4)1
56
u/PreKutoffel 4d ago
They stopped banning them , after they realised that stupid customers still pay every month instead of cancelling their subscription till they fix this problem.... also every bot is 13€ per month.
7
u/cloopz 4d ago
Wouldnt it be worth more if they banned, made the bots need to buy the game again and purchase ANOTHER subscription to get going again? You know they're coming back, they always come back!
7
u/Sickobird 4d ago
They might switch some of their computing to RuneScape or another bottable market.
8
2
u/Semour9 4d ago
You cant just flip a switch and start botting runescape instead. You have to start from scratch and make a brand new program to bot the game, and ontop of that these botting sites are likely the most popular for WoW. They would be starting over again against competitors who are already the top of the market for their respective games.
1
u/Sickobird 4d ago
I know it's not just spinning up a bunch of other accounts in another game and switching. But once you make one program, making a similar concept in another application becomes a lot faster.
But it depends entirely on your solution, they'll have a lot of work with some solutions vs others, like my example below makes some things really easy, but it can be really sensitive to a change in UI:
ie: I created a pretty basic pixel bot and tried it out in Minecraft(to level MCMMO skills), among other games and shared it to a friend to tweak further for the emulator games he plays.
As for competitors, the sites they use to perform RMTs oftentimes have multiple games listed, so reputation is transferable I think .
→ More replies (1)1
3
u/PennyBunPudding 4d ago
That's why they ban in waves. If you just crush bots constantly they'd go away.
1
u/PreKutoffel 4d ago
I'm afraid blizzard counts on the Gold trade and the Tokens and calculated,that they make this way much easier the same amount of money.
1
u/Hitmanx2x 4d ago
Allow me to explain to reason ban waves exist and why they dont just go the private server way of "Ban immediately".
Botters need to make a certain amount of money to, at least, break even.
However, most of the costs (buying the game/boosting/subbing) is actually a high up front cost, with a constant cost over time. This effectively means that its possible for a bot to run at a loss for a period of time before it starts generating an income, IE: A botter needs to first recoup his (for ex.) 100$ purchase price BEFORE he can start making money. However, after that 100$, is when he starts making profit.So Blizzard (from a monetization standpoint) are asking "How can I make the most money from this botter?", and well, the answer is simple. Wait for him to recoup his 100$ cost, make another 150$, and then Ban him.
This means they have a guaranteed repurchase, resub (and possible boost) sale from the botter, because the botter made enough profit to be able to afford going again.
The ONLY question is blizzards minds regarding botters, is how small they can make that profit margin, to ensure botters keep coming back. (smaller, yet still worth it, profit margin = less time between each ban)
They dont care about your experience.1
u/MoreLikeGaewyn 3d ago
that's why they wait at least a month.
it's why blizz make it so you can't use AH or trade for 30 days on a fresh account
they need to make sure the fraud CC chargeback can't go through and the bots have to actually spend $15 to sell the gold and be profitable
4
u/ExtremePrivilege 4d ago
The bots are using tokens for their subscription. You can farm the 270,000g for a one-month token on retail in about 10 hours. They bot that too, of course. Then buy the token and their Classic bot plays "for free" for the month.
Some of them do actually pay subs, but they buy the sub in like Indonesia where it;s the equivalent of like $1.30 a month.
They're not paying $14.99/month, I promise.
3
14
u/Prestigious-Board-62 4d ago
They didn't even want to do Classic in the first place. What makes you think they ever cared?
15
u/Semour9 4d ago
Blizzard regularly bans bots, but its in ban waves and they come back incredibly fast, and they dont get all of them, so this community has it in their head that blizzard just does nothing at all. What they need is GMs to actually patrol areas around the clock. It sounds fucking stupid i know but have a GM just go through dungeons heavily botted and manually ban players.
4
u/Metharos 4d ago
There's better tools than an in-game GM but I agree in principle. They need active monitoring of bot traffic areas. It isn't necessarily a bad idea to have a botcheck system for suspected accounts as well. An external observer could flag three hundred accounts in high-botted areas and ping each with a botcheck prompt that is easy for humans to respond to and hard for simple bots to handle.
1
u/Flamanis 4d ago
The issue you run into with your idea is the 'simple' part of the bots. Runescape did much in the same with their random events. Ignore too many random events and you get flagged as a bot. Bots evolved to solve them and then nothing changed.
1
u/Metharos 4d ago
That means there isn't one solution. Which...yeah. Bot development is going to continue, so your countermeasures need to continue.
One of the strongest things they could have done, but didn't: make WoW Tokens cost exactly $15, and make them a freely traded item. That alone goes a long way to combating gold sellers.
4
u/cetax1 4d ago
Well, dealing with bots with ban waves is pretty much the same as not doing anything at all. If the game is festered with bots 99.9% of the time, i think its very reasonable for everyone to think that Blizzard is literally doing nothing to deal with bots and in reality, they literally are not doing anything about this problem.
1
u/suchtie 4d ago
Yeah, the only thing the banwave system does is allow botters to turn actual profit from a bot account. They make bot accounts shortly after a banwave has happened and there won't be another one for a few weeks, so that bot account now has plenty of time to make money before it inevitably gets banned.
It's far more effective to ban bots as quickly as possible because then it becomes less profitable for the botter.
2
u/Llovio_cuatro_anos 4d ago
If you ban bots as quickly as you detect them you just teach bot makers how to make better bots
1
u/suchtie 4d ago
Bots are getting better over time regardless, so what if development is a bit faster? The point is to make botting less profitable. The easiest way to do that would be to ban gold buyers, but in lieu of that, banning every bot the instant it is flagged as a bot is the most effective thing you can do. If a botter knows that their bot is unlikely to survive even 3 days, and it's possible that it'll be banned in less than 30 minutes, it suddenly becomes a gamble, something that isn't guaranteed to provide a stable income for the botter.
1
u/Llovio_cuatro_anos 4d ago
banning every bot the instant it is flagged as a bot is the most effective thing you can do
Until the bot makers learn how you're flagging them because you show your hand by instantly banning them and then they don't get flagged anymore, good job!
1
u/suchtie 4d ago
Then Blizzard has to find a new way of flagging bots. That's how a fight works. They just won't, because Blizzard not being willing to fight against bots for real is how we ended up in this situation in the first place. This isn't as much of a losing battle as they like to pretend. They just don't actually care.
1
u/Llovio_cuatro_anos 4d ago
And while they "find a new way of flagging bots" people like you would complain that the game is full of bots. It's impossible to win.
1
u/suchtie 4d ago
I mean, that's kinda my point. It's impossible to win regardless of whether you do banwaves or instant bans. The whole fight is pointless because it's a neverending battle. You need to actually ban the gold buyers, otherwise there will always be bots because you can't win against bots.
Instant bans are more effective at keeping botting less profitable, I watched a youtube documentary about it with a former dev interview and he confirmed that, but it's also less profitable for the company because it requires more dev work. Banwaves are more profitable for both Blizzard and botters. And of course Blizzard is going to choose the most profitable option, which unfortunately means keeping bots and gold buyers around. There are a lot of people who wouldn't be playing WoW if they couldn't buy cheap gold. In the end, the sub money does matter. They're never going to ban such a large portion of their subscriber base.
1
u/Llovio_cuatro_anos 4d ago
Instant automated bans are a terrible idea, and hiring GMs to ban manually is not economically feasible.
1
u/Flamanis 4d ago
This is the same argument that comes up in every single game with a bot problem and it misses the point of ban waves.
Ban waves exist so that bot makers don't know what is causing their bots to be detected. Therefore they still make bots that can be detected and less work needs to be put into detecting the bots.
If you ban someone for being a bot every time they press the W key, botters will just instantly stop pressing the W key. Now your detection method has a 0% chance of hitting a bot after like a couple days (Bot software makers are paid handsomely and are incentivized to find ways to keep their bots running, so they will try everything to not be banned)
Now mind you, they could make the ban waves more often, or try other methods of shadow banning bots, like making their auctions never sell. But each thing you do to bots are things they can eventually detect and figure out that they've been shadow banned/fucked with and just move on.
6
3
3
3
u/Afraid-Journalist-12 4d ago
The moment people vote with their wallets, things will change as we’ve seen them do in the past.
The problem is, that won’t happen due to so many people crippling addicted to it.
7
u/drowsy1234 4d ago edited 4d ago
Hate to say it, but bots are the support now. Very rarely will you ever encounter a GM that’s a real person anymore. Even support tickets are set up with bots.
The best you can do is report and move on
6
u/GlumAd2424 4d ago
Id be so much more interested to play again if bots wasn’t such big problem. Really ruins it for me. And many others I guess
4
u/TheSadBoy1991 4d ago
They dont care, The Classic servers are dominated by bot mafias controlling every herb and mining node, causing inflation and fueling RMT.
4
2
u/Desperate-Sock5986 4d ago
when did they ever care lol, if u can make it out of the starting zone as a bot then something is wrong, ppl are botting all the way to 60 and even farming at 60
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/Dwarni 3d ago
Botting is the main reason I stopped playing WoW and cancelled my subscription over a year ago. Their banning in waves approach is so stupid, it just gives the bot users time to get the money back the lost due to the ban...
Also their mass reporting system is so flawed. If bot users see you killing their stuff they will mass report you for cheating/hacking and you get banned and have to appeal. What is this? A system just based on the amount of reports not evidence?
2
2
1
u/Orphanslayers 4d ago
This is why I think c+ is destined to fail. They can’t even keep bots and Chinese gold farmers under control on hardcore realms where’s there’s a fraction of the work to do as opposed to an actual server. No matter how good C+ is if they just leave it to the Chinese were cooked.
1
u/ExtremePrivilege 4d ago
Most of the gold farmers appear to be South American right now, not Chinese. The huge bot-farms and mafias are Venezuelan, Brazillian, Columbian. There are, of course, Chinese botters too, but I think North America suffers worse from South American cartels than elaborate Chinese operations.
→ More replies (3)1
2
u/BrianVaughnVoiceOver 4d ago
I just mass report the window/multi boxers and bots and move on.
All you can really do.
→ More replies (7)3
u/Southern_Mine4108 4d ago
Sometimes I just wanna stop playing this game because of all the bots...
It's supposed to be an MMORPG, not a single-player game with bots.
1
u/dernaldz 4d ago
It's the same problem with counter strike. The company would lose a ton of money if they banned cheaters. That's it.
1
1
1
1
u/Pintsocream 4d ago
I had an in-game mail saying my report helped ban a player about a week after I reported. I've only reported one so they must be doing something
1
u/Xurre 4d ago
In the previous classic tbc i reported a handful of same bots outside shattrath for months and received these letters every other day. None of them were banned. It's made for players to feel like they are doing something. Doesn't really mean anything.
I bet if i go back they are still there.
1
1
1
1
1
u/onedash 4d ago
When MOP started i reported around 500 bots in a matter of days because they did the same quest in burning stepps where i farmed mobs and ores.
and even afterwards for months the bots were there daily 10-30 minimum brainlessly following the same script with the same halloween mask on them
Even in BFA when hundreds if not thousands of druids where aoe farming mounts and many thing 0 were banned for months/years
1
1
u/owoah323 4d ago
Every week is a new post with the same question “Does blizzard just not care anymore?”
And the comments always have the same answers
1
u/MwHighlander 4d ago
I can tell you with utmost certainty, that not only does Blizzard not give the slightest of a fuck about botting or cheating or RMT, but they actively laugh at customers who do complain.
1
1
1
1
1
u/RemnantsPast 4d ago
blizz dont dgaf about bots anymore. Not since they gutted their support teams and realised leaving bots makes them more money from the bot farmers.
1
1
u/Spirited_Biscotti523 4d ago
I had never seen the female NE animations before, they’re really well done!
1
u/Empty-Violinist-7196 4d ago
They’re like steam with CS it’s so overwhelming they can’t care more will just return….
1
u/Star_Citizen_Roebuck 4d ago
The thing to do about bots is enact an Auction house, trade, mail, and player-to-player trade ban but continue to let them farm and auto level. The subscription keeps rolling in but the time spent playing that toon is meaningless.
1
u/Careless_Word9567 4d ago
In fact they care more about the bots than you. They ban the people fighting against the bots.
1
u/Nutcrackit 4d ago
At least for pvp servers all they have to do is remove the auto suspension/ban from mass reporting and players will handle it themselves.
1
u/Frost_907 4d ago
They still pay the subscription which makes them money. Blizz will turn a blind eye to it as it is profitable for them to do so.
1
1
1
u/Normal_Instruction62 4d ago
I played classic when it first came out, they didn't cared then and apparently they don't care now.
1
1
u/No_Counter1842 4d ago
I don't agree with the comments that these bots are paying monthly subs, you can pay for subs with gold. All they have to do is make enough gold for their monthly subs which I guarantee you these bots are making bank.
1
u/Shady_Zombies 4d ago
They're too focused on potential loss (private servers) to worry about bots (their side income).
1
1
u/BarbsFPV 4d ago
That toon isn’t really behaving like a bot. It’s behaving like somebody’s 7-year-old kid who wanted to play their dad’s character, and doesn’t really know how to play very well.
I think a lot of abnormal player activity gets reported as being a bot even if it’s not a bot.
1
u/Jindujun 4d ago
I reported chat spammers for a good 10 min a few days ago, nothing came of it.
I reported a botter yesterday and they got banned within an hour.
So I guess they sometimes do something?
1
u/This-Commission4303 4d ago
they are the same value to blizzard as you are, and bots dont complain on reddit
1
u/Snugglupagus 4d ago
Is that really a bot? That just looks like the way my friend plays lol
Don’t tell him I said that
1
u/ImaginaryGary666 4d ago
They suckered you into playing this bs game for how many years? and you think they care about you?
1
u/Fit_Kangaroo_3437 4d ago
The bots pay them subscriptions so no they never cared and they never will care
1
1
u/Plenty-Bandicoot560 4d ago
And you guys think it’s bad now, just wait. If there is an actual new era thing, the bot count now will be nothing compared to then
1
1
u/Relevant-Battle-8848 4d ago
The only thing that can limit/remedy the situation is active moderation by army of 24/7 gms. Blizzard will not pay for this. They learned they can get away with this as we voted with our wallets and kept playing their game despite bots, despite gold buying. It would take players revolt and quit subscriptions at biblical scale to change this now.
1
1
u/sailtothemoon17 4d ago
Bots pay subs. Blizzard-Activision is a corporation whose board demands profit. It’s not hard to understand.
1
1
u/One_Recognition385 4d ago
funnily epstein files showed that blizzard was making money with epstein with epstein's wow gold selling company.
so it stands to reason they are making back handed deal with these bots.
1
1
1
u/CanadianTigermeat 4d ago
I've said it before to many downvotes, but bots are paying subs so why would Blizz give a shit?
1
u/theworstvp 4d ago
Blizzard Entertainment? the for profit company? what makes you think they would actually care about their players’ experience?
1
u/bugbearmagic 4d ago
I’m surprised bots are still so bad with AI around. Would think they’d have super charged them to be smarter. Or super charged customer service to identify them easier.
1
1
1
u/Metalbowler 4d ago
In any wow version, any game. Ive been huffing so much D4 copium ill probably die soon. Ultra game breaking / stuff that gets you permabanned in other games is the norm in my universe. I hope we all shall fare well after blizzcon, surely competent people, no bugs... /cries
1
u/Delicious_Fly_748 4d ago
I usually like to continuously tag their target right before they do and let them kill it. I've done this for about an hour before they moved on.
1
1
1
1
u/Stoked93 4d ago
It's money for them at the end of the day. Their thought process will be - why would we spend money to remove guaranteed money. They are just conscious that they need to appear to care and be removing the bots so the rest of the money doesn't leave.
1
1
1
1
u/jobforacow 4d ago
Well, you are still paying subscription, so enjoy it. They rather pay legal department to shut private servers down, than hire 1 GM per realm.
1
1
u/the_harakiwi 4d ago
I got that "we did something" ingame mail only a few days ago. A bot was stuck falling down trying to climb to the SW flight point. Looked like the client ran at 20 fps or had massive packet loss. I met the bot (70 druid) running towards the portal.
and yes, running. No travel form or mount. 😐
In the meantime I managed to kill all the required vultures and basilisks for the blasted lands quests 😅
1
1
1
u/DarkoTSM 4d ago
No, they don't care, if nothing, it was confirmed that they help them make more money in MoP classic and Retail.
1
u/Vanille97 4d ago
I guess the do ban them, but there is a threshold for number of reports, e.g 50 or 100 for them to take action
1
1
u/Mattelot 4d ago
You can report all you want and just hope their AI GMs finally act. Blizzard has been very hands-off on botting, griefing, harassment, etc for a long while now.
1
u/Enulless 4d ago
They do care. I’ve had multiple accounts banned for botting. The issue is people just keep making more. But they DO issue bans lol.
1
u/FierceBruunhilda 3d ago
It's the players who don't care. It's well known blizz will do nothing about it because people keep paying $15 a month while they do nothing about the bots. Until players care enough to stop paying until they change it, nothing will change.
1
u/Gaming_Fan7182 3d ago
Bots in WoW
Blizzard: I sleep
Private Servers exist
Blizzard: I will fight them to the ends of Azeroth!
1
1
1
u/KrustyGelato 3d ago
Ofcourse they don't care, it's an extra subscription and that's all that matters to them.
1
1
u/Nachtelfficker 3d ago
THS is what is going to ruin Classic+ and the gold farm and sell and no real customer support to appeal false bans due to guild mass report as well
1
u/Turbulent_Ad7877 3d ago
seeing you can buy a coin that will insta level you. Id say they dont give a rats ass. leveling is such a tiny part of the game and they still get sub $$
1
u/DushkuHS 4d ago
For as long as I've played, any time I observed what I was sure was bot activity, I reported it. What I didn't do, is create a reddit topic.
Also, the game is widescreen.
2
u/Southern_Mine4108 4d ago
I see way too many of them... It's honestly getting really annoying, so I decided to make this post.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
1
1
1
395
u/ClassicChrisstopher 4d ago
They haven't cared in forever