Massive Ban Wave

[candlebox]

Well i cannot confirm but rumor is that troll that makes us all look bad might be banned for 6 months.

[Andreauk]

People were botting in LFR and stuff like that.. but anyway here we got this http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/14628493470

[Wubsie]

Been watching some streams that had people talking about it. So far I'm hearing that it's mainly leveling bots, Kickbots (automatic interrupt for arena), and some bot that does your DPS rotation for you that are causing people to be banned. Although some people are claiming they have now been banned for using T-Morph as well, but can't confirm that one. Seem to recall hearing that we're talking hundreds of thousands of accounts getting banned so far. At least that is also what Kotaku managed to get a GM to confirm as well.

Good riddance is my 2 cents. Also good fun to hear them try to justify why their accounts being banned was injust and how it's everyone else's fault that they were botting to begin with.


Please do not mention bots by name; this forum has no desire to advertise for them.
-MiRai

[Shania]

Yep there is like 90 pages now about it on MMO.

I am soo happy when I see these mass ban waves.
I just do not get why it is only for 6 months and not forever.

they return if they want after 6 months with all gold etc whatever they had.

[MiRai]

This is the same thing you see with any other banwave—Tons of people claiming their innocence and 99% of them are full of shit. People will claim it's because they bought cheap mounts off of the AH, or because of an add-on like GnomeSequencer, or Blizzard did some blanket ban on an IP address where someone else was playing their account, or whatever other crazy idea they can muster up, but I always find it entertaining to read the ridiculous excuses that people come up with. However, there is always the possibility of a false positive, but it seems like Blizzard may have been very accurate this time around.

Word on the internet is that Blizzard just lost a lawsuit against a bot maker in Europe, and that they were sitting on this information and waiting for the verdict of the trial before making a move. So, they've had this list of accounts for easily a few months, at least—This is, of course, just a rumor.

I do find it interesting that they're only handing out 6-month/72-hour bans for something that used to end up in a permanent ban. I guess one might assume that they fear of permanently losing more accounts after the large drop-off of subscribers in the first quarter. /shrug Either way, I just started up four new temp accounts last night to finish up an old RaF from months prior, so I added some active subscription numbers to the pool. :)

[omegared]

GnomeSequencer isnt the problem then?

[MiRai]

GnomeSequencer isnt the problem then?
Blizzard doesn't ban for add-ons because they run in Blizzard's approved sandbox. If an add-on does something that Blizzard doesn't like, then they break the add-on by altering or disabling the functions that said add-on rely on.

Just like how Blizzard didn't ban anyone for comma-based timing macros in Wrath, "WoWLazyMacros" in Cataclysm or MoP, AVR in Wrath, or whatever other add-ons/functions have been disabled without anyone receiving a single ban—If Blizzard doesn't like what GnomeSequencer does, then they'll break it.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something wonderful has happened."

Blizzard: Knock knock!
Botter: Who's there?
Blizzard: Not you for six months!
This has been good for quite a few laughs.

[Fat Tire]

I feel the law of unintended consequences for blizzard.

It only costs 5-8 bucks for battlechest, anytime of the year on G2A.com, just for just one example. Another 45 gains you a 90 and very little time investment in lvling(since it botted) gains you a lvl 100.

With that said the majority of botters used program/plugins as auto combat rotations bot which is harmless in it of itself. The code needed for just this part in general is much less intrusive.

The players who have taken the small amount of time to code their own combat routines have not been banned to my knowledge. I am not saying none of them, but the ones I know havent, including myself. I am not a coder at all by nature however it was pretty easy to find the all material needed for wow out there on the internet.

It seem that only the ones who using this particular program gateway were banned which apparently blizzard can now see on their machines in which in the previous five years they couldnt.

I feel that some of the lazy botters who just installed this particular program and then just added their choice of plugins will learn to write/modify .lua code themselves. Making it a hell of alot harder for blizzard and time unconducive.

[candlebox]

I miss all you douche bags btw. No homo or anything.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I feel the law of unintended consequences for blizzard.Do tell.

[Fat Tire]

Do tell.

Re-read my last sentence. Just because there was a banning of accounts doesnt mean botters are gone. It takes very little to be back up and running. There are 4-5 other programs that will produce the same result as this particular program that was targeted. However, most are just waiting for this particular program to be back up and undetectable again.

For some they will adapt and learn to write their own scripts understanding that they dont want to be reliant on auth server with a cool Ui. In turn making it much harder for blizzard to catch botters individually rather than a mass banning targeting a particular program.

By just playing around with profiles I learned alot by accident. Hell after a while(months) of playing around I found that I didnt even need isboxer anymore.

[EaTCarbS]

A more effective approach would be to address the game mechanics that encourage people to bot in the first place.

[Fat Tire]

A more effective approach would be to address the game mechanics that encourage people to bot in the first place.

Couldnt agree more.

[EaTCarbS]

Couldnt agree more.

Of course, the problem with it is that WoW is a game designed to be a grind. The grind is how they get people to keep subscribing month after month. They will never actually address the true problem because its what lines their pockets. Bots are only a symptom.

[luxlunae]

Zero had an interesting post about the ban wave:

http://abuseoftheeconomy.com/2015/05/14/blizz-finally-used-the-nuclear-option/

His hypothesis was that this was a shot across the bow at the bot program because they make their money selling botting and blizzard didn't like when a court case last week did not go their way. Interesting read either way.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Zero had an interesting post about the ban wave:

http://abuseoftheeconomy.com/2015/05/14/blizz-finally-used-the-nuclear-option/

His hypothesis was that this was a shot across the bow at the bot program because they make their money selling botting and blizzard didn't like when a court case last week did not go their way. Interesting read either way.

Considering some of the curiously bittervet paragraphs, logical fallacies and charts that don't match actual data, I'm still trying to figure out what the point of that article was.

[JohnGabriel]

This is kindof just a weak rehash of what everyone already knows:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/05/15/blizzard-hands-out-bans-to-more-than-100000-world-warcraft-players/

[zenga]

A more effective approach would be to address the game mechanics that encourage people to bot in the first place.

I don't buy that, you make it sounds as if there is just 1 big common reason why people bot. At the start of this expansion the most effective way to get full honor gear was to afk 4 hours in Ashran, yet battlegrounds were still filled with bots. It basically doesn't matter how much you reduce the grind, hell even completely remove it, people will always look for shortcuts in videogames, people will always try to get an edge in videogames. That has happened in every single videogame I've played.


Re-read my last sentence. Just because there was a banning of accounts doesnt mean botters are gone. It takes very little to be back up and running. There are 4-5 other programs that will produce the same result as this particular program that was targeted. However, most are just waiting for this particular program to be back up and undetectable again.

For some they will adapt and learn to write their own scripts understanding that they dont want to be reliant on auth server with a cool Ui. In turn making it much harder for blizzard to catch botters individually rather than a mass banning targeting a particular program.

By just playing around with profiles I learned alot by accident. Hell after a while(months) of playing around I found that I didnt even need isboxer anymore.
Does it really matter that much that not all the bots will be gone? I mean if you do a random WsG and instead of 5 bots on your team you only have 1 or 2 now, then I'd argue that the overall playing experience has increased for the average player.

[Fat Tire]

Does it really matter that much that not all the bots will be gone? I mean if you do a random WsG and instead of 5 bots on your team you only have 1 or 2 now, then I'd argue that the overall playing experience has increased for the average player.

I cant speak with any knowledge regarding afk-bg/ashran botting.

To me it would make more sense to afk bot skirmishes for pvp gearing, but that is just me.

My posts were directed towards the combat/healing/cc rotations which are automated and movement/targeting is manual.

[zenga]

I cant speak with any knowledge regarding afk-bg/ashran botting.

To me it would make more sense to afk bot skirmishes for pvp gearing, but that is just me.

My posts were directed towards the combat/healing/cc rotations which are automated and movement/targeting is manual.

Then I must have completely missed the point you were making. I read it as:
- far from all botters are gone
- its easy to get up and running again
- therefore it will be harder for blizzard to catch them in the future

And I was always under the impression most people bot either to make the grinds easier (be it honor points, leveling, weekly lft for a legendary quest chain, repetitive tasks such as the garrison, ...), to make a profit (gold farming) or for a direct competitive advantage (e.g. auto kick or pre-cloack stuff in arena).

I fail to understand why someone - unless physically disabled - would want the combat mechanics to be automated, since they are so simple to begin with.

[Mokoi]

I fail to understand why someone - unless physically disabled - would want the combat mechanics to be automated, since they are so simple to begin with.

Coming from the community who continually strives to have their combat mechanics "automated" to the extent that Blizzard allows using ISboxer and macros, FCFS setups, etc. There's always benefit in removing choice where none needs to be made. Why hit 5 buttons when 1 will do? Well, in the case of botters why hit 1 button when I can focus on my positioning, and the bot will take care of my rotation fairly well without my input. It's the last step in the "making life easier" category of WoW, and it happens to be against the EULA.

[MiRai]

Coming from the community who continually strives to have their combat mechanics "automated" to the extent that Blizzard allows using ISboxer and macros, FCFS setups, etc. There's always benefit in removing choice where none needs to be made. Why hit 5 buttons when 1 will do? Well, in the case of botters why hit 1 button when I can focus on my positioning, and the bot will take care of my rotation fairly well without my input. It's the last step in the "making life easier" category of WoW, and it happens to be against the EULA.
I agree, and I disagree, because as much as I do like to create mindless rotations for simple tasks, I love to try and expand upon my overall control of each character/class... such as CC, interrupts, procs, movement, and whatever else they have that is useful. I try add in things everywhere I can with keyboard binds, mouse buttons, click bars, or VFX—Hell, I don't even use JAMBA and that automates all kinds of things for a multiboxer.

I'd say that botting, for some people, is all about the setup, and not really about removing the tediousness from the game (although it is a side effect of such a playstyle). If I was to ever run a bot, it'd be about trying to make the smartest, most "human" bot I could, and not to blend in (because that's easy), but just as a personal goal/achievement.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My posts were directed towards the combat/healing/cc rotations which are automated and movement/targeting is manual.
OK, with that in mind, can you find no case where artificially inflating your apparent competence/effectiveness might push out other folks that are competing for the relatively small number of slots in high-end raiding? Or skew the progression speed and thus "obsolete" content prematurely?

Further, what effect do you suppose CR automation would have on the data that Blizzard uses to balance (lol...I know, bear with me) encounters?

[Fat Tire]

OK, with that in mind, can you find no case where artificially inflating your apparent competence/effectiveness might push out other folks that are competing for the relatively small number of slots in high-end raiding? Or skew the progression speed and thus "obsolete" content prematurely?

Further, what effect do you suppose CR automation would have on the data that Blizzard uses to balance (lol...I know, bear with me) encounters?


My in-game morality aside, well because I have none. Botting is not against the law.

One could argue, however, that in high-end raiding perfect dps rotations are a must and if you are not performing top 100 then you will sit out for someone else. Some of the mechanics of some of the fights have become more difficult for the avg player. May not be a problem for the teen on adderall or the cs;go pro, but in general the playerbase has gotten older and less twitchy. By having a program perform a top 100 dps for you it relieves the stress of performance and being a drag on the raid team. One could see the appeal of a program that does this aspect for you. The program that was targeted was pretty unknown up until a year ago and then exploded in users, I wonder why.

Why would I care how blizzards balances encounters based on dps if I am always doing top 50-100 dps. Its the mechanics of the fight that I believe blizzard balances around anymore.

Listen I understand that its against the eula. All the people bitching about losing their accounts are the ones who valued their accounts. However, once they disassociate themselves from their characters of having any value other than entertainment value, because the value of time has been removed they will be free.

Well, the only way I can explain it is when you first learn how to mutibox. Most mutiboxers cant or wont play any other way. Same with botting.

[ebony]

Am staying out this topic as i feel bots should be banned from wow av had some really good bg's the tonight and we was talking :O talking in a MMO who would think of it.

i found this on the eu forums

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/14628723818#8

has a nice blue post on it

[Ughmahedhurtz]

INCOMING WALL OF TEXT! RUN FER YER LIFEZ!1!


My in-game morality aside, well because I have none. Botting is not against the law.

One could argue, however, that in high-end raiding perfect dps rotations are a must and if you are not performing top 100 then you will sit out for someone else. Some of the mechanics of some of the fights have become more difficult for the avg player. May not be a problem for the teen on adderall or the cs;go pro, but in general the playerbase has gotten older and less twitchy. By having a program perform a top 100 dps for you it relieves the stress of performance and being a drag on the raid team. One could see the appeal of a program that does this aspect for you. The program that was targeted was pretty unknown up until a year ago and then exploded in users, I wonder why.

Why would I care how blizzards balances encounters based on dps if I am always doing top 50-100 dps. Its the mechanics of the fight that I believe blizzard balances around anymore.

Listen I understand that its against the eula. All the people bitching about losing their accounts are the ones who valued their accounts. However, once they disassociate themselves from their characters of having any value other than entertainment value, because the value of time has been removed they will be free.

Well, the only way I can explain it is when you first learn how to mutibox. Most mutiboxers cant or wont play any other way. Same with botting.

First, I don't recall anyone arguing that botting is against the law. EULA/TOS are a completely different concept. I also won't argue about twitchiness, stress, or how terribly depressing or not some of the grinds are; having budding carpal tunnel issues, I'm intimately familiar with how certain things are literally painful. Also, I understand the concepts of why people bot. If I could do it for certain tedious things without risking my accounts, I absolutely would.

My particular point is much more narrow in scope and is two-fold:



Blizzard has repeatedly alluded to the use of Big Data in balancing things -- their internal WorldOfRaids/WorldOfLogs/etc. charts, if you will. That data is a big factor in tuning encounters and making raids/instances harder or easier or nerfing/buffing boss mechanics. Now, take a raid of people actually, you know, playing their characters; we'll call them Raid A. They've spent some time crafting up macros but they still have to remember which buttons to push, when to push them, and be careful about not pressing the wrong button at a critical point in a fight. We also have Raid B, in which two of the healers, one of the MTs and a third of the DPS are running CR/heal-priority/interrupt bots. The only way they make mistakes is if they get LoS'd or out-ranged and the spell just flat fails. So, when Blizzard does the math on how these encounters run and considers tuning things, how much of an impact do you suspect automated/perfect play has on their equations? Do you think it is significant enough to skew Blizzard's perception of the difficulty of encounters in areas where bots are prevalent?
Another big feedback mechanism is raid members complaining (sometimes vociferously) about certain mechanics being stupidly difficult or /yawn-inducing. If some percentage of the raids completes the encounters because of perfect timing of heals/interrupts due to bot scripts and they basically pooh-pooh everyone else with "lol u guyz suck, lern-2-raid-derp," how would you expect Blizzard to treat those feedback threads?


With the above two in mind and with bots being as prevalent as they apparently are in top-end raiding (had lunch with a friend that raids and the results of his last few days (even in LFR) have been pretty freaking hilarious) then I suggest they are significant enough to warp perceptions and impact the balancing/tuning process to the detriment of non-botting players. At some point, sure, it all sorta gets lost in the overgearing but for at least some amount of time I think it has a deleterious effect on the game.

As someone that doesn't raid, I don't have a dog in this hunt. To say that botting is absolutely expected because of deficiencies and it has no effect and it's all Blizzard's fault anyway, etc. is I think being a tad disingenuous. If the game sucks so hard that you're willing to bot what is supposed to be the best parts of it, I wonder why people even still play it; and yes, I realize it's not an all-or-nothing proposition.

[Fat Tire]

INCOMING WALL OF TEXT! RUN FER YER LIFEZ!1!


Not sure if you just want my opinion or are trying to slow walk me to some sort of epiphany, but if its the latter I will pass. Maybe its just me, but your post has a developer quality to it.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Not sure if you just want my opinion

majority of botters used program/plugins as auto combat rotations bot which is harmless

Just trying to find out why you think CR botting is harmless.

[Fat Tire]

Just trying to find out why you think CR botting is harmless.

I shouldnt have used the word "harmless" since I have no direct evidence to support that claim, if it is or isnt is really irrelevant to me.

[harvan]

now we need to make a petition to get /follow back.if its true that bots are calling it quits then they should reenable it?

Please do not mention bots by name; this forum has no desire to advertise for them.
-MiRai

[Ughmahedhurtz]

now we need to make a petition to get /follow back.if its true that bots are calling it quits then they should reenable it?
Where'd you get that "bots are calling it quits?" This arms race has been going on for a decade in this game alone, and has existed in every MMO since the beginning. :p

[harvan]

Where'd you get that "bots are calling it quits?" This arms race has been going on for a decade in this game alone, and has existed in every MMO since the beginning. :p
not all bts but this is the second big bt company that has ended bc of blizzard.

Mod Edit - Do not post links to bot discussions here. We do not give free traffic to bot companies. - Khatovar

[zenga]

not all bts but this is the second big bt company that has ended bc of blizzard.

It took me 2 clicks to read an official announcement from the same company stating that:
- they will soon release a new client
- they have no clue if/how blizzard detected their bot, they suspect blizzard installed malware
- they say less than 100k users got banned, cause their bot never had more than 100k users to begin with

[harvan]

well even if there not gone we should look at doing a petition to see if we can get /follow back in since there doing something about bts.

[EaTCarbS]

well even if there not gone we should look at doing a petition to see if we can get /follow back in since there doing something about bts.

let us know how that goes :D :D:D:D:D

[zenga]

well even if there not gone we should look at doing a petition to see if we can get /follow back in since there doing something about bts.

Petitions are absolutely pointless and brainless. Solid arguments & reasoning is what matters to Blizzard.

[ebony]

well even if there not gone we should look at doing a petition to see if we can get /follow back in since there doing something about bts.

follow was removed because of a very simple bot, if they was to add it back in then the simple bots would come back. i would stay out of it. am sure they add it back if they feel it needs to be back in the game but i think you find they like us out of bgs "it maybe fun for the boxers but its not fun for the player thats at the other end"

This is the internet now full of cry babys

[Shania]

I feel the law of unintended consequences for blizzard.

It only costs 5-8 bucks for battlechest, anytime of the year on G2A.com, just for just one example. Another 45 gains you a 90 and very little time investment in lvling(since it botted) gains you a lvl 100.

With that said the majority of botters used program/plugins as auto combat rotations bot which is harmless in it of itself. The code needed for just this part in general is much less intrusive.

The players who have taken the small amount of time to code their own combat routines have not been banned to my knowledge. I am not saying none of them, but the ones I know havent, including myself. I am not a coder at all by nature however it was pretty easy to find the all material needed for wow out there on the internet.

It seem that only the ones who using this particular program gateway were banned which apparently blizzard can now see on their machines in which in the previous five years they couldnt.

I feel that some of the lazy botters who just installed this particular program and then just added their choice of plugins will learn to write/modify .lua code themselves. Making it a hell of alot harder for blizzard and time unconducive.


The players who have taken the small amount of time to code their own combat routines have not been banned to my knowledge. I am not saying none of them, but the ones I know havent, including myself.

including yourself ?

So your a botter ?

[candlebox]

Nope he is still in storm shield on Darkspear. super lame