WoW suspends bots, does not ban them

This was a post about a ban wave that happened about a week ago, and the blue response.

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There's some really interesting sociological hocus pocus behind it, but from what I understand, the TLDR is that if a botter gets permabanned, they'll often just buy a new account and go right back to botting. However, if we only suspend them -- meaning, they'll get their account back later -- they're less likely to buy a new one. Furthermore, once they do get their account back, they're EXTREMELY unlikely to bot again.

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Seems like they're working on stopping the casual players who may have been tempted to try out a bot. I doubt that will do much against the professional bot, who will both create a new account and be able to use the old one again in 6 months.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...6375?page=2#24

First, full disclosure. I was once upon a time a botter, I botted in Vanilla and BC. Botting actually led me back to boxing (I had literally dual boxed in EverQuest once upon a time). Perma bans didn't stop me from botting, and I'm sure they won't stop anyone from botting actually. Though temp banning likely would have.

It's a question of psychology, which Blizzard does pretty well for a gaming company. When you're perma banned you don't think, "Golly, I better straighten up and get right". More likely, you get angry, at Blizzard. And pick up a clean copy to start botting again, to spite them. Because human beings are the epitome of logical, smart creatures. Eventually however, I found I had a load of botted characters at max level and no way to play them all. So, I started looking into boxing. When RAF was released, I found I could have way more fun actually challenging myself and playing a whole group of characters rather than checking the bot every few hours to see if I'd looted anything worth selling.

He's not lying about the psychological hocus pocus, you feel that temp ban more intensely than you do a perma ban, you feel like you dodged a bullet and are more likely to stop because you don't want to risk what you almost lost. When you lose it outright, there's the indignation element, but there's also nothing to lose anymore (because it's already gone). Especially during those 75% of sale events. If it was all about the Benjamins, believe me they'd perma ban and watch a flood of new "cheap accounts" being activated.

It's an ultimately manipulative tactic, that will probably work better in the long run. Considering other changes they've made like the wow tokens for example, I can see them doing exactly what they want to do... stemming the tide, rather than stopping botting outright. Usually I'm pretty opposed to their psychological hijinks, but in this case I think they did the right thing.

OK, so the below is a copy straight from a Blue Post, which explains it exactly. Please note i did not change the player name to Jim, i just assume it was written about me before i discovered multiboxing.

So let me get this straight. You just want them to resub rather than banning players that are ruining the game? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding but to me that just seems like all blizzard cares about is cash flow.

Sorry, let me try to explain more clearly:

Take your average botter. Let's call him... Jim. Jim is an awful person who uses various scripts and/or third party programs to give himself an unfair advantage against other players. We don't like Jim. One day, Jim gets caught, and Blizzard takes action against his account.

Now say, hypothetically, that Jim's account gets permanently closed. Everything he had on that account is now gone forever, and he has no way of getting it back. Now, many players in this case would (and do) just stop playing, but not Jim. Jim decides he still wants to play World of Warcraft, so he buys a new account and starts over fresh. And since Jim's now starting from scratch, he decides he doesn't have much to lose, so he fires up his scripts and third party programs again.

Net result: Jim is still at it. If and when he gets caught again, he just buys another account, and continues to be an awful person.

However, if Jim only gets a temporary suspension, he knows he's getting his account back, so starting over from scratch sounds much less appealing. Jim likes his characters and wants to keep them, so he decides to just wait the suspension out. Once it ends, he really doesn't want to go through that whole ordeal again, so he decides not to risk botting again.

Net result: Jim is a decent guy who made some mistakes and learned from them. We're actually pretty okay with Jim now.

I'm obviously painting a rosy picture here (not everyone responds this way), but I'm just trying to illustrate why suspending accounts tends to result in fewer cheaters long-term than permabanning. Like I said, there's some really interesting psychological shenanigans involved (which are a bit above me, I'm afraid). That's my understanding of how all this works, though.

(Also, apologies to everyone named Jim who is not a filthy cheater. I'm sure you're all lovely.)

To be fair, the title of the thread is a bit misleading because Blizzard will eventually ban repeat offenders. :)

I feel like they've been getting more lax, giving people 6 month and 18 month slaps on the wrist. In a perfect world the method above would work, but I don't actually think that it'll actually deter anyone.

Serious botters will still bot.

Casual people who get tired of tedious actions like flipping omen cards or buying out bunches of auctions listed in stacks of ones (I have a btag friend who admits to using a click bot to do this and I can't really blame him). The later, Blizzard has started taking steps to reduce tedium with mass milling. They really need to improve the AH interface or make the remote AH app let you make more than 200 purchases a day as the remote AH interface is arguably better than the normal one.

cant afford to loose more customers.. They have lost over half their subscription base in one year.

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Originally Posted by sparvath

cant afford to loose more customers.. They have lost over half their subscription base in one year.

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Forgive me if this sounds haughty but your assertion has been disproved time and time again. I don't have the desire to dig up all the blue posts laughing at that argument but they are there. It's the exact same (inverted) argument the anti-boxer scrubs make: "They allow multiboxing because $$$$$ yo." /facepalm

(Also: lose*)

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Originally Posted by Zandrae

I feel like they've been getting more lax, giving people 6 month and 18 month slaps on the wrist. In a perfect world the method above would work, but I don't actually think that it'll actually deter anyone.

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Well, consider that if they temp ban people long enough to make it to the next expansion, those folks will probably buy that. Whereas permabans mean people would have to buy the battle chest first. They might also buy a whole new game, play it for the duration of the temp ban, then pay *again* to xfer characters back to the old account or the new one when the temp ban is up, and end up buying the expansion possibly twice! They have the historical data to analyze trends in those behaviors; I can't believe they would just arbitrarily decide to "get lax" on this without data to back it up. ;)

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Originally Posted by Zandrae

I feel like they've been getting more lax, giving people 6 month and 18 month slaps on the wrist. In a perfect world the method above would work, but I don't actually think that it'll actually deter anyone.

Serious botters will still bot.

Casual people who get tired of tedious actions like flipping omen cards or buying out bunches of auctions listed in stacks of ones (I have a btag friend who admits to using a click bot to do this and I can't really blame him). The later, Blizzard has started taking steps to reduce tedium with mass milling. They really need to improve the AH interface or make the remote AH app let you make more than 200 purchases a day as the remote AH interface is arguably better than the normal one.

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

Well, consider that if they temp ban people long enough to make it to the next expansion, those folks will probably buy that. Whereas permabans mean people would have to buy the battle chest first. They might also buy a whole new game, play it for the duration of the temp ban, then pay *again* to xfer characters back to the old account or the new one when the temp ban is up, and end up buying the expansion possibly twice! They have the historical data to analyze trends in those behaviors; I can't believe they would just arbitrarily decide to "get lax" on this without data to back it up. ;)

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To me a 6 month ban would be like a permaban, I'd just start over. That is just way too long of a time. Already start over at least once a year on a new server with a new team anyways. And I suppose once the 6 months is over I just transfer all the loot to my new account.

Hypothetical situation though as I have never been banned. Except in the blizzard forums does that count?