I have not read every page of this thread. If I was a betting man I would say boxers are being reported by cry babies in the bg's and arenas. You get enough of them reporting you it will draw attention.
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I have not read every page of this thread. If I was a betting man I would say boxers are being reported by cry babies in the bg's and arenas. You get enough of them reporting you it will draw attention.
That seems to be the consensus.
Blizzard's software seems to give suspensions, triggered by the amount of reports.
Sorry to be the dick, but it's a consensus purely based on speculation that holds no ground whatsoever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ualaa
Rephrase then; that's the best theory, based on available data.
Didn't a lot of people get in their GM responses and emails that they had been reported inactive?? That leads me to believe that it is related to being reported afk by other players. And people do report boxers afk a lot to try and get rid of them. They don't report afk for bots as much as they report afk to try and get rid of nubs/people they dont like.
Considering the bans are not specifically ISBoxer users ("I only used Keyclone and Jamba!"), I would say it has nothing to do with the 2 step. Also, probably fewer people use "the 2 step" method than you realize ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Chumbucket
People are getting reported AFK or whatever in the battlegrounds, some many times, and this is pretty obviously related to the suspensions/bans. (Not to mention the number of people who have been specifically told by Blizzard that this is related.) Since this is obviously a new thing with people actually getting suspended/banned automatically (I imagine this whole problem is caused by switching AFK reports to automatic review instead of manual review), Blizzard is probably still working on the algorithms that try to decide who is a botter, who is afk, and who is legit. There's supposedly some threshold where you need to attack something in x amount of time, or at least that was the rumor from before this debacle. It's also possible that permanently being on auto-follow might flag you, and so on.
I imagine that AFK reports might be permanent on your accounts, so people who have been doing BGs for a while might be more at risk than someone just starting. I also imagine that when the GMs review your account after you complain about your account getting banned for multiboxing, they might clear out existing AFK reports from your account. But anyone playing in the BGs can still use the AFK report tool if they don't like you, I don't think I see them making it impossible to do that to someone just because it's a multiboxer.
Part of the problem with multiboxers in BGs is, first of all, that some people are bad multiboxers. Say you run 5 and one's a healer, if you decide not to use him to heal then your healer might get reported as AFK... Say your configuration is busted and only one of your guys (e.g. the "main" one) is actually attacking, then 4 of your guys might get reported as AFK. Say one of your guys dies and ends up in a graveyard at the other side of the map, if you don't run him back toward your team, he might get reported as AFK. These are all equivalent to someone playing a character in the BG, and not doing anything, and your teammates may or may not like you...
With that said, I don't specifically know and if I did specifically know they would probably not let me spill any details. These are educated guesses. As always, be a Good Citizen (tm) and they have no reason to want to ban you.
I believe there is another factor and that is SoR accounts. These accounts are being sold from 5-10 dollars each and then being used to bot in huge numbers sometimes by a single person for gold/account selling. There is a rumor that blizz is watching these accounts more and has set the threshold lower.
I am not sure if anyone here is aware how advanced botting has become. The dps routines,way point configs, macro set up and the variables used in combat including cc is amazing, people bot PvE more than pvp. If someone didnt know any better and saw a person muti boxing 4 or 4 botted characters on follow of the same class I am willing to wager they wouldnt know the difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zenga
Didn't work out that way. People didn't just start reporting multiboxers. They've been doing so since multiboxers existed.
What Lax stated is what I'm talking about. The review of the accounts got moved to some automated system that runs a detection algorithm and that is what is suspending people. It isn't a person. A person investigating would see my team with like names and all mogged gear and laugh it off. Bans and suspensions used to work off of a cycle. Now it seems like the suspensions are all over the place. They definitely automated this part. Now what they automated is unknown. Theoretically it could be they are tracking how often /follow is used, or they could be tracking proximity to other players. Or they could quite simply be looking for X number of /reports. That seems rather simple but it wouldn't surprise me considering the randomness everyone is seeing with it. Some people aren't suspended for weeks while others go a day or two. Something like that in my mind points clearly to the abuse of the /report tool.
Lets think of it this way. Most of us here use Isboxer. Most of us have toons with same names and mogged gear, or so I assume. I'm also sure that some of us are running same class squads too which is pretty obvious that they are chaining GCDs and movement. We aren't all that different from one another so, logically, if the automated detection system bans a player for X number of offenses, and each of us perform X number of offenses similarly we should all be getting the same amount of suspensions. We aren't. So it has to be more reliant on the /report part of it than the automated detection system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Tire
They would because botting is not what multiboxing is today. Multiboxing is much less fluid and appears to the average WoW player as multiboxing. Botting itself is hardly detectable by the eye anymore. Unless the BG is loaded with them. They know when they see multiboxers. Hence the /spit, 'reported' messages and all the other tripe we get from them. They wouldn't bother replying if it were a bot.
I kinda thought maybe the proximity thing and /follow was an issue because the way the bots work today is they do all their normal routines but they follow someone around the map. So there is that proximity thing and the /follow thing most likely as well. I haven't looked at the newer bots but knowing what bots could do back in EQ1, I'd say they are quite advanced now.
I didn't get any suspension/ban.
Isboxer, jamba with strobe follow, no SoR, all same battlenet.
One account is old, others where created when MOP launch.
You have to give us more than that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baltyre
1. What are you doing? Dungeons, BGs or both?
2. What level are these toons?
3. How often do you interact with other players? Keep in mind the ratios. Not everyone complains or /reports, so the more people you interact with on a daily basis the higher your odds of being reported.
FYI I've not been suspended on any of my toons.
I multibox no Battlegrounds.
I multibox 5 man dungeons on a 5 man team.
I quest open world 5 man.
I sometimes stand in cities figuring out what I'm going to do next. Sometimes I get people who ask questions and some who report, but not many.
Early last year was the last time I 5 boxed any battlegrounds and the complaints were staggering. Even if we were winning and I was top heals and top DPS, people were reporting me. People on my own team, who would vote kick half the squad holding down a node and killing zerg trains.
1. Outdoor, BG, dungeons
2. 90
3. Lots, got a rage wisp per 2/3 days usually but my team is not named all the same way, so i get less report even if on small BG, multibox are obvious.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baltyre
I suspect most /report are done from the map, not up close. So your names may be throwing them off a bit.
It may also be worth mentioning I also run all 5 from the same battle net account. Maybe that has something to do with it?
I'm playing on Taiwan server. Currently I got 10 (5 dks, 5 shamans) Lv90 toons. I might to do some BG when I get enough armors for toons. And let see is whether the same situation as US/EU server.
To be honest, i'm a nice guy in WOW. I never take advantage of that because I know I play as a troop.
I changed my 4 shams to enh, an started farming honor gear this week, and I've got a decent chunk of gear 4 boxing, and had 0 issues with bans suspensions.
I've had a decent amount of QQ when we'd lose a WSG or something, and still nothing.
My accounts are all also pre-BC accounts, I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
Haven't been banned/suspended yet.
* 1 very old account (since launch)
* 4 SoR Accounts with 85 Shaman and a Mage
* First team: 30ish arms warrior + 4 disc priests
* Seconds team: 85 Pally + Mage + 3 Shaman
* Third team: ~70 1x Disc Priest + 4x Blood DK
* Fourth Team: 4x Retribution pally (50 ish)
With the first 3 teams I solely run instances. Sometimes I camp in IF. With the fourth team I quest in the outside world, I do get ganked a lot on those pallies, and I'll move into instances as soon as they hit level 60 (got another healer waiting for them.)
Sometimes people whisper me, either with interest, or to shout at me for cheating. In the latter case I suggest to them that they report me for cheating, instead of grieving me, and then /ignore them.
No battlegrounds.
I usually run a lot of AVs with 8 hunters and 2 druids.
update: I said before, I did tons and tons World pvp on my shamans, accounts are almost year 9 months old, after patch same, tons of world pvp, rage whispers, reports, etc... today i did Twin peaks on my ten accounts- no suspension.... how i Q up for 10 man bg? old school way.
isboxer/jamba, and few small addons
I was trying to use lua code to chain follow my guys (i.e. a long line of 27 guys each following the one in front of him) and read about protected code, then about how to crack protected code, then about bots, then about Blizzard sueing the Bot company and then:
So we can see why Blizzard is cracking down on bots; sadly it seems there is not a lot they can do as far as programing wow goes to stop botting software, hopefully they will win their court action but that seems a tough road also. So their only recourse seems to ban particular uses who exhibit "bot behavior" .....Quote:
Blizz won't be able to shut down this bot company.
The bot company has nothing to do with blizzard, literally. They wrote software that does stuff to things that are currently loaded in memory, that's it.
They don't touch your control inputs or mouse placement, its all done by memory manipulation. Thats the reason they designed it that way, because they knew they couldn't get shut down, also the reason they moved their company to germany.
Tbh I don't mind bots, they make all the crap on the AH a lot cheaper for me.
Edit: And they aren't making profit off blizzard, if you say that then your saying the people using high end video cards in raiding content to get sponsors that pay them money to play the game are using high end video cards to make a profit off the game.
On the good news front it seems the bot company isnt doing much to support their product due to the pending litigation, instead putting resources into other games instead of wow, to the dismay of their users lol ..
If they knew that their method couldn't be shut down, why would they move their company to Germany? :oQuote:
They don't touch your control inputs or mouse placement, its all done by memory manipulation. Thats the reason they designed it that way, because they knew they couldn't get shut down, also the reason they moved their company to germany.
Lawyers
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tonuss
I don't know, Glider was shut down and it was an American bot. Also Pirox bot got shut down but it's developers were from Germany I think.
I read somewhere Pirox didn't use the memory reading method the current bot(s) in question does, meaning Pirox interacted with the game in a different way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Santa
Also I can't see how these suspensions (if follow/afk related) can be related to botting since they don't use the follow system, atleast not the ones I've seen in BGs recently?
Ok, i got my temp ban too.
I can't reproduce my ticket here because it's in french but i contested my ban, they reply that the suspension was not going to be removed.
I send an other ticket, asking for more information and the gm tell me that multiboxing is ok but it seems that one of my character was not participing activly in some battlegrounds.
The character who was ban was on a tank half-pve spec (i was thinking that keep one char to tank the boss was a nice move) so it's probable that he get a lot less HK than the others.
So maybe the auto-ban is a system using not only the afk report but the performance of the character.
Maybe that a character always on follow, with lot of report and bad hk ratio trigger a detection routine.
I've given up on boxing BGs. I don't want to lose my accounts. At some point I will get bored and cancel them all.
I dont think so, there will always be some people boxing or solo with less to 0 HK kils, depending what your doing in BG I guess.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baltyre
What I find disturbing is boxers are getting suspended banned in BGS yet the tonne of bots are not.
WE had a guildie who raided with us in core raid and also was botting, 16 to 20 hrs per day literally, after raid, he would log off, and then log back on, and always never left dreadwastes it was brought up in vent if he is botting, due too the 16-20+ hrs per day in dreadwastes and never a word from him in guild chat, psts etc, other then verbally in vent on raid nights, he admitted he was botting, explained what he was using, what he was doing and did not care if he gets banned as it barely happens and been doing for x amount of time.
After raid, we had a discussion, problem was we are on a dead, small realm, person in question is a healer/dps os, you really cannot recruit anyone, so if we got rid of him, raid is over... numerous tickets were sent in by core raid members, weeks pass, he is still botting, one GM explains they usually mass ban bots, and this takes quite some time to do, occur, well wonderful, really... its an evil vicious cycle truely.
My partner had enough as had I, and we basically got rid of the shammy who was botting from the guild, which now leaves us with no raid for days, none for unknown period as we cannot pug fill or recruit lol.
So going to xfer our mains and a few others from core are coming with us, to a more populated realm, medium, not excessively high like we were on prior too raid.
My boxers will remain on the low pop realm, which I farm silver elites like there is no tomorrow and will with new ones in 5.2 but solo do heroic dungeons, best as I can... I wanted too BG come 5.2 but with these kind of threads I dont think I will bother either.
it just is disturbing too see this thread when botters in BGS, farm bots and whatever kind of bots are plagued and in mass forces and it takes forever for any to be banned and is mostly done in so called masses, which does no good as they are back a week later for months on end before the cycle occurs again, yet legit players, boxers cop a suspension in a BG.
Absolutely stupid.
yeah I'd refrain from BGs for now. Too dangerous and I don't think GMs are sympathetic towards boxers.
Maybe Gms are that way, however it is wrong, and unfair, to legit multi-boxers/players, especially when they do near nothing against bots, who are the real problem... it makes no sense. Boxing is allowed, we have seen alot of blue posts on this, confirming time and time again over the years, yet botting of course and rightfully is against the rules, but who is being suspended here, bots or legit boxer ?Quote:
Originally Posted by heyaz
Bots and people not participating, like watching tv and hitting jump, are getting hit as well. They aren't being sympathetic to muliboxers and I have some ideas as to why.
Anyone else think they'll explicitly ban multiboxing from Titan and this is them gearing up to that?Quote:
Originally Posted by heyaz
Recently, I've been taking a look at other online games.
In particular, the Free-to-Play games.
I could see myself spending a month or two, in Everquest.
Just to visit a world that I played in for six or seven years.
Not sure if I'd want to stay there or not.
It would depend on how the gameplay goes, and if the current suspensions for boxing in battlegrounds persists.
Then again, there are a lot of other games to experiment with too.
And there is finishing the RAF (two more phases) and leveling teams in Warcaft; but that has less appeal currently, due to the suspensions for boxing in what I'm primarily interested in... the large scale battleground pvp.
Finally had my fill of Warhammer online. See that MoP is at $20 in the blizzard store. Are these bans still going on or has this been resolved? Will I be able to queue my 5 man team into bgs together?
thanks for any updates at where things stand!
I can't say for certain, but it's been a month since this thread was bumped prior to your post, my guess is that if people were still getting banned they would still be complaining.Quote:
Originally Posted by DMan
I don't think it's possible that multiboxers stopped doing battlegrounds entirely, there's new multiboxers every day and certainly not everyone has even heard of a possibility of getting banned from battlegrounds...
My guess is either that they changed some parameters on their end in a server update and that it's harder to get automatically banned by this system, or that they turned the automatic bans back off for now.
Over the past week or so a ton of players have reported getting banned for botting in BG's (even on that particular bot it's forum). Most seem to be banned after using one of the so called public profiles. A profile is a certain route that a bot takes to run around in a BG. Hence why you could see certain bot trains in random bg's, people using the same profile. Apparently one can make their own profile, and it doesn't look like those 'players' got banned who kept their profile private. So it was not really the bot that got detected, but rather the bot behaviour that triggered the banwave.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lax
By the looks of it blizzard implemented a detection tool that tracks routes that characters take in random battlegrounds, and compare those routes to other players. What happened with all the boxers getting banned, and the fact that some main toons/leaders did not get the ban, is imo that they did not have enough data yet to compare. The system detected multiple toons taking the same route while it was in fact a multiboxer, and given their sample size not being big enough, the system flagged them as botters. Now that their is plenty of data available, it looks like the false positive detections for boxers disappeared.
Thanks for the heads up!
Had 4 friends get banned. From what I've been told by a friend inside the company GMs are actually watching players in bgs once a flag comes up that they are "botting" from their internal detection system (not player reports) and taking actions based on that since there were more false positives than just for boxers, if it is your first offense you receive a 72 hour ban and a final warning and if you have ANY strikes on your account otherwise you get perma banned.Quote:
Originally Posted by zenga
They've also implemented a new anti-botting features for gathering as well.
Thank god.
But yes, the bans shouldn't occur as often anymore if at all simply because you are boxing in bgs. You should only be banned if a GM doesn't know much about boxing but I've been told that they have made it clear if someone isn't sure to go to their supervisor before taking action.
Thanks for the info, almost enough to make me reactivate, to bad sc2 in < a month.
I'm dropping out of years of lurking here to share my experience. I got 3 hour suspensions on two characters back in the end of Jan. They came after the two characters got AFK'd from an AB. There was a player in it spamming for other players to report mine AFK because I was botting. I said in the game chat that I was multiboxing which was legal, but he kept it up. I reported him for griefing / harassing. About an hour later the suspensions hit on the two characters. I appealed them, saying I was multiboxing, playing by the rules. I also told about the harassing player, saying that his behavior shouldn't be allowed. I asked that they remove the suspensions and flag my account as being a multiboxer so that I wouldn't be misidentified in the future. The suspensions were dropped (although way after the 3 hours were up), their reply didn't really say anything about the reason, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shodokan
I continued playing BG's heavily after that. A couple of weeks later, in AV, I got a message on my screen for a short time "frozen". I didn't think much of it, it was very short. A couple of minutes later I get a message up near the mini map saying a GM wanted to talk with me (the first time ever in the game for me). I think "Oh shoot, here it comes", I click it to talk to him. The conversation was this:
GM: I just wanted to apologize about randomly freezing you. I was on a bot hunt and accidentally targeted you. >.<
Me: I'm multiboxing.
Me: Thank you for asking rather then assuming we were bots.
GM: You're welcome. Have fun!
So, it looks to me like GM's may be looking for bots live in the game, but multiboxing isn't the issue. I've played BG's heavily since then and I haven't had another problem. Knock on wood.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldboxer
I think it's much better if GM use "frozen" or related method to identify whether player is BOT or multiboxer rather than ingame automatic system.
Anyway, it's good experience sharing~ :)
Thanks for the update. I'm still a bit butt hurt over the whole suspension ugliness but this is encouraging news. I still have several suspensions on my toons record from back in December that I hope I will be able to get removed as I did appeal but was denied.
My strange story for the day. After saying the other day that I wasn't getting suspensions while playing BG's heavily, knock on wood, I forgot to knock on wood and got a 72 hour suspension last night for "Unapproved Third Party Software". I use nothing out of the ordinary, so I appealed it, listing all the software that I had running on my machine while I was playing yesterday. I sent in the appeal at 4:47 PM, the ticket said 24 to 48 hour response time. I called customer support on the phone, they said they only deal with refund issues and that kind of thing. At 5:27 PM I get a response on the ticket saying "An additional review of the previously communicated action taken against the World of Warcraft account ... has been completed. Unfortunately, we have confirmed our initial findings. The account action will not be reversed or amended." I appeal it again, trying to get them to at least tell me the software involved. At 5:46 PM I get the reply to that. "After an additional thorough review of the action taken against this account, we regret to inform you that we have arrived at the same conclusion and the account action will not be removed under any circumstances."
I did the live chat thing, I pay 3 months at a time, I wanted to see if I could get refunds for what I prepaid. The rep said I could on some, not on others. I tried to get some details on the reasons from her, or a higher level contact, she gave me a management level customer service reps email. No details though.
At 6:37 PM I put in another ticket, asking again what program I was using, what could it hurt to tell me, I don't want to use it again. Reply at 6:42 PM: "As per our last contact, this issue has already been reviewed multiple times by our representatives, and it is now considered closed. No further dicussions (sic) or review of it shall occur."
At 6:46 PM I do another ticket asking if they could furnish me with the name of a management level contact in account management. At 7:42 PM I get this reply: "Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding the World of Warcraft account you are using. We understand your point of view and have thoroughly reviewed this issue. As a result, the account action has been removed from the account and all involved parties have been addressed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused." And I could log into the account.
I'm saying "What the f**k??" Do they think I did something wrong or not? On the one hand I want to do a ticket asking them if removing the suspension means they concluded that I was legal, on the other hand I don't want to stir it up again.