Massive Ban Wave

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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 ?