Unethical Gameplay?

[MiRai]

My source is people i know, who got banned for "3rd party software": they used to place a pen fixed to a fan rotating from side to side, the pen then pressed the spacebar, which was mapped to a macro. Other people used a ps2 controller with bluetooth, tapeing down a button. There are also other ways to make it work like this. Some also used devices like this to prevent going afk during the launch of a new expantion.

When a GM comes to investigate if you are botting or whatnot, they most likely have the ability to track it. Its similar to the combatlog, but includes jumping etc. If its non human behavior it is a "robot".

I'm sorry, but that is not a reliable source.

I could very easily say something like, "My cousin knows a guy who works on the Warden team, and he says that Warden doesn't do that." I just "one-upped" your source with my imaginary source, and you wouldn't have known that it was imaginary had I not said so. Do you see how unreliable that is?

If it wasnt able to be detected, every person would have just bought a "autofire" keyboard, taped down a key and called it the day.

What? If Blizzard states that X behavior is not allowed, why would you then think that if X behavior cannot be detected, that then everyone is going to engage in X behavior? This just isn't true, by any stretch of the imagination.

But no i dont have any official sources sadly.
Im sure there are others out there who know more.

I will accept a source from someone who is intimately familiar with Warden and what it does. If you can find a known bot author, or someone who really knows their shit, who has posted on a "reputable" botting site, I will accept their statement. I will not accept a family member, a friend, your neighbor's uncle, or some random dude from some random site on the internet who has only a handful of posts.

I might seem like I'm being hard on this, but you made your statement with such certainty, and I really dislike the spread of false information, even if you're helping deter people from engaging in unethical gameplay.

I do remember a bluepost though, regarding that such a keyboard could lead to a ban. It was years ago. Maybe we can find it somewhere.

But i belive pressing and holding down a button to spam ingame spells etc is automation.

Yes, any GM will tell you that auto-fire, loops, and automatic delays are against the game's rules, but all keyboard and mouse software, including the World of Warcraft branded mouse/keyboard from Steelseries, have this ability. Plenty of people engage in this type of behavior and see no repercussion, simply because Warden is not "tracking the milliseconds between each click."

Could Warden track that information? Sure, but it would never be 100% accurate. Do you think Blizzard wants to base their bans off of inaccurate results? Maybe. Who knows? Maybe when they want to track a certain account/character to build evidence against them, then they do turn on something like that. I don't have a reliable source to counter your unreliable source, except that I have known people who have engaged in that type of behavior, and they had never seen any action on their accounts because of it.

[Ritley]

The 4 spesific people i know, 2 irl nearby and 2 from wow, could have lied ofc. I cant garantee that what they told is the whole truth. I will try to dig a bit online later for the bluepost.

But i belive pressing and holding down a button to spam ingame spells etc is automation. They have stated before that 1 keypress and holding it down = max "1 action" allowed.

The problem is you and these acquaintances have no idea what alerted them to automated gameplay. They were away from the computer and couldn't react to any of the bot checks blizzard may have employed. They (and you) have no idea if it was because they didn't react to a teleport properly, didn't respond to whispers, the GM noticed that even though they moved the character the button/macro still kept firing but the character never reacted beyond that. Maybe the GM killed the character and the macro kept firing but the character never tried to res. A GM would be able to bot check without needing to use Warden or any other bot detection software. They could see your friends weren't at their computer just by looking at the characters in game. Claiming you know the reason when neither you or them were even at the computer when it happened is ridiculous. There is only one thing for certain, they were trying to automate gameplay, like a bot, and got banned for it.

Warden has the ability to scan your computer to see what processes are running, and while it's possible it might be collecting data like how many keystrokes you are sending per second it's unlikely for a variety of reasons:

1) That is an insane amount of data to collect and analyze.
2) They can get this information without Warden at all. The game client sends keystrokes to the server. There is no need for an anti-cheat tool to detect that information.
3) It's perfectly legitimate to be at your keyboard pressing and holding a key or set of keys. And many people do this as part of their normal, legitimate play sessions. The amount of false positives this would create would be too much to handle.
4) Warden has the capability to look at all applications/executables running on your system to see how they are interacting with World of Warcraft. Why would it waste time/resources looking at keystrokes?

[MiRai]

I found a useful statement from a Blue on this matter:

Understand also, that while we prohibit that use that doesn't mean we are monitoring all activity to such a degree that we're checking to see if you are pressing the "2" key too quickly or at precise intervals. We are primarily looking for exploitative activity, activity that harms the overall game play environment. If you use these methods that doesn't mean that the invisible hand of Blizzard will immediately descend and smite you. You will place the account at risk though and it is possible that penalties may be applied if automation is verified.

I understand that Warden can be updated at any time to include something new that it wasn't capable of just moments after being downloaded onto your machine when you first run your game client, but as Ritley pointed out, tracking keystrokes and mouse clicks is quite a bit of data to be recording, and then expecting that someone (or AI) to be able to precisely determine whether or not someone was using software to apply auto-fire to a few of their keys is quite a stretch.

Yes, while it is certainly unethical to engage in this type of gameplay, especially when the game you're playing doesn't allow it, that doesn't mean that it's an automatic ban right out of the door.

[WOWBOX40]

Im at work so i dont have much time. I realize it must be a lot of data. Maybe they only "engage" in tracking various parameters when they want to investigate someone on the spot. That "file" would then include any evidence. But yes, it would be nice if we could find any definite answer from someone in the know.

[Jabberie]

[WOWBOX40]

"You will place the account at risk though and it is possible that penalties may be applied if automation is verified".

Tapeing down a button remapped via isboxer to do a standstill farm 24/7 inkluding jumping to prevent going afk.. isnt that automation and prob also a exploit of the economy.
You only need a keyboard or f.ex a ps4 controller to create the unlimited spam effect.

You can create the same effekt by using a external fan. Its also possible to create delays in isboxer.

[MiRai]

Its also possible to create delays in isboxer.

It is not possible to add auto-fire, looping, or automatic delays (resulting in a string of actions) to any Action that sends a keystroke, in ISBoxer—this is by design. Every Mapped Key, and every Step within, requires that a key be pressed before anything is sent to the game client, and that a key continue to be pressed, for any further action to take place.

[WOWBOX40]

That is right.
Thats why you need external help if want to do that, like either standalone software, via a keyboard with software or some other psycical device.

Have any of you sent a question to blizzard or botmakers to ask if they know if they can track keypresses down to the millisec or not btw?

I may not have time to do it until maybe saturday.

Random rambling while at work:

Btw, if it turns out Blizzard doesnt mind using a autofire keyboard to spam commands, tape down the button, for a standstill farm, with f.ex 1 sec interval between actions, i will personally buy maany more computers and start selling gold. Based on the amount of gold and few hours im able to farm myself right now, with just pressing the buttons with my own fingers up and down, if im comparing it to wow token prices. i can earn several thousands of euros every month.

I could stop working.

i could join a world first ish guild again and do that i like: to play games.
I could even pick up streaming again aswell.
I will have 1 pc for wow and 1 pc solely for streaming.
The other maaaaany pcs will be farming gold nearby.


If im greedy (i probably will be pretty soon) and want to let it run a lot longer, its totally possible to notice the GM bot-checks with the right equipment on every game window, though it wont be cheap. And even if im asleep. The pcs will be in a different room with its own seperate air condition.




Somehow i have a feeling this spammage isnt allowed.. but we will see eventually.
I will make efforts to figure this out for sure.

Though, if it has been allowed this whole time, ive then been a total fool all these years and il be the first to /facepalm and /sadface irl: i could have started to make a decent living out of this many many years ago.

[Ritley]

What are you talking about? Nobody ever said automated, unattended gameplay was allowed. And RMT is absolutely, unequivocally a ban. A perma ban.

[WOWBOX40]

What are you talking about? Nobody ever said automated, unattended gameplay was allowed. And RMT is absolutely, unequivocally a ban. A perma ban.

MiRai said above:

"Yes, any GM will tell you that auto-fire, loops, and automatic delays are against the game's rules, but all keyboard and mouse software, including the World of Warcraft branded mouse/keyboard from Steelseries, have this ability. Plenty of people engage in this type of behavior and see no repercussion, simply because Warden is not "tracking the milliseconds between each click."


So...they dont allow it.. its against the rules.. but at the same time they arent able to actually notice if anyone is using the keyboard to spam commands.. but they will consider it automation if someone is abusing it?

Pretend im just going to use the "automation" part from blizzards own keyboard. To spam a single button macro.
Im going to visually check the gamewindows to see if a GM tries to botcheck me all of a sudden.
I will just be sitting there doing homework, reading and such. While i dont have to worry about getting tired fingers etcetc. Seems like a ok and legit strategy? its not like im abusing it.. i mean, im here, in the flesh. Right? Not AFK.

I wish to get this verified.





Btw, do we have any multiboxers out there who can step forward and let us know if they have done any standstill farming like this without any issues for a long periode of time:

"Plenty of people engage in this type of behavior and see no repercussion, simply because Warden is not "tracking the milliseconds between each click.""