Unethical Gameplay?

[Jabberie]

Random example, the one MiRai did in his video>
Imagine you are smelting 7000 ores on each, you got 20 accounts.
You are lazy so you have them all lined up in a big long row in dalaran.
People get jealous.
You ofcourse just choose smelt all and go afk. You know that you will auto logoff in around 30 min, so you set your watch for 25 min.
A Gm contacts you because someone reported you around 2 min after you went afk irl.
You do not respond... you get banned.
In this example i dont think you should be banned.

Are you sure you want to use this as an example?

[WOWBOX40]

Are you sure you want to use this as an example?

I just gave an example. its also a stationary "farm" so to speak. Ive not tried to smelt bars myself ingame.

If i were a auction house hero focusing on smelting cheap ores to sell bars, i would most definitly not be sitting in front on my pc all the time while smelting all day long. I would run insane. It even have a feature to smelt all bars non stop. I guess its a perk.

But who knows, if you arent there, you went afk, and you got reported for cheating, maybe its possible to get banned.
i mean, its also possible that you arent able to see the GM popup on "toon nr 15", if its a very small window.
Even if you actually sat right there in front of the computer engaged in a movie on monitor nr 5.

I guess if there was a timelimit you got to respond to a GM, i guess it should be atleast within 25 min.

Now its your turn to explain why i maybe shouldnt have given this as an example.

[mbox_bob]

Are you sure you want to use this as an example?

The only rule that example really contravenes is 7.c.iii of the TOU (which is pretty wide open and non specific).

(iii) Anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the "essence" of the Game.

Which the interpretation might be, "your character is doing boring repetitive stuff, so you should be getting the experience of doing boring repetitive stuff too", but this is not actually the case is it. Your character is putting stuff in a forge, melting stuff, cleaning it, pouring it, moulding it, cooling it. You on the other hand are keeping a seat warm. Perhaps if you did some cleaning around the house (or making cakes) while AFK, at the same time, it would be a on a par experience, and the WAF would be high.

If the essence of the game play is to capture your attention, then perhaps the design of areas which do not require your attention needs to be looked at.

[WOWBOX40]

Before i pass out of tiredness, i had a sudden possible "eyeopener" moment.


Maybe, since the time you have available while you go afk, untill you auto log out of the game, is 30 min...
That means that its perfectly OK to be afk *you literarly are and the sign above your head says AFK".....even if you are doing something...f.ex smelting.

This means that you will log out automatically after 30 min.

If you arent....then you could possibly be a botter.


So me having a key remap to "jump", which prevents me from going AFK status and eventually auto log out... could be a good sign of a possible botter.

So......... if i atleast look at my screens closely around every 20 ish min, i shouldnt have any issues.


"Just seems kinda logical at the moment.

[Jabberie]

It's not at farm at all. It's pressing one button to create all and going afk. No other commands are done at all to your character in your 25 mins.

[Ritley]

Not to mention it's a base part of the game that doesn't even require an addon to accomplish. It was built, as is, by Blizzard. Nobody, multiboxer or not, has ever been banned by Blizzard while using the create all feature of the stock professions UI.

[MiRai]

Breaking up my replies into two posts because there's a lot.

Well they cant prove where i am or what i am doing while im pressing the buttons.

The only thing at the moment that seems to be able to ban me, is if they message me on one of my other accounts, that are on a very very small portion of one of my monitors.

If they did a spesific bot check on that one, i would most likely fail it. Even if i sat in front of my computer.

Im probably not alone.

What will they do? Will they ban only that spesific account? That whole battlenet with 8 accounts? All my battlenet accounts?

I think thats out of order, since im actually here. Im playing. Though im only able to see the fullscreen of my main character account clear as day. I dont think this is wrong.

It's highly unlikely that a missed whisper is going to result in a ban. There are plenty of other checks they can run on a character to test if they're automating gameplay.

Im pretty sure they have notes on me. Ive been playing for as long as you MiRai.

I often wonder whether or not "senior" multiboxers—those who have had their accounts for a long time—are given a break when reported. I mean, rather than verify anything with a whisper, a GM would simply do a quick visual check, and unless I'm doing something truly questionable, they just move on to the next ticket. /shrug

Im being told by players almost every single day that they will report me. Imagine at blizzard hq (years back): "omg this is the 2000th report we have gotten...the workload it creates on this guy alone is insane. Lets just create a script so we never have to see these ever again"

You can watch Pinkskull talk to a GM who tells him that he's been reported "quite a bit" in the week prior, and that he has been reported over 800 times across the lifetime of the account he's playing on, but obviously no action had been taken since he was never found to be doing anything wrong.

IMO, if they want us to pay attention at all times as a multiboxer, as long as i atleast is able to pay attention to 1 account, that should count as "im paying attention to all my accounts".

I think Blizzard acknowledges that when it comes to multiboxers, but that's not really what I was originally discussing in the video.

Btw MiRai, i hope you will forward both the video and link to this forum to Blizzard.

It would be nice to know their official stance on these subjects.

Your excellent video also touched on other parts aswell, which i would love to know Blizzards reaction on.

Once some people heard the word "multiboxer," they'd get bent out of shape and lose focus of the actual discussion.

I realized that they already have a implemented "warning" screen... the one where the whole screen turns blue, when you need to confirm your ingame store purchase. Maybe they could use that one, and make it appear on all the currently active accounts and on all current battlenet accounts, when they wish to perform a "bot check". That certainly would be easy to spot.

First of all, family members can play from the same BNet account, at the same time, so it doesn't make much sense to alert everyone playing on the account.

Second, that would be incredibly intrusive if you were in the middle of something when a GM wanted to contact you—it's supposed to be a whisper, not a megaphone.

[MiRai]

"no one" plays with sound enabled on all the slaves when they play. I only have sounds enabled on my main character window. I can also hear the sounds when i tab out from that window or when its not in focus. So its basically impossible to hear any incoming /whisper sounds coming from the slaves if a GM contacts one of them.

If you were tabbed out of the game, then you're AFK and you aren't going to be bot-checked unless they have a good reason. It's not like GMs just do spot checks on random players to see if they're automating gameplay in any way.

And as i said, the jamba whisper forwarder only works seldomly.

It was explained to you before that JAMBA cannot forward any GM whispers. The entire frame is protected, which means user add-ons cannot access it or make any changes to it.

The game has a ingame slider for render grafics.
The game is already pretty demanding and it will get worse in BFA, supposedly.
Have any tried to have the render scale on 50% and with lowest possible settings ingame AND that the slavewindow is like 5 x 4 cm "in real world" on a 24 inch monitor? Thats right, no chance to see any "bot checks" on that window when you do a stationary farm.

The render scale option does not affect the user interface, which means all frames, text, buttons, artwork, etc. are all rendered at 100%, regardless of the render scale setting.

One would imagine its in Blizzard interest to keep us subscribed.
How hard could it be to actually atleast contact the "main" window, the one you lead from, the one you told them is your "main", to conform if you actually are there or not.
It would be interesting to know how much time you actually have to respond to a "bot check", before you get banned.

I don't think there's a time limit, as there are plenty of other assumed checks that you would fail if your character was doing something and you weren't responding.

Why would a GM do a bot check on a character that is just hanging out? If your character is standing around doing nothing and you look like you're AFK, then you're not going to be bot checked. I wouldn't doubt that the idle time of your character is visible to GMs if they want it to be, since that information has to be known by the server before it automatically sets you AFK.

I don't doubt that a GM in World of Warcraft would give multiboxers the benefit of the doubt, and simply message the leader. In other games, I've heard of GMs sending whispers to other characters in the party, and people "failing" the bot check because of that. It's not hard to believe that a GM that has never dealt with a multiboxer before might make the mistake of messaging a follower, but that doesn't mean that it would be upheld.

Random example, the one MiRai did in his video>
Imagine you are smelting 7000 ores on each, you got 20 accounts.
You ofcourse just choose smelt all and go afk. You know that you will auto logoff in around 30 min, so you set your watch for 25 min.
A Gm contacts you because someone reported you around 2 min after you went afk irl.
You do not respond... you get banned.
In this example i dont think you should be banned.

First, why would anyone ever be reported for smelting? Second, why would a GM completely ignore the fact that you can smelt bars and be AFK? Since, as it's been pointed out, that feature is built right into the profession UI.

Again, receiving a whisper and not responding does not result in a ban.

I just gave an example. its also a stationary "farm" so to speak. Ive not tried to smelt bars myself ingame.

I would not consider smelting bars to be a stationary farm.

If i were a auction house hero focusing on smelting cheap ores to sell bars, i would most definitly not be sitting in front on my pc all the time while smelting all day long. I would run insane. It even have a feature to smelt all bars non stop. I guess its a perk.

But who knows, if you arent there, you went afk, and you got reported for cheating, maybe its possible to get banned.
i mean, its also possible that you arent able to see the GM popup on "toon nr 15", if its a very small window.
Even if you actually sat right there in front of the computer engaged in a movie on monitor nr 5.

I guess if there was a timelimit you got to respond to a GM, i guess it should be atleast within 25 min.

Now its your turn to explain why i maybe shouldnt have given this as an example.

You'd have to be in front of your computer to move your character(s) between the auctioneer, the mailbox, and a forge to smelt bars at. Even if you used a portable mailbox and thermal anvil, you'd still have to click through a bunch of frames and options in the UI. Also, how could you be AFK from your computer and buy ore from the auctioneer?

I do not understand this example.


I think what needs to be understood is that you need to be reported multiple times before a GM will come and do an in-game check on you. If a few uneducated haters want to report you for lolcheating, it's unlikely that a GM is going to show up until there are more reports. You also aren't going to get bot-checked when you're AFK—Blizzard would do a check to the player that actually makes sense.

Finally, GMs aren't assholes, and it's not their job to seek and destroy every player who might be playing in "the gray area." I already quoted Blizzard stating that they take care when looking into an actual report, and they try to make sure they're doing the right thing when actually handing out a ban. Please stop whittling the entire bot-check process down into one simple whisper.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Wall of text incoming since I haven't had a PVP drama thread to whine about in a while. Also, GET OFF MY LAWN.

I'll just chime in with a few things.

* I have sound enabled on all 5 toons. Always. Even the one that wants to be called Loretta. Because if one falls behind and I miss/ignore the follow-broken warning, when my other toons are not in combat and I hear combat sounds, it usually means one guy is stuck in a hostile area. Saved my bacon plenty. Highly recommended. Requires some tuning so you don't get overwhelmed by noise (e.g. disable environment/ambiance, set followers to half volume). Here, I'll even provide my example for this (note: my volumes are low across the board so I can hear Netflix):
Master:

/console set Sound_MasterVolume 0.1/console set Sound_SFXVolume 0.2
/console set Sound_MusicVolume 0
/console set Sound_AmbienceVolume 0.5
/console set Sound_DialogVolume 1
/console set Sound_EnableAmbience 1

Slaves:

/console set Sound_MasterVolume 0.1
/console set Sound_SFXVolume 0.1
/console set Sound_MusicVolume 0
/console set Sound_AmbienceVolume 0
/console set Sound_DialogVolume 0
/console set Sound_EnableAmbience 0

* The Jamba whisper forwarder has never failed to forward me a whisper from a GM or anyone else on any character as long as I didn't have the Jamba channel somehow misconfigured or it was a Jamba beta release that had a channel bug due to an unforeseen Blizzard change. (Yes, the GM whispers were pre-popup-change.)

* There's this nifty addon called sounds4chat. It lets you override the sound of, say, that whisper thingy that nobody seems to be able to hear. On mine, it makes this really, really audible noise that I can hear even when I'm in the kitchen getting something to drink. It's totally amazing. Y'all should look into that before something...unfortunate happens to your account. Here, I'll even link it for you: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/sounds4chat

* When I'm doing something that I always want to see details about, I discovered two options that work pretty well. The first option is, just make the windows big enough that I can see them all, and move them around so I can see the part(s) of the screen I want to see. The second option (I use ISBoxer) is to set up a dxNothing repeater for the area I'm interested in so it's this big normal-size chunk of window so I never have to worry about things popping up there and me not seeing it and having something dramatic happen to that character/window.

* If I'm standing somewhere farming something, I figure that since Blizzard has a well-known and well-documented method for contacting people to personally check whether they are an AFK bot, and they do this personal-contact thing as a courtesy to me rather than just banning me and making me prove I'm not a bot, I own personal responsibility for being able to respond to those rare but important queries to the best of my ability. I've had I think 4 of those, two of which happened after the move to the little extra popup rather than just straight whispers.

* I agree in spirit with MiRai's comments regarding standing in one place pressing a button while basically AFK. However, if the problem is that some tasks are so mind-numbingly boring that people watch TV with no sound and no monitor while pressing 1 for hours, not only is that fostering a whole new generation of advanced carpal tunnel syndrome sufferers but creates areas where "botters" can take advantage of bugs/loopholes to fill a customer need. (Does anybody honestly think that if the game were fun for everyone 24/7 that botters would exist in their current numbers?) That said, until and unless they remove all the monotonous things in the game, or until you get hired as a game designer/product manager for WoW, you'll have to expect to play the way they want you to play or be actioned for not doing so. EULAs suck, but without a bunch of people willing to make it painful for Blizzard to enforce it, they'll keep right on doing what they're doing.

I'm usually pretty live-and-let-live about people doing whatever as long as it isn't running afoul of the "Don't Be A Dick" ethos. Hell, even botting isn't necessarily big-E Evil IMO, but you can't exactly allow some people to do it when there are so many others that would exploit it to ruin parts of the economy or camp play areas, with the knock-on effect of pissing off lots of players and overworking the support team. The MMO company that comes up with a way to automatically enforce "bad" botting regulations and allow "good" botting will have a big advantage over the games that don't have that. Maybe. Maybe AI will kill us all off by then. Right after the black helicopters show up.

[WOWBOX40]

Thank you all very much for all your answers and insight.

I belive i got all the answers i needed.


I think the reason i mentioned the smelting thingy was just to make some sort of "paralell" that... ok so a smelter can click a button and go AFK...totally afk, while they reap the benefit of that... but a crafter or disenchanter cant do the same, they have to press the button / macrobutton everytime.. meaning that its "kinda unfair"... They smeling and beeing afk... is a bit similar to me clicking the craft / disenchant button from the sofa watching a movie.

But anyway.

Im content with the answers.


Im just going to stick with what ive been doing and check my monitors around every 20 min.
(i will be watching my main window all the time though. And if i get banned for this, well, im sure il be able to find something else to spend my money on).

If anything happens i will let you know.


Edit.. TY for the addon link!




Btw MiRai,
regarding the "It was explained to you before that JAMBA cannot forward any GM whispers. The entire frame is protected, which means user add-ons cannot access it or make any changes to it."

I was aware of that, what i ment was if the GM tried to send me a regular /whisper also, similar to a normal /whisper from a random player.



Ughmahedhurtz

i totally forgot about this isboxer feature.. to create Dxnothing regions.

I will try figure out where the "GM wants to talk to you popup" appears excactly for each game using the moveanything addon and make a Dxregion for each. Better yet, il move them if i can so that it appears just above the slaves /w chatwindow, so il be able to see both. If i cant find it using moveanything, i do rememeber approx where it appears.

i will then place those to a side on my main screen, so i can easily see if any of the slaves gets contacted.


Absolute genius suggestion.

I will investigate.