Honestly I don't think Blizzard takes the issue seriously enough in Classic let alone Retail. It seriously sucks for the community but friends of mine mass reported Druid bots and a few days later they were still there. It's a problem that isn't letting up. Obviously they probably don't have the manpower to deal with it either, but as long as no solution is presented the harm will continue to inflate over time.
Blizzard does not care, they only want to grab as much money as they can.
Just put in the WoW Token. I'm pretty #nochanges, but the token will take care of many of the problems that the botting is causing. Everyone knows of at least one person buying gold anyway, and the only way to limit the bots is to take away the real world money profit.
Why doesnt blizzard shut down the hack selling websites?
Considering the fact that the number of servers on Classic are dramatically lower than on live, making such a thing possible, I feel that the only solution at this point is ACTIVE moderation. I.e., have GMs sitting there with windows open to watch popular farming spots. You know, like any other security detail. The delay between player reports and investigation and finally banning just doesn't cut it.
Blizz rather cut costs wherever they can, anticheat is one of them. Even couple of volunteers running through hotspots would catch more bots then Blizz ever did during Classic.
I would kill those Initiates outside of BT back in the day on my warrior, hoping for a Blinkstrike. Please don't report me if I decide to again.
Ahh I was so sad when they nerfed Mechanar chest farming in 2.2 :( It was super profitable farm for rogues.
I only find it slightly odd that there's a link to private server footage but that's just me
Hardware, IP, name, and payment ban forever any account found doing this. Additionally blizzard needs to eliminate sub fee discrepancies between countries by bringing up (and down for certain countries) sub costs equal to the US Dollar. That way people can’t make Argentinean accounts (cause they pay way way less than other countries as an example) as their initial startup method to create bots if the prior operation gets ruined entirely. Lastly, restrict all initial payment methods for accounts to require an actual payment rather than gold conversion to blizz balance (aka using retail gold to make new WoW account for subs) for the first month or so for new accounts. Also restrict the ability to create non-primary WoW accounts on the same Blizz account for the first month or so as well.You have to make it economically inefficient for people to do this and you do it by creating barriers and adjusting differences in currency power. It should be no wonder why the boosting organization Gallywix had someone in the Balkans running the RMT. Why? Because the living wage there is way lower than the rest of Europe, thus it became very profitable to sell gold at lower price points than if it was hosted out of Germany, a Nordic country, UK or the US.
the only working bots for classic are fishing, I get that might irritate a small part of the overall market. Overall, not a big deal though.
I'm very pro wow token for Classic TBC at this point. I don't think Blizzard cares enough about in game economy to hurt their real life economy at this point, so hoping for an actual solution is likely a pipe dream. At least the wow token keeps the trade amongst players and not bots.
The amount of bots in retail is discouraging. It ruins professions. I literally care 0% about professions because the time/reward has been completely skewed by botters.
bots are still a problem on retail and sadly the only way to manage that is reporting through ticket...i've reported in game and nothing happens but when i report with a ticket 100% of the time (after them responding to report in game) i'll get some notification of actions against players. Reporting 7 characters is a pain in the ass and not everyone has the patience to do that...And classic is even worst due to the "lack" of assistance compared to retail...U can change terms of use but if the system doesn't track this strange behaviour the problem will continue
Removed
Stronger internal controls would be needed to combat this. Let's see we have a low barrier to entry. Either the $15 in balance or subscription (am not sure they even end up paying the $15 in real money tbh to enter the market in all cases, some perhaps). The number of bots likely has been growing and software detection, in addition to player reports/policing of botting hotspots would be hot to catch them. Likely for both classic and retail exponential increase in preparation for the next raid/phase. Usually more are caught in ban waves and likely are using from a list of popular automation bot software. Retail usually sends a thank you for reporting after a bot has been caught and banned. There are patterns and cycles in botting and fraud. I'm not sure botting can ever be entirely eliminated but it can be lessened with tighter controls in place to combat it. The length of the botting bans plus how long it takes the bots to get up and running on another account at full efficiency are also factors. Perhaps more of the lucrative things the bots are doing can be nerfed without much harming the normal player experience in the process. The eventual gold conversion is another area where they can be caught/have been in the case of Gallywix. There were the two reported hardware bans in Council. The WoWToken curbs some of the demand (on retail) but doesn't entirely solve the issue. Old Method last year choose Gallywix over using the WoWToken. I think botting and RMT will exist as long as there is a profit to be made. Both can be controlled and lessened with money to combat botting and fraudulent activities. It actually feels pretty bad to think about how a lot of these activities also trivialize hard work and player sense of accomplishment.
There are so many people in 2nd and 3rd world countries that would gladly work on this matter for a really small sallary compared what Blizzard is paying... But probably they are fine with bots...
blizzard does NOT give a single *!@# about thatso it's going to be worse in TBC mark my words ;)