Wanting Blizzard to allow botting?

to the people that voted yes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8A4CoKiAsc

 

This question isn't that stupid..cause indeed Blizzard "allows" botting...not in the meaning of "hey all you players out there feel free to bot". If Blizzard would really want to kill any possibility to bot they would

- remove "click to move"

I know that doesn't mean the end for bots as there are other ways of moving but sure it would instantly make some bots unusable.

- monitor / analyze player activities

But..they already do, don't they? No they do not! The only thing they do is logging

• IP
• last online time (just the date, no specifications of hours or something)
• last online location (coordinates)
• chat (whisper / say / trade / raid / bg / ....)
• trade ( just everything!)
• auction house trade (i put this separately as ah trade is logged but blizz doesn't interfere in ah tradings. *See example below)
  
  

The meaning of logfiles

This part is often misunderstood as people think:


Something is logged = results in any consequence


But that’s just wrong. Information being logged means nothing until someone looks at this information.

But if not - How are people being suspended / banned

They don't have any system / software or even a person that does logfile analyzing the whole day to check whether there are people that are online for more then x hours or something....until they have a reason to do that!

Most of the people are suspended or banned just because of other players reporting them.

A few years ago i bought gold from a vietnamese site..everything was fine...and 2 weeks later i lost my account(virus/trojan). I wrote a ticket..got everything back but then just another few days later i got contacted again by a gm. He told me that while investigating my account they found out, that i had traded gold with a player (vietnamese ip) and that i would get a 72hr suspension for buying gold) If i would not have written the ticket..there would not have been a suspension. As mentioned before...there has to be a reason for them, to check logfiles!


A few examples:
(some gm's react different and don't help you - but others do)


The logging of trade activities is kind of mysterious and i'm sure it will always be...but indeed like written above - everything is logged. It doesn't matter if you trade gold via ingame mail / face2face or anything else...it will be logged in any way.

You trade gold with a player face2face and he said give me 10k and you will get epic xyz. You give him the money and he says "lol thanks and runs away" -> you write a ticket, gm checks logs and you'll get your gold back.

You've got trojans, viruses and stuff like that on your pc and someone steals your password and transfers all your stuff (items, gold) to another char - a gm checks log and you'll get your stuff back.

AH trading, people often discuss about that, but in fact it doesn't matter if you sell 100 things via ah each day 1000 or 10000. Selling tons of shit every day is no reason for someone to be banned. As a bot user you think “i can’t put in thousands of herbs...this must be recognized” but remember, there are also people that make gold just with cheap buying and re-selling. Those people spend their time (almost the whole day) just with creating auctions...something like several thousand of parallel auctions is nothing unusual.



Online time

Same here, you can be online for 20 hours and perhaps be contacted by a gm...you don't response..he observes you for a while, watches your movement, spell using behaviour and decides to lock your account for further investigations...sure..but this could also happen after 1 hour of botting..

You can also stay online for several days without logging out one single minute (apart from 24h router disconnects) and nobody has your attention at all. It is not about how long you bot, whether 1, 2, 4, 8 or 20 hours a day...it's just a matter of luck some is reporting you or not. If you are botting smart and change your botting behave and spots regularly you won’t get any attention of other players. If you act smart, something like “i see this guy here every day and he is always just farming..must be a bot” will never happen.
There is no rule like “the more you bot = the higher the risk” NO!
It is just “botting = account risk”
Sure it matters where you bot and how. Botting in battlegrounds is a much higher risk then leveling a character somewhere.



What a big surprise - Blizzards best friend...

We - the bot users are the largest income for Blizard. As we all (the most) have several payed accounts. There are million bot/farm/hack accounts out there and they know exactly what they would lose if they would (try to) really take down every possibility of botting. People that do business with botting and get 20 accounts banned – just buy 20 new accounts. Sure sometimes they release press articles like "Several thousand accounts banned today" so that those who complain about bot users calm down, but in fact a few thousand accounts compared to several million is just < 1%, no one cares about that.



Just trash? No!

The things stated above (information about what’s being logged) are based on information i directly got by an blizzard employee which is (not only) responsible for server maintenance, especially for databases. I can not give you his name, as they are not allowed to give specific information on how things are handled and working in detail. All i can say is that i know him personally (for years now) and i trust him.

- dasoul

 

Good read, thanks for the information.

 

When you mean with "good read" that it was enternaining then ok, but I wouldn't call it informative because it's mostely outdated bullshit

 

that's just a very good example for a stupid post. If you disagree with something tell me what and we can discuss but this..sorry..just a flame.

 

short. no.

 

Whatever if you want to continue to shit your pants with "omg blizz will ban me if i bot to long"....well do it..

i am botting 20hrs+ every day for more then half a year now with gb and hey guess what not 1 single whisper from a gamemaster or anything. But yeah keep thinking what is spread out that blizz monitors everything you do. Sure... they have a room full of hundreds of people that monitor ALL players the whole day.

 

Dumbest thing i'v post i'v seen in awhile. You basilica said thanking someone for there work = flame. (It looks like he put a bit of effort into the post, and i agree with what he said from my exp aswell)

 

Yes and no! If they did the AH would turn to mush and everyone would charge much more for things because everyone can just bot for it. Botters pay for blizzards paychecks also, and I don't know a soul in my past guilds who haven't fishbotted. They ban them all blizzard just lost a chuck of money they could go spend on researching murloc technological advancement.

 

I agree if Blizzard wanted to expend quite a considerable amount of resources to catch people botting they could. And Blizzard's bank roll is quite a bit bigger than Bosslands. If they REALLY wanted to shut all of us down. They could. If your smart and dont call attention to yourself by making shitty HB paths, you wont get caught. If you get reported a bunch by real people saying your botting you'll get banned. Thats about it.
If blizzard had a "auto ban for lots of auctions and excessive login time" too... i would have been f****d when LK expansion came out.

 

if blizzard allowed botting, then we would have to find another way to get our natural high. we are breaking the wow "laws" and thats a thrill, especially when you earn money from playing a video game

 

Blizzard has passed 11 million subscribers. lets say there are 300 000 botters. (i very much doubt it) If blizzard could swing a big mighty ban hammer and remove all botters they would.

 

I personally don't believe that peeps who are logged in for long periods of time are automatically flagged. I have been botting since a week after Glider's release (with half a year's pause after the shutdown of it), and I have been botting 24/7 for up to 5 days at a time. Also, if they flagged people who played too much, think of all the bans that would come with Cataclysm - people playing 24/7 to be the first to hit 85.. Simply don't believe it.

That being said - if you do bot 24/7 and you are reported by a player (and thereby investigated by a GM), you will be banned. All I am saying that this process is not automated - only when you are investigated will your logs be checked, which will usually result in a ban. And remember, there is NO way to bot safely, but there sure are ways to bot badly.

 

Oh, and this guy botted 10 chars to 80, botting 24/7 (or so he says, at least )

http://www.thebuddyforum.com/showthread.php?7792-The-10-Project-1-account-10-level-80-s

 

To the guy who said that there are millions of botting account's to this I say I highly doubt it. If there was this many we would not be able to sell our gold because of lack of demand.

 

mistatic 1 million in 10 millions is just a small 10% means the other 90% still want and need gold, but obvious is not a million but for sue around 100k-200k acounts botting

 

Its pretty stupid that anyone would say yes to this. Hum, let me think; I work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I raise a family. Can I compete with a 13 yr old that spends all day after school leveling and farming? NO. So what do I do to keep up and be able to do raids with my guild buddies? I BOT.

Consequently I make more gold, I can afford all the upgrades to my toon, and I still have a life, but also I lose on Achivements and run a HUGE risk of losing my account. I think this is a good balance. If you dont cheat, earn things through hard work and really enjoy the results. If you cheat, get there the easy way but obey the 11th amedment: Thou shall not get caught. Plus, if they were to make botting legal, why not start every character at level 70 with 20k gold and all the upgrades?

 

Why does this thread exist ?

 

i've botted for 6 months 24/7 on a few accts at once and the only reason I got banned was due to a player report by some asshole who wanted his acct back. douchebag. This is why I don't buy accts anymore

 

I say no.

I remember the days of Diablo II hex editing for gold as well as over powered talents. Clearly blizzard remembers as well. They ended up losing money because the only way to play online was to cheat. Players ended up complaining and then leaving. In all honesty I doubt that the company as a whole cares that we cheat by botting, as long as we don't cause the loss of other players, and as a company they can not endorse it without losing subscribers.

That being said I am greedy.
Supply and demand states that the more people who can or are willing to the less we make.
Who would ever willingly want to make less?