I got banned within 4 days of pretty standard botting. Scripts I'd used in the past that had never yielded me a ban had suddenly got me banned with a short time frame. Now I know I could have been very unlucky but I stumbled onto some LCP banning thread explaining that when you use a series of hot spots in a row in x time frame that you are flagged and eventually banned with no human intervention. It's got me to the point where I'm not quite sure what bots to use or how to make gold with my bot now. So my question is "Is LCP banning a thing?" or is it some fairy tale?
I believe it is a "thing". I made a private farming profile about a month ago, used it for a couple hours a day, and didn't have an issue. Usage went up to ~10 hours a day and I got an auto-ban with no whispers or contact from other players. Look for profiles and plugins that don't use hotspots, but basic targets. Botanist does this with his profiles - they're set to a quest order, not a grinding/hotspot-based profile. I don't know exactly how it works, but he has his stuff together and all of his public profiles are available via SVN on one of his threads. If you're gathering, find the rndbuddy plugin here on the forums.
I've looked at rndbuddy and I can't quite work out exactly what it does. Is the purpose of it to replace scripts with random node collection with gatherbuddy2 or does it run its own botbase of sorts? I'm trying to find something that will allow me to feel safer...
Rndbuddy (from what I understand) consists of a small handful of servers that have collected node location data from participating WoW users who use the plugin. The plugin uses this data to generate profiles instantaneously, thus eliminating pretty much any possibility of two people having the EXACT same profile. Any time your character gets stuck, the plugin reports it to the server, as well, so it lessens the chances of your toon getting in an endless stuck cycle. Plus, there's a massively helpful website where you can view your toon's activity even when you're not at the computer. You can see if people have targeted you (and if so, for how long), chat logs, node performance reports, and you can even issue remote commands like start/stop. The dev recently added screenshot functionality so you can see what your toon is doing, too!
So what is the general consensus on LCP ban tracking? Is it a time online deal, hotspots visited in x time frame or even NPH?
I think it's more based on time and hotspots more than anything else. The two combined can be easily tracked and auto-banned.
Simple answer: No! LCP bans are just conspiracy theories, indeed. To prove this, I have tested 2 of my GB2 bots to use only a single, very popular Multi-zone Pandaria Gatherit public profile in their botting history. Both got 72h after more than 6 months of botting 6hours daily, then receive their perma ban, 7 months after their 72h suspension, or 13 months after they started botting GB2. One of them even farmed its legendary cloak meanwhile ... So, if LCP was any factor, they would not last more than a year!
I think the keyword here is "multi-zone"... what about those who use private profiles in one zone (like I did when I first started using GB2 regularly)? With no player reports whatsoever, my first toon lasted only a week botting AT MOST 10 hours a day. Because it seems like Blizz would monitor the length of time spent in a certain zone, it would make sense that multi-zone gathering has a better chance of "surviving".
Nobody can prove it exists from a bunch of localized examples. Anyone that has the slightest clue what a database is knows they employ some kind of server side detection, namely by collecting statistics, the most obvious of which being timeframes. LCP is a more complex threat and is much better explained by people who know more than us.
I want to read this article but I'm currently at work. I skimmed and noticed it's from 2009 and was tested using WoWGlider which was just a grind bot. Is it still prudent to compare an article from '09 with current day botting? We have things like scheduled botting, random profile generation, multi zone profiles etc. I'm happy about the input I'm getting from the community with this thread. It was my intention to open a dialogue in which we can discuss safe vs unsafe botting in the current state of botting/WoW.
Gatherbuddy2 runs off of the exact same premise of running in hotspots repeatedly, and I doubt the timeframe is going to affect it that much. The moment you let a multi zone profile run through the loop more than once it's going to just make you look worse in LCP terms. A human is more likely to run a bot-like route in one zone, but if they're running the same way through multiple zones it's pretty obvious you're an outlier. Randombuddy is built on the premise to disrupt LCP detection.
Gatherbuddy has an anti lcp sistem that misses the hotspot by a few random yards, always diffferent thus making slighlty changing routes, thats why now a days is not very important. before this was implemented, more than a year ago, when lcp was assumed to have gone live, bans went rampant and public profiles didnt last even a week. You could test if lcp exist or not by simply doing a short circuit out on the sea, away from anyone to avoid weird reports, turn off the randomization (i thinks its doable if you set it to 0) and let it run for hours/days. I know someone that did it 24/7, before the randomization was implemented, and didnt reach a week, but i dont know if never disconecting might have influenced the results.
I'm curious where bans come from these days then. I just suffered a 72 hour ban with an arelog schedule of 2hours on, 1hour off using rndbuddy.
