Personally, I don't think blizzard will have all these accounts suspended for the full 6 months. It would be too hard of a hit for them with how money-hungry they are. Think about it..why would they just do a 6 month ban instead of a permanent ban? I don't think people will wait around for 6 months nor do I think people will make new accounts just to pass the time until their banned accounts get reactivated. I could be wrong but I'm calling blizzard's bluff on this one calling it a scare-tactic to shake up the community. Too many people will lose friends/guild mates/raiders/leaders due to bans and will just end up not playing themselves - though i know many will make or find new ones. In addition I think there are too many people who bot thinking to themselves that the game isn't worth playing without the bot (myself included). Only time will tell but I am highly skeptical and think blizzard has ultieror motives and this is too big of a risk at too little of a reward financially - at the end of the day blizzard is still a business that runs on capital. Thoughts?
This was my initial thoughts as well. 6 month ban is rather, odd. It's long enough for them to follow thru with, however it's not permanent which is the key here.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. If they're expecting us all to just get new accounts, they've got another thing coming. I haven't actually played the game (without a bot) in months, so it's their loss, not mine. I think after they don't get all of our sub fees for a few months, they're gonna be real sorry. And I didn't even think about the aspect of people losing guildmates/raiders. You're absolutely right about that. If half a raid team gets wiped out due to bans, at this point in the game, people don't want to put in the effort to recruit people to replace them. They're going to lose more than just the botters. I hope it was a scare tactic because if not, they are just really stupid.
Let them read what they want. In a few months blizz will be crying snot when they realize how much money they've lost And the no-lifers at blizz forums will continue posting nothing but "REKT!!!11OneOne", "Raktz" and "AahaMAhaHa U hHaz Rekt AHAaga" until Nov. 13th.
It could be something like a new exp or some new exciting feature released around the time they lift bans or sometime before/after. Think about it, they have lost 3m+ players in the last couple of months (Which has a huge implication on their stock market value). Now they ban alot of people whom is botting (and if the amount banned is huge in volume they take the economical hit) When everybody gets their bot accounts/main accounts back they release a new exp or something and people upgrade (more money incoming) and they can say see how many subs we have today (Increase in stock value) Everything Iv said is just speculations, and it might not be like this at all. I just wanted to feed the conspiracy people with some thoughts P.s I dont think they will lift the suspensions earlier than said, that would create bad PR for blizz.
I'd have to say this was my initial thoughts also, but that is operating under the assumption that a good majority of banned people will come back. I could see that happening if the ban was ~3 months but at 6 months I'm not so sure. It just seems like it's too big of a risk for blizzard financially.
Even if they lift a ban or 6 month expires, there is no way I'm pressing a single button on that action bar! No expansions no bulshit will pull me back! Fuck wow, it was only HB that kept me playing
Same here, would have unsubbed a long time ago if I didn't have HB. I think blizz will realize that HB was keeping their game more populated than they thought.
I haven't played for probably 3 months, which is odd seeing as their logs go back 63 days. However they are down from 10 million subs to 7.1 and ALL the people who just got banned will also likely quit the game. So I'm guessing this is the end of WoW. I'm assuming between EU, US, KR, CN, they are down another 2 million (only they know how many) which leaves them at around 5 million active accounts (depending on how you subscribed). They don't want to actually Ban anyone (except for those who have already been hit previously) because they are going to be bleeding money as is. I wasn't going to play Warlords to begin with. Actually I was going to quit but then decided I'd finally give botting a try. This is just the nail in the coffin for me and I don't play any other Blizzard games so best of luck to Blizzard. As a side note, everyone I was playing with, not including a few exceptions, had basically quit already. Barely logging in, no longer showing up for raids, etc. 10 years and I won't be playing again in November. Wow's boring and I'm not a kid anymore. I think ultimately MMO's are a dying breed. It's mind boggling that the most successful and king of MMOs is one that is a decade old. To shed some light on what 10 years in gaming is: Nintendo offically announced the Revolution later named the Wii Nintendo launches the DS Doom 3 is released Counter-Strike Source and Half-Life 2 are released Ninja Gaiden is released on the XBOX Battlefield Vietname is released on PC Unreal Tournament 2004 is released on PC Far Cry is released on PC Final Fantasy X1 is released on the PS2 Manhunt comes outs for XBox and PC City of Heroes Launches on PC Thief Deadly Shadows on Xbox and PC Legend of Zelda: Four Sword on Game Cube Nintendo Silent Hill 4: The Room on PS2 and Xbox The Sims 2 Fable Star Wars: Battlefront for PS2 and Xbox Kill Zone Halo 2 and finally World of Warcraft In that time MMOs have gone from a niche to mainstream but not a single other MMO (Wildstar, GW, GW2, Rift, Age of Conan, Warhammer, SWTOR, Star Trek, LOTRO, Champions, DC Online, Darkfall, D&D Online, Matrix Online, Neverwinter, TERA) has anyone even gotten close to WoW. It's just a boring game type at this point, which is why so many of us bot. We want to play with our friends but the whole level up, grind out a character, rinse and repeat has been overdone. It takes way too much time to get to the meat and potatoes of a game which is why other genres like MOBAs are doing so well. Character Development, PVE, PVE, Leveling, Competetive, Social but you don't have to spend a week getting to max level to play.
I don't think I'll ever play another MMORPG, most of them require hours upon hours of repetitive tasks to stay competitive. If I decide to get back into gaming this fall it will be with Call of Duty Black Ops 3 on PS4.
After years of botting I got my first ban today. I am hoping that they lift the ban sooner than 6 months but I am not going to sit here on my hands and wait by the email server for them. I have already created my next account and I will wait for the HB team to let me know when I can go back to safe as they can make it botting again.