What happens when WoW players report a bot? (I have no idea.) Does Blizz do a manual review of the account to determine whether to suspend/ban the bot account? I doubt it. My guess is that Blizzard--like most American companies--seeks to minimize personnel costs, i.e. hiring people. So I'd imagine that they probably do an automated software review first. Maybe they examine questions like: Have multiple reports come in accusing this account of botting? Relative to our average customer, does this account run for long hours without breaks? Relative to our average customer, does this account generate an unusually large amount of gold? Relative to our average customer, does this account trade an unusually large amount of gold? Relative to our average customer, does this account spend an unusually long period of time doing monotonous tasks like AH, grinding or gathering? Based on the results of the automatic software check, some accounts are likely: Banned immediately. If they met all Blizzard’s criteria for botting, Blizz likely bans them straight away. Audited further. Perhaps they’re monitored for the the next 24 game hours to investigate the extent of inhuman behavior, e.g. getting stuck on pillars, using identical combat rotations spanning thousands of iterations, etc. Sent to humans for further review before action is taken. So what happens if we botters start reporting about 0.5% (1 in 200) of every player we see--regardless of whether they're botting or not--for botting? Would it send Blizzard's workload through the roof? What if there were a plugin that reported random players of botting--mostly false positives? Would it overload the system? Maybe they do have some automated software that would just catch all or most of the actual botting accounts while dismissing the reports against customers who play the game legitimately.
This sounds like a good idea to me. It may be enough to mess with their heuristics as well as overload any interpersonal intervention.
and than Blizzard will add a new question: Relative to our average customer, does this account generate an unusually large amount of reports against other players for botting?
