Banned just came back after 2 months off time, didnt even start HB just had it open.

Even if so, nothing new here and hardly represents a "ban-wave". Doesn't take any theorizing to figure that out.

Nothing brings out a lurker like a ban (or the bot not being available). For the past several days it's mostly the same posts, from the same users, being refreshed due to new replies. Just noise, nothing more. You're reaching for the remotely possible again and ignoring the immediate reality.

I don't see the hostility but I do see a lot of paranoia. But then, the 2 can often be blurred.

If Blizzard were passively detecting honorbuddy, everyone who uses it would be banned. Even if it meant 10K subs. They don't want, nor will tolerate, someone they KNOW is botting to play their game . Isn't it also your thinking that most of those people banned would just go and by a new copy anyways? Ohhh I forgottttt....you guys also think they don't want the honorbuddy team to know, that THEY know

 

So a few things here.
I worked at Blizzard for several years so I have an inside view of how they do things.
Let me correct a few misconceptions here.
First Blizzard does NOT wait till an account has game time put on it to ban an account. (It would also run them afoul of several laws to do this.) The GM "God Tool" that is used does not have access to your billing information directly. They have to go to different tool for that and have to have a good reason to access it. They rarely bother. They do not care if an account is active or not, if it is caught in a bannable offense, they click a button, fill out a report, and you are banned.
Second Blizzard does not play shadow games. If Warden could detect Honorbudd, they would ban every account that uses it across the board. They have a team, (mostly one guy named Jeff) who does nothing but try and reverse engineer botting programs and hacks to allow warden to detect them. Why does Honorbuddy get by most of the time you ask? Because it is not nearly as destructive as some of the other hacks, dupes and exploits out there that can really reek havoc on the servers.
Third my GUESS would be the OP did not get banned for Honorbuddy at all. Instead he had something else running or did something else that set off warden. Honorbuddy being up is just an unfortunate circumstance.
And fourth Blizzard is NOT a publicly traded company. They are owned by Vivendi. They do not have investors to report to. That is why you never see profit reports or numbers from blizzard. They do not have to release them.
Like anything you read on the internet, take this all with a grain of salt. I worked there, but that does not mean things never change. I seriously doubt they changed to the degree people are trying to insinuate on these forums though. It just is not worth their time.

 

I like turtles

 

hes lieing, your not going to get banned from running HB on your desktop for no reason thats some bullshit, why do u even believe this guy. LOL

 

I doubt that Blizzard ist doing that, too. But if you read the official forums than I guess people who are pissed with botters will do that. At least I would do that to troll around.

 

Well my appeal was denied, I dont get my account back .. what a load of crap.

 

How many did you put in? They almost always deny the first one. Stick with whatever story you went with and try a few more times. Even if they say "this penalty has already been upheld" try a couple more times. No guarantee, but it's worth a shot.

 

I had a friend who just got a 72 hour ban on his account, while we were doing BG together.
He had never used Honorbuddy, but he used wowglider several years ago.

I have no idea how this happened so many years after he was botting.
We called the customer support, but they would not help, and also said "Do not setup macros in BG, do it before queuing BG's, because thats a legitimate ban aswell" WTF..

 

flame war flame war flame war flame war

 

Do your tin foil hats hurt your ears at all ?? And do you wear them in direct sunlight ?

 

I have HB running 18 hours a day. NO issue.

 

Blizzard is absolutely a publicly traded company, with a ticker symbol ATVI. A company this large is concerned with making money ethically, and pleasing stock holders if they could report to there stock holders that they were able to ban all botters/hackers, it would,
1) increase reputation/credibility
2) increase stock price

So in conclusion, HB is NOT detectable.

http://investor.activision.com/stockquote.cfm

 

I just want to point out that a being a large business certainly does not mean it is ethical. Most stock holders probably have no idea what bots are, nor would they care unless it started to cost them money. Do you think Nike stock holders care that the shoes are made in Chinese sweatshops, as long as they are making their money?

Anyway, I don't really see my theory as being unethical anyway. More like Blizzard working the system to strike a balance between keeping legit players happy by being able to say that they ban botters and keeping their profits/subscription numbers as high as possible.

 

Considering I have been investing in stocks for 15+ years I know for a fact that a majority of stock holders would like to see a gaming company have no cheating. It's a huge deal to stock holders. For example, you give Nike as an example, the day Nike announced foreign production the stock dropped almost 20% (huge in the stock market), and announcing to the public that WoW was the first "true" non-cheating game would impact gamers, community, blizzard and shareholders. There would be no reason for Blizzard to not ban everyone...

The point is... if HB was detectable, there would of been a ban wave. It's a fact, that there is really no looking past. There are legal obligations and fiduciary responsiblities they have to attest to as mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

I smell Bullshit!

 

...rich criticism from someone who is pretty much just trolling through the ban section of the forum for 120 posts.

 

Trolling..... how so? This should be good, I don't agree so now I am a troll.

 

I agree with this 100%, they need to
A: show they're doing something for people who think having things on that ah is a bad thing (those who hate bots) and
B: Maintain as many subs as possible.

Really the quality of the game has gone downhill since I started. Everything feels bland and un-unique, like they just reskinned everything. You don't work for anything they way you used to, its a quick gratification here and there and this lack of quality is showing in the number of subscribers.

They had 11+ million players and its down to 9.6ish? thast 13 or so percent, It may not sound huge but were talking about 1.4 million subscriptions lost. They lost ~400,000 since mop came out.

Frankly the game has lost its magic, the level of fun it had in vanilla and bc, your sense of achievement and so on. when you provide a service that is no longer superior to the others your going to take a hit. Rather than make the game fun again they're being sensitive to bots because they rely on it. So even if they can detect them (which I don't think they can) this downturn in subscriptions is probably going to work out in our favor. Lets just hope they dont make wow fun (no im kidding i hope they do).