it is all part of the plan... possibly

I was just thinking why...? why the sudden dection and the fact that wow is really cracking down on bots. Then i remember what is next month. And what would be great to show investors prior to a "con" is a sudden spike in sales....

But how would you generate these sales?

Ban the botters... with a long undisputed ban. Then they would all go out and buy new battlechests, etc. and there would be a nice healthy spike in sales prior to the con. That would look good to any of the investors.

could be speculation.. but i thought i would share... lol they got another sale out of this guy..

 

Yeah could be speculation. Could be true. Blizz has played this game for awhile now to generate sales. What we are not 100% sure of if this is a short or long game. Are they really cracking down and trying to end botting or are they simply wanting to get a big banwave and reset as they have in the past. This is what we are not sure of. There is talk of the overwatch style detection being put in place and how that will kill botting so I don't know. It's not my area of expertise so to speak but I can say a nice big banwave should create a spike in sales especially now with the tokens in place unless new accounts are created or store sales they getting less funds than before.

 

WoW has been around for such a long time, that without botters i believe it would die off. i believe they don't want to get rid of it COMPLETELY, but do what they have always done and botters keep buying the game over and over and keep paying the monthly fee. When i've been banned, I ALWAYS dispute the charges (the monthly charge of that month) because I dont have access to my account now, so I am not getting what I paid for. GIMME MY MONEY BACK.

 

anyone knows the size approximately of the botting community now?

 

I am guessing total subs is sitting at about 3 to 5 mil now from 12 mil subs in LK days...So how many are bots and how many are not?

Bliz stopped seemingly reporting sub levels in 2015 or thereabouts when they saw that subs were in steady decline.

 

Question is, how long before botters get tired of buying new accounts and subs. Gold farming isn't as lucrative as it used to be (not to say that all botters are gold farmers). Infact due to this recent banwave, I'm debating whether or not it's worth it right now. I'd be best moving on to other games or just call it quits all together.

 

I doubt the total EU+US realm pop is more than 2-3 million active players and 2 more on the SE/TW/CN realms.
Out of them we have ~5-10% botters by default.

Keep in mind, active player by blizz definition is one, logged at least for a hour ... weekly
So the real number of concurrent connections to Blizzard realms are way lower, probably 1/4-1/5 of this number.

 

Honestly I’m done with retail. I have my main account coming off ban soon but I’m kind of over it. This last ban hit my other account and that won’t be usable until 2019. So I’m thinking of just lol’ing about on a PS or finding another game.

 

So if we take high end we are looking at a botting community around 300k to 400k ish.

I kind of thought to be the better days kind of number though. I was thinking we were actually down to 100k to 200k community now if not smaller.

 

Considering we talk for persons, not for bots, we are way smaller than 300-400k, most likely ~50-100k botters total on all regions. Out of them, I have no idea howmany do actively use HB, but not more than 20-30k I suppose. Keep in mind, HB have several bot farmers as customers, which owns 1000+ sessions each. This bumps the total count of botting accounts alot.

 

wayyyy more than 100k persons botting. i'd say maybe HB alone, but there are many other bots out there and other routines. My guess of % of players that bot and/or profit from botting (meaning buying gold) is around 25%

 

Correct!
The majoritry of the botters are using Combat Rotations only and never let the bot move their characters. Some are using HB, others are using CR-only 3rd party tools, etc.
The other part let the bots grind the stuff they require to keep up the pace in their game play.
And the last part just bruteforce the botting for shinnies!

 

Rumor has it that subs have dropped down in to the 1.5m range. Supposedly this was tracked by the amount of accounts gaining certain achievements in legion. I am sure there is a fairly large margin of error here, but still even if it is 2 million ... to lose over 10 million subs in just a few years has got to be concerning.

 

I suppose only SE/CN/TW players are more than 1.5m.
The EU/US could have dropped under 1.5m, it is expected, since Blizz merged tons of realms into "connected" ones, which are basically 1 realm with diff realm tags.
But even with those numbers, they are still dominating the MMOPRG niche.

 

Concerning? Panic hysteria mayhem in the street is more like it....That's a 83% drop in subs. At 50% investors start to flee and sell off stocks....

 

I use combat rotations only and play all the content, but even we got hit in this ban wave, got my letter this morning banned till 2018/04/18, which does not bother me all to much, i mean its kind of shit that even pve players who just want to do a few world quests and chill for a few hours a week got nailed in this also. But it is what it is, I wont be back and I think Hb is on its death bed. It seems there is no escaping this ban wave for anyone.

 

There is though moments here and there. As always, this Blizz pressure will be gone soon™ and we can bot for a while again.

 

Well i wont be LOL, I only used HB for combat rotations and played the game manually, the last time I botted characters or resources was early in panda land. Only have the one account, screw blizzard, its time to move on

 

You know, no one move on off WoW, just needs bit more time afk

 

To clarify a few things.

1. WoW has been dying for many years:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=warcraft

2. However, don't even remotely count on it's death anytime soon, as it is, by far, still the top dog compared to all other online mmos:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=/m/021dvx,/m/0jt2y_q,tera online,runescape online,final fantasy xiv
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&q=/m/021dvx,/m/0jt2y_q,tera online,runescape online,final fantasy xiv

3. And WoW is making more money than it ever has:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/featu...ry-with-nearly-10-billion-in-revenue#/slide/1
http://files.shareholder.com/downlo...50DD69FE/Activision_2016_AR_FINAL_Spreads.pdf

Thanks to the monthly subs, expansions, transfers (as economies and servers die), name changes, faction changes, mounts, pets, etc., but especially the TOKEN. That is why the token was added and it also why blizz no longer publishes sub numbers. And that is why Blizzard will no longer suffer farmer botting, as higher auction prices mean casual users buy more tokens for raiding mats and enchants, carries, rare mounts, etc. As WoW is just a poor ripoff of Lord of the Rings (the book), it should be dubbed the JRR Token.

4. Warcraft is now where the company assigns its beginner and least-talented designers, artists, writers, musicians (hive mind copy-and-pasters versus a talented and expensive Russell Brower), and security experts. This is why, for example, you see Diablo designers, those unable to have a single original idea, packed off to WoW where they simply translate Diablo concepts into WoW. The top designers, those that created WoW and developed the glory years, have moved on to develop all of their new franchises. But with an attempt to bring Blizzard games into esports, their top security experts (those with serious skills) are now sharing successes (think Overwatch) with their stunted little brother wow staff.

5. Keep in mind, that just as Blizzard ban waved rotation bots, etc., right before the release of Overwatch, they are now ban waving rotation bots, etc., right before the Windows release of Destiny 2 (October 24 on battlenet). The same logic is being applied: many of those banned will be looking for a new game for the next 6-18-forever months. Corporations are run by sociopathic accountants (think Enron and Worldcom) who get bonuses based on increased profits... at any cost.

6. Anyone in the industry knows the prevalence of "god complex" asperger-spectrum sociopathic coders, and those at Blizzard are getting personally angry that honorbuddy and firehack still exist, and combined with everything above it is leading to a perfect storm againt botting in warcraft with blizz now sending in the perfect storm troopers.