[Guide] Avoiding the BANHAMMER

[Types of bans]
There can be a lot of confusion between suspensions and bans. A ban is when your account has access permanently disabled. A suspension is when your account has access temporarily suspended. Accounts can get banned and suspended for a multitude of reasons.

Blizzard usually suspends accounts for two reasons. They suspend accounts when they believe they have been compromised by hackers that are using them for illicit activities such as selling gold. Normally these accounts have been compromised by a phishing attack and are stripped within minutes from when they are accessed. (check out my guide on how to avoid getting hacked)
Now that you know the difference between a ban and suspension let’s discuss some techniques that can help you avoid getting the mighty ban hammer.


[Appealing bans]

Blizzard allows you to email their Account Administration department and appeal your account action. We all have seen success stories where someone gets their account perma banned and emails Blizz some sob story about how they left their parrot in the oven and get their account back. If you are perma banned it could be worth a shot to email them. What are you going to lose?

When you get suspended for 72 hours, personally I wouldn’t recommend emailed AA to contest the suspension unless you are using a legit account and not doing anything prohibited by the ToS or EULA.


[Avoiding bans]

This is the trickiest part. We all know the risk we take every time we turn our bots on and let them run rampant through Azeroth. There are a few precautions that we can take to minimize, or attempt to minimize, the obvious nature of what were doing.


[Hours]


Botting 24/7 may seem like the quickest and most efficient way to get your tasks accomplished. If you actually care about your account and don’t want to lose it use some common sense and bot like a human would play. No human, besides teenagers overdosing on Redbull and Monster will be playing for 16 to 20 hours or more a day 7 days a week. Establish a “safe” botting pattern. I quote safe in the means that botting is never safe and you risk account closure every time you start. A safe botting pattern will look like you have a routine or a schedule that you can play. Log on at 0800 and bot for three to four hours, log off at 1200. Stay offline for an hour or two and login and bot another three to four hours and finish for the day at 1700 or 1800.

Some would go as far to argue that player reports over Blizzard reports are more responsible for bans, and they may be right. Having one character running 24/7 on the same profile is asking to get reported. You run that long and use mailing you’re going to overflow the AH and piss off a lot of people. Switching characters every few hours can help minimize player reports. Most players get angry and nerd rage over a botter being in “their spot” for hours upon hours upon days on end snatching up all the ore/herbs. This can help eliminate player reports but if you still runn 24/7 on the account using different characters you’re still going to throw red flags on the back end. In essence, use your brain!


[Laying low]

[Dickbag] whispers: Hey botter. Reported.
You receive [Whiptail] x 6
You receive [Whiptail] x 3
You receive [Whiptail] x 2
You receive [Whiptail] x 4
You receive [Whiptail] x 2
You receive [Whiptail] x 6
You receive [Whiptail] x 3
You receive [Whiptail] x 6
You receive [Whiptail] x 2
[Dickbag] whispers: Botter!!!!!
[Dickbag] whispers: Botter!!!!!
[Dickbag] whispers: Botter!!!!!
[Dickbag] whispers: Botter!!!!!
[Dickbag] whispers: Botter!!!!!
[Dickbag] whispers: Botter!!!!!

Imagine being out with your friends, or getting ripped in the gym, you know, because having HB/GB gives you the opportunity to get a life, and finding this in your logs or chatbox. You feel like you’re going to have a heart attack! Get that pitted feeling in your stomach and you want to vomit. What about my 100,000 gold, all my ore in my guild bank, my epix??!?!?

Take a chill pill bro. Think this out. Don’t go off responding to the accuser. I am willing to bet that most people who whisper botters won’t ever open a ticket. This is not to say that they WON’T. What most people don’t realize in the heat of the moment is you don’t HAVE to respond to anyone, ever. Even if you’re legit playing your account farming some herbs and some jackass is pissed you have enough cash money to buy 310% mount and skill and beat him to herbs. “This guy isn’t responding he must be a bot!” herp derp. Put the player on ignore. If they whisper you again and you happen to be around, feel free to reply to them “I don’t appreciate your uncouth accusations and slander. I placed you on ignore for a reason and now your violating the rules of WoW by bypassing ignore mechanics to harass me. Enjoy your penalty volcano infractions.” /ignore
Remember, stay calm and think rationally.

[Auctions and Trade]


You’ve been farming for a few days and have a guild bank full of raw materials and you’re ready to make a huge pile of gold. SWEET! Let’s think about this. That Twilight Jasmine you have a boatload of sells for 62g/stack! WOW! I have 350 stacks and I’m going to make 21700g! Hold your horses bro. Let’s USE OUR BRAINS. How many stacks are on the AH right now? How many different sellers are there? Is there a lot of undercutting going on right now? These are all things we need to consider when selling mats on the AH. If you go up and Rambo 100 stacks of one ore at once and undercut by 10g you’re going to piss someone, or a lot of someone’s off.

Use trade to your advantage and find people leveling professions or buying in bulk for a raid guild. Offer them discounts for buying in bulk from you. NEVER tell someone how much inventory you have. If they ask why you have so much at once, lie. Tell them you have been farming for a month and were going to level X profession up and decided you didn’t want to sink the gold in it so you’re selling off your stock. Be creative, but be believable.

 

Very will written guide, +rep. Honestly most of this is common sense but a lot of people seem to lack that skill. New botters should really find this helpful.
I really think this should have been put in the HB section of the forums not the ban section, but up to you i guess. ***Request sticky***

 

I will be organizing this in the next few days. Also if anyone has other tips that are beneficial I will add them and give due credit. Specifically if anyone has info about Proxies and such that they use. Additions MUST use proper English grammar and spelling and are subject to proof reading and editing by me before being added.

 

Write a guide on how to sell gold to gold sellers without losing any of your accounts.

For me i still have to use a vanilla account and use seperate IP to my guild bank, and then invite the gold seller and assume vanilla account is banned and hope that my main farm accounts aren't tagged.

 

Wow this is by far the best guide I have seen very nice I knew most of this but it was a good reminder as I am going to start back up again

 

I've never sold gold so I have no knowledge of how to do this without losing accounts.

 

that guy name fits him calling you a botter while he bots him self to the most people who call people botters are botters self wel i useally ignore tjhem or report them for harrashing i dont let me scare of of another botter ingame.. but i dont sell gold neither i use it for my alts or my self while going to raid or pvp to buy better things i bet that guy got mutch dicks in his bags D while he cant stand it you make more money then his little ass.

 

It should probably be noted in here somewhere that selling gold on an account to ANYONE automatically puts a DEATH SENTENCE on that account. You will be banned, no matter how realistic you look while you bot. You might get 3 months, you might get 3 days. The security of your transaction isnt just in your hands. If your buyer gets caught, and overseas buyers almost always do, then any account associated with that account gets closed.

I just had 3 accounts closed that I only botted 8 hours a day on each and only on my laptop next to my desktop. I responded calmly to people, and spoke to realID friends, etc. The day after I sold gold for the first time, one was banned. Last week, another banned out of the blue and I just lost the 3rd and final one tonight. I dont know how to get around this but I will next try just having an account specifically for selling gold. A throwaway Vanilla account that I will sell all gold through but Im not sure that's going to protect my accounts that feed it gold.

 

do you think the same applies for trading gold for game time? the amount of gold is much less and it would only be once every two months... id just love not to throw any more cash towards time cards

 

Really nice read, and I have to say I laughed a lot also!

Like:

"You’ve been farming for a few days and have a guild bank full of raw materials and you’re ready to make a huge pile of gold. SWEET! Let’s think about this. That Twilight Jasmine you have a boatload of sells for 62g/stack! WOW! I have 350 stacks and I’m going to make 21700g! Hold your horses bro."

*****ed me up!

 

all those things are true, and quite obvious to be frank, although i loved it, ofcourse; i know all these things, but am certainly glad you refreshed my memory about it !
+1

 

hey man i have been botting for about half a year now. my account which had 4 lvl 85's now has 9 going on 15 all from gathering professions mostly. i stopped playing for a bit back in july so i wasnt sure if HB got discontinued or not. i hope it never does. i love this program. i can get so much done and not even have to be at my computer

 

Common sense really, you may want to add it's good to bot on a VPN to say you got hacked, although, if you're not paying for a HQ VPN it may slower your internet.

I'm a VPN 24/7 anyway, botting or or not, so, it can't hurt my cause.

 

Wish more people had read this guide, my current realm you have the same 3 people throwing on 300+ stacks of elementium ore, twilight jasmin, stormwine every 3 days.., tried talking to them to make them realize its drawing unneeded attention (Not to mention crashing prices), but there's a serious lack of brains -.-

 

How many auctions per day would you guys say is safe? And what is "normal" (if there is such a normal) for someone whos farming AH alot? I've had from 100 auctions to 250auctions up the last week and its alot of random stuff, gems, potions, random blues and stuff. (im not putting up 100*random herb/ore)

 

I have a question regarding safe selling techniques. I have a few dedicated buyers for my raw materials (ore/herbs). Is it safe to mail them CoD regularly in batches consisting of 12-30 mails? I honestly don't know how the automated system works, so any enlightenment would be appreciated.

 

I've been tempted to sell to private buyers who advertise in trade "buying ore in bulk" etc, but I fear that they will report me if I sell to them in large amounts. Just AH your stuff, I doubt anyone checks names, besides my server doesn't have many snitches and has heaps of botters.

 

Few tips I have as well.

- Use more than one character to auction.
- Sell your Herbs on character
- Sell your Ore/Bars on another
- Never post more the average amount another person has posted.
- Sell completed crafted items from a 3rd character.
- Never sell items from a character that has farmed them, people will put you on the friends list and watch you.
- You don't have to sell only ores/herbs/farmed items. Get creative, make stuff with crafting professions, this will increase your income with minimal effort.
- Build a stockpile, you don't need to move everything in one day, the market fluctuates. Gather stuff now, sell when the items are the most expensive.

 

also something i do you mentioned flooding the auctionhouse, when i prospect/mill items from my botting account, i gradually put them in the auctionhouse, and i don't put like 50+ inferno rubies in the auctionhouse at once... my invitory/bank has mining bags+herb bags and 1 gem bag, as well as a 6 bank tab bank to store items, i know blizzard can view what i got etc, but if you gradually put in the auctionhouse and dont flood it, then it cuts down people reporting you. ^^ nice thread though.

 

i have been boring for five years now, never got an suspension, or anything. so, i consider it safe? am never boring more then max 15 hours. well if you're online like 25hours without any wispers to other friends, it?s kind of unnatural. well common sense is the most "effective" botting.