[Column] World of Warcraft: The Ban Hammer Swings to What Effect?

SBFord

It has been quite a while since Blizzard issued a large number of World of Warcraft bans but last week saw that lull end with over 100,000 player accounts being blocked for bot usage. The most common program for which players were censured was the Honorbuddy bot program that essentially automates play during PvP matches and with plug ins that can also make certain PvE tasks automatic as well. These player accounts received a temporary restrictions that will see them unable to play WoW for six months.

Read more of Suzie Ford's and Catherine Daro's World of Warcraft: The Ban Hammer Swings to What Effect?

Laughing-man

So they bot and get ONLY  a 6 month ban?

Blizzard, why do you act so hard up for cash / subs when you clearly aren't?

hallucigenocide

bout time they did something.. doing battlegrounds the last couple of years have been horrendous.

 

6 months seem appropriate. .perma ban is just overkill and 6 months should be long enough for ppl to not wanna risk it

Arskaaa

only 6 month huh.

Now they ban bot players when they can buy game time with gold.

Nanfoodle

If its only a 6 month ban, chars that progressed with the cheat should be deleted. IMO wrong move. 

tawess

Well... The temp band could be to see how the tracked accounts act next. What other ways they use and what other paths they take. This is after all more about information warfare then it is anything else. 

 

Banning accounts are easy... Diminishing the source is a lot harder. 

Arskaaa

or they release new expansion pack after 6 month so banned players can buy exp...come back to game:>

Ozmodan

What amazes me, the people banned, trying to justify their cheating.  It is bad enough they cheated, let alone try to defend their actions.

 

ButeoRegalis

"that Blizzard “encourages” botting by making such a huge number of time-consuming achievements that many feel requires the use of bots to complete."

"I have read here in the forums a bit, a lot of the accounts where 10 years old."

Hmm, I wonder how many of these 10 year old accounts are just running on auto pilot? Accounts from people who have invested years into the game, but don't want to play it any more, but also don't want to "fall behind" by not playing, so they run bots that "keep up" with the game for them.

Satyros

Burn their accounts and ban their children for three generations.

And its still not enough punishment.

 

Wizardry

Originally posted by hallucigenocide

bout time they did something.. doing battlegrounds the last couple of years have been horrendous.

 

6 months seem appropriate. .perma ban is just overkill and 6 months should be long enough for ppl to not wanna risk it

Except the TIMING seems fishy as always does with Blizzard.Perhaps giving themselves a media pat on back whilst likely making more sales as many will just buy another account and bot up again.I am sure the bot program will be updated to avoid detection for a long time again.

IMO perma ban for blatantly cheating is the accurate answer.Remember these cheats may have got away with it for years,ruining the entire game for everyone else,you can't put a price on that.They may have cheated for 3/4/5 years and get a 6 month slap,not good enough.

What Square Did when they finally got around {5 years or so} to doing something about cheating ,is they went back as far as their logs would go and cross referenced to other accounts all their sales and exchanges to basically come close to reversing the negative affects cheating had on the economy/game.It takes a lot of work but it is the only way after you have allowed cheating to go on for so long.

nyxium

Blizz are spying on your computer. I'm ok with this, as I don't bot and I'm sure they won't detect my secret stash of giraffe pictures that I love but I can't be too sure. Ok that last bit was a joke.

 

Velocinox

Here's a thought Bossland, make your own cash cow and stop tongue tickling the udders of some other cow's success.

Solar_Prophet

Would really like to hear the reasoning behind the German judges' decision to side with Bossland, especially since they're clearly in the wrong. 

Glad to see Blizzard banning bots again, although it's been far too long since the last time they cracked down. Hopefully they make an effort to stay on top of the problem this time instead of letting it get out of control. 

Should have been permabans though...

Muke

Originally posted by Ozmodan

What amazes me, the people banned, trying to justify their cheating.  It is bad enough they cheated, let alone try to defend their actions.

 

 

You are surprised?

Do a tour around prisons in your country and you will be shocked how many inmates will say they are innocent. (they all are)

As for Blizzard, they are milking their customers while cheapening their product, and it proves even more that they allow such players to come back on their own clients. The least they should have been doing was permaban their accounts and through IP.

(Yes, it can be done, CCP have been doing it for years)

Of course you will always have bannd players who at some time move houses, get a new IP, use VPN etc, but the fact that Blizzard allows them to come back makes it even more look like a slap on the wrists while saying "please come back in 6 months, we like your money through"

Banning players for bots is one thing, but also a bit ironic, since there are hardly any players who can play without macro'ed commands ingame. I think I am the only one who played 'normal' when I had a active sub. -quit after reaching level 100 out of boredom-

For the ppl that accuse Blizzard of spying: game clients scanning active running programs is normal, they do not spy into your computer or scan your harddrives for malicious/juicy content.

 

 

Aison2

Originally posted by Velocinox

Here's a thought Bossland, make your own cash cow and stop tongue tickling the udders of some other cow's success.

 

It's a normal occurrence if you think about. Think of all the third party bussiness for cars for example. Whenever a product leaves something open to fix someone else will step in and make money on it.

The only difference between bot developers and your third party car mechanic is that the later benefits you.

OhhPaigey

Originally posted by Laughing-man

So they bot and get ONLY  a 6 month ban?

Blizzard, why do you act so hard up for cash / subs when you clearly aren't?

I botted in MoP, I had 9 90s, farmed gold, ran it in BGs, went for like 1.5 years until I was raiding one night and got perma banned, told them it was a friend and they unbanned me in less than 30 minutes, I was able to finish up the raid and everything lol.

But really let's be honest, when their game has dropped so many subs, and then they decide to do a big wave of bans like this, it's not smart from a business perspective to ban 100k people forever.

But I know first hand that they do perma ban people for botting, maybe not as much as they should, but it does happen.

Also, while I've been leveling & now gearing my ally Druid in BGs over the long weekend, I haven't seen a single bot at level 100, just really bad players.

So, it seems to have fixed the problem.

And btw, 6 months is a really long time from now, especially considering they're losing whatever subscription time they paid for, and next time it will be permanent lol, don't think that Blizzard banned them, and then will forget about them once their ban is up, all of their accounts will be getting watched. I'm sure all the botters that got caught are pretty mad right now rofl, and the one's who didn't get caught in the big ban wave, aren't botting at all anymore.

6 Months is long enough to make whatever gear you botted completely irrelevant, at the very least.

OhhPaigey

Originally posted by Wizardry

Originally posted by hallucigenocide

bout time they did something.. doing battlegrounds the last couple of years have been horrendous.

 

6 months seem appropriate. .perma ban is just overkill and 6 months should be long enough for ppl to not wanna risk it

Except the TIMING seems fishy as always does with Blizzard.Perhaps giving themselves a media pat on back whilst likely making more sales as many will just buy another account and bot up again.I am sure the bot program will be updated to avoid detection for a long time again.

Some will open another account, probably won't bot unless their gold sellers and don't care about their account(s). Do you think Blizzard is stupid?

 

The bot program can't update anything to avoid detection unfortunately, there's many flaws with it, including just how obvious it looks, the fact that it only runs in 32bit, the fact that you need to have click to move enabled, the fact that the rotation it uses is the exact same every single time, I mean, it's very very easy to tell who's botting or not. 

The fact that they will randomly get stuck and run around in place for many hours if they aren't babysat, if you have the relog option enabled it will sign in & out at the same exact intervals, if you're botting in BGs, the fact that it won't move outside of BGs unless to repair, and will only use the same repair vendor multiple times.

HB is very amateurish, and unless you want to pay for the programs license key, and then pay coders to make a script for whatever you want, it's very simple to detect.

Velocinox

Originally posted by Aison2

Originally posted by Velocinox

Here's a thought Bossland, make your own cash cow and stop tongue tickling the udders of some other cow's success.

 

It's a normal occurrence if you think about. Think of all the third party bussiness for cars for example. Whenever a product leaves something open to fix someone else will step in and make money on it. The only difference between bot developers and your third party car mechanic is that the later benefits you.

While I see your point, I don't think it's exactly accurate. While it does mimic the after market industry for cars I would adjust that analogy to an after market company selling you a kit to crack your odometer and roll it back despite the fact that it's a federal offense and the car companies build them to be tamper proof.

Also, the end result of these bots is so gold sellers can turn around and sell the rewards, gold, and leveled up/awarded up accounts when they are maxed out. This isn't a legitimate use of the original product. Chips, headers, tips, and other car products are legitimate additions to your car.

Velocinox

Originally posted by Aison2

Originally posted by Velocinox

Here's a thought Bossland, make your own cash cow and stop tongue tickling the udders of some other cow's success.

 

It's a normal occurrence if you think about. Think of all the third party bussiness for cars for example. Whenever a product leaves something open to fix someone else will step in and make money on it. The only difference between bot developers and your third party car mechanic is that the later benefits you.

While I see your point, I don't think it's exactly accurate. While it does mimic the after market industry for cars I would adjust that analogy to an after market company selling you a kit to crack your odometer and roll it back despite the fact that it's a federal offense and the car companies build them to be tamper proof.

 

Also, the end result of these bots is so gold sellers can turn around and sell the rewards, gold, and leveled up/awarded up accounts when they are maxed out. This isn't a legitimate use of the original product. Chips, headers, tips, and other car products are legitimate additions to your car.

kjempff

Blizzard are and have always been quite inactive when it comes to enforcing anti cheats. Once in awhile when they got some numbers to work with, the do the usual publicity stunt "this many accounts banned for using blahblah... we care about blahblahblah". Rarely are the bans permanent (cheaters are also paying customers), and never do they actively target cheaters outside the dedicated anti cheat publicity week.

This has been the Blizzard way ever since .. ever. Next ban round will be in 6-18 months, and the number banned will be the usual 50k-100k.

Aison2

Originally posted by Velocinox

Originally posted by Aison2

Originally posted by Velocinox

Here's a thought Bossland, make your own cash cow and stop tongue tickling the udders of some other cow's success.

 

It's a normal occurrence if you think about. Think of all the third party bussiness for cars for example. Whenever a product leaves something open to fix someone else will step in and make money on it. The only difference between bot developers and your third party car mechanic is that the later benefits you.

While I see your point, I don't think it's exactly accurate. While it does mimic the after market industry for cars I would adjust that analogy to an after market company selling you a kit to crack your odometer and roll it back despite the fact that it's a federal offense and the car companies build them to be tamper proof.

 

Also, the end result of these bots is so gold sellers can turn around and sell the rewards, gold, and leveled up/awarded up accounts when they are maxed out. This isn't a legitimate use of the original product. Chips, headers, tips, and other car products are legitimate additions to your car.

 

Those car dealers loose likewise money on their official repair services whenever you use the services of third party people. They would love to ban those third party guys hurting their profit just as much as gamedevs want bots banned, the only difference is that they didn't manage to make it official. 

And it's just a single example, same with refills for printers, same for refills for coffee machines,... it's always the same story, someone comes and undercuts them which cuts into the original producers profits.

The gamedevs are merely in the lucky position of being able to forbid it and most people accepting it as they are on board with the decision.

gervaise1

Originally posted by OhhPaigey

don't think that Blizzard banned them, and then will forget about them once their ban is up, all of their accounts will be getting watched.

This.

And as was mentioned above watching may lead to other bot programs - assuming the accounts come back of course.

What - perhaps - might also be considered / done is to "fine" the accounts; remove gold and / or items / and / or experience from characters. The reasoning being that is the account holder opts to sell the account (lets assume they wait 6 months) then the account won't be as valuable. Just a thought.

Gravarg

Blizz should delete their accounts, not ban them.  And then program WoW to automatically launch inifinitely on their computer upon start up so they can't do anything and their computer just crashes to blue screen everytime they start their computer...The EULA would make it legal for Blizzard to do this, if some court thinks that botting is legal on someone elses property, why not return the favor

Abdar

You've missed the part where they've killed off (for now) the bot program as well, finding a way to detect it. That's bigger then 100K bans if you ask me.

tixylix

Better be careful, 100k is a lot of players for WoW these days lol.