How To Find Bots (Scuffed) Guide on Warmane

Hi all, first of all the reason I'm making this scuffed guide is because I've gotten real sick of flying around just trying to farm in Northrend, and seeing all these bots. I don't know what warmane does to handle this issue, but I just know they're doing something, because these bots are never there forever. I do see them just dissapear after a while. I do feel a difference for weeks after reporting 4-5 bots. The place just gets significantly quieter, but don't expect good things to last because out of nowhere you can soon (like the day after kind of soon) be flying around and waste 2 hours flying around, getting close to nothing because there is an entire army of new bots. I'm talking about getting close to 0 flying around the whole map for an hour, seeing more or less 20 people flying around my routes (ally & horde) and only like 6 of them are real people.

1. Where to find them:

They are usually in spots where the mobs are not a challenge but the loot is still good. Personally I'm a Northrend farmer so I can't say much about ground-mount farming. So in Northrend they will be mostly in Sholazar Basin & Wintergrasp. Mobs in Icecrown are challenging so the people that farm there have high dps. I don't see many bots there myself and I'm assuming they get deleted quick by every real human player, so it's not profitable for them. In Wintergrasp is even more chaotic since it's a major PvP zone, but the insta-res is beneficial to these botters so they still do it there. In Sholazar the mobs are easy, it's the furthest zone from dalaran, and is really just a leveling zone so the bots are in swarms there.

2. How they fly:

They fly weird. You can immediately tell if you compare it to yourself flying. You know how we fly with WASD and/or the mouse? WASD leads to 'irregular' flying mannerisms (which is perfectly normal to us) and just using the mouse leads to super smooth flying mannerisms. Well these bots don't fly like that. They fly all choppy, with sharp turns, like pacman. Even just flying a turn 10 yards distance they can do 5 sharp turns. If you stack on them while flying, NOT ONCE they will even target you no matter how long you do it for. Their routes are not perfectly scripted, so they can often go from one point to another in a straight line which can lead to them flying SUPER low to the ground but not once have I seen them actually touch the ground making their flying mount walk. If you spot them discovering a node they can pick up, get there faster, and just land on the node even if you don't pick it up, what they will do is just pause in the air for 2 seconds and make a sharp 180 degree U turn. It looks like when someone rotates the camera 180 degrees, then presses both mouse buttons to make them abruptly turn around like that. They ALWAYS seem to know if someone landed on their herb/mineral and/or is taking it so they will just carry on flying somewhere else. You know you'd fly around a tree or a big rock, or mountain only to find someone is already there farming it? These bots don't do that. They will ALWAYS know, even if you are further than 42 yards away. WAAAAAY further than a hunter's attack range but as long as they haven't zoned out of your area, they will always know if you're there taking their herb/mineral so they can just skip it.

3. How they land & mount up:

You know how a lot of us sort of just dismounts in the air because it can get hard to actually make the mount put its feet on the ground? Or when we sort of just know where the herb/mineral will be so we just dismount, fall forwards, and land on top of it. We can also land too far, or too early and end up having to walk to it. Well these bots never do any of this. They are always hovering on top of the thing (but veeeery close to the ground) for a good 1 second before dismounting, and then another second before picking it up, then they will mount up, make their mount fly close to the ground & hover. They always do this weird hover before making another sharp turn to get back on their scripted route. Another pattern I've seen certain bots do is they always perfectly land on the ground right where the node is, but they still do that weird pause before picking it up. Now I know there might be people that do it this way too, but come on we are people, not bots. The timing & way these bots do it is the EXACT same each time. We can never be like that. In fact, the moment we land on the thing we often just spam click to pick it up. Well these bots never do that.

4. How they pick stuff up:

I will give you the patterns I've seen. So I've seen them spamming on pick up herbs/mining no matter how many times you hit them. I've seen them do that til they're dead, or about 5 times before they start running away in bot fashion. But the most common is they will try to mine/pick up herbs JUST twice (because you keep interrupting it with auto attack or something) before they start running away. Some of the more shamelessly blatant bots will land while you are nearby fighting someone (possibly over a herb/mineral) and no matter how many times they get cleaved they will still just spam pick up herbs/mine ores. Bots like this are the same as ones that always spam pick up herbs 5-6 times of infinitely. You know how we sometimes interrupt someone farming to steal the node by using HoJ or poly or cyclone? These bots will never do that. Also if we clearly see someone beat us to the herb by a good second as they're almost done pick it up while we've just started and we give up and fly away? What I've seen happen is these bots will pick it up anyway even though it's clear they're too late (although people can do that too, just not every single damn time). This is caused from what I've seen, by them landing on the node almost at the exact time you did.

5. How they run away:

They are ONLY on the ground if they are made to go on the ground (death grip, dazed by a mob so they fall, and so on) or you catch them dismounting because they've picked something up. Combat timer is about 5 seconds. They will keep walking around for about 5 seconds until they stop and try to mount up. If you keep them in combat ofc they just keep running around. Having said that, the way they walk is WEEIIIRDD. If kept in combat they will often run through a pack of mobs without a care in the world, run into a wall for several minutes, backpedal a bit, run into the wall again, backpedal, fall off somewhere, run in circles, run into a wall again, run into the same damn pond or lake 4x, and this is where it gets interesting. If you watch them swim, they stutter. Like they don't look like they're holding down the W button, they look like they're spam pressing W so instead of just plain old swimming forwards, they will be swimming forwards a pixel, stop, swim forwards a pixel, stop, swim forwards a pixel, stop, swim forwards a pixel, stop, swim forwards a pixel, stop, swim forwards a pixel, stop, swim forwards a pixel, stop, swim forwards a pixel, stop. Also I've noticed they never dive, they only stay at the surface. They never do the jump thing we like to do while in the water too.
If you stealth up so they lose their target but then immediately reappear & constantly stack on them, they will NEVER target you unless you make they auto-target you by attacking them.

6. How they fight & behave in general:

Calling it a fight is a joke. Paladins spam cleanse and heal up until they get oom while continuing their running away because we keep them in combat. Warriors keep charging off cd even if they're almost far enough to fly away from us. Badly scripted warriors will charge again after mounting up. I've had one warrior bot charge me 3x after mounting up even though I've lost him because I got stuck in some rocks & trees. Even the way they charge is weird. They're facing away from us but the moment we get within range they can charge. I'm guessing it's because for a milisecond they actually turned towards us before doing it. Priests spam dispel and heal up. Mages never blink (LOL). I don't know why there aren't many druid bots these days so I haven't been able to experiment, but from what I've seen druids never go into travel form, and shamans never go ghost wolf. One thing in common is they never attack. They just use HoJ or charge or other things like that, but never try to dps you. At first glance it might seem like the way they're running is broken, like the bot broke, because they're going towards a wall all the time, backpedalling, running in circles, but that's actually because the bot is trying to get back en route. If they're not running in circles or doing any of that weird stuff, the bot is already en route somewhere else even though they're walking, not flying. It will always be towards where nodes are located, and if you keep them in combat with a node nearby they will actually try to pick it up. Some actions make them pause & turn around somewhere else but I don't know what causes it. Maybe I stood to close to the herb/mineral. I don't know, I'm not a botter. I've seen this one pala I tried to keep in combat just stay en route while I steal everything he's about to take, allll the way until he came close to nesingwary camp in sholazar. Along the way he kept aggroing rhinos and I always stacked on him so his spells hit me too. He was already dying and u know what he did once he arrived at nesingwary? He went to a vendor for like 5 seconds while spamming flash of light because the guards kept shooting at him, then he walked towards the mailbox while spamming flash of light. He died from not being able to catch up to the damage dealt.

7. How they res:

Even if you're hovering exactly above their corpse, or standing there on the ground, they will for sure res on the spot. Some bots res at the same spot twice, before moving a little to the side to res for the 3rd & 4th time, move a little again before ressing for the 5th & 6th time. I know this, I've tested it and ended up with piles of 2 skeletons all over the place. Some bots res a little to the side each time until they reach what I would assume to be their optimal res spot and keep ressing there 5 times in a row until I got bored & left. Maybe that spot is the closest to them getting back en route? Idk. Also they will always res exactly when it allows them to. They never wait for you to fly away or anything, or until a nearby mob walks away, when that 2 minute timer is up, they will for sure res.

8. Other hacks that they do:

I've seen some deliberately make themselves lag. The lag is abrupt & consistent. These bots can make themselves lag consistently for prolonged periods of time and usually after getting killed a lot. I'm talking about dying, then the 3rd time they res they'd be chronically lagging. When people lag, they teleport all over the place because they don't know where the hell they are & what their chars are doing. Sometimes they have moments when lag isn't so bad so they go back to normal before lagging again. But these bots are somehow still behaving like bots. Like their connection is lagging but the bot isn't because the bot still knows where it is and what it should be doing. So what you will see if you hang around one while keeping them in combat, is that they will teleport but never all over the place, it's always in a straight line, because they are always going in a straight line except for the times you might mess up their script by standing too close to a herb or doing a certain thing around them that triggers them to move elsewhere. So the teleporting always seems like they're teleporting backwards in a straight line, because of this teleporting back to where you were feature that warmane has when you're lagging.
I've also seen this hack where they blatantly teleport. I don't know what it's called. There was this male undead priest in sholazar that I found very hard to record because every time I would follow him in the air until he found a herb, the moment I got a bit too close to the herb he would just dissapear. This happened 3x until one day he dissapeared and when he dissapeared he appeared waaaaay in the distance but still within my eyeline. He was behind some of those giant trees flying in another direction. The distance between his previous spot and the next is like when in eye of the storm you are in any of the bases and looking at the flag area in the centre. At first I thought it was lag, but how come he wasn't stuttering when he's not teleporting? How come it happened 4x conveniently always when I got too close to his node? I haven't been able to see much of this happen before he got banned anyway by botting.

9. Who are these bots?

I've noticed they all have a pattern. None of them is unique. It's more like every batch of 3-5 bots are unique compared to the rest that are flying around. Maybe it's just the software's script making them behave that way. Maybe it can't be tweaked, maybe it can. Maybe every 5 bots that behave the same is actually the same guy. I don't know, but if it can be tweaked, then warmane needs to implement something to prevent these bots from even existing on their servers because if it can indeed be tweaked, it would an endless battle of figuring out their patterns & banning them. It's too much work. Too many bots will kill your server.

10. Other types of bots I know of:

I know of follow bots in BGs. I've seen people follow me even if they're way too far for follow to be enabled. They can even follow someone else nearby in an instant, but these follow bots never walk on their own. I've seen patrolling bots in BGs too. So they behave like farm bots but they keep visiting bases over & over even and spam take flag no matter how many times they got hit. In one arathi basin game I camped gold mine with 2 other people and this tauren DK kept coming there to try & take it at least 5x, it must have been about 7x though. He took the same exact route, stopped at the same place each time, and just spam take flag. He never attacked anyone too. I also know of the fishing bots. I don't think this can be proven easily though. I've only hung around long enough to notice one because I one time I was in wintergrasp for hours. I don't remember why. Like every time there'd be a battle I would logout and log back in later. Anyway every time I ressed, there would be this female human just fishing at the same spot throughout the whole day. She's sitting where she's immune to all dps because she was at a graveyard. I kept trying to talk to her to ask if fishing was good money. Throughout many hours I must have tried talking to her 6 times or something. I whispered her, said it in /s chat. Invited her to party. Stood on her, mounted up there to get her attention. She just kept relentlessly fishing. I don't know if bots farm classic & tbc zones because then I'm going to guess they'll be quickly banned because nothing will spawn whenever they're online.

11. What they look like:

From what I've seen they range from lv 75 to 80 (yes even lowbies bot) but they always wear crappy gear. The most random *** names too.

11. How to report them:

Record your screen with OBS. Make sure to record the following:
Follow them flying for a good several minutes to prove they never target you, until they finally land on a node. Interrupt them to see if they spam pick up herbs/mine minerals. Test them out with various spells. Keep them in combat and see what they do, where they walk. You can also try landing on their nodes ahead of them and then follow them again to see if they will fly away all bot-like to another node (this can be hard though, sometimes they just land anyway and take it if you do it wrong). I do recommend reporting them because just reporting 4-5 can make it feel much better for weeks, but again as I said, the reason I'm making this guide because I just saw an antire map go from perfect to swarmed with bots overnight.