Overwhelming farming botters on icc server and how to spot them

[dzsila]

Hello, i feel its long overdue for this kind a post since there are way to many herbalism/mining boters and i dare to say they are vast majority of farmers. Not only they infest all zones in Northrend even those with cheaper loot but they operate in Outland as well, everywhere where flying mount can be used but mostly in Sholazar. I hope this thread will become popular and draw attention of Warmane's staff in order to get rid or minimize this ever lasting and growing problem.

Here is what i learnt so far about bots by plenty of time farming and watching them closely even while losing loads of nods because of it just to track their behaviour. I even watched some YouTube tutorials marketing those bots just to know what i am dealing with.

-Three most common botting classes because of extra speed are pala & DK and Druid because of flight form. Other classes can be found botting but not so often.
- Most botters will usually be low GS <20k HP, probably with many other low chars to replace them in case they get banned.
- With that said I have encountered few full geared botters that sometimes i beat easily because their pvp bot just random spams different spells and other times while they are really playing they obliterate me like they are different players. Note that its easier to spot enemy botter because of PvP.
- Botters will often fly while targeting themselves.
- They will never target you even if you are close to them.
- They will be also flying on low health caused by enemy attacks or mobs without healing themselves even out of combat.
- They will often go unbuffed and with ress sickness for insta resurrection because they are programed not to wait long for respawn.
- They will often avoid cheaper herbs even though they can be good extra gold because of limited bag space and long time botting.
- Often you can find only crystals in ores and herbs because their bags are full. They probably cant auto convert crystals to eternals and ''auto collect'' ores and herbs first even though sometimes crystals are more valuuble then ores.
- Usually first time when struck they will continue trying to pick up nod but in second attack they will either stand doing nothing, try to attack you with spamming random spells with no order, or try to run away in straight line to leave combat and mount up.
- Most of them will always use same route and stand on exact same spot while waiting for respawn.
- They will never look for nod but instead they will land directly on it using shortest route like they knew exactly where is it. Druids will never have to leave flight form while collecting herbs even though sometimes you just have to leave form in order to collect it.
- If you are already farming nod friendly botter will sometimes try to farm it no matter it is obvious it's already taken.
- If you are occupynig nod and enemy botter is near they will usually just fly away without fight even if they are much better geared.
- Sometimes they get stuck in the trees for minutes.
- Even free cheap bots have sound alert when whispered, attacked, followed etc.
- Some of them, mostly geared players combine PVP bots with gathering bots and soon as you attack them they spam everything + interrupt you at 0,01.
- Few of botters farm just certain areas like north-west and south-east part of Sholazar where respawn of nods is highest and always return to exact same spot to wait for another.
- Friendly botter will never help you when you are fighting, they just collect nod and move forward. Enemy bot will do same and not attack you.
- Their movement is kinda different, rarely a straight line but mostly lots of ups and downs rights and lefts (to recognize that you need to have a keen eye).
- They usually farm at all times at day and night. For example i work in different shifts and every time when i go farm no matter what time is it i see same players farming for as long as i am online.
-They usually fly at a certain height stop above nod, fly straight down, pick it up and fly straight up on that same height.
I could make video of all the things i said above but its a drag and would take alot of time but most honest farmers know what i am talking about by just reading this text. If this thread ever becomes popular i will make some videos just to show ppl what i am talking about.

Now what i usually do is when i see someone meeting few behaviour like i mentioned i take a screen shot of players name and when i have a lot of names i just quickly write them and open ticket to report them. By now i probably reported hundreds of botters and dozens of them got banned. As far as i can tell ppl accepted them like it is normal without anyone doing anything. Believe it or not reporting works. You can see daily tenths of ppl getting banned for bot. It just takes a lot of time which would be probably reduced if more ppl report same person. Biggest problem is there are so many of them and they keep coming to replace their banned char. Like i said they probably have multiple boting low geared chars since i see lot of ppl lvl 80 multibox boosting like 5-10 characters through dungeons in very short time. Pressing ctrl+v to toggle friendly plates helps to easier detect friendly player botters. I estimate that in Sholazar more than 70% ppl are botters. For example i also keep seeing on AH tenths of stack of Lichbloom selling by same character which are very hard to find. Same is with adder but it is somewhat easier to loot. I dont think they really spent hours, days and weeks farming them to put them so many and so cheap.
Now i dont know what impact it has on server economy but i certainly know that herbs and ores would be much more expensive than they are now because literally they are for free and somehow it would probably impact gold sale for coins on warmane site. I also see way too many players sell gold for coins. I dont believe they use all of those coins from gold to gear their characters (they would have done that ling time ago) but rather to sell it for real money. Do your math and think how much time would honest farming take you to earn some real money by selling coins for cheaper price than it is on site.
I hope all the things (and guide) i said in this post will help you detect botters and encourage more ppl to start reporting botters more because this growing problem needs to end.

[mirekrock]

I started farming recently, tried Storm Peaks first and saw plenty of bots who fly as you said - straight down, reported them, dunno if they did get banned.

Moved to Icecrown, havent really saw bots there, maybe because u fight there for vein, lots of pvp. BUT! today I started seeing “empty” veins, no saronite ore, but crystal earth left, and so on. Sadly it takes like 4-5h for unexperencied booster to lvl up to 80 (dual account boost your self in dungeons)
So u report them, ban, and in few hours new bot is ready. No idea how to fight that (

[BaceX]

"Descending down while flying without pointing mouse cursor down. This is easiest way to spot a botter because as far as i can tell there is no keyboard button that gets you down in flight while facing forward. There are only space (up), left, right, forwards and backwards but no downwards button."

Try using the "sit" button ;)

[dzsila]

Man i never use sit button because i use that key for some more important spells do i never figured it could be used for flight descending. I edited post. Thx alot.

[xandor]

Easiest way to detect bots:
Look at their movement, I think nearly all the bots use click to move because it works so good.
Try enabling it to see how it look like in Interface -> Mouse -> Click to Move and then right click a few times on the ground.
They generate paths of coordinates where they use click to move.
Bots use click to move in the air (I don't think you can't do that as a normal player since when you use it normally you click on surfaces, they do it by writing coordinates in memory so it can be coordinates you can't normally click) which is super obvious but it is also so easy to see it when they walk on the ground.
You can usually see if someone is a bot within seconds of it moving.

I have reported bots in the past, I found so many that I had to use multiple characters on multiple accounts because I found them much faster than reports was handled (I think they hand out the bans once a week or something like that).
It can be fun to add all the people you report on friends list and then see how they all are offline a week or two later. Especially if you do it on a server like Lordaeron where it takes longer to level. On Icecrown they can have a new character at 80 in less than half a day.

[Prikaza88]

Man... Sometimes i get tired if Sholazar and go other areas in Northrend and Outland to try farming cheaper herbs and ores. But even there i see some people u described in ur post. I also reported many players and see many of accounts get banned, but i think main problem is that they are easily replaceable by other chars. GM's are definitely doing their part but in order to resolve this issue all of them would need to putt their efforts in this subject which is impossible.

[Zachariah]

I feel for you bro. You nicely excribed their behaviour, but i think you are being generous with 70%. Its probably more like 90%. Lots of time i when i think someone is bottling i msg them but usually without response. Sometimes i write on general chat just to see how many actual players there are. Just 2-3 of them reapond while dozens of them are farming. Idk maybe rest of them just mind their own business but i doubt it.