They dont ban bots anymore?

[Trasheye123]

Been following a rogue bot for 4 days. Sent loads of pics and information about this rogue. He is still not banned. and he is still botting.
Seeing loads of bots roaming right now in Outland

[Flavi87]

Sooo.. without names or anything, what exactly does this rogue you've been following do?

[jmsvanbuskirk]

The real question is why? Are we that bored waiting for wotlk we're following players around now lol.

Maybe Trasheye needs a badge and we can promote them to police the server while we're all logged out and on vacation.

[Gandbol]

I have found more then 10 bots only in terokkar forest, opend the ticket but still didnt get any response for 4 days. I gues all azeroth and outland is full of this bots. Warmane need to update their's anti bot system or promote with bagde bot police

[NapoLoL]

Bots are obviously a huge problem on this server.
Moving around the open world you come across way more bots than actual players sadly.
Reporting them is way too complicated imo and seemingly does not even guarantee they get banned.

Here are some of the most common examples I've seen:
- Hunters, Rogues, Druids, Shadowpriests and Warriors grinding mobs
- Druids and Hunters flying with herbalism / mining
- Warlocks farming under water (Nagrand / Terokkar)

Thanks to their programmed and therefore predictable behavior there are a couple of things you can do:
- pull them into mobs to get killed so they lose durability (doing this often enough will make them use Hearthstone or run back to repair or simply to stop reviving - depending on bot version I guess - sadly they come back quite quickly sometimes)
- as a rogue: sap them when they eat/drink - they become immune eventually but it still interrupts eating/drinking as they stand up - they lose all their food almost in an instant and have lot of downtime, when they can't reg (almost more effective than killing)

There are a lot more things you can do ofc, but these things have proven halfway effective.
We even tried trapping them on flying islands in Nagrand. Sadly they just take the jump and don't care about the height ..

Some bots however fail to revive after they get killed once! (mostly seen on flying bots)

But in the end we figured out the best way so far:
THROW THEM OFF THE MAP!
You can easily kite them to the edge of each zone. We then used a priest to mc them and send them flying.
That way it's harder for them to revive and they are mostly gone for the day at least.

This does ofc not solve the problem. But it helps killing boredom until WOTLK pre launch.

[Palutena]

Dozens of bots are banned in a daily basis. We have thousands of players and a small team of 10 Game Masters. Your reports if delivered without good evidence, will require some investigation from a GM. We can't go banning players just because player X got defeated by player Y and decided that from now on he would accuse anybody he lost a fight to as a bot.

[Obnoxious]

Retail, with all their resources and paid subscriptions, still has a big problem with farming bots.
I don't understand why people expect us to find a perfect solution for what a multibillion company hasn't in decades.

[Entrip]

This is funny because the truth is Blizzard actively profits from farming bots, they aren't actively trying to find a solution at all this is their solution - to have it exist enough for them to profit off it, but not prelevant enough in the eyes of the average gamer so that it doesn't boil over and you win-win. People just need to decide if you lying to us about this kind of thing matters enough to them or not. Between this and the way you handle win-trade accusations, not a good look.

[Obnoxious]

If you're going to accuse us of lying, let me help you decide if you should stay.

[NapoLoL]

Your reports if delivered without good evidence, will require some investigation from a GM. We can't go banning players just because player X got defeated by player Y and decided that from now on he would accuse anybody he lost a fight to as a bot.

We can absolutely agree that this is one of the main issues.
Of course no player should ever be banned without due process! Reporting players should also not be usable as some sort of harassment either ofc.
On the other hand it is hard to provide good evidence. Screenshots really don't prove anything here and I don't normally screen-record myself playing. Not sure if that's even possible for everyone ..

[Gandbol]

Mr/Mrs I realy understand that bot programs progress every day, and it is hard to detect them. But i wish we can work together with Game Masters and other players to cut this AI "cancer" from our lovely server. Just need some your online attendance ,and we(gamers) will show you(GM) them. Bets regards.

[Milodiablo]

Big Blizzness for Bots $$$, that's why.

[NapoLoL]

To get back to the initial question: YES, they do indeed ban bots.

I tried reporting the bots I came across.
Took a couple of days, but eventually my ticket was answered and action has been taken.

The report I submitted included screenshots and a brief explanation of the characters behavior.

So I can only encourage everyone to do the same!
Please submit a proper report when you come across a bot.

Also I would say: the better the evidence, the faster the GM can take action.