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Blizzard Bans 100,000 Cheaters In Massive "World of Warcraft" Ban Spree
MojoKid writes: Like many MMORPGs, World of Warcraft can be a grind. To sidestep the time commitment required to continually level up a character, gather resources, improve skills, or whatever else is desired, some gamers turn to bots, software that automates the process. The only problem is, Activision Blizzard isn't so keen on this behavior and has dropped the ban hammer hard on gamers who've been using them. Activision Blizzard didn't specify exactly how many people it booted, saying only that it was a "large number of World of Warcraft accounts." However, a screenshot of a conversation between a player, Game Master, and Activision Blizzard employee suggests that over 100,000 World of Warcraft accounts were identified and booted.
That's a lot of revenue per month Blizzard has chosen not to receive.
It's about fscking time. You would think they'd protect their billion dollar brand better.
Why would anybody play a game where you're required to spend time playing it just for the sake of playing it? Where you're building up the skill level of your character rather than yourself?
If Slashdot is going to be relevant, it might start by posting news that is, you know, actually new. This story hit everywhere else days ago.
I still play WoW when I'm particularly bored. It's a dead-easy game these days, and I see no reason anyone would actually use bots. Blizz has been very slow at policing but, you can go into cities now without getting trolled by half a dozen "buy gold here" sites, any more, which is progress. To be sure, the cities tend to be empty of everyone, not just the gold-sellers.
i mean fired, will be that gm and employee that gave out the, no-doubt confidential, details.
n/t
easiest way for getting rid of all cheaters and whatever on WoW is to close everyone's accounts and discontinue the game.
- -= Napalm means serious BBQ =-
Not playing a computer game, or watching some other people do things on reality TV?
The thought process that goes on in some people's heads must be truly baffling.
Good for the players who got booted, I mean. It's easy to waste large portions of your life playing that type of game. Think of the productivity gain they will experience now that they are not playing a grinding game.
When people are into something and when they are into that something _deep_ it is very difficult for them to plug themselves out of that sinkhole
No matter if it's WOW or weed or even slashdot ... a bad habit is a bad habit
Abnegation.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How many of those ~100,000 were false positives?
Dear Blizzard,
If large number of people want to automate or outsource your game experience, then what you have is not a fun game but a chore.
Activision Blizzard likes it when Activision Blizzard talks about Activision Blizzard.
Activision Blizzard!
By the time they get their asses in gear to ban botters, the damage is already done. It takes months - sometimes years for Blizzard to actually take action. Even when the person botting is obvious and blatant.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I've played WoW a bit, and I estimate that the amount of time and effort required to get a lvl 100 character with "epic" gear today, is perhaps 1/5 of what it used to take to achieve the equivalent lvl 60 back in the day.
Blizzard dumbed down, simplified, and accelerated the game, in the shear fear of losing a subscription somewhere because some kid quit when he couldn't get everything instantly, and people are still lazy enough to cheat their way to 100.
Instead of banning them, give people a settable-but-not-clearable checkbox:
- "I won't cheat", if you're caught then you're subject to a ban
- "I might/will cheat", fine, but you can't run multiplayer with others who won't
Heck, go one step simpler- no checkbox, but if you're caught cheating you can only go multiplayer with others who were caught. But the flag clears itself after 'X' amount of "time served".
I am not a sig.
How many of those ~100,000 were false positives?
Zero. Its not behavior based. Its based on physically inspecting the game's code executing in RAM and recognizing modifications to that code. Whether the player knew they were using a hacked copy of the game is debatable, that the game code was hacked is not debatable.
People proclaim their innocence all the time and the honest ones eventually return to forums saying that they did some investigation and found out that yes their brother/cousin/friend had installed a hack on the computer they played from.
Doing it that way has lead to banning people who were running WoW on Linux previously. So yes, it can lead to false positives.
Since they can't play the game they bought because it is now deliberately defective by the "owner", they get a refund, right?
You see, this would be 100% problematic if you could run your own server. But as they showed with BNetD, they are shit scared of any competition in how "their game" can be played by the people who FUCKING GAVE THEM MONEY.
I would totally demand through the courts a refund of the money for the game.
1) Each month you get a certain "allowance" and hours played deduct from that. Any unused allowance is turned into some form of in-game loot (gold or random enchants, or credit for next month). Therefore when you aren't able to play due to work or holiday for some time, you don't feel you've wasted the months' subscription. This also means you can avoid some grind and gold farming becomes less necessary to pander to: you farm gold already, or play and get much more gold by actively playing than you would when you can't.
2) Self hosting servers. Hell, if their scares about how the protocol would be hacked and their servers compromised for cheaters were relevant (See SMB and the Intel BIOS for why it's a load of crap), have two protocols, at least different interpreters, therefore compromised differently, and use one for the self-host and the other for official walled garden games. Banning accounts merely becomes a "You can't cheat on our systems, play with others who don't care".
3) Cut the grind. Maybe by making a single line of synergistic abilities easy. The grind would come when you need to up the other abilities to get a well rounded character that doesn't lose if they're not playing a well balanced and cohesive party. Two problems fixed here:
a) you need all archetypes playing together, and this can be hard without including people you don't know, hence cheaters get "in". Making the grind game rounding out your character means experienced players can gravitate away from forced co-op with random strangers and the demand for all usual players to organise together to play at the same time. You can do without one or two of them for sessions.
b) you can speed up the grind without unbalancing. Those who grinded already have more varied skills, so they won't have to restart.
Those people paid for it.
It's still cheating. That's the same as what they call cheating when other people do it.
Nobody does. My sister plays. She walks off while playing, the laptop still on, still dinging sounds coming as "the character" continues to level up smithing or something to a perk. So 100% not playing the game because it's the grind.
Yet still "playing" it. And, because online, paying for it.
The playable points are a long grind away. And designed that way, hence I agree with the OP that WoW is a waste of time.
Until you've spent enough to actually play the fucking game, that is. But that's the problem here: you have to play the non-game of the grind. That's what the OP is talking about. Whereas you're talking about the "post-grind" game.
Kill the first.
If you grind on a server that you don't pay for, then there would be pressure on Blizzard to make the grind less onerous and still give it purpose. As it is, they want to make the grind longer and more boring, which makes farmers of game points valuable. Depending on how much free time you have it can easily be CHEAPER to pay someone a large sum to bypass the grind. They profit too because they can put much more time into it. Only Blizzard loses, because they aren't getting the money from the gamer with a life and commitments outside the game. This is why they're against farmers: it costs them unearned revenue.
After the said undressing of them, the 100000 player character should have indeed jumped to their deaths from the highest peak of Azeroth, simultaneously. Banning is a spectator sport, you know.
What is the difference between buying a fully leveled character and using a bot to make one?
And I've played grindy MMOs before, when you get good at it (the grinding) your actions aren't easy to tell from a bot anyway.
Corporatism != Free Market
OP needs to play a real MMO to know what a true GRIND is. WoW was and is the easiest MMO to level up in.
blizzard banned 1 bot and 179 dedicated players.
Here's some context:
WoW has a bunch of things you can do.
Level: You have to level to participate in most content. Bots that automate this are often ignored, because they aren't that much better at it. This is not about one of those bots at all.
Raiding, an organized pve (player versus environment, in other games pvm for player versus monster)- an experience at max level versus challenging encounters. If you fail on one "boss", he "resets", and you have to try that boss again from the start. Each boss encounter is 3-10 minutes, and raiding guilds normally meet at specified times when everyone can be available, and clear multiple bosses (ideally all of them) in one or more difficulty levels. The hardest levels are almost unbeatable except for the top few thousand players out of millions, and it normally takes some time for even the professional players to get down the hardest bosses on the hardest difficulties whenever a new raid is released. When you do beat a boss, he drops random loot- potential upgrades, hopefully, to make you and your friends more powerful. The gear dropped from the toughest bosses is the best currently in the game for pve.
No bot can raid. A few bots can automate certain tasks, but these are rarely employed- the tasks needed for automation are so dynamic, and the risks so great, that it's almost unheard of.
Ranked PvP- At max level, you can join a premade group for arena (2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 death match) or rated batteground (objective based 10v10 play). These modes are very difficult to win at the higher level. Participation grants access to the best pvp gear in the game.
No bot does these things. A few players use bots to automate certain tasks- for instance, one really hard task is to "kick" an opponent when they are casting. Since there is a lot of latency and ability to fail (the opponent will often start a cast, then stop, hoping that you will "kick" when he is not casting, thus wasting your cooldown, and allowing him to cast again, this time without fear of interruption), kickbots are a thing- but they are much harder to get away with. All ranked pvp is very hard to cheat at, because you will generate a series of complaints from your opponents, and get banned permanently for it.
This is not what's being discussed, and a kickbot or other arena program is ultimately trying to provide your character with one or more superhuman responses. These are rare and actioned severely.
Casual PvP- generating the gear needed to play in ranked, this involves being thrown in with mostly random people in an objective based pvp environment. Very popular among those who don't want to coordinate in Skype, or people who just want to play some.
*This is what the bot in question does:* It automates this casual pvp. This allows the players to have alternate accounts that are getting gear on multiple characters. This means that they can play pvp with different classes easier than those who do not cheat. A few fools even botted from their main accounts, which the bot authors always tell you not to do. These bots shit up the game- you'll queue up and notice some of the players are bots, and if your team has too many, you'll lose. If the enemy team has too many, your win will not be fun, because bots are stupid.
I don't play WoW right now, but I'm very glad to see them banning these clowns.
Why not fight bots with bots? Players caught using bots get a "special" servers, where the bots cheat, and constantly pummel the players.
After a few days of getting pummeled, getting their inventory reduced to nothing, the problem will take care of itself, and they will either stop using bots, cancel their subscriptions and start a new one, or just quit altogether.
So people pay to play this game...... then they pay other people so they don't have to......... odd
Either that, or the in-game capital has an exchange value to real-life currency, and they want more of that for some reason.
move to a real game that is fun enough that you dont want to bot! check out Archeage
oh, wait, no, those were just account stealing gold pirates and people using bots.
God those are so annoying.
Way to go, Blizz!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Did they drop any good loot?
should be allowed to drink alcohol.
Some people are drug addicts, so no one should be allowed to use drugs.
Some people are addicted to World of Warcrack, so no one should be allowed to play WoW.
The baby can't digest meat, so all of us have to drink milk....
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
Great, can you guys get on the Starcraft cheaters now? Those cheaters only cheat to beat other individuals and they really ruin the game for everyone.
Great move by Blizzard. Now we need to go after the clowns that hack Starcraft 2. I really don't understand the mindset of cheaters/hackers... it's like they so utterly fail as human beings that they can't even have fun playing a video game without cheating. If you really hate "grinding" at WoW (and the article and comments suggest that this type of grinding isn't at all necessary to enjoy the game) then don't play it. Starcraft 2 hacking (generally maphacking to gain vision of your opponent's base and army) is even more counterproductive: the matchmaking/MMR system gives you opponents judged to be at exactly your skill level, with an expectation of 50% win/loss. By hacking you artificially inflate your perceived skill... leading to harder opponents, who can and will beat you DESPITE the cheating. Losing even when cheating must be a special kind of awful.