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Blizzard has gone ahead and dropped the ban hammer, wiping out thousands of bot using World of Warcraft accounts in one swoop. Those found to be using the popular HonorBuddy system were faced with six month bans from the game.
HonorBuddy was a popular bot system that claims to have over 200,000 registered users, The bot was capable of automating gameplay on accounts. The bot was mostly used to gather Honour in PvP without actually having to play the game yourself at all.
In a post on the World of Warcraft Battle.net forums, Community Manager, Josh Allen, said that Blizzard has recently “taken action against a large number of accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay. We’re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft.”
One of Blizzard's Community Managers, ‘Bashiok', took to Twitter to explain that any form of automated gameplay goes against the subscriber agreement, meaning that it is against the rules and punishable with bans. Blizzard has been making a big effort to clean up World of Warcraft recently, first by introducing Tokens in an effort to combat gold farmers, and now with this big crack down on bot use.
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KitGuru Says: Using a bot to play a game for you seems to defeat the purpose a little bit and no matter which way you look at it, it's a form of cheating. Do any of you still play WoW from time to time? Have you ever encountered bot accounts in PvP?
I still play wow but I don’t see botters around as I don’t PvP anymore, however I’m glad the ban hammer had been dropped as It spoilt PvP for the actual PvPers who wanted to play the game legit.
Only 6 months?
Hardly seems like a punishment eh? They’ll just do it again, A 6 month ban is about as pathetic an attempt at banning someone on steam for cheating in CoD or CS, they’ll just make another account.. by the game dirt cheap and do it again and if they get banned again they’ll rinse and repeat
When are we gonna see serious punishments for ruining other people’s enjoyment?
Should be permanent bans imo. But, at least Blizz has their priorities straight in one area. I remember in Cata there were so many bots farming mats and honor that it was hard to do any farming or BG’s myself. Arena and Raids were the only way to get away from them.
I remember playing one game really late at night; it was a strand of the ancients match and I only had 2 other real people on my team. All the bots were following the exact same path and mounting at the exact same time. It was kind of funny to watch until we inevitably got wrecked.
To little to late and not even perma bans ?
So many players left due to battleground honor farming bots that ruined any form of fun pvp for years on end.
They lost over 3 million players wich is insane in such short amount of time even for wow standards.
Gues they had no choice anymore and ban bots before those were the only “players” left.
Shame the bans arent longer, but can see why they did 6 month bans as ultimately most game publishers believe in giving rule breakers a 2nd chance, and ultimately they feel that if they hand out harsh punishments it will affect their investment in the long term. I’ve seen too many publishers use these softly softly approaches and quite frankly they need to man up and deal out permanent bans, as cheats will always cheat as long as soft tactics i.e, temp bans are used as punishments.
Blizzard is bull shit, I made my first account with them 3 weeks ago and ive never touched a bot in my life but my account was hit with one of those bans, I filed 3 ban appeals and all they have to say is there is nothing we can do just wait 6 months. I feel like they just running a big ass scam after I just tossed 100$ at them.
You high? 6 months is enough to force them to miss out on 6.2 and the new PvP season. I’d say good enough punishment
Except buying WoW with all expansions and then level every single time seems like a massive hassle and expensive, so doubt they will just “rinse and repeat”
Seems like that many botters should clue Blizzard in to the fact that playing their game is so boring that players want to automate it. I have a friend that plays who told me he started using HonorBuddy to level because it bored him to tears to level his characters. I told him he’s an idiot for botting but at the same time I kind of understand. I quit WoW years ago because it just ends up being a boring grind for everything.