72 replies to this topic

[averagepriestz]

sounds_, on 28 December 2012 - 10:54 PM, said:

I don't think he's defending it at all, all he said was if you can't afford to invest the time to maintain several toons then don't. There's no reason to ruin a part of the game for people who genuinely enjoy BGs.

Yes they should revamp the honor system, but when you start getting games where the majority of the players aren't actually playing themselves what's the point of regular Joe even bothering to try?

As I said, some of the blame is on Blizzard. Rest on us.

[Hyrmine]

averagepriestz, on 28 December 2012 - 10:34 PM, said:

Edit: @Hyrmine. I think the only one not making sense here is you, looks like you had a bad day. People bot because they feel they are forced to do so, in order to actually play the game without having a disadvantage.

The only problem is that players are trying to play 5 characters in arena. I doubt people have a problem with gearing one character. All you have to do is farm honor in the start of the season, then you're set. It is common sense that you have to play more if you want to play more characters so how is it wrong or bad that you obviously have to gear them up as well?
You cannot play 10 characters in PvE and expect not to gear them up for raid first so why should PvP be different? Unlike GW2 Blizzard obviously wants their PvP system to be about farming. You wrote about Blizzard having to improve the honor system but can you explain why they should improve it when everyone keeps playing anyway? Do you honestly think that those people sit at their desk and wonder how to make you happier about the game?
No those people look at the subscription chart and read what people write in the questionnaire they fill out when they click on Cancel Subscription and do whatever the majority of them wrote.
If every player who disagrees with the honor system cancelled their account for a minimum of one month and in that time spent his time trying out WoW alternatives the game would actually be better now but people rather cry and complain, and keep playing and to be really honest I highly doubt you are enjoying arena right now anyway so I'm not even sure what the gearing 5 characters is for.

[averagepriestz]

I don't know how you come to the conclusion that if maybe 70-80.000 people quit WoW, the game would be better. They would get even less money and less attention at the problem.

[sounds_]

Still doesn't justify botting at the cost of ruining someone else's experience.

[Hyrmine]

Money is the reason it sucks. They have too much money and don't bother improving since they are getting too much money.
I don't know how much you about business but if income does not change you do not change your product. Especially since Activision acquired Blizzard it is the way they work.
You also didn't get your numbers right nor the way you see them. There are a lot more botters than only 80k. You aren't accounting for the people who bot in the start of the season or only for other periods. Now if every single one of them tried alternatives and cancelled for a minimum of one month there would be plenty of people who would actually stay with competition and quit for good. If enough players quit for competition Blizzard would take it more serious and actually try to improve and I genuinely hope you do not think that they are trying already.
And now try to imagine you are Blizzard. A chunk of your customers leave you for a rival and fortunately they all filled the questionnaire out. What would be the first thing you do? Yeah, check what those people wrote and surprise. They all said they dislike the gear farming which does not exist in the rival's game, and now take a completely wild guess what their next step would be.

[averagepriestz]

I study business and economics, and I cant tell you how wrong you are Hyrmine lol. You always try to earn more.

[averagepriestz]

Also there are 114k registered users on HB, and around 53k active. So my guess is pretty accurate.

Unless you want to enlighten me with another source of how wrong I am? Stop pulling things out your ass.

[Hyrmine]

averagepriestz, on 29 December 2012 - 12:14 AM, said:

I study business and economics, and I cant tell you how wrong you are Hyrmine lol. You always try to earn more.

That's funny.
Yes you do but not with an old product. WoW is milked and Blizzard is not trying to improve it, they are trying to keep it up as much as possible. They are saving ideas that would improve WoW for future games. WoW is not like any other product. You do not have to keep improving it to keep the players as you can see here on AJ or in PvE where players stay for the simple fact that they cannot go one day without looking at their achievements. With 'improving' WoW they wouldn't earn more players so they already receive the maximum income. You don't look at ideas in games the correct way. Ideas equal money and player boost. You don't throw player boosts away mindlessly simply because nerds on a forum demand it, the same nerds that will keep playing anyway.
Example:
Many ideas I saw in MoP I have read on the old WoW forums back then in TBC. Now we can say it's all an coincidence or we can say that Blizzard collected a good idea and used it for MoP to make as many people come back as possible? Writing about the idea in a MoP trailer would make an ex player think that the game changed and is improved a lot, however if the idea had been used back then in TBC what would have happened? People would have been happier, they would have kept playing anyway though, with or without idea and nobody would have started playing again simply because of an idea since they don't know anything about WoW.
Additionally WoW is #1 MMORPG already. If you are market leader by an insane margin you do not waste good valuable ideas out of the window when you don't need to. Maybe you study business but you apparently don't know that every product works different.

[averagepriestz]

What are you talking about. They keep updating and implementing new shit into WoW. Such as the new Pet Battles. Achievements, X-realm, Pet store etc.

This was supposed to be the last expansion for WoW, but they said themselves they will keep going as long as we keep playing. Blizzard is trying to improve it more than ever rofl. Have you really not be keeping an eye on all the new stuff they put out?

Edit: Not to mention the WoW movie.

Edited by averagepriestz, 29 December 2012 - 12:34 AM.

[Djandawg]

The cost of technology for stopping bots + money lost on monthly subscriptions due to bans will outweigh the happiness of people who join random bgs because majority of those do it for a short period, just to gather honor gear to start with. This is the obvious reason they have been turning a blind eye.
In my personal experience and as mentioned by some posters above,  there is a huge chunk of players that play worse than bots, factoring that in and bots keeping the queues somewhat alive, it makes the whole thing not as bad as some people make it to be.

Also, they won't replace a grind mechanic with a cool semi-enjoyable less grindy mechanic because no matter how cool it is, it will return less money on the long run than something that makes you play more. It contradicts with the concept of making and running an mmorpg game.

But I sincerely agree -from my perspective and gaming experience- that they have to make it more enjoyable and less grindy. The majority of the core people who have been playing for 7years+ simply don't have the time for it anymore. Especially people who work full time or pursue post-universitary education can never do it. I know I can't.

Edited by Djandawg, 29 December 2012 - 01:05 AM.

[Kosherz]

My buddy farms for me while i sleep.

[Thaya]

averagepriestz, on 28 December 2012 - 05:52 PM, said:

They do ban and close accounts. Quite a lot each day, but a lot of them get the bans lifted by calling them and claiming they had no idea. They grind them for using all kinds of profiles. Levelling, grinding, and as you mentioned, materials.

Also, it is not ridiculously easy for them to kill of HB, otherwise you don't think they would have done it, instead of waiting years for a lawsuit to end? They can't track who is using it with Warden, that is the problem.

It IS easy for them to fix the currently used method. They simply have to make Warden scan a few more things, and Warden can update its base without a client patch. A new method will be found relatively quick, yes, but after 1-2 banwaves, the userbase of HB will drop drastically. It would also help if they actually perma banned people for repeated use of 3rd party software as it always was. Botting should be risky as fuck, it shouldn't be something that every second person you know in game does.

I remember when they were using the phrase "against the spirit of the game". I haven't heard that for years now, but that's exactly what botting is.

averagepriestz, on 28 December 2012 - 05:59 PM, said:

How do you blame bots? WoW has been out for 8 years, and some of us are moving on with our lives. Having 1 or 2 alts, a job or education (perhaps both) to take care of, wanting to do some casual PvE aswell and stay competitive in PvP at the same time. The entire game has changed, but the way you farm honor hasn't. Each season, I have to grind 30k honor on 3 different toons. This would take me perhaps 1 month if I had to do it in my own time. Not to mention the fact that I have probably close to half a million kills. It is a repetitive ritual I have done for 8 seasons on my own. There is a reason chinese firms offer it, and people buy it. If I want to stay competitive, I need the honorgear the first two weeks, on all my toons and now with the upgrade, I need it even more.

TL;DR Blizzard has changed how PvP is a lot, but have not touched how farming honour works. It is an outdated mechanic going back 6 years and with each new update (MoP, upgradable gear) it is getting harder and harder to do. Yes, you can blame Blizzard for forcing people to using bots. The oppertunity cost is simply too great to be doing it on your own, rather spend 25 euros for a bot.

I know people who made 5man premades first day honor gear was available, won like 40 BGs in a row or something like that, and got all honor gear. In a day. It was WSG call to arms, but still.

I do agree that the honor farming methods themselves are outdated though. Losing is not rewarding enough considering there's no coordination whatsoever in BGs, and that's frustrating when you're actually going for honor. They've always been increasing rewards for winning, to motivate people to actually do objectives and win, but I always thought that was the wrong approach and they should just make winning/losing in random battlegrounds irrelevant - leave the objectives meta game to rated. After all, for the solo player, it's completely random whether you'll win or lose. Perhaps you also need too much honor now with the upgrades. Conquest points have the same problem.

I see what you mean and yes, Blizzard is also to blame for keeping the system bad for too long. Less people would bot if it was more bearable to do it yourself.

Nycto, on 28 December 2012 - 06:01 PM, said:

I'm curious, how did bots remove that aspect? If 70% of the players are bots, and you remove them, you are going to have to wait like 15+ minutes for a battlegroup queue pop. Bots didn't stop you being able to play a random bg,

It removed it in the sense that it's no longer fun. If you simply never enjoyed it, then yeah, we're just different; I used to queue for random BGs entire TBC and first half of WotLK as a way to pass time when there was nothing more productive or fun to do. It was just fun running around and pwning nubs, and no it's not fun to play against bots. Flying around on your mount around Stormwind and Elwynn is higher up on the fun scale than that.

Nisslol, on 28 December 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:

Mind elaborating that part? Or have you only just found out about Dreadful gear?

In TBC you needed to grind all the offsets every season. Now you only need to grind at the start of the expansion, or on a fresh character.

Edited by Thaya, 29 December 2012 - 01:32 PM.

[Nisslol]

Thaya, on 29 December 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

It removed it in the sense that it's no longer fun. If you simply never enjoyed it, then yeah, we're just different; I used to queue for random BGs entire TBC and first half of WotLK as a way to pass time when there was nothing more productive or fun to do. It was just fun running around and pwning nubs, and no it's not fun to play against bots. Flying around on your mount around Stormwind and Elwynn is higher up on the fun scale than that.

So farming bot-level (argueably even less than bot level) retard casuals is fun for you, but knowing that if there is no player behind the character isn't? I honestly have a hard time relating to this.

[GrieverZ]

averagepriestz, on 29 December 2012 - 12:33 AM, said:

This was supposed to be the last expansion for WoW, but they said themselves they will keep going as long as we keep playing. Blizzard is trying to improve it more than ever rofl. Have you really not be keeping an eye on all the new stuff they put out?.

Source? According to their business plan posted by MMO-Champion (that has been so far 100% accurate), they still had 1 or 2 more expansions planned in the near future.

Also its very hard for them to quantify the losses of actually purging the game from bots, as we've seen with the archeology bot banwave, a LOT of people ended up buying a new account and coming back, not only that, but how do you quantify the amount of people that actually quit because of the botters? A lot of people enjoy simply doing random bgs to pass time and couldn't care less about the rated stuff and can easily decide to quit when the problem gets out of control like it is currently.

Also, lets say they perma-ban 5000 accounts using HB, how many would keep using it? Don't have to ban everyone just to send a message.

On another note i fully agree they need to update the honor and conquest system and make things more entertaining/less grindy, but even then i really don't think it would alleviate the botting problem much since a lot of people just want everything here and now and don't want to put efforts into anything if they don't have do, even if its just playing a video game. Its just the current society we live in.

Edited by GrieverZ, 29 December 2012 - 01:54 PM.

[Thaya]

Nisslol, on 29 December 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

So farming bot-level (argueably even less than bot level) retard casuals is fun for you, but knowing that if there is no player behind the character isn't? I honestly have a hard time relating to this.

Yes. If I had enjoyed killing non-player controlled units, it would be easier to go do some dailies or some PvE.

Besides, if only real players played BGs, not everyone is a "retard casual worse than a bot". It can also be fun to get into various 1vX situations if you really outgear them.

Is it really that difficult to understand that fighting players in BGs is more fun than fighting bots?

Edited by Thaya, 29 December 2012 - 02:41 PM.

[Crawthz]

Thaya, on 29 December 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

It IS easy for them to fix the currently used method. They simply have to make Warden scan a few more things, and Warden can update its base without a client patch. A new method will be found relatively quick, yes, but after 1-2 banwaves, the userbase of HB will drop drastically. It would also help if they actually perma banned people for repeated use of 3rd party software as it always was. Botting should be risky as fuck, it shouldn't be something that every second person you know in game does.

I remember when they were using the phrase "against the spirit of the game". I haven't heard that for years now, but that's exactly what botting is.

Warden doesn't scan HB because of privacy issues (Can't remember what and why, I just readed about a year back). Basically Warden only stops speedhacks and hacks of some types and collects some data about what you inject into WoW's process (like tMorp and other memory edit softwares).

Yes, even small details like changing the current patch's number breaks HB for a small time, but that's all it does and is really quickly fixed.

And if you get banned PERMANENTLY (you get 72h bans often) as a botter? Call Blizzard and cry that you didn't know what you we're doing or you didn't play for the last couple weeks yourself because you were in a vacation or something. 99% of cases you get your account back.
Didn't still get your account back and it's permanently banned?
No problem, make new Bnet account, buy unmerged SoR account for 10-15 euros with free Cataclysm included, buy MoP for 20euros, bot the char to lvl90 (you already have the bot you got banner for) and wait for new season to start and you're back ingame.
If you add total costs, it's cheaper to do it this way than server migrate + faction change even. So it's basically nothing.

Edited by Crawthz, 29 December 2012 - 03:16 PM.

[averagepriestz]

Thaya, on 29 December 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

I know people who made 5man premades first day honor gear was available, won like 40 BGs in a row or something like that, and got all honor gear. In a day. It was WSG call to arms, but still.

But back then the system worked differently. I ran High Warlord runs back in vanilla, and 80% of the games were against random innocent people that just queued solo. Now if you queue as 5 you will sit in a longer queue and possibly meet 5man or 10man teams aswell.

GrieverZ, on 29 December 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

Source? According to their business plan posted by MMO-Champion (that has been so far 100% accurate), they still had 1 or 2 more expansions planned in the near future.

According to a blue post. There was a Q/A and they asked if this was the last expansion. The response was something similar to "We'll keep updating the game as long as you want to play it".

I know the leaked project plan has a fith expansion, but as they said themselves it was not an official plan (might just be a cover up). But as we can see for ourselves, several things have been delayed/postponed on it aswell.

[Thaya]

Crawthz, on 29 December 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

Warden doesn't scan HB because of privacy issues (Can't remember what and why, I just readed about a year back). Basically Warden only stops speedhacks and hacks of some types and collects some data about what you inject into WoW's process (like tMorp and other memory edit softwares).

Yes, even small details like changing the current patch's number breaks HB for a small time, but that's all it does and is really quickly fixed.

And if you get banned PERMANENTLY (you get 72h bans often) as a botter? Call Blizzard and cry that you didn't know what you we're doing or you didn't play for the last couple weeks yourself because you were in a vacation or something. 99% of cases you get your account back.
Didn't still get your account back and it's permanently banned?
No problem, make new Bnet account, buy unmerged SoR account for 10-15 euros with free Cataclysm included, buy MoP for 20euros, bot the char to lvl90 (you already have the bot you got banner for) and wait for new season to start and you're back ingame.
If you add total costs, it's cheaper to do it this way than server migrate + faction change even. So it's basically nothing.

ANY injection can be made detectable. There is no privacy violation here, you will only scan the games memory. The Warden privacy scandal was due to Warden scanning beyond the games memory, and that wasn't because of HB.

I know this and I'm saying this with 100% certainty. If they wanted it detected, it would be detected. Can we please stop going back to this over and over?

[Thaya]

averagepriestz, on 29 December 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:

But back then the system worked differently. I ran High Warlord runs back in vanilla, and 80% of the games were against random innocent people that just queued solo. Now if you queue as 5 you will sit in a longer queue and possibly meet 5man or 10man teams aswell.



According to a blue post. There was a Q/A and they asked if this was the last expansion. The response was something similar to "We'll keep updating the game as long as you want to play it".

I know the leaked project plan has a fith expansion, but as they said themselves it was not an official plan (might just be a cover up). But as we can see for ourselves, several things have been delayed/postponed on it aswell.

No no, I was speaking about this season. There were people with full honor gear day 1 it became available.

There was a tweet about the next expansion, by the way. It's pretty much confirmed that they are working on it.