Thursday, September 17, 2009

Here a bot, there a bot

Everywhere a bot, bot. If you play WoW and pay attention even the remotest of the time, then you will have already have realized that bots are again overrunning Azeroth. The last big ban wave was May 2008, though there have been mini-waves since, the latest apparently having taken place in the first week on September. But botters and the gold sellers that ever present with them are still a growing problem that Blizzard seems all too helpless against.

I come across bots every day and report them, then put them on my friends list to keep track of how long it takes Blizzard to finally deal with them each. Through last Fall there was nary a bot on my list, but that began to change in the Spring and into the Summer. During the Spring and Summer it could take as little as 2-3 days to a week for Blizzard to investigate my reports and then I assume, ban the account because that bot would go off line and not return. I keep them on my list for as long as 45-60 days after they go offline, so while it's certainly possible they are just idling, I assume they have been dealt with and remove them from my friends list.

But the past two months I have seen what used to be a week long process now take 3 or more weeks, if at all. I have bots that have now been on my friends list for two months and been reported by me several times only to see them continue around the clock botting in the same locations for weeks. It either signals that Blizzard is utterly inundated with investigations, or that Warden has fallen behind in the war, and they can no longer detect the third party applications regularly.

No one outside of Blizzard has any true knowledge of the procedures Blizzard goes through while investigating complaints, but I think it clear that they need to step outside of those and rely more heavily on the human element than they apparently are doing now. The human eye can often see what Warden isn't. Give us back Azeroth Blizzard.