Blizzard's World of Warcraft has a retention problem. The game that peaked at over 11 million players at one point, now is shedding players as the Warlords of Draenor expansion pack, released in fall 2014, appears to be a failure to many long time players.
After a brief peak due to the WoD expansion, the subscriber count begins to tumble.
The latest expansion package from Blizzard failed to deliver a compelling enough experience for many users to stay engaged with the game, but for automated bot players, the expansion did little to curtail the use of bots in the game.
If anything, the issue of bot playing has become more widespread and more rampant as Blizzard appears to take a more "hands-off" approach to the game. The company appears to be focusing more on creating a new expansion pack. An expansion pack the company hopes will bring the game's subscription numbers back up.
Bots in World of Warcraft are nothing new to this game, or any other online game. The bot software was written to play automatically or grind certain areas of game content to earn in-game currency. The software has been around for a long time and in the past Blizzard relied on many measures to protect the game from bots.
Blizzard was previously embroiled in a lengthy lawsuit against a company named MDY Industries. MDY created a piece of software that automated gameplay for World of Warcraft called MMOGlider. The MMOGlider software had been sold over 100,000 times, according to court documents. It is clear that many players of World of Warcraft were using the automated game play software to get ahead in the game.
Blizzard has taken an aggressive stand against bots publicly. It repeatedly states in the rules of the game that using botting software will result in a ban and termination of your account. In the past, Blizzard backed up that hard stance with firm action. Recently, however, it appears that Blizzard is backing down from taking strong actions against the bot players.
A recent former employee of the company spoke with LDT editors about how Blizzard handles bots in World of Warcraft under the stipulation that her identity be left omitted from this piece out of fear of retaliation from her former employer. When asked why Blizzard is letting very obvious bots take over some areas of the game she told LDT,
Blizzard receives and reviews the reports for players that are cheating using bots. If they determine a player is using a bot they might let it go on for a while to be sure, to gather information about the software being used so they can detect it better in the future and because to be frank they can keep making money from the offender in subscription charges until they do a mass ban of many players on a single day.
Blizzard is not trying to let bots run amok in the game, but they certainly do profit from it just as much as they do from legitimate players. While the bots are "being studied," they can continue making profits from the bots while all human players suffer.
The bottom line is that players who run bots are destroying the economy of many World of Warcraft servers. They disrupt gameplay for those who wish to grind legitimately. (Grinding is the act of completing repetitive actions in a video game such as World of Warcraft for gold, experience points or other purposes.)
Bots frequently run amok in certain areas where grinding can be the most profitable with the highest GPH, or gold per hour. In certain areas of the game where the mobs are often spawning quickly, the items being dropped can be dumped on the auction house for a profit, and the grinding can be performed with Area of Effect abilities and spells. Area of Effect abilities or spells allows a player to cast a single spell or ability and cause damage to several groups or mobs of enemies at a single time. Players can kill several monsters at the same time using these abilities. This can make grinding some areas of the game significantly more profitable than others.
One such area in World of Warcraft, being heavily visited by both legitimate players and bots alike, is currently from the previous expansion pack. An area by the name of Sra'Vess. Sra'Vess has been an extremely popular zone for botters and manual grinders alike. The mobs are on a fast respawn timer, are quickly killed, and drop a variety of items for selling on the auction house '“ not to mention plenty of fast gold.
The area in question is being farmed very heavily by a myriad of bots and legitimate players. I set out with a maximum level character (on a highly populated realm) to the zone and began farming the area. As I arrived, I immediately saw several other players doing the same. It was only minutes into my manual grinding that I received several private messages in the game from other players in the area.
Most of them would say something along the lines of hello and ask if I wanted to farm some mobs nearby. I was polite and thought it was great to see other players in the game. It had been a while since I had seen other players outside of the major cities. It did not dawn on me for several more minutes that some of these players were simply messaging me to see if I would reply.
Often people who are cheating using bots in World of Warcraft will do other things and won't reply to the private messages. My fellow players were testing me and after about ten minutes I immediately was able to see why for myself.
Within fifteen minutes, I had spotted a player who kept running the same path, casting the same spells over and over for the next 45 minutes. It could just be a dedicated player. Alternatively, it could be a bot.
After an hour of grinding the area, I logged out of the game. The next morning I returned to the game and to the same area to find the same player was still running the same path. I was intrigued and watched as this player kept the same routine for the next three hours. During this time, several players messaged me, and we began talking about the suspected bots in the area.
One player explained to me they had parked a character in the area to report the characters they thought were bots and had logged things inside of a spreadsheet showing the hours that this one particular character was online and running the same sequence repeatedly. We quickly determined it was logged in for 15 hours or more at a time. During those 15 hours, it would keep running the same path, casting the same spells and not responding to any messages.
I was highly intrigued. I began messaging the player in question and never received a response. I also began reporting the player to Blizzard as instructed by the Blizzard website and never received a response. I also noted that this activity with this individual character continued for over 30 days.
Screencap from a video showing another player exhibiting bot-like behavior.
After talking to other players in the area and explaining that I was a journalist who was fascinated by these bots and Blizzard's lack of response, I was beginning to become inundated with emails to my personal email address regarding bot information. Several players began making videos, sometimes hours in length and sending them to me. The videos would show characters with very bot-like behavior running rampant in this particular section of the game. I watched nearly 30 hours of videos from several players. Each of them showing the same three or four players and many of them showing the players reporting the bots and following them.
Personal experience following characters exhibiting bot like behavior for hours.
I even began to take my own videos. I targeted one player, in particular, plugged in a large external hard-drive to my computer, and hit the record button. I recorded for several hours. It was always the same path, the same spells, the same looting pattern. It was apparent and almost undeniable.
Several of the players with whom I had been conversing with took to the Blizzard forums to begin making public complaints about the situation. The alleged bot players were destroying the economy of a few key items in the auction house. Anger began mounting after one particular character had been reported by a cabal of players repeatedly for the past thirty days, and nothing had been done.
Blizzard's response indicated that it could take several months to address the issue. Many of the players who had been sending me private messages began spreading my contact information around and emailing me about how furious they were with how Blizzard was handling the situation.
A few quick searches on the Internet and I had quickly found profiles for several popular World of Warcraft bot applications to help others farm the area.
Profile for botting app.
With just a few minutes of application setup, you could be running a bot in the same area that would farm the same points, take the same paths, and kill all of the monsters in the same area.
It will take months to determine if a player is using one of these illicit applications in violations of the game's Terms of Service according to Blizzard. Here, in the clear, on the Internet, was available to download in plain-text the exact points. It just didn't make sense.
I spoke to several experienced World of Warcraft players whom all asked not to be named out of fear of retribution, and all of them agreed that Blizzard was simply ignoring the issue to generate more revenue from the players using bot applications. They could ban them after several months, but not before they collected more revenues from them.
I eventually decided to go truly down the rabbit hole and joined a major botting community. I would never personally use the software myself as I could not bring myself to be part of the problem, but I wanted to get into the heads of others who used the software.
One player had recorded the entire process of going from nothing to the maximum level of 100 in the game using nothing but bot software. Another had shown me how they were able to reach 1.3 million gold in under 23 days when they only began with 93,000 gold.
Most botters were very fearful of talking with me. They feared I may report them to Blizzard, but after assurances that I would keep their identifies secret, many of them opened up and began talking frankly about bots and banning in World of Warcraft.
One player, known simply as "The Warrior", had been using World of Warcraft bots for an extended period of time. He had three accounts, and only one had ever been banned. He was able to get it back after a year. He merely told Blizzard it was not him doing the bot playing, but rather someone "who had hacked" his account. The other two accounts are automated nearly 12 hours per day and have remained unmolested.
His current goal is to have a level 100 character of each class in the game. A lofty goal, but one in which after just a month of setting the goal he is nearly 75% complete with. Over and over again I heard the same story of very few bannings outside of massive ban waves that occur once in a great while. It seemed as if a large number of people were using bots to get ahead in the World of Warcraft.
Why were they doing it? Some were doing it for gold to pay for subscriptions, others to sell the gold and a few were simply doing it because they did not have time to farm content and wanted to "get to the good stuff" at the later levels.
While leveling a new character I joined several instance groups. These groups are formed across servers and require a varying set of player classes to complete content. In nearly 5% of the groups I had joined, I found other players in my group who were using bot software that had been carefully designed to appear like legitimate players.
Several pieces of software allow those who wish to use bot applications the ability to join and play inside of dungeons in World of Warcraft. The software simply begins attacking once the tank begins damaging a target and follow the tank without performing any other actions, casting the same spells, not responding to messages and exhibiting other odd behaviors.
Searching the Internet I quickly find that I am not alone and that many others, especially tanks, are reporting the same sort of things.
(NSFW Video '“ Language)
We've seen the bot applications become more sophisticated with time and have expanded to do a wide range of World of Warcraft actions.
Others were simply using bot applications to farm player versus player content.
(NSFW Video '“ Language)
The Player versus Player or PVP Botting is one of the worst parts of the World of Warcraft experience for legitimate players. The PVP aspect of the game is nearly destroyed when players are matched up against computer programs versus other human players. One World of Warcraft application named HonorBuddy makes the process of playing battlegrounds automated. It has since expanded to be a wide range of other things but began as merely a way to earn battleground points for players.
With the game subscription numbers already sagging one could see why Blizzard would be slow to ban players using automated means of playing. They are paying for subscriptions just as much as legitimate players. However, the loss of many players due to being angry about the current situation in several areas of the game could be an even larger long-term issue for the game.
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