Any program that doesn't inject into the program itself; ie, Keyclone.
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World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Software KVM allows you to control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse with Multiplicity. Seamlessly move between multiple computers with monitors. No Cables or Extra Hardware Required.
Software KVM allows you to control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse with Multiplicity. Seamlessly move between multiple computers with monitors. No Cables or Extra Hardware Required.
www.stardock.com
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But we weren't talking about botters, we were talking about multiboxers.
Which, after the last policy change, changed their programs or even invested in hardware broadcasting solutions to keep up with Blizzard regulations. From what I can gather, Blizzard was already banning people for 2x4 farming herbs, even when they are using hardware. The ban email says "Your fellow players reported you for cheating."
Botters on the other hand can stagger their farming toons, have different routes or outright port around under the world for farming, being basically invisible to users and therefore not easily reportable.
Botting software is infinitely times easier to deal with as the patterns can blatantly show up in analytics backends. Plenty of companies use analytics solutions to find that info. Riot, Blizzard, Nexon, NCSoft, EverQuest, even small studios have tools at their disposal to analyze player trends. Middleware like Red Shell, Databricks, Google Analytics, and other probably can map your habits better than you can map them... after all, for a lot of these companies, *you are the product.*
For example, when I worked on Hawken, we could tell with absolute certain which point in the tutorial players dropped off from the retention graph. It was almost half that couldn't even click the 'launch' button to spawn their mech in the first-time user experience (FTUX) match and would close the game, never to play again.
Blizzard is now the kind of company that would be bean counters making decisions to end customers accounts in mass quantities, because it isn't Blizzard making those decisions, it's shareholders and execs who report to them.
I feel bad for people like Ion and Holly. I can tell by the tone of Ion's voice in that Preach interview that he's being forced to make those decisions if he wants to keep his job at Blizzard and thus the greater games industry.
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That's not the point, though. It's about player perception, and not if you can see the bots in your shiny backend data.
Blizzard right now is sacrificing the multiboxers, because frankly roaming hordes of hive-mind mounts scrapping every herb and hordes of druids farming things on hyperspawns is not a good look for normal players. They don't care if those are multiboxers or botters, it's all cheating to them because "they can't compete with them."
The players don't realize that botters have impacted the WoW economy for years, and the cost for raid consumables would probably multiply once Blizzard was really successful in banning all bots. And, as you said: Blizzard could really clamp down on bots if they wanted to. It's a monkey's paw solution, though.
Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
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But the fact remains that botting is always going to be one step ahead of the people that try to catch it. Its an endless rat chase and the only reason, at least in my opinion that MMO's catch it, is because the rats try to monetize it. Making the hack known to the public and revealing how they are getting around it in the first place. All I did was make a combat routine for Mage and Shadow Priest in legion and it made me.. lets just say, more money than I ever expected. Even after their cut and I have very little programming experience. Partnered with T**** and I would check the account only to have a couple thousand coming in a week during prime subs. Thats insane in my mind. You cant code against that - especially if someone else is providing the shell.
Regardless, Retail WoW is dying fast right now. Dying hard. It'll be around for years to come, but at the pace Corporate is monetizing the game on top of subs.. I cant see anyone like "myself" subbing for much longer, even with the TLP shit.
Regardless, Retail WoW is dying fast right now. Dying hard. It'll be around for years to come, but at the pace Corporate is monetizing the game on top of subs.. I cant see anyone like "myself" subbing for much longer, even with the TLP shit.
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jayrebb
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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checked in w/ asmon. he's 180'd from the start of SL and is treading the toxic line. devs are being held accountable, and he's on the offensive. won't let people blame shadow figures and illuminati. cites too many examples of low level dev decisions. passing the buck to shadow figures has ended. he's gone pretty far this time and is accused of destroying sense of community and slandering developers.
big argument and pushback on his most recent post to Blizzard.
big argument and pushback on his most recent post to Blizzard.
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Leadsalad
Cis-XYite-Nationalist
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Fucker
Log Wizard
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He looks like he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Or has he always looked like it.
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jayrebb
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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I've never seen him like that. He hosted his ex-girlfriend also on his personal account which was unusual since they've been apart for a long time. Maybe he's going through some things. I've never seen him that toxic to viewers either. He sounded burned out.
It was 3 full hours of defending his recent post to Blizzard. He's probably going to have to walk back some of his statements at some point.
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Let's be honest here: Asmongold may be an extreme over the top persona of a man that lives with his mom and plays WoW all day. However the person behind this also likes playing WoW, but has to see his favorite thing devolve from bad to worse. The worst part is that there is no course correction, and feedback goes unheard. This is frustrating, because it's like you are talking with a wall. He's not the only one, though: Preach did some videos with the problems he saw in the BfA beta, and people roasted him for it. But Blizzard didn't listen back then, and Blizzard doesn't listen now.
The sad truth is: The people that originally made WoW were MMO players, mostly EverQuest. Especially Allan Adham and Rob Pardo. They thought they could make "a better game", and some of the things were really polished from the Vision(tm) EQ had. For the current devs WoW seems to have been their first MMO. They seem to be immersed in some particulars of MMO design, but have lost the overarching view what makes an MMO work: social cohesion. We're not here for funny raid encounters or the great storytelling, we're here because we can play with other people.
Also, the big elephant in the room here that no one talks about: When WoW was made Blizzard was independent and they made their own decisions. The current developers however seem to be stuck in the quagmire of decision making in a billion dollar corporate environment. I can guarantee you that they have to write "cover your ass" letters for their designs, on how their design "forms habits and improves the daily user interactions", which they then can flaunt at their quarterly investor calls. Complete with spreadsheets on how long it takes a player to progress from start to finish of the content, and how they timegate it in daily bite-sized chunks to maximize player retention. Also pay attention how they take out anything skill-based out of the single-player content, e.g. the leveling/campaign and world quests. This is modern casual mobile game design 101.
The dark truth is: only people playing this corporate metagame are promoted.
I can feel for the developers who are stuck with this, because I believe they don't want to play their own game anymore. And it shows.
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Fucker
Log Wizard
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So, basically WoW is now made by the HR department with input from accounting. That explains a lot. The first job I had out of college, we had to fill out a report on our daily activities in 15 minute increments. It was a stunning waste of time. I did it exactly once, made a copy of it, and handed that copy in every day. To give you an idea of how awesome it was as a management tool, no one once caught on. This means they didn't read them, didn't care, or both. Blizzard also has a fetish for pointless busy work.
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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I would strongly suspect this is very true. You go from "what's fun?" to "what does the algorithm say is most profitable for ROI?". The 2nd only works for so long before players begin to see through it and walk away.
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Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Humans are very good at pattern recognition, and as soon as they get the feeling you are tricking them, they will start to look behind the curtain.
Let me ramble a bit here: The accounting and management types have developed this strategy primarily for mobile games, which aren't that expensive to make and are mostly free to play. If one game is finished (both in the sense of "development" and as "service") you just lauch the next. However:
- This does not work well for MMOs, because those are really expensive to make (>$100M) and take years to develop. Sure, there are F2P models out there, but only some of those recoup their investment costs. Look how often Bless is rereleased to new markets or with a fresh coat of paint. It is doomed in a neverending cycle, a Phoenix made out of shit.
- You can't really sell power in mixed time/achievement/skill type games like MMOs in the style of WoW, where player power comes into play in things like PvP. As soon as you do, a big segment of your audience flat out leaves. Also, you can't attract whales that way, because whales don't spend money to compete with each other, they spend money to "outwhale" the normies. As soon as those are gone, they are, too. It's like the Trammel/Felucca thing with wolves and sheep, just with money.
- Long-term, this strategy damages your brand and your IP. Look how many mobile games prominently show their developer/studio or publisher. That is not a big thing with these games, even successful ones.
And this is exactly where Blizzard is, too: If they let their flagship WoW rot in that way, the whole brand is damaged and people are less likely to buy any of their other games.
And those aren't doing that hot, either:
- HotS flopped in the MOBA genre, even with attempts at "esporting" it, with cringe stuff like "Heroes of the Dorm". The guy who came up with that deserves a raise, he could probably sell freezers in Antarctica, too.
- Hearthstone is in decline because the sheer amount of stuff in it makes it hard to attract new players, as they would have to pay a lot of money to catch up. At the same time they can't cut off their existing playerbase.
- Diablo has been relegated to "don't you guys have phones?" meme status. What about the girls? Looks like they aren't in the target demographic.
- Overwatch has problems after they pushed really hard to make it into a esports league, which they probably fucked up with micromanaging everything, being greedy and their exclusive Youtube deal.
- Their RTS games are either on life support (SC2), or have managed to piss off the fanbase in ways I wouldn't even think to be possible for an already finished, developed and balanced game (WC3:Reforged)
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