GM's not banning botters I report.. why?

There is so, so, so much confused perception in this thread. I'll do my best to clarify, but this situation is one where I can't go into too much detail about the things we do - doing so only benefits those who would take advantage of it.

03/26/2011 10:20 AMPosted by Xaf

Why won't Blizzard do anything to these game hackers and cheaters?

The answer we give in response to this question is the same as it has always been - we gather information from those who would exploit the game so that we can hit them back on a much larger level.

There's many reasons for this, but the primary one is that those who abuse our systems usually aren't on their own accounts - they're often the compromised accounts of other players. Banning them does little because they'll just use another person's information. We'd be punishing those who don't deserve it, and not stopping the abusers because they just move on to their next target.

It's much more effective for us to study what they're doing so we can break the processes at a larger level, or detect them earlier. This is a constant, ever-evolving battle. We break a bot, they make a new one, we study that one, break it, they make a new one. So on and so forth. It's a bit endless, and it always will be so long as there is a market for the things that they do. Gold selling and trading is, most of the time, the direct source of these botters and exploiters.

This article sums it up much more succinctly - you may want to take a look at it:

Gold Buying & Power-Leveling
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/25455

03/26/2011 10:20 AMPosted by Xaf

When is Blizzard going to stand up and do something about this?

We already do. Every day. We have a team dedicated to this and only this kind of work. They have some really exciting things coming down the line, but as I mentioned before, I cannot share those plans. It's an advantage we shouldn't lose in such a difficult war.

03/26/2011 10:20 AMPosted by Xaf

What does Warden do exactly?

Our systems do a lot of things. But again, that's information I'm not at liberty to discuss. The military doesn't state the intricacies of their strategies publicly for a reason.

This is because it's automated! Blizzard doesn't have the man power to look into these things on a case by case basis.

While we have some automated systems, they are overseen by the dedicated team I mentioned above. Their job is to make sure that those systems are as accurate and effective as possible - and that does involve a lot of individual comb throughs of data and results, among other tasks.

When Blizzard cuts back on combating farmers and hackers it shows and the game starts going to hell in a hand basket very quickly.

These preconceived misconceptions come from not being able to see what it is that we do in these situations. It's unfortunately a byproduct of having to keep our actions veiled in mystery, to be as well armed as possible when combating these things. I'm unable to provide you hard facts about what we do - I wish I could, because it's all really cool and I'm in constant awe of the work we have going on behind the scenes. You will have to take my word for it - I can offer little more.

They also have similar automated systems to hand out random bans to people with names that are flagged as offensive, no matter how inoffensive they might actually be. I know it's automated because I was flagged by one once. Once, just randomly out of the blue I was dc'd from the game when I was finally able to log in I had to change my name, I of course changed my name to almost the same thing with slightly different spelling and alt characters and immediately it was flagged again, this repeated several times until the system finally forced a random name on my character.

No, we don't. That was a Game Master responding to a report about your name. Our Game Masters don't always move right on to the next ticket - sometimes they hang around and make sure you abide by our rules if you're found breaking them. In all honesty, that was a kindness on their part. It prevented you from being actioned a second time for the same offense in the future.

I kindly request that players do not make presumptions about systems that we intentionally keep secret - it doesn't help anyone to make allegations that cannot be fully supported, and is not conducive to productive conversation.

Ah, sorry, I'll remove the tags - I think I just grabbed the text from your post. =>.<=

03/26/2011 12:13 PMPosted by Razmahtaz

So the take away is that as long as you're willing to download a new bot every once in a while, you're golden?

No, most of them do get caught. But on the forums especially, players tend to focus on the negative more than the positive. And those who bot support that ideal, because they want people to think they're winning. They like the community to think that we do don't do anything, because it discourages your player reports. And those reports help us immensely in our work.

Not reporting is helping the botters get their way. It doesn't look like, on the surface, it does much. But it runs a lot deeper than we're able to share.

03/26/2011 12:15 PMPosted by Marselluss

In short... who cares HOW you are fixing the problem. We want to see MUCH faster results.

How we fix the problem matters because it's a lengthy process. We don't want to hastily put out a system that runs a 90% false positive return. Who is that helping at that point?

It's a lot like bug fixing. We have to make sure that stuff works as perfectly as possible when we implement it. We're dealing with whether or not people can access their accounts - I'm willing to bet that's a pretty important factor to you guys, and that you wouldn't much appreciate being suspended for something you didn't do because a 0 was where a 1 should have been. Stuff like that does inevitably slip through... but we work to minimize that effect as much as possible.

03/26/2011 1:08 PMPosted by Profyrion

I'd like to think you could find a better way -- some form of compromise between long-term research and short term clean-up.

My father used to always say, "There's got to be a better way." When he said that, he meant it for everything - there is always a better way.

But if we had found it, we'd already be using it. >^.~< That's not to say we aren't constantly looking for a way to improve such situations. Other options are always being explored, and if the day comes I'm able to share those details with you, I look greatly forward to it.

03/26/2011 2:07 PMPosted by Lexa

They stopped making any of these details public exactly because the botters were using them to their advantage. :/

This.

I was leaving this thread open in hopes of getting more productive inquiries or conversation going, but it seems the same points continue to be trodden repeatedly on. I'll go ahead and lock it on up then.