Comment by vbezhenar
8 hours ago
I'm playing WoW and I've heard lots of compains about Blizzard banning innocent players. Just recently there was a wave of complains that they banned players who spent a lot of time farming one dungeon (like 10+ hours per day).
I, myself, got two accounts banned and I was innocent. I managed to make it through support and got them unbanned but I'm fairly certain that many players didn't, because they seem to employ AI in their support.
So I'm a bit skeptical about that kind of behavioural bans. You risk banning a lot of dedicated players who happened to play differently from the majority and that tend to bring bad reputation. For example I no longer purchase yearly subscription, because I'm afraid of sudden ban and losing lots of unspent subscription time.
I think you are right on every point, but I think it's worth noting that WoW is kind of a different beast.
You don't play a "match", you don't play "against" other players most of the time, in this context "botting" and "cheating" overlap because having your character do stuff 24/7 unattended is an evident advantage over the rest of the population, but it's not like you are hindering anyone's progress directly the vast majority of the time doing so.
How often does actual cheating happen in WoW, anywhere it matters? M+? Raiding? PvP?
Most of cheating is botting. When bots farm dungeons or other activities, earn gold and then that gold is being sold at black markets for dollars to other players.
That's indirectly hindering other players progression, because it causes deflation (so you can't earn as much gold selling your ores); because it causes inflation (more circulating gold, yes, these are contradictory); because it denies other player farm (if bot gathered ore, other player have to search for another vein) and so on; also illegal gold selling increases expectations (other players bought super good gear, why don't you do that) and causes burn-out (because farming gold fairly is much more hard, than just buying it).
But mainly it just makes players angry, because they can see these bots moving in a predetermined route and stealing resources from their noses. I'm not really sure if bots are that bad in the grand scheme of things, but living players certainly don't like to compete with automatons.
There were also cheaters who used instant cast interruptions at arenas, but it seems that competitive PvP is not that popular nowadays so I'm not sure how it's wide spread.
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I agree that it's a problem, having a strong support system for remediating false bans is very important.
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