Honorbuddy Finally Concedes Defeat, Announces It's Closing

On the eleventh day, of the eleventh month of the year 2017, the great war between Blizzard and Bossland finally came to an end.

Greetings Buddies,

The following will be sad news, but this is the result of a six years long legal dispute that recently turned into a battlefield for hackers on Blizzard's side.

With that said, our only possible course of action is to discontinue Honorbuddy. Effective today, we will stop all sales for the following products;

Honorbuddy, Lazymon, Buddywing, Hearthbuddy​

The aforementioned services will however remain intact until 31th December 2017 for those that already own a license.

Within the next week we will decide on Rebornbuddy’s and Pokefarmer's future. Demonbuddy, Exilebuddy and the Hashing service will remain on sale for the foreseeable future.

The forums will undergo a change; the store will be closed. A lot of things will change.

It has always been our opinion that Honorbuddy provides no edge, except to empower players with less time than others to enjoy the game like anyone else. Many disagree, not in the least Blizzard, but being able to provide this service to those players has always been a goal of ours, and something we have been happy to do for the past 8 years.

It saddens us to close these services, but the recent advancements from Blizzard's side are only possible because of their decision to compromise the privacy of their players. While WoW runs, the game is continuously scanning the user's computer with the capability to send back exactly which applications the user is running, and in some situations even going as far as sending back window titles of any window on the computer. These things happen even if WoW is running in the background, and even without logging in to a character.

Fighting this war as long as we have is something no one has done before, and no one will do in the future. It is not quite over yet, but we need to adapt to these new circumstances to even stand a chance of continuing in the future.

We hope you understand these changes are not something we do because we want to, but because we have to. We thank you for your continued support. 


Blizzard is the maker of World of Warcraft and Bossland is the maker of the Honorbuddy bot for WoW. The two companies had battled for years, both in-game and in the courts of two countries. The latest legal news occurred in April when Blizzard won an $8.5 million judgement against Bossland in a California court. The court also ordered Bossland to cease marketing and selling Honorbuddy, as well as cheats for other Blizzard Entertainment games like Demonbuddy, Stormbuddy, Hearthbuddy, and Watchover Tyrant, in the United States.

Apparently a ban wave on 13 October spelled the end of Honorbuddy, although many believe the bot's vaunted Tripwire anti-detection system was fatally compromised in 2015 and from then on users were vulnerable to increasingly frequent ban waves.

The aftermath of the announcement reminds me of some of the things said about the Roid Ripper bot for EVE when it closed after the bot's developer disappeared:


Bazingastar2013:  the last time i saw such a post from a bot creater blizzard paid for it ! bye bye HB and i have to say it - a lot of ppl said exactly that will happen after u changed the lifetime sub's ;D! 

virtual: Take the money and run. I can't help but think they already knew this was going to be the result when they forced everyone to buy new keys. 

virtual: Im sure those of us who bought the the year key exppected to get more than a few month from it and partial key refunds just sounds silly, I don't care about the money, I CARE ABOUT YOU GUYS THROWING IN THE TOWEL!!!!!! 

matt84: Called it when you revoked lifetime licenses and what was it Tony said.. "come and see us in 6 months" well im here and you're closing the doors... So I guess that smug attitude didn't get you that far after all...

That being said it's the end of an era looks like nothing is safe from blizzard anymore and if they turn to out of process solutions that's the end... I did save myself a lot of time over the years using Honorbuddy but removing lifetime for the last few months of your life doesn't look that great.. 
Shylari: I mean, bossland has been lying about HB being 'undetectable' and 'relatively safe' for a few years, sitting back- collecting money all the while convincing people Blizzard is evil and actually spying on you.

I mean- it's pretty comical really. 
Ferre868: is it that easy? , they knew it was going to be like that and said no more lifetime keys and pushed everyone to purchase annual key made tons of money and run away simpley ha. 

Veliton: In ma opinion it is sad how you just lie to us... just look at the post here in the forum like : wait for the update ... and bam this shit ... i dont know you had the best producte for a long time for sure, but the shittest communication with us ... so yeah fuck you .. hope you will come back better and stronger .. but for now you are bunch of li 


The last day of operation is 31 December, when the doors finally close on Honorbuddy. Despite the brave words, I don't expect the bot to make a comeback. While gaming outlets have declared the bot dead before, I think this time is for real.

Blizzard's Legal Team Not Tired Of Winning Against Bossland Yet

The year 2017 is a very bad year so far in the courtroom for Bossland GmbH, maker of the Honorbuddy bot for World of Warcraft and many other bots. Blizzard's legal team had suffered setbacks in the past in German courts, but the tide has turned recently. On this side of the Atlantic, Blizzard is about to win a virtually uncontested case against the German bot maker in California. At the same time, the concept of End User License Agreements and Terms of Service may gain more legal weight.

Bossland's losing streak began 6 October 2016 when the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled that that the use of the basic game for the purposes of the programming of the bots is not covered by the rights granted to the acquirer of the game. On 12 January 2017, the BGH further ruled that the decision of the Court of Appeals that the sale of such bots is contrary to the Unfair Competition Act (UWG). Felix Hilgert, writing for the German website Online.Spiele.Recht, offered this analysis of the decision:

In the judgment at first instance on this dispute, the Landgericht Hamburg distinguished between general conditions of business in the actual case and mere "rules of play", which the provider of a game could unilaterally establish and modify without having to be contractually agreed with the players. There are quite a number of arguments for such an approach .

In the second instance, the Court of Appeals had left open the question as to whether there was a real difference between the GTC and the "rules of play".

However, the BGH now finds clear words. In any event, if the "rules of the game" - as in the present case - are designed as restrictions on the granted license for the use of the software and the provider has a right of termination in the case of infringement, they should also be in the GTC and should be effective in accordance with the General rules are included in the contract and must be subject to a content check at the standards of the GTC law.

...

According to this decision of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) "game rules" must be regarded as a GTC in any case if they restrict the actual possible use of the game legally and give the provider binding sanctions. Such rules must therefore also be accepted by the players as other GTCs. However, this is sufficient if this is done within the scope of account registration.

If the use of bots is prohibited in the game rules, this is effective and also leads to injunctions against third parties, which offer such bots for the on-line game.

The case is now heading for the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG), where the bot maker's lawyers will argue that the rulings infringe upon both Bossland and its managing director's fundamental rights under the Grundgesetz, or German constitution, specifically Articles 3 and 12.

In the United States, Blizzard filed a federal lawsuit, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. v. Bossland GMBH et al, in the Central District of California on 1 July 2016. Bossland counted on dismissing the case due to a lack of jurisdiction of the court. Bossland published its rationale back in July 2016:

US courts in general think they can decide about the future of anyone, however even they have regulations. There are few ways how a company could be sued in the US. One of them are the "Long-arm Statutes", and Blizzard surely tried it the following among other writings:

(d) Defendants have entered into, and continue to enter into, hundreds or thousands of contracts with individuals in the United States and in the State of California,

(e) Defendants employ or engage individuals residing within the United States to create, code, develop, test, and support the Bossland Hacks;

(f) Defendants contract with numerous entities located in the United States and the State of California in connection with their business. This includes,
for example, domain name registries, hosting or content delivery services, and credit card processors and merchant banks; and

(g) Defendants distribute the Bossland Hacks via content delivery networks and servers located in the United States and the State of California.

That is tactically excellent, if it just where true, to make the "Long-arm Statutes" to work. But none of that is true and all of that is very vague, perfectly made for the court to believe. Neither we have employees in the US or in California, nor do we host our websites and download portals in the US. And we never used CDN, our french servers can handle it very well. But nice try.

Then there is the „Tag Jurisdiction“ based on U.S. Supreme Court im Fall Pennoyer v. Neff (1878). As you can see, this one is pretty old, for it to work, the person in interest must be in the state or country where he is to be sued. Best known case here is  Burnham v. Superior Court of California from 1990.

And of course, if the company has its residence in the US. But we for sure have no residence there yet. Anyhow, lets assume such a lawsuit passes the court and a company gets sued in the US, that would lead to payments of Punitive Damages. Everyone knows the MDY case and the Ceiling Fan cases, one for $6M, the other one for $7M in Punitive Damages. However, according to EU law, such an judgement would be not acccredited in the EU. The Ordre public clause is written in n § 328 Abs. 1 Nr. 4 ZPO, Art. 27 Nr. 1 EuGVÜ and Art. 34 Nr. 1 EuGVVO.

The presiding judge on the case, Judge David O. Carter, disagreed and denied Bossland's motion to dismiss due to lack of jurisdiction on 25 January. After some additional legal moves, Bossland defaulted the case on 16 February. On Monday (13 March), Blizzard submitted an entry of default judgement against the German bot maker.

A reading of Blizzard's motion for a default judgement is interesting. Blizzard maintains that Bossland committed three areas of illegal acts:

• Bossland distributed and actively encouraged the use of software which, when used by the end user, creates a derivative work of one or more of the Blizzard Games. Bossland also encouraged and facilitated acts of copyright infringement by its freelance contractors and software developers. This conduct constitutes secondary copyright infringement.
• Bossland created and distributed computer files designed to circumvent and bypass access controls put into place by Blizzard. This conduct violates Section 1201 of the DMCA.
• Bossland, with knowledge that others had entered into valid and binding contracts with Blizzard, encouraged those people to engage in conduct that plainly violated those contracts 

Bossland's sins were violating copyright law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the World of Warcraft EULA. Violating a game EULA is against the law? In Blizzard Entm't Inc. v Ceiling Fan Software LLC, a federal court in California in 2013 ruled against the makers of the Pocket Gnome and Shadow Bot World of Warcraft bots to the tune of $7 million:

The publisher originally filed suit in December 2011 against Ceiling Fan, a company that developed two bots — Pocket Gnome and Shadow Bot — allowing World of Warcraft players to automate aspects of the game. Using bots is a violation of the World of Warcraft end-user license agreement and its terms of use.

The court agreed with Blizzard's contention that the bots constituted tortious interference with contractual relations under California law. That is, Ceiling Fan knowingly sold software that was a violation of World of Warcraft's terms of use, which is a legal contract between World of Warcraft players and Blizzard.

To confirm that an uneducated gaming journalist didn't get the legal facts wrong, Federal District Judge James V. Selna wrote in his decision:

In order to play WoW,³ a user must agree to two separate contracts, the “World of Warcraft End User License Agreement” (“EULA”) and the “Terms of Use” (“ToU”). ( Id. ¶ 28.) Both the EULA and the ToU prohibit players from using “cheats, automation software (bots), hacks, mods, or any other unauthorized third-party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience.”⁴ ( Id. ¶ 29.)

3. In a procedure that has become familiar to the vast majority of internet users, installation of WoW software requires assent to the EULA and ToU via a dialog box that conditions installation of the software upon the user's mouse click indicating acceptance of the software provider's terms. ( See Rice Decl. ¶¶ 28–31.) Access to game play requires such assent. ( Id. ¶ 31.)

4. Various versions of the EULA and the ToU have been used, but all versions used since at least October 2007 have contained this prohibition. (Rice Decl. Ex. 2.)

The reference to encouraging people to violate contracts in Blizzard's arguments against Bossland probably are directly related to California law related to tortious interference with contractual relations. Judge Selna spelled out the criteria for determining such an offense:

In California, “[t]he elements ... for intentional interference with contractual relations are (1) a valid contract between plaintiff and a third party; (2) defendant's knowledge of this contract; (3) defendant's intentional acts designed to induce a breach of disruption of the contractual relationship; (4) actual breach or disruption of the contractual relationship; and (5) resulting damage.”

Judging by the description above, any effort to sell products in contravention of a game's EULA probably violates California state law.

The next confirmed date on the legal calendar is 10 April, when Judge Carter will hold a hearing on the default judgement against Bossland. Blizzard's years-long legal effort against Bossland is reaching the end game, both in the U.S. and in Germany. Given the pace of the legal system in both countries, the cases could go another year, depending on appeals. However, Blizzard once again looks to have the upper hand over a bot maker.

A Partial Victory For Blizzard

Due to internet problems, I didn't notice until yesterday that Bossland withdrew support for the use of the Honorbuddy bot in World of Warcraft's PvP arenas on Monday. Withdrew support means the software shuts down when a character enters an arena. On Tuesday, Bossland published the following statement:

"Many of you wonder, why we have said, that Arena will no longer will be available.

"Actually, since the beginning of Honorbuddy, Arena was the only section of the game where we actually never wanted our bot to be. There where many requests in the forums and we always declined them. We did not want to automate Arena. The main reason for this was, that this is the only thing in WOW that had the one-on-one spirit of competition. And we wanted to leave it that way. The decision came from above, from Bossland and from Hawker.

"As you can see in one of the typical requests, we always declined to involve HB with the Arena*:

"https://www.thebuddyforum.com/honorb...a-botting.html

"If you search harder you will most likely find many such posts.

"Why the recent change then? Again it is not a change, it is something we decided long ago but did not enforce.

"We are now just making sure it stays the way it was supposed to be since 2010. That said, we are also looking into Battlegrounds.

"We approved Honorbuddy to be used in Battlegrounds since its first release but we will look into that again and tell you if we have a change of mind very soon. Or maybe, just maybe Blizzard opens the "Bottlegrounds" with patch 6.2., exclusively for us paying customers.

"I am also very sorry about the censorship that took place in this forum, i have reopened most of the threads. You are always free to discuss relevant matters in our forums."

HonorBuddy, as used in WoW's arenas, isn't a bot in the true sense of the word. What HonorBuddy did in arenas is provide a feature called combat rotations (CR), which pushes the keys for HonorBuddy users more effectively than the users themselves. In EVE Online, what HonorBuddy does is considered a macro. But since WoW has a macro system in place, players tend to call everything a bot. Perhaps "automated cheating" is a better term.

When asked if users could still use CRs in battlegrounds, a developer replied:

"Yes for now. It is not sustainable to have BGs with too many of the players being bots and we are reviewing how to handle this. I am hoping that removing BGBuddy from trial keys will remove the users who buy a trial and bot continuously for 72 hours and get their full epic set."

The strategy is clear. Bossland hopes that reducing the visibility of the cheat to average players will result in fewer complaints to Blizzard. Fewer complaints means less pressure on Blizzard to go after the PvE users of Honorbuddy. Bossland is not alone about concerns about PvP use drawing Blizzard's attention. The manager of Soapbox Rotations made the following statement on another forum on why Soapbox will not support PvP:

"I get it you guys are looking for a PVP program with the recent banning of HB and them closing their doors if not temporarily or forever. I do not develop, or support development on anything thats intent is to directly impacts the gameplay of other players. I am not sure what about the HB ban has all the sudden made everyone a 'Warden Expert', but I do things a certain way here for a reason, and it has worked quite well so far. 

"Its not just about having protection, its about not ruffling too many feathers. Like I said I get that you guys want something for PVP, I am sure someone will eventually fill that demand but for the safety and longevity of my product, it will not be me. It is nothing that I can be convinced otherwise either, there are more than enough people that prefer PVE rotations and I certainly enjoy focusing my time and effort into that crowds wants, instead of one that would just contribute to more problems in the botting community."

One of my favorite sayings is that people hate losing to software. In a PvP environment, players don't mind losing (much) to players with more skill. But losing to players with less skill using a cheat, especially one clearly against the rules? Then players start complaining. Loudly. For these two developers, the obvious answer is to restrict, if not prohibit, the use of their products in PvP.

Hopefully, a pullback by Bossland away from PvP will not reduce Blizzard's efforts at stopping botting in PvE. If my monitoring of the gold selling sites is any indication, the illicit RMT operations took a hit as the supply of gold available to sell fell after the ban wave two weeks ago. Bossland's retreat from PvP is a sign of Blizzard's effectiveness. I really hope Blizzard keeps up the pressure.

The Reports Of Honorbuddy's Death...

I just double-checked the blog due to the latest news. Unlike outlets like Kotaku, Eurogamer, and PC Gamer, I at least refrained from proclaiming the death of Honorbuddy on The Nosy Gamer. A good thing too, because Bossland, the maker of the bot, issued the following statement yesterday:

"Greetings Buddies,

"We will soon release Honorbuddy again - we expect it to be by the end of this week.

"Its been a week since we closed down the authentication servers for Honorbuddy. In this time, we tried to figure out what happened. We must say that we have no idea what really happened and all we have are speculations.

"We speculate, that at some point, Blizzard used parts of the World of Warcraft client that acted in a hidden manner like malware. Then they scanned everything they could scan on a given computer and flagged the ones they thought were operating against their TOS/EULA. They are fine to install any such malware-type hidden software at any given time according to their End User Agreement.

"There have been rumours, spread by Blizzard, that over 100,000 WOW Accounts have been banned during the ban wave on 13th May 2015 and that they are most likely all Honorbuddy users. We have to dispute this; there has never been that many active Honorbuddy users. We are still unaware if this was a real detection or some shady malware that was injected into everyones computer for a short period of time.

"Be aware that we have not seen the cause of the bans. We have an anti-malware and anti-detection tool called Tripwire that aims to identify unexpected behaviour by gaming companies. We can just try to make sure, that the next time something shady has been done, that Tripwire detects it. Tripwire is the only hope we can rely on right now; it has been improved and hopefully will watch over your shoulder much better now.

"Again, we will give no guarantee and we have never given a guarantee, that our software is immune to detection or bans."

In effect, Blizzard went for a headshot in the RMT war ... and missed. The morale boosting effect of Bossland's legal victory over Blizzard in a Hamburg court two weeks ago had to help the bot maker whether the storm caused by the mass banning. Bossland is even using smack talk by Blizzard employees as a weapon to inoculate the bot maker from future claims by the game company. The Washington Post reported last Friday that the figure of 100,000 banned accounts came from a conversation between a player and a GM. Amazing how many news outlets went with the 100,000 accounts banned figure based on an image.

Honorbuddy didn't have 200,000 active users?

Of course, when Bossland made the statement, "there has never been that many [100,000] active Honorbuddy users," the spokesman hopes that readers ignore the front page of the site where Bossland claims over 200,000 registered users. So while Bossland survived the ban wave, the way the company is spinning like a top indicates the bot maker is heavily bruised.

Now we see if Blizzard is committed to waging a CCP-style RMT war or if the gaming giant is too set in its ways to change its tactics. The company made a good start setting a cap on how much WoW gold sellers could charge with the WoW Token. The "top down" pressure of gold sellers competing directly with Blizzard forced the median price of twelve sites I monitor down from $20.96 USD per 30,000 gold on 6 April down to $11.13 USD per 30,000 gold on the day the ban wave hit.

The ban wave is a form of "bottom up" pressure that increases the operating costs of both the gold sellers and the independent gold farmers who sell to the various gold sellers. For example, the ban wave cut down on the supply of gold available for sale on the secondary (aka black) RMT market. The result is that sites that do not harvest their own product drive up the price of gold by competing with each other.

Price of WoW gold immediately after the ban wave

At least in North America, the secondary RMT market experienced a large spike in the price of WoW gold following the ban wave. The median price of my secondary RMT WoW gold price index rose from $11.11 per 30,000 gold on 14 May to $13.98 per 30,000. Perhaps more telling is that one of the gold sellers ran out of product to sell for four days.

A 25.8% increase in the price of illicit WoW gold in seven days is a good start. Blizzard needs to keep the pressure on the botters who feed the gold selling websites. The higher the price of illicit gold, the more likely a player will choose to purchase their game's virtual currency through the game company. What holds true in New Eden also applies in Azeroth. But in order to keep the price up, Blizzard needs to end the practice of collecting lists of botters and conducting one or two major ban waves a year. That type of shock and awe tactic just gives botters months of uninterrupted time to operate. In order to have a real impact, Blizzard needs to holding ban waves at least once or twice a month, not once or twice a year. Ideally, Blizzard would move away from the concept of ban waves and ban bots based on their bot detection systems every day.

Reading the Honorbuddy forums, a lot of users expressed dismay that Bossland would release the bot for use despite not knowing how Blizzard detected their bots in the most recent ban wave. But for the professional gold farmer, having accounts banned is just a normal cost of doing business. If a gold farmer receives $0.20/1000 gold, then selling 250,000 gold covers the box cost. A botter can easily cover the $50 cost of a copy of WoW every six months. Every two weeks though? If Blizzard takes action that often, I think a lot of the casual botters will either drift away or just stop botting.

Blizzard Loses In Court, Botters Lose In WoW

Yesterday saw a major ban wave hit World of Warcraft. Many botters believe the move was retaliation for the victory of Bossland GmbH, the maker of the Honorbuddy series of bots, in a German court concerning the Demonbuddy bot for Diablo 3:

Global War On Illicit RMT: Blizzard Slams Honorbuddy

A lot of people think that the introduction of the WoW Token alone will bring an end to gold sellers in World of Warcraft. Ha! If ending the selling of black market virtual currency in MMORPGs was that easy, CCP would have ended the practice in EVE Online years ago when it introduced PLEX.

I've criticized Blizzard for having a lax ban policy in the past, especially when compared to CCP. However, with the introduction of the WoW Token, which should have the top down effect of putting a cap on how much black market gold sellers can charge, I wondered about Blizzard's efforts at trying to choke off the flow of gold at the farming/botting level.

Things have changed. When I clicked on the link to visit the "penalty volcano", I discovered the link redirected me to a new page created on 1 April.  I followed the links on the page to Blizzard's new "Exploitation Policy". I call the policy new as the page shows a last modified date of 3 April.  Nowhere do I see any references to lengths of bans.

I then went to the forums for the Honorbuddy bot looking for reactions to the news of the release of the WoW Token. Honorbuddy is famous as Blizzard paid €650,000 in 2013 in order to halt the sale of the bot in Germany. Instead of finding a lot of talk about the new item, I found a lot of reports of bans.

According to what I read, a tripwire event occurred on 19 March. A tripwire event in one, like an update to the Warden anti-bot software, that causes all of the bots in operation to immediately shut down. Apparently, the emergency shutdown didn't work as many botters were banned for six months for their (supposedly) first offense. Six months for a first offense? Well, apparently, as you'll soon read, creating new accounts is quite easy.

Did I type "soon read"? Yes I did. I found some quality botter and RMTer tears on the Honorbuddy forums. Since the operator of the forums was kind enough to leave the forums open to the public, I thought I'd go ahead and share some of the feedback Honorbuddy botters left. Remember, the term "Abuse of the Economy" is the reason Blizzard gives for banning a player for conducting black market RMT. Also, I'm going to copy the posts "as is", complete with all spelling, punctuation, and grammer mistakes.

22 March

wesleysniper - "Summary : 5 accounts and 5 expansions bought from plati.ru not from that cheap battlechest link. all safe. applied codes and got 90 level boosts. paladin tank / hunter / shaman / druid and holy priest for the sake of looking normal.all of them have crafted items bought from AH or some 665 BOE items again for the sake of looking normal and casual. 

"Lately i've been experimenting with 5 boosted chars. i leveled them up to 100 and sic them to wod normal dungeons. they barely made it 2 weeks straight in wod dungeons - and barely pay off their costs. this morning all of them are banned with the total of 100k gold which is made in 2-3 days ( and yes very very low gph overall )

"i dont know you all but from this moment on botting with honorbuddy is finished for me. and i dont know the plans of the developers or programmers but their product is compromised big time. 

"you cant level your toons / cant send them to BGs / cant send them to Dungeons / no solo dungeons / no grindings so whats the use of hb ? and from what i understand is you just dont neccessarily be reported to a GM cos ppl get banned in their garrisons. so its something else. 

"Can someone from programmers / developers side care to eleborate a little bit more of events happening lately because we'Re paid customers and i feel like we're deliberetely kept in the dark for the sake of not losing customers..

"Anyways TL : DR i'm shutting down my operations for sometime. me and my friend have lost more then 60 accounts in 1-2 weeks time and its not worth it anymore."

27 March

misterneko - "Yeah, another vanilla account banned. I use legit HB key, Millz/Kingwow2 of store, and still got the hammer. Seems 6 month is the standart. This is real..."

narusu - "I got the ban hammer pretty hard today a few hours ago. I had lost a few last week but the final 7 all went down at the same time today. All exploitation of economy. Seems a common thread today especially on US. I made an account to post this because i thought everyone should know the frequency of bans on US is high. Some of my accounts were 7-9 days old... ALL were online during trip wire event....o.O."

Note: this user lost 13 out of 13 accounts.

30 March

AlexCosmos - "My 6 trial acc was closed for goldselling. OMG, blizz are crazy? how can i sell anything on trial?"

31 March

dragonbuddy - "mule banned overnight, then set my 5/5 dungeon buddy and 1/1 anzul Gundrak too who is a separate account farm while i goto shops for 1hr,come back all banned. old school perma banned, all for bots as per usual letter."

Macatho - "Used WoD Trial on 5 accounts that had been without game time for months, they ran for 2-3 days then they got banned when they were off line. I'm seriously starting to question how to bot nowadays, botting for profit is just increasingly difficult."

1 April

Malice213 - "Only two soldiers left...and they are going to go dark until the game is worth playing again."

Note: The user had 11 of 13 accounts banned.

2 April

HBL0V3 - "42/42 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco"

3 April

233286 - "Not here the fill in a usual report, just stating that over the past 2 days I lost 34 account.
First lost 15 due to Eco exploiting, few hours later I checked and another 10 on EU were banned aswell for automated software.

"Next day I started off making 5 new raf accounts and had 4 left overs who I ran through instances (note: they did not run the same instances). These 4 accounts where banned the same day in about 2 hours. Other 5 who ran on other VM where still intact. They got 85, next morning set them up, banned after 3/4 hours.

"Now this was over the last 2 days, I have lost alot more but these went out with enough profit so I usually do not care to post. Now suddenly I am getting targetted hard? Or something else I have no idea.
<2 computers.="" different="" each="" ip="" mac="" modems="" multiple="" running="" vm="">

"That is it for me for a while. Will cooldown alittle and start again."

happyfriet - "Was trying to figure out what to do in WoD because of all the heat atm, so I made 3 WoD accounts, each on 1 pc with it's own IP.

"All 3 were doing (self-made) profiles after dinging level 100.

"Aaaand their gone... fml - they weren't connected in ANY way nor involved in gold selling.

"Ir pissed yo."

Mario27 - "i gues i was to greedy i already had botted 10 classes to 100 it was weird that i even came this far normally i was banned at questing lvl 15 and i dont get a 6 month or anything my bans are permantly evrytime with no Suspension i dont get that why but i was bored with the game anyways if i played for 1 hour i was done i play more on my ps4 then wow now those days wel that was it for me with wow i might come back onetime when the wow token comes out but then i wont be botting again"

v1go - "12/12 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco. 100 lvl, private grind profiles."

6 April

masterwow - "My main acc got banned last week, got a perma ban then i apealed and nothing they insist on perma ban, i never got any suspensions on that acc before, i dont know what to do!"

milouchoa - "I just get banned in my first attempt to sell gold. It was only 50k gold but they caught me. I´m trying to revert the ban, but I have no hope."

These are just some of the ban reports that weren't just filling out a questionnaire. Some of the numbers are quite surprising, given the scale I'm used to in EVE. But given the scale of botting and RMT in WoW, Blizzard has a lot of work ahead of it if it wants to make the WoW Token truly effective in fighting illicit RMT.

The Rabbit Hole: Monopolizing Resouces

This week, I'd like to continue discussing the five reasons why real money trading (RMT)  has negative effects on massively multi-player online games as spelled out in the initial post of the series. In his 2006 paper, "A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Real-Money Trade in the Products of Synthetic Economies", Dr Edward Castronova stated that, "RMT induces gold farmers to occupy territory and system resources."  However, I'd like to modernize the statement a little, to state that real money trading results in gold farming activity that monopolizes content and uses disproportionate amount of game server resources.

The Rabbit Hole: Why Is RMT Bad?

Over the past 2-3 years, I wrote thousands of words concerning the subject of real money trading in MMORPGs, mainly in EVE Online.  I attempted to write a comprehensive post on the subject of RMT on a few occasions in the past, but much like Lewis Carroll's Alice, I always find myself distracted as I venture down the rabbit hole into the world inhabited by botters, hackers, and gold sellers.  So, instead of a comprehensive work, I decided to write about the subject on Tuesdays.

This initial post in the series will address a topic I have never addressed directly before: why RMT is bad.  But first, I must define the term real money trading.  At the end of 2013, I defined RMT as, at its most basic level, the exchange of virtual goods, including in-game currency, and services for real world currency.  I then, relying on the work of two researchers from the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, divided real money trading into a primary and secondary market.

A Blizzard Of Tears: Botters Banned In World Of Warcraft

"I got a 72hr on my main. But if it makes you feel any better i've lost about 30 accounts over the last 2 years."

Gentoo, WoW botter

I originally planned on trying to make a scholarly post using the words of botters to illustrate the differences between CCP's and Blizzard's methods of dealing with botters and hackers.  But after reading Blizzard's ban policy, I gave up on that thought.

The Penalty Volcano: Blizzard's Ban Policy

The reason that I bring up the ban policy is to prepare those reading this post for the confusion that ensued.  For example, in EVE Online, CCP will ban botters 30 days for a first offense and issue a permanent ban for a second offense.  Blizzard is a little more flexible, with no set penalties and with nothing between 3 days and permanent.  The confusion begins below the cut.

Blizzard Kills A Bot

I don't know how much the mainstream gaming media has covered the story, but apparently Blizzard dropped the ban hammer on quite a few botters in World of Warcraft over the past two days.  Well, WoW players are calling PQR, which I believe is the application in question, a bot.  I would call it a macro, but as macros are legal in WoW, I believe bot gets used to avoid confusion.

Image edited to show the last edit date.

According to the official description on the OwnedCore forums, PQR was:

"PQR is a bot designed to perform complex DPS, healing and tanking rotations for the player. It was mainly designed to reduce the tediousness of performing a complex rotation for hours on end, which for many can be a huge relief and provide them with a better WoW experience where they may have wanted to quit in other cases."

Note that I indicated "was"?  That is because, as the graphic above shows, that the download link was removed from OwnedCore's forums, probably at 4:02pm yesterday, Central Standard Time (GMT -6).  Since the application was freeware, Blizzard can't go after the developer's wallet, but if the lawyers were able to track down Xelper, perhaps he was persuaded to cooperate.

Someone posted a rumor that 510 thousand accounts were banned.  The users of PQR apparently believe that people who used the application in PvE were receiving 72 hour bans and those using the hack in PvP were receiving permanent bans.  The fact that Xelper took down the link has led to some conspiracy theories on the forums similar to ones seen when the EVE bot RoidRipper closed down due to aggressive action by CCP.

The story is ongoing, and the MGM will need to cover the story if highly ranked Arena players were caught in the ban wave.  I'll go through all the information I have and post something more comprehensive on Monday.  And for those of you who want to read some tears, I'll leave a link to the official ban wave thread.

Click here to read bot tears

UPDATE: I'm not so sure PQR is permanently dead.  I tracked down the statement people were using to say it was.

"I'm going out for the night, and I just want to be clear: I am not sure if PQI was the reason for detection. I am just saying that listening on that addon channel was a bad idea, and a potential avenue for detection. There are others. If people were banned for using PE (and have never touched PQR/PQI) There is certainly another. Another thought is that Blizzard may be able to see what addons are running, but these are all guesses for now. I highly suggest people do not continue to use PQR."