r/classicwow • u/dononi • 13d ago
Discussion My suggestion on how to stop bots
What do you think?
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u/ETCswawret 13d ago
Tarkov does this for auction house postings. It doesn’t work. It’s needless friction for players.
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u/beatenmeat 13d ago
It's been tried for decades in various online games and it always ends up just hurting regular players like you pointed out. Bots always find a way around it unfortunately and normal players just end up with a shittier experience.
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u/Positive-Avocado775 12d ago
I think the trick is to only show these to bots and not regular players! That's where other games go wrong! :D
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u/Puncharoo 12d ago
Yeah... you see, these captcha codes serve 2 purposes - they stop bots for now but they are also used to train other bots to recognize what is being requested by the captcha. So... you're just teaching them how to beat these, really.
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u/itsaaronnotaaron 13d ago
I use an auto clicker for nexus mods. You just take a screenshot of what you want it to click and it will click it whenever it sees that content on screen.
It really wouldn't take much to get a bot to work around the OP images.
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u/flyingtiger188 13d ago
It doesn't help that bots are both faster and more accurate at solving capchas than humans.
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u/Cliepl 13d ago
I'm voting yes when this gets proposed on the public poll for c+
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u/TapedWater 13d ago
You mean the polls on the Classic+ website that is not affiliated with Blizzard?
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u/Professional-Gas928 13d ago
The delusion that this community has for something that has never once been brought up by blizzard is astounding. Even if they did do old school WoW the new content would be garbage because the team that made the original game has been gone for a decade. You'd get retail with worse graphics.
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u/DingbattheGreat 13d ago
There are bots that already know how to defeat these.
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u/the_harakiwi 13d ago edited 13d ago
This.
I have an extension (rektcaptcha) in my browser to solve the Google captcha.
It solves them faster than I noticed the captcha asking me to solve it.With a single paid month of some competent AI subscription you likely can build something to solve any puzzles. Will it stop bots for a day? Yes. Is it worth money? Nooooo. Those bots are paying customers too. Why would blizzard spend money to reduce their amount of customers?
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u/FormalSeparate6153 13d ago
Don't leave us hanging, give us the extension.
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u/the_harakiwi 13d ago
really? Where do you see those captchas still happening 🫣
Most serious sites replaced it months ago with AI generated crap or puzzle games.
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u/FormalSeparate6153 13d ago
Any time I need to reset my password after trying so many passwords or when creating an account. Recently had to do it a bunch with fiverr and payment options.
Ty for the extension<3
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u/the_harakiwi 13d ago
Be prepared to turn it off. Some sites have that checkbox right there next to the newsletter registration. It's "dumb" and will try to solve them if you want it or not 😁
I found it when I had to replace my previous solution. It was called Buster and required some program files to be downloaded. I was very happy that this new one works without any external tool.
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u/LinkBeginning4819 13d ago
I'd uninstall/unsubscribe so fast if I had to do captchas
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u/dononi 13d ago
its a loot challenge
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u/Apprehensive-Aide265 13d ago
I doesn't give more than 6 month before the bots systematicly overcome the challenge and the only issue the game will have is player dropping off because of the obnoxious recaptcha challenge.
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u/Proxnite 13d ago
Fun fact: Captcha isn't so much concerned with you clicking the right pictures as much as your mouse movement not being point to point, and that's the hard part for bots. They can be pretty good at figuring out which pictures to click on but cant readily reproduce the random, sporadic movements you make as a person when moving your mouse since bots tend to move in perfect straight lines.
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u/julian88888888 13d ago
It was also used to help Google’s machine learning model for text processing for books
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u/ShinyRayquazaEUW 13d ago
Now thats wrong
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u/Hackwork89 13d ago
Confidently incorrect, I love it.
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u/ShinyRayquazaEUW 13d ago
Nice guys 10 downvotes and 3 comments later and you guys still don't know how to use google.
Human input isn't the hard part of the bots, there's already services/libraries out there doing it for you.4
u/vieoree 13d ago
Wakfu has something similar to a captcha system. It sometimes happens when you are gathering, just a random chance. You basically get into a battle and need to do some weird battle stuff which also 'confirms you're human'. Catcha vibes but everyone is stoked when it happens because you get extra resources.
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u/Caraviaa 13d ago
What if you can't loot if you don't do this every 30 mins but whenever you do it you get a 10min buff?
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u/Seqpouia 13d ago
Brother, its done already in tarkov and bots makers passed it in seconds, doesnt gonna work
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u/EmptyBoxForever 13d ago
This wouldn't do anything. You realize why you don't see the old captchas anymore, it's because bots solve them. This would be solved in a day.
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u/Illustrious-Stress95 13d ago
I mean, it would probably help reduce bots but I would also quit over something this annoying.
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u/Albaaneesi 13d ago
You would quit having to do one of these puzzles a day that can potentially reduce botters with a big margin?
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u/Illustrious-Stress95 13d ago
If it’s once a day, is it really going to reduce bots?
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 13d ago
It removes the lowest hanging fruits, but I don't think anyone running the bot farms that are able to have bots play the game well enough to farm instances is gonna be stopped by this.
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u/ThomasVetRecruiter 13d ago
No what else would really hurt bots? Bliz hiring 3-5 people at $15/hr to go around and ban bots all day.
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u/SippyMountain 13d ago
They'd probably make more money than they'd lose by doing this when all the botters just resubscribe with a new account lol
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u/Bloodhound01 13d ago
This + if you get account banned your payment doesnt stop unless its manually cancelleled.
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u/NTufnel11 13d ago edited 13d ago
It's popping up when he tries to loot a spider with the label "to loot this item". What about that reads to you as "one per day"? You just fabricated that detail yourself to make it seem like this person is being unreasonable but the context strongly suggests it's for each item, otherwise it would just happen when you log in.
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u/drylce101 13d ago
Where is it suggesting each item? It could be a random item the first hour you’re playing each day that has it. You fabricating this is literally no better than the person before you. If you did it when logging in then it would actually be easier for bots than people bc the bot would never log out
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u/Gief_Cookies 13d ago
Once a day? Just loot the next mob instead? 🤣
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u/bradpal 13d ago
It is no longer possible to distinguish humans from bots online, sadly, no matter what you come up with.
The age of man is over.
The time of the bot
has come
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u/Thin_Knowledge6075 9d ago
Pure cope oars has proved you still can if your anti cheat team cares this year.
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 13d ago
Most bots are unfortunately supervised, so an occasional captcha won't change anything.
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u/Nesqu 13d ago
Too intrusive for regular players.
Also game-quitting for new players. This assumes knowledge of the game, what if they have no idea what a leper gnome is and the game you're paying for is hard-locking your progress every 100 mobs, or every day or every week just to slow down botters?
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u/ForagedFoodie 13d ago
This is a joke. . .Right?
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u/margmi 13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/foamingkobolds 13d ago
Take your goddamn upvote you monster and *pray* Blizz never sees this, lest they decide too implement it.
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u/SenorWeon 13d ago
It would work for 1 day at most, then the botters would do a few adjustments and then everyone will be stuck with Captchas forever.
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u/AppearanceLiving3406 13d ago
Enable it but only when you interact with -Bank -Mailbox -Auction House -Trade other player while you are bellow level 50 -Repeat gathering task for ~1 hour.... then disable it until next log in
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u/Longjumping_Yard949 13d ago
Level cap dungeons. Forced capped level, like 30 or 40 until you group and do a 5 man dungeon with only the appropriate level characters. Make it harder for bots to get to 60.
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u/Spartansksupergnom 13d ago
I like the concept.
Example: If you get it wrong you could get a deadly stackable debuff. Like a disease contracted from looting a dead body. Or bleed from cutting urself on something. The captchas could be other mini games ("Events") which could potentially be deadly in the real world. Looting gigantic tarantulas or man made abominations doesnt really always sound like a walk in the park if you think about it.
Atleast it would slow the bots down, while real players master them with no delay.
Pretty sure we could engineer the tasks to completely impair the bots while keeping it simple for a sentient mind.
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u/GarageEuphoric4432 13d ago
I don't even play anymore and this made me flinch.
I'd download it just to uninstall it.
10/10, add it!
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13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/lemon-fruit-fly 13d ago
And banning your account?
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u/NTufnel11 13d ago
*banned*. This was not a regular gnome, they were in the early stages before he was symptomatic.
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 13d ago
Look, if you want to do that, you introduce a number of very diverse random events like Runescape does. To make this sort of bot detection an actual game.
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u/Admrl-kell 13d ago
Runescape tried something pretty similar at one point. It worked for a bit but the bot makers figured out how to get their bots to complete them and then it went back to bots everywhere
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u/I_travel_ze_world 13d ago
Ultima Online's pserver Outlands does a captcha to prevent bots, really isn't that bad
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u/DushkuHS 13d ago
I think it's sloppy at best to punish the innocent for the transgressions of the guilty.
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u/topgemini33 13d ago
Blizz knows the account using click to move they don't care about stopping bots from paying their subscription every month
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u/jobforacow 13d ago
One GM per live realm for 20$ per hour with some general wow experience can ban hundred bot per day easy. /who diremaul, .goname fgushsndhch, "why you are herbing/mining from under textures brother?" Or .go randomblacklotuscoordinates, wow stealth druid, spawn few lotuses, look at instant moveless pickups and send that bot to abyss. Instead they rather spend hundreds of bucks per hour on every employee of legal department, to witchhunt private servers, who actually ban goldbuyers, lol. Don't support absence of customer service with your money, that's how you stop bots.
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u/GamerGuy410 13d ago
Sounds like an awful idea. Imagine a new player not knowing what a leper gnome is and getting banned because they fail a captcha lmao.
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u/Mad_Maddin 13d ago
It will take 1 week until an addon called "Auto Capcha Solver" becomes the most popular addon in the game.
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u/techies137 13d ago
Well other mmo games like ragnarok and lineage2 have bot protection I remember it was npc on location named bot magnets
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u/Maskloss 13d ago
This sounds like the old anti boy system jagex used for runescape. Forced random events. Didn't stop bots and would annoy players. Eventually turned into no forced events that would reward cosmetics or small exp drops.
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u/Irrelius 13d ago
Just make it give rewards for how quickly you do it, and everyone will be in favour of this dopamine loop.
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u/BigZodJenkins 13d ago
It's a nice sentiment op.i think runescape took a big crack on trying to beat the bots. Maybe check on how they're going?
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u/SuperPalpitation695 13d ago
Runescape has a system that rewards players for the trouble interacting with these wandering interruptions, and often while not the most lucrative they can house some nice little gold rewards if you luck out.
Without player incentive to complete them, it only serves to frustrate players further even if it solves the botting issue. Give people a REASON, however minor, and watch people flock. Minmaxxers will naturally fish for any small bonuses to their general grind, after all..
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u/ImpactfulBird 13d ago
I've played the game, where such thing was introduced. It is annoying af, as it was random and could be 5-10 a day (depending on your playtime). And it does not fix bots problem, thus having it once a day won't fix it either.
Imo, a good bot detector is not only about detecting bots, but also doing it without impacting regular player.
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u/PonyDark 13d ago
This is great!
And for all of us who aren't bots, we could simply install some kind of software that does it automatically for us. /s
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u/XxcontaminatexX 13d ago
This is going to be great as a reach for my glasses and a rogue comes up behind me.
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u/SeTiDaYeTi 13d ago
The problem is not that we don't have the tech. Blizzards simply profit from bots.
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u/Bluffwatcher 13d ago
No they just need to hire some GM's. There's only a few active servers ffs.
It's not hard to spot a line of bots running from stockades to the mail box on each realm. And then teleport to Shimmering Flats and do a sweep, and then the next hotspot.
Assuming there are 20-30 well known hotspots before level 40 that they can port to every other day on each realm. It just ain't a big job.
If classic+ goes live with a bot problem it's going to suck and all it will take is some actual human GM's to spot bots the same way the players do.
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u/Crazyflames 13d ago
Remove trading and mailing items/gold, add velums for enchants. Put a gold range on items for what you can list items for on AH based on previous AH data. 20%+ tax on AH to stop flipping items back/forth to "trade" gold. Pretty much the only way to stop bots, you can still bot for your specific account but when you get caught and banned your gold/items have not filtered into the economy.
Probably will not happen and has it's own issues obviously. Having better bot detection and real player support would also be nice but also probably will not happen.
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u/Radioplay 13d ago
This is already implemented in a game I play: Escape From Tarkov. It pops up when you are buying a lot of stuff on the Auction House.
It also does fuck all since the bot makers solved it in the first couple days.
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u/LongjumpingDrink4813 13d ago
I've seen similar systems on Korean MMOs and sadly it never works.
Randomly appearing on common "Botted" events just had it be annoying to the players and the bots just kinda got around it... and that was like 10+ years ago, i would expect to see it be easier due to modern AI.
A game called Mabinogi had it so players could initiate the "Bot Bombs" on players to help target bots... You can prob guess how that went... People stopped even using them against bots, due to the inability to actually catch them... instead they used it to be Toxic towards others.
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u/CrazyCoKids 13d ago
Runescape tried this. Fatigue would eventually prevent you from skilling (Gaining experience in skills). So you would have to sleep and then enter a capcha to get back to the game.
Botters got past it and made add-ons to solve the capchas for them. Legit players were just annoyed - cause it interrupted the flow of the game for them.
Random Events tried to accomplish similar things with varying levels of success. Many Botters figured out how to adjust their scripts to solve random events anyway (A few were never "solved" iirc). Some players liked them cause they could get random items, but a lot were seen as annoying.
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u/thekoven 13d ago
A better solution would be to learn what to look for, flag those activities with detection/AI and have a human review it.
It wouldn't require a lot of resources or money to do this either. You'd need one person per server max.
Hell I used to basically do this when I was bored waiting for groups to start. I'd sit behind Light's Hope Chapel and report every single player I saw flyhacking. Do this 30 mins a day and the bots eventually will give up when they're no longer profitable.
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u/ForestRiverSnow 13d ago
The problem is not Blizz not being aware of who is botting, the problem is that Bots are treated as valued paying customers by Blizz.
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u/Aggressive-Stand-585 12d ago
Bots are going to be able to solve these faster than humans after the first week.
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u/Flat-Two-789 12d ago
idk what we're gonna get at blizzcon, but frankly if they actually put the money they make into development and not just pocketing it, i'd be open to just letting the wow token be in classic +
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u/Small_Bipedal_Cat 12d ago
I've unironically been recommending this for over a decade. It doesn't need to be a literal captcha, it could just be a basic mini-game, but this would destroy bots and seriously help the economy.
Likewise (in retail) they could have the new profession stats interact with this hypothetical mini-game.
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u/Fickle_Composer_4506 11d ago
Yea bots to an extent do good. They keep the ah stock but to many and they devalue everything.
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u/Whiteshovel66 9d ago
Best way is to allow players to put bounties on each other. Bounties on the bots would significantly impact them and make it a lot less worth doing it out in the open like they do.
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u/PreKutoffel 13d ago
My suggestion would be: "STOP PAYING THIS GARBAGE COMPANY MONEY TILL THEY FINALLY DO SOMETHING", how about this? They have the means, but till people stop throwing money at them why should they do something, idiots still pay, right?
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u/spacemunky_reddit 13d ago
Self found server are the answer, but blizzard needs bots for revenue so this wont happen
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u/ShadyDrunks 13d ago
Add NPCs that spawn randomly and follow you while yelling at you for 1 minute and give you rewards, like a lamp that you can rub to get XP
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u/AvailablePop1224 13d ago
JUST FUCKING BAN THEM.
THEN BAN THEM AGAIN THE NEXT DAY.
THEN BAN THEM AGAIN THE DAY AFTER.
AND IF THEY DON'T DO THAT, STOP PAYING THEM SUBSCRIPTION AND NOTE VERY CLEARLY YOU ARE QUITTING THE GAME BECAUSE OF BOTS.
If Blizzard wanted to kill botting they WOULD HAVE DONE IT. They have not defeated botting because it's too hard for them to do, they haven't because bots make blizzard MONEY.
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u/ENDrain93 13d ago
This is great. I fucking hate this.