Nobody likes bots in games. This isn’t an I, Robot-esque anti-robot rant or anything of the nature, but simple observation of something that is drastically harming the gaming community at large.
If you’ve played World of Warcraft: Classic, there’s a good chance you’ve run into a bot or two. Heck, you probably ran into some without even noticing it, as they don’t wear it as a flag. Normally, they’re just out grinding like you and me.
But there’s a serious bot issue within Classic, as there is in many games. Players have been asking for Blizzard to address the problem for months, but it seems like progress is slow going, or at least not noticeable.
Taking to Reddit, fans of the game complained about the rampant issue via the r/Classicwow subreddit. User u/geze46452 stated, “Cmon Blizzard do something about the bots. I pay 15$ a month to compete with bots. Pay someone to do something about them. They are easy to spot. I report them constantly and still nothing is done. Your methods aren’t working. You make close to 90 thousand dollars per server, you can pay a couple of people 2,000$ a month to police them full time.”
As of writing this, the post is just shy of 2,000 upvotes, with 500 comments discussing the issue at hand. The vast majority of players agree with him, and I can say as I this that I certainly do as well.
First off, how do you spot a bot? They aren’t exactly named “BOT13” or anything of the sort.
It’s all in the behavior. Bots tend to focus on auto-attacks instead of abilities, though this can certainly vary. Hunters are a popular class among bots as well as they’re effective at soloing various mobs. Typically, they stand out in the wilderness of level-appropriate zones and just grind off on the mobs, looting gold and items to sell so that they can sell gold via third-party websites. Another option is to message them or invite them to a party if you suspect they’re a bot, with a lack of responses possibly meaning they are.
The best thing you can do is report a bot and hope Blizzard actually does something about it, which they don’t seem to have been too effective in doing thus far. If they’re of the opposite faction, we cordially invite you to kill them and camp their corpse while you farm honor. Frankly, most bots don’t fight back either, so it’s easy going for an honor farm and disrupts their operations. If Blizzard won’t kill the bots, you might as well!
