Thread: The Bot

I strongly suspect I'm competing against a bot in my server's glyph market. I'm wondering what is the best way to collect evidence through observation, then report in-game.

Documenting consistent player position at the ah and mailbox?
On-line 16-20 hours per day?
Patterns of action, such as repetitive and consistent canceling/resposting?

There is some variance in these patterns and the player is probably on botting 100% of the time, but there are just too many occasions when she seems to be in a 'remote-control' mode of canceling/reposting every 15 minutes or so.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Originally Posted by Meyer

Server & Playername?

A stronge evidence could be TUJ heat matrix

I would rather hold off on naming names until I've collected enough proof.

One thing that I found rather suspicious is that this player, upon returning to the mailbox after a cancel, paused momentarily in front of the mailbox, then jogged to the right a couple steps. I noticed the same movement and positions on a second trip to the mailbox. Coincidence? Not sure yet, need more observations.

Can the heat map be run from TUJ website for a specific player?

Thanks for your help.

Figure out what your break even point is...Post all your glyphs at your break even price.
When he undercuts you , start cherry picking the most expensive glyphs that are selling below your cost.
If the bot has a herb bot, its hard to compete.
But pick out your favorite sellers, and most them cross faction.
You will be amazed at the price differences on both sides of the faction.

The other way I survived in wrath against bots was , I stopped selling glyphs horde side, and just started selling inks.
As long as I was selling inks at profit, you will build gold.
Sooner or later the herb market will crash and you must come in and start buying.

Lower your cost, lower your sale price so that you still break even, make the bot post below your threashhold and make that bot work for you!!!!!

Can tell you from personal experience that Blizzard will simply turn a blind eye to it. We have a botter on my server that sits on the AH 24/7. I know I've reported him with heat maps and a FRAPS of his pathing getting messed up and stuck on the mailbox for 20 minutes. All of my other competitors have reported him as well as far back as early Cata and he's still on 24/7. He quite literally posts 23-24 hours a day.

Your best bet is to just take advantage of the situation if possible. Most of them have bad TSM settings so you can usually tank the prices and then buy them out. You could also cut off supply but it's very likely they have a second account running a mining/herbing bot too so that probably won't do any good. I would focus on finding his thresholds and fallbacks and trying to abuse those.

Thanks for the tips. I was frankly wondering if observing/documenting/reporting a cheat would be time wasted, especially after a recent blue post/article on wow insider.

Also I hadn't thought of cutting the price or selling inks.

One thing I thought was strange, the bot deleted his level 1 character, recreated it the same day and not sure why..... to remove his char name from friends lists?

Anyway, thanks again for the helpful suggestions.

Originally Posted by Valdron

I really don't know too much about how bots work so please excuse my ignorance, but what happens to them when an object like [Pandaren Firework Launcher] is set down in their path? Are they set on some sort of timer so they run in a certain direction for a set amount of time, or do they just run in a certain direction until they reach where they need to be?

Not sure, sounds like it's worth a try, will report back

Originally Posted by Valdron

I really don't know too much about how bots work so please excuse my ignorance, but what happens to them when an object like is set down in their path? Are they set on some sort of timer so they run in a certain direction for a set amount of time, or do they just run in a certain direction until they reach where they need to be?

Depends on how their program is made. There is no public bot that I am aware of other than one that requires much modification by the user. It utilizes another bot that would most likely be able to move around said object.

Just want to give you something to think about:

I have 2 accounts. I have 2 instances of wow open pretty much at all times. 1 account simply sits on the AH and reposts / cancels auctions all day long, apart from the time when I log over to other toons to do their daily cooldowns. I have a job, so its not all day every day, but there are definitely long stints on the weekends.

My main account is doing all the things I would normally do, dailies, achievement runs, dungeons, scenarios, farming etc...

Im not saying this particular case is not a bot, he very well may be, but just something to consider.

I know the easiest way to identify that I'm on another account is when achievements come through that I could possible not get such as a heroic dungeon run when im listing on a non 90 toon