Ok, did a bit of research and I think I might have an idea of what’s going on:
“According to their official press release, Blizzard is suspending game services for a lot of its major game titles. This includes World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Warcraft III: Reforged, Overwatch, Starcraft, Diablo II, and Hero of the Storm. They said, however, that Diablo Immortal will still continue as this is under a separate agreement. This suspension of game services sees an end to the 14-year partnership that Blizzard has with NetEase in publishing games in China. Once the license ends on January 23, 2023, the games mentioned above will no longer be available in China.”
“The events are still developing, and we are waiting for an official statement from Blizzards. While it's suspected that the regional price hikeHearthstone players from 14 countries suffered on February 14 was related to Chinese players "emigrating" to other servers so they could keep playing, Blizzard hasn't confirmed (nor denied) this.”
It’s all speculation, of course but this likely it.
Also worthy of interest:
”A post on a Taiwanese forum revealed that Blizzard banned hundreds of Hearthstone accounts for botting. These bot accounts allegedly belonged to Chinese Hearthstone players who registered them under fake Argentinian addresses to benefit from lower regional prices.”
Also:
”Botting is getting so bad we have more legends in Classic than Standard because there are so many bots feeding off each other they eventually climb to legend faster than regular players in Standard. Mercenaries bots hit over 100k MMR, and Even Shaman bots plague Wild in legend.”
A summary of the video for those who can’t be bothered (like many videoson YouTube, the content can be summarised in 10 seconds but draw on longer for algorithm purposes):
* Shows the same screenshot I’ve posted, I thought it was my own at first but it’s someone else who had the same experience I did. More examples of more DK bots.
* As we had already discussed, there seems to be two types of bots: Blizzard and Non-Blizzard.
* A user requests more transparency when it comes to report feedbacks and information about bans (which would be neat). Blizzard replies it’s planned in the future.
* He speculates that it’s few individuals mass botting the game to then sell the accounts to other people. There’s probably a monetary incentive to do it. You really need to have no morality at all to poison a whole community for your own gain. Holy f.
I personally don’t think the scrambled letters are Blizzard bots, as confirmed from the video. Blizzard bots have names that makes sense, they don’t use scrambled letters.
It’s not fun though. Reaching legend on farming bots would be meaningless. Winning in a competition only has value when opponents have similar skills. I actually considered de-ranking myself because of the wins I got against bots because it felt so hollow. I didn’t end up doing it because *all* I was facing were bots so at least I still got to play. Also, the higher rank you get, the less of them are.
This is definitely a new phenomenon. Is there a way to contact Blizzard about this although I would imagine they’re already aware of the issue?
If there’s ever a debate that aggro. requires skill, I hope this remains as a reminder that bots who aggro can still reach platinum. I’ve noticed some of them are starting to get names now, it’s improving. Also, the a.i. is getting better, less nonsensical plays.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Since the bots (non Blizzard) always follow the same patterns, couldn’t Blizzard set up a system of flags to flush all of the bots? If each card is played *exactly* the same way, couldn’t it identify it as being automated with no margin of error? Considering they have access to all the online data, why do users need to report bots in the first place? I mean, it’s not like the A.I. involved here is Chat GPT and super developed. I’m not a programmer but it just seems to me that identifying a bot based deck content and tun length alone should be fairly simple. I would imagine matches are always queued the same way as well.
Interesting, my experience has been the latter. I’ve reached 12 wins in a row with deathknight bots. There are still some at platinum, which I’ve since reached. I think they likely will be gone by plat 5 since they can’t reach higher tiers (I’m surprised bots manage to reach platinum).
So I figured some of you might think I’m making this up or exaggerating but, those are my last five games. All Death knight bots. I don’t know if I’ll get 10 bots in a row.
If they don’t appear in the “latest opponent”, they’re a bot. That’s it, no detective work required although they always use the same patterns. If they don’t appear to be reported, is Blizzard aware of the bots? Why else wouldn’t they appear as opponents like everyone else? Have they been tagged in some way? Why prevent users from reporting the bots? I don’t get it.
Standard. One thing I’ve noticed is that the username in-game is different when I attempt to report for botting post-game, it changes. Never seen that before. It only happens with bots.
edit: I was wrong. The username doesn’t changes… the bots simply don’t appear as my latest opponent! I can’t report them. How weird!
Has this been announced somewhere? I’ve seen a few threads popping up about bots but I’ve just started playing again and more than 50% of my games are against bot? Has some sort of software been discovered to circumvent detection or something? It’s never remotely close to being as bad for bots. I’d get one every week or so but now it’s more than half.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
⚙
Learn More
Cosmetics
Related Cards
Card Pools
✕
×
PopCard Settings
Click on the buttons to change the PopCard background.
Elements settings
Click on the button to hide or unhide popcard elements.
Ok, did a bit of research and I think I might have an idea of what’s going on:
“According to their official press release, Blizzard is suspending game services for a lot of its major game titles. This includes World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Warcraft III: Reforged, Overwatch, Starcraft, Diablo II, and Hero of the Storm. They said, however, that Diablo Immortal will still continue as this is under a separate agreement. This suspension of game services sees an end to the 14-year partnership that Blizzard has with NetEase in publishing games in China. Once the license ends on January 23, 2023, the games mentioned above will no longer be available in China.”
https://clutchpoints.com/blizzard-pulls-out-of-china-after-agreement-with-netease-ends
Which coincides with the massive influx of bots on other servers. It might also be caused by the recent price hike:
“The events are still developing, and we are waiting for an official statement from Blizzards. While it's suspected that the regional price hikeHearthstone players from 14 countries suffered on February 14 was related to Chinese players "emigrating" to other servers so they could keep playing, Blizzard hasn't confirmed (nor denied) this.”
Source
It’s all speculation, of course but this likely it.
Also worthy of interest:
”A post on a Taiwanese forum revealed that Blizzard banned hundreds of Hearthstone accounts for botting. These bot accounts allegedly belonged to Chinese Hearthstone players who registered them under fake Argentinian addresses to benefit from lower regional prices.”
Also:
”Botting is getting so bad we have more legends in Classic than Standard because there are so many bots feeding off each other they eventually climb to legend faster than regular players in Standard. Mercenaries bots hit over 100k MMR, and Even Shaman bots plague Wild in legend.”
-Zeddy
I don’t know what the solution is.
A summary of the video for those who can’t be bothered (like many videoson YouTube, the content can be summarised in 10 seconds but draw on longer for algorithm purposes):
* Shows the same screenshot I’ve posted, I thought it was my own at first but it’s someone else who had the same experience I did. More examples of more DK bots.
* As we had already discussed, there seems to be two types of bots: Blizzard and Non-Blizzard.
* A user requests more transparency when it comes to report feedbacks and information about bans (which would be neat). Blizzard replies it’s planned in the future.
* He speculates that it’s few individuals mass botting the game to then sell the accounts to other people. There’s probably a monetary incentive to do it. You really need to have no morality at all to poison a whole community for your own gain. Holy f.
I personally don’t think the scrambled letters are Blizzard bots, as confirmed from the video. Blizzard bots have names that makes sense, they don’t use scrambled letters.
It’s not fun though. Reaching legend on farming bots would be meaningless. Winning in a competition only has value when opponents have similar skills. I actually considered de-ranking myself because of the wins I got against bots because it felt so hollow. I didn’t end up doing it because *all* I was facing were bots so at least I still got to play. Also, the higher rank you get, the less of them are.
This is definitely a new phenomenon. Is there a way to contact Blizzard about this although I would imagine they’re already aware of the issue?
If there’s ever a debate that aggro. requires skill, I hope this remains as a reminder that bots who aggro can still reach platinum. I’ve noticed some of them are starting to get names now, it’s improving. Also, the a.i. is getting better, less nonsensical plays.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Since the bots (non Blizzard) always follow the same patterns, couldn’t Blizzard set up a system of flags to flush all of the bots? If each card is played *exactly* the same way, couldn’t it identify it as being automated with no margin of error? Considering they have access to all the online data, why do users need to report bots in the first place? I mean, it’s not like the A.I. involved here is Chat GPT and super developed. I’m not a programmer but it just seems to me that identifying a bot based deck content and tun length alone should be fairly simple. I would imagine matches are always queued the same way as well.
I’m curious, why are they still around?
Interesting, my experience has been the latter. I’ve reached 12 wins in a row with deathknight bots. There are still some at platinum, which I’ve since reached. I think they likely will be gone by plat 5 since they can’t reach higher tiers (I’m surprised bots manage to reach platinum).
It’s weird, they didn’t used to! Now, they do. I noticed the change today.
So I figured some of you might think I’m making this up or exaggerating but, those are my last five games. All Death knight bots. I don’t know if I’ll get 10 bots in a row.
I’ve now reached 12 wins in a row.
Update:
Some things I’ve noticed:
Bots are always death knight
Usernames are always a bunch of random letters, like sdv or sksndnej
Always the same deck: obliterate, body bagger, Saurfang, gnome muncher x2, chillfallen baron x2, thassarian, heart strike, remorseless winter x2, Death strike, Rime sculptor
never concedes even when defeat is certain
It’s so easy to identify.
Exact same length of time before acting
At Gold, it’s about 75% of the matches.
Strangely, didn’t meet a single boy this morning (as opposed to 75% beforehand). Could be because I was gone for a while.
If they don’t appear in the “latest opponent”, they’re a bot. That’s it, no detective work required although they always use the same patterns. If they don’t appear to be reported, is Blizzard aware of the bots? Why else wouldn’t they appear as opponents like everyone else? Have they been tagged in some way? Why prevent users from reporting the bots? I don’t get it.
Standard.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the username in-game is different when I attempt to report for botting post-game, it changes. Never seen that before. It only happens with bots.
edit: I was wrong. The username doesn’t changes… the bots simply don’t appear as my latest opponent! I can’t report them. How weird!
Has this been announced somewhere? I’ve seen a few threads popping up about bots but I’ve just started playing again and more than 50% of my games are against bot? Has some sort of software been discovered to circumvent detection or something? It’s never remotely close to being as bad for bots. I’d get one every week or so but now it’s more than half.