Recently, user of stormspire.net forums "Aaa" found a huge network of around 150 auction house bots, that has been buying and selling various profession materials all over high-populated US realms. The most interesting fact is that it seems like all these bots are in fact controlled by one person / company at least since December (and most likely much longer).
How to detect Auction House bots? Well, it's actually pretty simple, all you have to do is to use one of these methods:
First way to spot AH bots is to check TheUndermineJournal.com (TUJ) to see one of the standard items that bots are selling, like Ghost iron ore, Nether wave cloth or other materials, and check if any of Auctioneers selling them matches the criteria:
1. Randomized name containing 7 letters, like: "Fryopqw" or "Qhyrlovg", as this seems to be the way that said company / person was naming all of his bots.
2. Chars will be lvl 1-4 Night elves, so TUJ will show "Player not found" while hovering the name. (TUJ is showing more details for level 10+ characters).
3. All auctions created by them will be only 20 item stacks, so there will be no auctions over 20 items (even if the item can stack up to 100 or 200), nor items posted in smaller stacks like 5, 10 or under stacks (16, 18 etc).
If any of Players on your realm meet these criteria, then check if they also are:
1. Posting mainly (or only) between 4pm and 8am every single day of the week.
2. Making auctions containing only mats like: ores, cloths, dusts, leathers, essences, bars, herbs, minerals, and current expansion cooking ingredients.
3. Usually creating total of 500-600 Auctions of 20 item stacks at the time from each toon (or less if the bot-char was created recently).
Another way to tell if they are on your realm is going to Auction House in Dranassus and watching their movement between Auctioneer and Mailbox (bots has not been spotted yet on Horde side, we do not know yet which AH they might be using for Horde, but its likely not OG). Bots will always follow the same and only path while moving from Auctioneer to Mailbox, and always standing sideways to both of them (they will never be turned in any other angle than their straight path). Because Dranassus is a cross-realm zone, you will be able to see few bots at the same time from various realms, while they happen to be in the same instance as you. In cases like this spotting them should be very easy as they will often move using the same path simultaneously (this will never happen id Ogrimar nor Stormwind as these cities are not instancioned).
If a player meets 6 of the mentioned above criteria, than you can be almost 100% sure that they are controlled by the same person or company. They seem to have 2 farmer and 2 Auctioneer toons on each realm and faction that they are operating on.
To see some examples of AH bots, you can use TUJ to check few realms that they are active on, like: Aerie Peak (check recent sellers section if they are not showing on current sellers list), Aggramar, Alexstrasza, Antonidas, or Azuremyst.
The question is, what should we do once we find them? Perhaps these bots aren't harming anyone and should be let alone? or maybe they are abusing economy too much, and not letting others with one-two bots up make any profit?
Be sure to let us know what you think about it in comments!
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