Attention Bot Creators, New and Existing

[zewt]

As another example. All these Auction House bots... will get you banned.. Who sits in auction house and searches for items for 5 hours + without even playing the game? Easily detectable and on the HIGH list of priority for Blizzard since real money is involved. Doesnt matter if its a private coded bot or a public release. The simple activity of searching auction house for many hours non stop WILL = Ban.

[sspamfilter]

Hi zewt, in fact the four methods don't do the exact same thing. Randomization is important (to me) both for in-game human-like behaviors and for more random game times. You can certainly make your own decisions in life without my input. If I'm writing a bot, I'm randomizing everything, which is certainly best practices in my opinion; it's also very easy to implement. The point of the post really is that you should make your bots run like humans, not like bots. That will always be a better decision than the opposite.

[sspamfilter]

As another example. All these Auction House bots... will get you banned.. Who sits in auction house and searches for items for 5 hours + without even playing the game? Easily detectable and on the HIGH list of priority for Blizzard since real money is involved. Doesnt matter if its a private coded bot or a public release. The simple activity of searching auction house for many hours non stop WILL = Ban.

Do you know what would stop the bans? Reading and applying the concepts listed in the opening thread. A simple example of this would be having the bot randomly decide to join a game, repair, go run a monster, wait around, go do some random useful activities, then leave. Then go in, check a few listings, and go back into game or not go back into game a few times, randomly..

Like a human.

You don't get the 'now, now, now' bot that everyone wishes was practical. However, it's going to be a better overall run if you don't get banned, don't have to wait to buy another copy, and DO get to continue checking prices, etc.

[zewt]

Do you know what would stop the bans? Reading and applying the concepts listed in the opening thread. A simple example of this would be having the bot randomly decide to join a game, repair, go run a monster, wait around, go do some random useful activities, then leave. Then go in, check a few listings, and go back into game or not go back into game a few times, randomly..

Like a human.

You don't get the 'now, now, now' bot that everyone wishes was practical. However, it's going to be a better overall run if you don't get banned, don't have to wait to buy another copy, and DO get to continue checking prices, etc.

Oh i agree with you completely.. i wish this reply was your original thread starter... the sleeping randomly has always been implemented in bots i write. People doing rmah bots need to throw in some monster runs every once in a while. Not the same monster run either, roll a dice to decide which one to run!

I am not knocking randomization.. i am 100% eye to eye with you on that... i just think your original post is stale information is all.

[sspamfilter]

Hi Zewt, I will make more clear in the first post what it is I hope to accomplish, which is more of a mindset thing than a code-specific thing. Thanks for your input.

[awp2004]

Okay, Ill have to put in my 2 cents.

Its highly unlikely that blizz record either mouseclicks or keyboard inputs (other than chat). If they did, they ouldve have banned many many more people than they did.
Second, if I play by myself farming gold, I do it at a faster rate than a bot, really.

Only thing i might think of doing would be a little random sleep whe youre at the menu, and also at some point ingame, be it just before u leave. And dont bot 24/7. This is the safest way I think.

Injecting the game client should ge detected at some point when warden eventually scans. Still, people have been runnin IB 24/ for more than a month without a ban. (Roll the dice blizz!)

Anyway, im not using these sleeps myself, i pause my bot once ievery few hours.

[Rhynocerous]

sspamfilter get's the "nice patient guy" award, I would have already gotten mad at some of the responses in this thread.

That being said I will say that I absolutely do not think the Warden is looking for repetitive actions but that evidence is just anecdotal.
Just for shits and giggles I have been running 1 bot 24/7 on Sarkoth with 0 randomization, auto relogin, etc. I dump the gold off the account every few days. It's been a very long while now and no ban.

I write randomization into just about every action but NOT to the extend that it will dramatically sacrifice efficiency. I feel that the risk of a ban due to poor randomization is so low right now that it isn't worth sacrificing efficiency at all.

That being said I agree with your instructions from a mechanical standpoint and would be interested to hear you opine on mouse movement.
I currently randomize mouse movement using varied ramp in and ramp outs and splines rather than a straight line but I am almost positive it's completely unnecessary. I'm betting instant mouse movement won't get anyone banned.

[sspamfilter]

Hi Rhynocerous, you're right in that things like mouse movement near as I can tell isn't even sent to the server, as it's irrelevant to the server side. I suppose I'm too paranoid about these things but honestly to me it feels better to have a human-like bot than it does a 'dumb bot.'
As far as efficiency, the search for max gain from botting is what pushes it from undetected to 'detectable.' So I will always prefer to have a max gain setting that is by default not enabled. Thanks for your comments.

[Wewel]

Most importantly, never write client memory and instead interact by simulating mouse clicks or keypresses.

I guess the reason most commercial bot writers write memory is so that their bots break at patch releases, and cracked version will thus stop working, while they would probably be detected anyway since the program is publicly available.

[hovsa]

you do realize that this:

function zzz()
 $x = random(1000,4000)
 $y = random(3000,6000)
 sleep($x,$y)
end function

is the same as this:

function zzz()
 sleep(random(1000,6000))
end function

Oh, and did it occur to you that people who release bots, might want competitors to be banned? If i ever released a bot i had spent several days/week coding it would be:

A) Because i was done with botting.

or

B) Because i wanted to get rid of the competition.

[TMichael]

you do realize that this:

function zzz()
 $x = random(1000,4000)
 $y = random(3000,6000)
 sleep($x,$y)
end function

is the same as this:

function zzz()
 sleep(random(1000,6000))
end function

Oh, and did it occur to you that people who release bots, might want competitors to be banned? If i ever released a bot i had spent several days/week coding it would be:

A) Because i was done with botting.

or

B) Because i wanted to get rid of the competition.

Just wanted to point out here that mathematically, those two are not the same. You are essentially doing something like this:

Sleep(Random( 1000-3000 , 4000-6000 ))

which is more likely to produce a number somewhere in the middle, while getting something close to 1000 or 6000 is slightly less likely. Think of a shallow bell curve.

[KingYoshi9]

What about mouse clicks. How would your program a consistent pixel bot if it clicked in random locations?

[sspamfilter]

Hi KingToshi9,

First you will need to know the approximate size of the item, or at least be sure it will be larger than some size, for example a 3x3 pixel square. If your script normally would just click right in the middle, like
ooo
oxo
ooo

Now you can make a random function to select anywhere in that square, since you're sure the entire item/object will still be hit. So you can write this in many ways. Sometimes people will get the top left start of the square with their locator function, if the item moves, and then they will randomly choose a pixel inside of that square. Another way to do it is to find the center of the square and randomize the direction and amount you move from that center before issuing the move/click.

[Prooz]

Well, now that there are bans going out, you would think these bot creators would put their focus on making it "undetectable." I think that before now there was really no need to put much effort into such things. But yeah, if any creator wants to make some decent money from here on out it better be marketed towards being undetectable.. I know thats the route I would take if I was into scripting/coding.

[TMichael]

Well, now that there are bans going out, you would think these bot creators would put their focus on making it "undetectable." I think that before now there was really no need to put much effort into such things. But yeah, if any creator wants to make some decent money from here on out it better be marketed towards being undetectable.. I know thats the route I would take if I was into scripting/coding.

There's one problem with this. If the bot is released publicly, then Blizz will also have a copy and Warden will recognize the patterns, however randomized. It's all about data analysis at their end, at least initially. IMO your best bet is to program your own as differently as possible from public releases.