Warning to ALL AH Botters - you will get banned. It won't take long either.

[thevadar]

Blizzard is making profit from AH bots since they resell on RMAH = 15% for blizz :O
Silly blizz

Actually, if anything, they probably lose money.
Buyers are generally going to buy anyway, even if the price is slightly higher.
You are pushing the market prices down, so Blizz 15% cut is lower than what it would be.

Nice try tho...

[MonsterMMORPG]

ah bans are in-depended off the bot itself

your queries can be easily stored. it is not like storing clicks in order to detect scripts

[wootpeng]

"Most people" but you could make an argument to not get banned, and avoid being picked up by their automated ban waves through random delays. It would appear as if every single time through was completely unique on their logs, while a standard macro / bot will have the exact same timing every time through.

Which looks more like a bot:
Refresh, waits 2 seconds, Refresh, waits 2 seconds, Refresh, waits 2 seconds, Refresh, waits 2 seconds, Refresh, waits 2 seconds, Refresh, waits 2 seconds, Refresh, waits 0.01 seconds, Buys.

or

Refresh, waits 1.8 seconds, Refresh, waits 4.6 seconds, Refresh, waits 7.3 seconds, Refresh, waits 1.4 seconds, Refresh, waits 2.2 seconds, Refresh, waits 2.6 seconds, Refresh, waits 2.3 seconds, Buys.

... the automated bans that macro users get are a result of the pattern you leave in the server log, the act of 1000 refreshes in a row alone is not. The act of 1000 perfectly exact timed refreshes, is.

"Randomizing" things won't make a difference. There were plently of people who were using "randomized" bots that still got banned. Also, there were people who got banned who didn't use any software at all and would manually refresh the auction house. It is all about how many queries a person is doing within a certain period of time.

Do you think Blizzard would 1. log the time between key presses of every single user who plays the game 2.send all these logs to there servers 3. go through all the logs searching for keystrokes that appear to be suspicious.

It is much more likely they just simply look at their logs and see which users have a certain amount of searches within a certain amount of time and blanket ban them.

[ssknight]

I would have to agree in part with woot. I have seen no evidence that "click coordinates" are denoted, processed, uploaded, or anything else by Blizz. I actually even doubt whether or not there is any long term storage of individual user search query. It seems more likely that blizzard has software running on the back end monitoring queries and holding them in temporary storage (RAM or a small file reset at regular intervals for suspricous accounts) for analysis. If analysis determines a botting pattern in the temporary data, the temporary data may be dumped to a permanent ban record and a ban is issued. The dump file can be used in appeals to determine whether a legitimate mistake has been made but I would imagine to overturn a ban, indisputable evidence that a mistake had been made by the processing algorithm would need to be present.

Again, I truly believe that randomizing click coordinates on a bot is a manifestation of wishful thinking on the developers' part. Developers have so little control of the variables used in determining botters, that they resort to randomizing variables that are not a part of the equation to sleep better at night. The variables that we can control (search query interval, etc) are a large factor but botters are so unwilling to sacrifice speed of search in the interests of self-preservation becuase that preservation is not guaranteed. It is a very basic risk/reward situation but I do think that we should document and study different search variable matrices and their resulting outcomes. I think there is plenty to be done in safeguarding botters but scouring the D3 window for as yet unclicked Search button pixels seems unfruitful at best and at worst a deluded/sick mind at work.

[bukoman]

Okay, I never said anything about randomizing "click coordinates."

However, I'm saying that if you have random TIMING - I guarantee you that timing is stored. Having multiple second differential will drastically help - it won't avoid a ban - but if it's exactly 2 seconds apart instead of ranging 2-9 seconds, for example, then you can't appeal your ban. If it's randomly 2-9 seconds apart and different everytime; Blizzard can't prove you were automating anything and you will be able to be unbanned.

It is much more likely they just simply look at their logs and see which users have a certain amount of searches within a certain amount of time and blanket ban them.

... searching the AH a lot isn't against the TOS, automating that search is. If you can tell them you weren't automating it, and to manually check the log - a human will look and see that there is a (for example) 2-9 second variation without any distinguishable pattern (which would suggest automation) - thusly helping yourself be unbanned.

I personally write all my own scripts, and share only with friends and myself - how many bans between the 8 of us? 0.

[Iaccidentallytwink]

As has been said before.

It's not about avoiding bans.

It's about making enough money to continue botting after you're banned.

[Honor777]

Haha sign me up for that job on banning people botting the ah... dont even need a salary ill just keep what I ban
Really though I have a lot of money invested in AH, so even exploiting I dont take lightly just for the fact can lose a lot of money.

[Sneakerhead]

As has been said before.

It's not about avoiding bans.

It's about making enough money to continue botting after you're banned.

lmao, this is the way to think.

[sharkopolo]

Regardless of whether you randomize your timings, you should still be on top, when they query their DBs for the amount of searches made.

[ccplz]

so did you guys chargeback on spambears?

Would be interested in knowing that too.
I'm one of the people that got scammed (in a way) by him,and as furious as I am,I'm considering a chargeback.However,I don't know if it's going against the forum's rules,or if the action would be justifiable in this case.
Would appreciate an answer,cheers!

P.S.I'm not furious about the ban,instead,I bought one of his products,then he pulled his classic act of stopping the updates,and requiring extra money to buy the new updated version.

[JonnyJa]

so did you guys chargeback on spambears?

also interested if that would be appropriate/anyone else did this.

[darkchaos89]

It's not the timing of the clicks, it's the amount of time the bot is used and the amount of queries it makes.I don't see how this would be hard to understand for anyone, but let me try to break it down for you.

How many people do you know who play D3 without botting? Do they sit on the AH for 6 hours trying to find stuff to resell or do they play the game and check the AH every so often? It's as simply as that. You can argue that it's your choice to play the AH and not the game, but when you do it for 6 hours straight with no breaks for washroom, food, social interaction, it looks weird. When you do that for multiple days in a row it looks even more suspicious.

People tend to do things that they believe "help" such as only running it at night when you're asleep or running it at random times, but none of that will help when you're running it for excessive amounts of time.

I wonder if half these people complaining play D3 now because they got their WoW accounts banned in Uldum.

[xLesz]

also interested if that would be appropriate/anyone else did this.

I tried his "new" bot, he stopped updating that day. I filed a claim with paypal but they couldn't do anything as it was a "virtual" good. I submitted the case to my bank and got back my money in a day.

I would recommend you do the same. His practices are clearly shady at best.

[sharkopolo]

Not to add, not only is his practices shady with all his.. "new updates, now you have to pay again", the product you bought was shit also and his coding sucks.

[Oxis]

AH bots are like DDOS attack on their AH server, ofc they are going to prioritize banning those first.