BvB (bot vs bot) is this a thing?

[pallep]

In Starcraft a huge community has formed around creating and battling bots.
It has come the extend that PhD-positions revolve around developing new technologies and techniques to improve Starcraft bots.

Does anything like this exist for WoW bots?

I'm not talking about XP/honor/gold-farmer bots. I'm talking about bots that can do duels and/or arena battles?

In the past year me and some friends have been developing a BG/duel/arena-bot that isn't just a "keep me non-afk"-bot. It's a bot that - given a few pointers - can play any class in the game, and is actually quite challenging to play against in a 3v3 arena.
I would absolutely love to face this bot up against another bot, and get a whole bot meta-game going.

Part of the reason why Starcraft bots have become so big is that the game is a great spectator e-sport, another reason is undoubtedly that there exists an (unofficial) API (bwapi) for the game out in the open.

Does a similar API project exist for WoW?

We(my friends and I) have also developed an API along with the bot, but this API is made for live servers, which means that we cant allow memory injects and we have an APM(actions per minute) limiter.
I'm sure that if this was moved off live servers we(the ppl reading this) could create a much better API that would make it much easier to create bots and ultimately lay the base for BvB (bot vs bot) competitions.

What do you think? Can this be a thing? Is it already a thing?

[SysMunky]

I myself haven't heard of it before, but I think it would be pretty interesting. One issue I foresee (unless sit was moved off servers and characters all had equivalent armor/specs etc) is that no matter how well someone creates their bot, it could be bullied so to say. Still, the idea would be interesting, although I believe that there may be a bit more strategy and open endedness in Starcraft that allows for a little more room to wiggle and devise a rather intense AI. While WoW has an element of strategy, I think that there may be a bit less. Since the PvP play is relatively basic (Kill healer, interrupt casting, close/ maintain distance).

In all, while I think it would be interesting,but I've not seen it. I think that that SC has more options and requires a more in depth AI than WoW would. Still, I'd be interested in seeing whats created. Heck, I may eventually be able to get enough stuff relearned to want to contribute, but that's all in due time.

[Unholyshaman]

Try matching your own bot against itself on another account :P

But obviously I can see what you mean here where the battling is actually one developer's skills against another developer's skills rather than class mechanics/user skill versus class mechanics/user skill.

[pallep]

Still, the idea would be interesting, although I believe that there may be a bit more strategy and open endedness in Starcraft that allows for a little more room to wiggle and devise a rather intense AI.

You are right, compared to SC, WoW has a lot fewer things that you can do. But there are still plenty of interesting things to figure out when making a bot for arenas: CD management, positioning, CC, rotations, situational abilities, and for BGs: which flag to cap, how to divide the forces to protect points of interest.

Practically a BG commander-bot would be quite hard to create unless you create a graphicless client for WoW, or someway to interact with the server without having to run the client. Running 15+ clients AND the bot on a single computer would require quite the rig.

Try matching your own bot against itself on another account :P

We did, we made two 3v3 teams and battled them against each other, each team consisting of a healer, a melee and a ranged player. We also tried battling different versions of the bot, i.e. an old version of the bot vs a newer version, to measure our improvements. It was really fun to see how adding things like healer-CC and single target burst made a difference in favor of one of the teams.