Is the HB team incompetent? They've been detect since mid WoD.

[Scott McKay]

If you do your homework it's easy to see a detection method seasonally bans HB bots (and other bots now). There are other lesser waves that ban based on analytics for overarmed content.

I know a couple people that have private bots and they are always safe. How is a college kid making a bot in his free time doing a much better job than a dedicated team? It's been 2 years now and you see that there is pretty much a wave every ~6 months. If you look through the reports it becomes obvious that HB is detectable during this time.

Before the detection I would pretty much farm like it's the wild wild west and never lose the accounts.

[Garalon]

I've been using Honorbuddy since 2011 and i did not get banned until i stopped using it and tried Soapbox rotations and after one week of using it back on 2015 i got permanent banned, As i was using my friend extra account not risking my old school main account!
But it seems like blizzard are not joking around and letting you have your time botting and using third-party program without being monitored and flagged, They're going so insane on botters and it seems like there will be another lawsuit by Bossland for not taking a permission from him and mess around in his property.

[ev0]

When you have a userbase of 50,000+ (maybe 200k+ in WoD) botters at any given time, you're asking to be a target. Not to mention, they're counter suing, and winning a legal battle against the same people you're violating. So, no they're not incompetent. They're a team of < 10 people battling a company worth $18.9 billion.

[Ashoran]

If any HB devs are reading this.... I'm single and ready to mingle! :gusta:

[lolp1]

When you have a userbase of 50,000+ (maybe 200k+ in WoD) botters at any given time, you're asking to be a target. Not to mention, they're counter suing, and winning a legal battle against the same people you're violating. So, no they're not incompetent. They're a team of < 10 people battling a company worth $18.9 billion.

I assure you they are not winning the legal battle. They have lost practically every meaningful case and drug all of them through all the appeals process they can go through, and recently reached the last step... and its very, very likely they lost that, though the final ruling is not until january.

[ev0]

I assure you they are not winning the legal battle. They have lost practically every meaningful case and drug all of them through all the appeals process they can go through, and recently reached the last step... and its very, very likely they lost that, though the final ruling is not until january.

they've "won" a few claims made by blizzard, that's enough to say they are winning.

[Legal] Bossland GmbH has won a lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment S.A.S.

[Scott McKay]

When you have a userbase of 50,000+ (maybe 200k+ in WoD) botters at any given time, you're asking to be a target. Not to mention, they're counter suing, and winning a legal battle against the same people you're violating. So, no they're not incompetent. They're a team of < 10 people battling a company worth $18.9 billion.

Yeah that's a better perspective I guess, but I'm mainly referring specially to my friend's bot that survives ban wave last night. We've both been going since before Legion. The issue is we are now at a point where if you did all of your own profile, plugin, combat routine, human-like hours, etc with HB your bot still dies from a Warden scan twice a year. Meanwhile a small amount of private bots running around getting just as many reports and they are fine.

I understand it's hard to test because you only have a couple times a year let's say if you wanted to just run stripped down versions of HB that runs humanly does some questing and navigation and see if it get's banned. But HB team made a statement after the first detection and admitted it.. it hasn't changed since, then perhaps because they are spending too much time fighting in court and paying lawyers. I don't think the people I know that claim they use private stuff is some wizardry to avoid Warden why can't HB be the same?

[ev0]

Yeah that's a better perspective I guess, but I'm mainly referring specially to my friend's bot that survives ban wave last night. We've both been going since before Legion. The issue is we are now at a point where if you did all of your own profile, plugin, combat routine, human-like hours, etc with HB your bot still dies from a Warden scan twice a year. Meanwhile a small amount of private bots running around getting just as many reports and they are fine.

I understand it's hard to test because you only have a couple times a year let's say if you wanted to just run stripped down versions of HB that runs humanly does some questing and navigation and see if it get's banned. But HB team made a statement after the first detection and admitted it.. it hasn't changed since, then perhaps because they are spending too much time fighting in court and paying lawyers. I don't think the people I know that claim they use private stuff is some wizardry to avoid Warden why can't HB be the same?

I bot for profit on 12 accounts, 12 out of 15 accounts survived (3 are expired on gametime, don't feel like paying to see if they're banned). They botted for 5-8 hours each day for last 6 weeks. I wish i could tell you how i survived the HB banwave.

But i say this all the time: bot purely for profit ($$$), not for personal character gain (ie achievements, pets, mounts, herbs/gathering) on main account.

[Scott McKay]

I bot for profit on 12 accounts, 12 out of 15 accounts survived (3 are expired on gametime, don't feel like paying to see if they're banned). They botted for 5-8 hours each day for last 6 weeks. I wish i could tell you how i survived the HB banwave.

But i say this all the time: bot purely for profit ($$$), not for personal character gain (ie achievements, pets, mounts, herbs/gathering) on main account.

I dunno maybe people are lying to point the finger at Honorbuddy but I still think a detected product with luck is not reason enough to bot for profit I would gladly give all the gold I made this year for a safe bot that I can actually scale with.

Why would you have to pay to see if they are banned just log into battle.net or check the e-mails?

[ev0]

Why would you have to pay to see if they are banned just log into battle.net or check the e-mails?

Most of my accounts are all set up through unique proxies on my own servers, so i haven't really gotten around to putting a proxy on a computer to view the account.

[lolp1]

they've "won" a few claims made by blizzard, that's enough to say they are winning.

[Legal] Bossland GmbH has won a lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment S.A.S.

No, it's not really if you ask me. It is intentionally miss-leading to suggest they are winning. To imply they are winning means they are... winning, not that they've had a win or two. They have lost multiple times now on all their important suites and have arrived at their final appeals court.. which has already heard the case and its not favorable, expect a major ruling the first month of next year from that.

For their sake, I hope I am wrong.

[SmileMoar]

So far most of the information we have on the dispute is based on the impressions from the hearing. The full text of the decisions is not yet available. It is merely a preliminary presentation of the course of the hearing and no legal representation of the dispute.

Which is basically speculation at this point by a random law journo.

The fact is if this case is so easy and so certain to end in Blizzard's favour then the supreme court judges would've just ruled against Bossland GmbH already. The fact that haven't suggests that things are a lot more complicated then what is being suggested so far. I mean the fact the decision(s) got postponed until the 12th of January further supports this as it is unprecidented.

Now I am not saying that this means all is well and dandy but I think it shows that at the highest level of court the judges involved are not completely convinced of Blizzards case.

To the OP:

"Yes, every time we get caught, heavy analysis is done. Things are changed—we are never detected the same way twice. In addition to fixing the hole, we always look around to see what else might be exposed in other ways, and proactively go after that, too. Every time. We not only look for the obvious, but also 'side attacks' like network vectors, out-of-band vectors, and other such things.

Bliz has a new 'warden guy' (head of the team). He is much more gifted than the last one, and is trying to prove his worth to the company. This time, they caught a bunch of bots, not just Honorbuddy. He appears to be on the ball."

Which reminds us of what botting has always been - an arms race. Botters (including HB) work to find ways to avoid detection and Blizzard counters by trying to find new ways to detect them.

Glider was a classic case of where Blizzard decided to attack the source directly as they were struggling to keep up with the arms race. HB is no different.

[Jaladhjin]

I bot for profit on 12 accounts, 12 out of 15 accounts survived (3 are expired on gametime, don't feel like paying to see if they're banned). They botted for 5-8 hours each day for last 6 weeks. I wish i could tell you how i survived the HB banwave.

But i say this all the time: bot purely for profit ($$$), not for personal character gain (ie achievements, pets, mounts, herbs/gathering) on main account.

I can tell you active or not you'll still receive bans or suspensions & have emails coming notifying you.. no need to attempt to activate the account unless you don't read the email where ever it gets sent to.

If the inactive accounts were on the chopping block that is.

Emails & general monitoring are all I look at accounts for now..

1 of 2 emails.. game time expiring or an account action.

Aside from that relogger all the way [emoji41]

[lolp1]

So far most of the information we have on the dispute is based on the impressions from the hearing. The full text of the decisions is not yet available. It is merely a preliminary presentation of the course of the hearing and no legal representation of the dispute.

- We know that blizzard has won similar cases in the past, we know that they won their cases already in the lower courts (forcing them to go to higher and higher courts),
- We know that the person writing the article is a lawyer and writes specifically about this kind of stuff often... so its not uneducated.
- We also know that he made it clear he thought they lost the important aspects of the case, but they were some what stuck on other issues like trademarks, not anything relevant to people wanting to bot.

So considering that, it would be foolish to assume the outcome is good for them. It is possible, but no evidence suggest is likely.

[xio8up]

honorbuddy has been detected for a while now. Ever since that time apoc gave up the source code to something. Then wham. Anyway mass banwave happens every 6 months now over there. I would not touch that bot. Unless you just suicide bot.