You didn't get detected client side.
Your bot toons obtained a hidden achievement that Blizzard adds a new one of every patch or two.
They use the achievement system for marking bots. Namely ones that are online too much or doing too much of one thing. The reason people say to not bot 24/7 is because Blizzard will ban you over this and say you're botting,
even if they did not detect the bot itself.*
*Blizzard gave up on their client side anti-cheat, they took the easy way out and just ban by automatically checking if you did too much of x within y period. If you are getting detected in the year 2023, it's because of achievement coding being co-opted for marking bots. It's the reason you can have an anti afk script keep your client alive every day for months with no ban, but if you use a near identical script to click an ah npc to open it on a timer, you get autobanned for botting.
A good fishing bot will thus:
- Not be online 24/7
- Occasionally "miss" fish
- Have human-like input. This means randomness every key stroke, greater than 200ms input delays between visuals and clicking.
- ChatGPT some chat channel, preferably its own bot self guild or proximity chat.
- Be moved around by the operator every couple hours.
- Not be in the same zone its entire existence.
- Optimally be rotated with another form of botting.
Coincidentally, the hidden achievements being used for banning are also why there are false positives on people who extreme grind but don't have any scripting software installed. Someone ran Stratholme 80 times in a row and tripped a server side bot achievement that took a Reddit post to get a ban overturned with.
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There is a new form of server side analysis I did forget to talk about.
They automatically check if multiple toons have the exact same rotation/input commands. This is their form of detecting multibox broadcasting. Again, always insert some rng into the input pattern and timing for each individual toon.
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Do not be fooled by redditors drinking copium saying GMs are going around checking logs. Their whole process is automated. They lie by omission by saying each ban is manual, when in reality the manual part is them speed-scrolling through an intranet portal clicking toons at the top that were automatically flagged by the server side metrics. Real GMs would be doing a much better job with same-day actioning, not once every patch when hidden achievements get updated for checking for bot-like stuff. Bobby unfortunately has customer server skeleton crewed to reduce overhead.
I've been running Auction House bots since WoD with no bans and sitting on multiple bnets with 50 toons each gold capped, simply because I've made sure to make it look as human as possible. People even try to DM it to start conversations, not to bot check it. I even stream with a bunch of followers and people are none the wiser.