The REAL reason the mass Ban happened this week...

[Sklug]

... well ok, put on your tinfoil hats, but a lot of people are not aware that Blizzard was in a fairly long legal battle with Bossland, the creator of all the most popular bots for Blizzard's games, be it Warcraft or Diablo 3 or w/e.

Blizzard last week (7th of May) lost their long-standing lawsuit against Bossland in court. This has been something that has been dragged out for a couple of years now, and Blizzard was just ordered by the courts to cover Bossland's legal fees, which was no small amount of money.

DETAILS HERE:

Kaesler & Kollegen | Blizzard Entertainment S.A.S. withdraws the application for an injunction at the court of appeal that was an attempt to ban sale of ?Gold? for Diablo III.

Anyway, lo and behold, BOOM, Bossland (or Honorbuddy users I should say), get hit was a massive ban that seems targeted at HB. Retaliation? Possibly. Now yes, mass bans have happened in the past, but let's face it, the timing on this one is kind of suspect and I've seen mass bans that seemed to cover features represented in many bots (though not always true, as I do remember the HB archaeology back in the day too, or the PQR one). But still, this one seems to have been focused on some flaw or identifier of the HB bot only. It's been LONG suspected that Blizz has not been too brutal against botters in this game because there are SO many people that do it, that it could really hurt their monthly revenue fees by banning a massive % of accounts.

Yes, I know blizz bans in waves, for obvious reasons, but I do think they might have purposely been holding on to this one whilst waiting for the court verdict, only to dump it hard on Bossland when they lost their legal battle.

Ok, speculation is over and you can take off your tinfoil hats.

Just a simple observation I made.

[namook83]

That is one thing but take into account they added wow tokens to game also they want to kill any possible gold farmers/sellers.

[zycamzip]

They didn't just ban Honorbuddy users, but that is the bulk of the ones you probably know about. In fact from what I read elsewhere, they banned many different script users and exploiters as well. While timing could be associated with it, I don't think a small win to Bossland for not being banned from selling gold, would be a retaliation effort.

Also those users only got 6 month bans, not perma-bans. Likely the gold will still be on the accounts. And when you think about it, Blizzard must realize that while not a lot, 100k sales losses, could in fact hurt their business if it is longer then 6 months. What is blizzard down to now, 6-7 million players worldwide - and that likely includes China, which is just a licensing sale, not actual monthly subscription monies coming into the company.

[Dante]

That is one thing but take into account they added wow tokens to game also they want to kill any possible gold farmers/sellers.

what he said ^

[Tankall]

Also those users only got 6 month bans, not perma-bans. Likely the gold will still be on the accounts....

I think this is the part that annoys me the most. People have been perma-banned for lesser/similar reasons. It's not that I don't think a 6 month ban isn't fair, but if they didn't perma-ban for botting, they shouldn't have perma-banned for for other things that they have mass banned for (Archelogy Bot in 2011, Item Dupe in 2013.... etc)

[Viscosity]

They won a lawsuit thats completely irrelavent to the actual lawsuits against Bossland for the sales and distribution of the demonbuddy and honorbuddy clients

Also, people suggest the detection was initiated late last month, a week before the regional court even handed over their decision, id say this was planned way before, obviously.

[Wargon]

i don`t think any gold be on those accs in 6 month
try to read carefuly ban letters

[HI5]

If bans were caused bu detection (which seems to be the case) then it has nothing to do with the court ruling, original detection / account flagging happened around 12 days ago.

HB haven't really won anything either, it's just one small case out of, 10(?) they had already - from which blizz won few to this day, and this is the first that was ever ruled to HB.

Also as mentioned above - HB is not the only bot that got hit.

[lolp1]

They didn't just ban Honorbuddy users, but that is the bulk of the ones you probably know about. In fact from what I read elsewhere, they banned many different script users and exploiters as well. While timing could be associated with it, I don't think a small win to Bossland for not being banned from selling gold, would be a retaliation effort.

Also those users only got 6 month bans, not perma-bans. Likely the gold will still be on the accounts. And when you think about it, Blizzard must realize that while not a lot, 100k sales losses, could in fact hurt their business if it is longer then 6 months. What is blizzard down to now, 6-7 million players worldwide - and that likely includes China, which is just a licensing sale, not actual monthly subscription monies coming into the company.

Most people saying they were banned and never use it are likely not all truthful, but I can confirm that the bans happened to non-honor buddy users who use the same method they did for lua stuff, or at least I assume that is why I got banned on some accounts I did not use HB on. At first glance, it seems that some kind of trace on a call stack from a lua related function caught it.

I'm just not fully confident in that though because while I was banned as well on private software with no HB use at all on those accounts, I also have zero protection in the 'software' to protect my self from checks on the call stacks, solutions exist in a few different ways and I assume honorbuddy had already added protection for this when they noticed the hook added to a client a few months ago and analyzed it.

EDIT: Ignore below. Unlikely it worked like this. I was wrong.
I'd say right now it is more likely their protection was just simply not enough to avoid detection or added another way to detect it as a side effect of the fix. It would work sort of like this if it is the case, though:

1. Login > Receive detection packets > Detection hook on _lua_load starts > detection packer handler loaded
2. User loads HB or program using the same code to execute lua stuff or close code.
3. The hook on _lua_load catches it by checking the call stack for anything calling this outside of WoW directly.
4. Blizzard sees the call coming from the stack to _lua_load now, flags you for a ban, banned

[Sklug]

Haha alright guys, you are probably right, it was just fun speculation, hence why I said put on your tinfoil hats lol

[Notfincher]

But still, this one seems to have been focused on some flaw or identifier of the HB bot only.

No. I saw tons of other Bons such as gathering or farm fatty Goatsteaks banned as well.

In addition, not sure if it was this time or earlier, but all the Grim Batol/Stonecore bots got banned also.


What are the experiences of you OwnedCores? Were you banned together with the Honorbuddy group even though you used some other bots or exploits?

[Sklug]

No. I saw tons of other Bons such as gathering or farm fatty Goatsteaks banned as well.

In addition, not sure if it was this time or earlier, but all the Grim Batol/Stonecore bots got banned also.


What are the experiences of you OwnedCores? Were you banned together with the Honorbuddy group even though you used some other bots or exploits?

If you check out the other Bots over in the bots forum, it really seems like the bans were localized on HB. Rebot, the other popular bot didn't seem to get hit at all, nor any of the other smaller ones. All you have to do is check their forums and their "report bans" section, then you head to HB's forums and you got 23 pages of reports people being banned.