I have a theory of what caused HB to be detected....

[HI5]

Is it possible there was no detection and the banwave was merely from player reports?

Very unlikely, over 100000 accounts got banned yesterday

[geezcarlos]

It is stupid to think that Blizzard banned ALL HB users. If they did they would most likely lose more than 100,000 accounts. As of right now they have banned .6% of their client base. That is a loss of 1.4 million dollars a month x 6 months equals 8.4 million dollars. They couldn't ban everyone who used HB because it would probably be more like a loss of 15-20million dollars for the 6 months. Thats why some people got "detected" and some people didn't.
Either way, Blizzard got what they wanted, they shut HonorBuddy down...probably for good.

[Alissa]

It is stupid to think that Blizzard banned ALL HB users. If they did they would most likely lose more than 100,000 accounts. As of right now they have banned .6% of their client base. That is a loss of 1.4 million dollars a month x 6 months equals 8.4 million dollars. They couldn't ban everyone who used HB because it would probably be more like a loss of 15-20million dollars for the 6 months. Thats why some people got "detected" and some people didn't.
Either way, Blizzard got what they wanted, they shut HonorBuddy down...probably for good.

Alot of those banned players had paid for their subscriptions and they can't get the money back, unless they chargeback and this may include not being able to play on the Battle.net account ever again/fraud accusations from Blizzard/your bank and so on - not too many people bother with chargebacks. In addition, you have to open a ticket to cancel your subcription for the next months which some people might miss. Third, alot of those banned players already bought new accounts+subs+boosts. Fourth, Blizzard's revenue from WoW is more than 100mln$ every month (SuperData: February 2015 US Digital Game Sales | alistdaily), so those lost subs with 1mln$/mo at MOST (implying everyone had a subscription for 1 month which they cancelled instantly and they all quit until the ban is over) is not even worth considering.

People seem to overestimate the "financial loss" Blizzard gets from banning botters.

[Ales Kolman Bagari]

My sleeper bot last time botted was on 27 of April and still got banned (was using it only for lvling) when reached max lvl i never logged back in and still 6months =).

[HI5]

It is stupid to think that Blizzard banned ALL HB users. If they did they would most likely lose more than 100,000 accounts. As of right now they have banned .6% of their client base. That is a loss of 1.4 million dollars a month x 6 months equals 8.4 million dollars. They couldn't ban everyone who used HB because it would probably be more like a loss of 15-20million dollars for the 6 months. Thats why some people got "detected" and some people didn't.
Either way, Blizzard got what they wanted, they shut HonorBuddy down...probably for good.

If we believe that GM, then it is over 100000. Also that was only on the first day, bans haven't stopped even now as far as I'm aware, so it might be even around 200000 now, that's only a little less than overall number of users buddy bots have.

That being said not everyone got hit, mainly people that were detected around 12 days ago (+/- 3 from what we can see), but that might still means blizz went after every single acc they managed to detect.

Was it a stupid decision on their end? well yes, of course it was, but they'll just have to learn that the hard way, when they finally kill that game with their own, bare hands.