Selecting the bot for you

[~OddBall~]

When choosing a bot there are many things to consider and they should be inspected carefully in order to avoid wasting money (obviously).

Now many people may be thinking "There's nothing to choosing a bot, just ask what the best bot on the market is and go buy it." While for many this may work to some extent, for many it won't. People may have a lower end PC that can't handle certain features of "the best bot" the primary one that comes to mind is navigation for e.g. Often having a slow computer will lead to laggy movement.

So where to begin? Well below this, so far useless, block of text is a list of key aspects that everybody should consider when selecting the bot for them.

Compatability is my first topic as obviously, it's useless even looking at a bot that cannot run on your computer, so might as well define a list of bots that will run on our computer.

I. Operating System
First things first, will we be able to run the bot on our computer. Whilst this might seem stupidly obvious, people often forget to take into account some bots may not run on an x64 OS (Although these bots are generally poorly coded, either that or they use some sort of root kit/driver(?).)

Now if you are running a mac then the main bot used by mac users is pocketgnome which is a free and can be obtained at:
Pocket Gnome - WoW Bot for Mac
It should be stated that pocketgnome can also be run on select PC's with the appropriate hardware and software, there are various guides scattered around the forums.
However the other obvious solution for mac users is to run bootcamp or parallels and use a normal windows bot. A table will soon be added showing what operating system each bot is compatible with.

The main point/tldr; that should be taken away from this sub-category is double check that if you are running an x64 operating system that your bot is able to run on x64 OS's.

II. Hardware
For this subcategory I am going to say that you should mainly take a read of the pathing section and the sessions section.

Here's a section I really shouldn't be giving advice on, so I'll try and just cover the basics. Obviously not getting your account banned is a bit of a key priority, seeing as they aren't cheap to replace so protection is an important thing.

I. Warden
Many of you will know Warden is Blizzard's (in)famous anti-cheat system put in place to bust bots. I'm not going to go into how it works cos I don't know the specifics but I will state some common misconceptions/facts.
Warden:
- Can be updated at any time, it does not require a patch! You will have no idea it's updated.
- It does not at this point in time scan for windows titles or perv through other processes running on your computer.
- Deleting Scan.DLL will not disable Warden =.=

A common software system used to combat Warden is tripwire. Tripwire was first seen implemented into Glider (AFAIK) and it's main purpose is to detect for any changes in Warden and if a change is detected turn off the bot so users cannot use the bot until the owners know it's safe to use again. FYI, tripwire was just the name given to it by Merc/Hamut (Guys behind Glider), but every other bot has decided to call their system tripwire as well, so ye....xD
Whilst this is a very good tool it doesn't ensure your account to be 100% safe, why?:
- If warden is already capable of detecting a bot without an update, scans can just be pushed through without warden requiring an update, therefore the tripwire system will detect no change and the bot will keep running and being detected by Warden.
- Blizzard can also detect bots through the use of adding code to the client (Requiring a patch) and tripwire is completely useless in this instance (Ref. to Gremlin).

tldr; Check your bot has a tripwire system or some other system to stop your bot getting owned by Warden.

II. Detection via the client
Blizzard can add code to the WoW client itself, requiring a patch that users have to download. Blizzard often do this to bypass (or help bypass) tripwire systems. Often disabling certain functions of a bot/hack that hide the bot/hack from warden and therefore allowing warden to now find it. At least, that's apparently that's what happened in the latest (LUANinja and WoWGremlin) banwave.
Not much you can do to avoid this except hope that the maker of your bot is/has a good reverse engineer (RE) to check each patch for code added to the client that may aid in the detection of your bot. It should be noted that most, if not all, public bots coders at this point in time are far too incapable/lazy to RE each patch

When a bot says they are fully passive it means that the bot does not hook or write to the WoW client making it very hard to be detected/competely impossible to be detected via Warden.

III. Blogs
I am constantly reading Kynox's and Cypher's blogs as they have very interesting posts on Warden activity, bots that have crap detection and how bots are being detected. I suggest you bookmark them!
Kynox's blog
Cypher's blog

Pathing determines the way in which the bot navigates around the land of Azeroth. Pathing is a key element of a bot and can make or break a bot. There are many different ways in which a bot can navigate throughout Azeroth but I will go through the main three atm. For an excellent explanation on Waypoint and the mesh system I suggest reading the bottom of KuRI's Honorbuddy review: Click ME

I. Waypoints
Waypoints act by the user walking along marking out a place that the bot can walk/follow. The bot will then proceed to follow these waypoints around (generally in a circle) killing mobs along the way.
Advantage:
- Generally much lower than other pathing systems on the memory useage, good for low end PC's
Disadvantage:
- Going around in a constant circle for many hours can look very suss, especially when you are following the exact same path the whole way.

Bots currently using this system:
All bar Honorbuddy (Thanks KuRI)

II. Navmesh:
I'm not too knowledgeable about navmesh but I'll give it a shot. It was most famously used in Open-bot (no longer publicly available) but is now similarly used in HonorBuddy. It works by being given a co-ordinate(hotspot) to go to and using previous paths to get to the hotspot. It will calculate the quickest path generally. However the paths more often than not have to have already been mapped out by the user, but nav files from other people can be loaded.
Advantages:
- Generally not too bad on memory useage (Good for low end PC's)
- Won't choose the exact same path every time
- Walking long journeys is easily possible
Bots currently using this system:
Honorbuddy

III. PPather:
PPather was first a custom class made for Glider. It was able to be given any point (coordinate) and calculate it's own way there, theoretically avoiding objects in it's way, with no mapping required from the user. However it wasn't written so efficiently and it had quite a few bugs. Since it's appearance in Glider a Lite PPather library has been released that can be ported to other bots like WoW-Robot has apparently done and it is apparently being ported to Omega bot.
Advantages:
- No Mapping required
- Can sort of avoid objects
Disadvantages:
- High memory useage (Mind you if it was re-written it could probably be made much more memory efficient.

Custom Classes are generally user developed classes that tell the bot what spells to cast etc. a good CC can determine the XP/Hour and survival etc.

Pricing is always going to be an important factor when looking at a bot. The main feature that should be looked at is how much per month and how many sessions you can run at a time.


I. Sessions
The amount of bots you can run at a time. Example if a bot was capable of three sessions it would mean that you can run three WoW's and three bots at the same time.
--------------------------------------------

Changelog:
29/1/2010:
-Original guide posted

30/3/2010:
- E-Bot and WoWRobot added
- Removed WoW Gremlin as it is no longer being sold by an english provider
- Updated the tables so they looked neater and the ticks are way hawter

25/5/2010:
-Removed E-bot due to closure of bot

Any other suggestions/requests post them here or drop me a PM.

-Odd

[superprokop]

I think this may be better in the bot and programs section. Just a thought. Good thorough guide though

[~OddBall~]

nah was originally there and got moved to here, rightly so, this is not a bot or program

[facepalm]

Great post

[Colster]

nice work +4rep from me. took quite some effort i suppose

[~OddBall~]

Thanks guys

[burton992]

Your missing quite alot of public bots and i dont understand why you added WoWRobot on the pathing part of the guide but no where else. But good guide non the less.

[~OddBall~]

If you want more public bots added tell me and I'll add them. I only did WoW-Robot for pathing because it was the only feature I knew about it, I will have to take a look at the rest of it next week when I get back from holidays.
I'll also probs be adding a pricing table.

[Zylin]

The mimic team are back in all their fury, with another terribly written, hilariously advertised bot, that as per usual, is advertised with a number of false claims.
“I can assure you, its NOT injection” was one of the claims spouted, yet as you can expect, a stupidly named DLL was found; containing all of the bots interoperability between WoW and itself. In addition to this, three API hooks are present: LoadLibraryA, GetCursorPos and GetPhysicalCursorPos.

Dribble Blog Archive AIO Bot – Detected - Just another WordPress weblog



This is borrowed from Kynox's Blog, and corrects the "hooking" section of your post.


Also a bit from Cypher's blog about it too:

This bot has zero Warden protection, and it is in fact WORSE than WoWMimic in its current form. Its pretty much a clone of WoWMimic v1.

Proof of their module being injected:
Proof of their hooks:


@@CODE@@

Ramblings++: AIO Bot





Great guide though, very well written and informative.

[eekje877]

nice post cheers +1

[[the Sills]]

Very detailed, +1

[Evilbuffy]

I can see you've put some effort into this bud, and that's exactly what I want to see. May sound wierd coming from a person with "l33cher" status, but I mean it. Well done

[~OddBall~]

Dribble Blog Archive AIO Bot – Detected - Just another WordPress weblog



This is borrowed from Kynox's Blog, and corrects the "hooking" section of your post.


Also a bit from Cypher's blog about it too:




Ramblings++: AIO Bot





Great guide though, very well written and informative.

Umm what? I never said AIO didn't hook, I know for a fact it hooks, I used to be a reseller of the Chinese version when no one knew about it. AIO is a terrible bot and no one should buy it, but it's one of the major bots atm so decided I'd include it.

Thanks for your last comment though and for everyone elses xD

[Unholyshaman]

Very unique guide idea, keep it up.

[Zantas]

Of course no bot is safe, but as a poor guy I recommend GPBOT.

It's very newbie friendly, although the tutorials available are in German if I'm not mistaken.

The way-points added from scratch in the download don't provide you with the best result so making your own way-points might be the best to do and doing so is very easy.


The result of boting 1 night is rival to Gatherbuddy in my opinion. Only downside is that it's not very mailing and bank friendly and doesn't work to well without memory reading if you are doing something meanwhile on the computer.


May I suggest you add the fish bots to this guide since they are also a gatherbot.