Botters DO affect others gameplay

[kormanthor]

  In the past I have read many forum threads with people stating that botters don't affect their gameplay, so why do people care so much about them? Rather then necro a thread on it here, I decided to state my experience with this here.
  I was merrily playing World of Warcraft one day a while back, farming some boars to up my skinning skill. I spent a few hours in one area, killing as many as I could. When other players came along, I defered the mobs to them, so that I did not interfere with anyones questing and whatnot. I got a few tells from people saying things like "Are you there?" and such, to which I would respond along the lines of "Yup, I'm here, what's up?" To get something like "Oh, was just wondering if anyone was  there, you have been here for a long time killing these boars." Granted, I cleaned up some of the typing/spelling/language and whatnot of the tells, but you get the idea.
  Suddenly, I get a tell from someone "I just reported you!!! botterbotterbotter!!" I responded with "Well thanks for being an idiot, I'm not botting."
  About 30 minutes or so later, I got contacted by a GM. The conversation went well, I explained what I was doing and why, and we had a good laugh at the person who reported me.
  Fast forward about a month. I go to log into my account to do some questing/instances with a friend and his wife. But I can't log in. I have been banned! I check my e-mail, and there it is.... the dreaded "You have been banned!!!" e-mail, stating that I was banned for using 3rd party software, which I never did. It turns out that ALOT of accounts were banned that day, and I am going to assume a majority of them were in fact botters. But I wasn't. So I sent an e-mail to Blizzard stating that "I understand the need to ban botters, but I have never used 3rd party software. Please look into this matter and reverse your decision." I even asked what 3rd party software I was accused of using, so that I could do some research on it, and see if it was possible that part of the MazzleUI I was using was the problem.
  The response I got was less then satisfactory, they basically told me "We are sorry, but you botted, now deal with it. And we can't dislose any information about what you were using, since that could show how we got the information." And they even told me "We consider this matter closed."
  So there I was, banned for doing something I never did, because at least one person, possibly more reported me as a bot without checking if anyone was there.
  So do botters affect your gameplay? In most cases, no they do not. But can they affect your gameplay, along with idiots who report you at the drop of a hat for having a high boredom threshold? Yup, they most certainly can. Now I realise that this was more a problem with stupid players and GM's, and yes I blame the GM who investigated me and talked to me directly as much as I blame the idiots who reported me and the botters for being there in the first place allowing something like this to happen. If it weren't for bot programs and the people who use them, I would still be playing WoW with my friend and his wife.

Sorry for all the rambling, I'm still a bit sore about lol.

[Brasse]

That is absolutely horrendous.
Are you permanently banned, then?

There is something seriously wrong with customer service if they cannot even tell you precisely why you were banned. I understand them not wanting to reveal their methods but surely they could say "we detected you using <name of process here>".  There is seldom any recourse following a banning, and usually all you can get in response is form letters.  I know that at least one game in 2007 mistakenly banned a lot of people and then reinstated the majority.

And yeah, botters DO affect gameplay, in ways not always apparent. If the morons who keep BUYING the gold would stop, it would all just disappear, wouldn't it? But no, it is still a multi-million dollar industry. Thanks, idiots.

Brasse

[Gildan]

Oddly this story is not uncommon.  You would be much better served contacting customer service by phone and escalating to someone who does not go though scripted questions.  Beyond your personal suffering (which is unacceptable) botting has a very real impact on the game world - especially when coupled with how Blizzard has handled it.  The antibotting techniques still don't stop the gold farmers, the solution of adding dailies for gold only screwed the economy up worse, and the casuals who were really the only ones affected by botting/farming are in an even worse predicament than before the solutions.

[Jrral]

Seconding Gildan's suggestion. E-mail usually goes to the tier-1 CS people, who usually won't deviate from the script one iota. You want to phone in and get escalated to tier-2 or higher, someone who'll actually excercise some discretion. At the very least they should be able to tell you the name of the third-party software you're accused of using. It's possible they got a false positive, this has been known to happen and you'll usually find reports of it via a Google search if it has.

Most likely what happened was some tier-1 GM decided to improve his numbers by accepting a complaint at face value and not investigating it. Tier-2 CS will be able to spot that quickly and fix it.

[Brasse]

I recommend the same. I am most familiar with SOE CS, and that is indeed what I would do, to speak to a live person about my issue.  I know for a fact that they DO review account issues, and therefore I hope that other companies, such as Blizzard, will as well.

Good luck, and please let us know how it goes.
Brasse

[kormanthor]

  Aye, it is a perma-ban. Now if only I had thought of phone support when this happened, but it has been almost 2 yrs now. I'm not really one for talking on the phone, as I have a pretty severe social anxiety, that thankfully doesn't really extend to online stuff, like MMO's and forums, but makes it incredibly hard for me to talk to people I don't know.
  I've basically written off the account. Even if they reinstated my account at this point, I really don't think I would play. The whole situation really just turned me off to WoW and Blizzard in general.
  Thank you for the replies and suggestions tho! 

[Thales]

Yikes!

You would think that a company would realize that anyone taking the time to call (or chat, or write) repeatedly is very likely not a bot.  A cheater, maybe, but not a bot.  Wouldn't a plat farmer just open a new account, rather than wasting time trying to get an old one reinstated? 

[CaptainBoots]

Yikes!

You would think that a company would realize that anyone taking the time to call (or chat, or write) repeatedly is very likely not a bot.  A cheater, maybe, but not a bot.  Wouldn't a plat farmer just open a new account, rather than wasting time trying to get an old one reinstated? 

Well, keep in mind if it was as easy as that to get reinstated, gold farmers would spend a few minutes making a call to save th em the time of power leveling another character to gold-earning levels.