How to Spot a Bot Farmer
by Mike D'Anna 
May 14th 2006 at 11:00AM
I'm not sure if this counts as racial profiling or not, but the official Blizzard forums have an interesting thread on ways to spot a bot farmer. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a bot farmer is a program, running without direct human control, used by lowdown, cheating gold farmers to collect money in the game without even having to actually play it.The thread lists several different, highly debatable (all alliance bots are Night Elf females?), criteria for spotting a bot , and even gives some screenshots & video examples to back them up. I don't know how close to the truth it actually is, but it's an interesting read. I've never knowingly come across a bot myself (although I probably have & didn't realize it), but I'll be keeping a curious eye out after reading this...
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Cheats, How-tos, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, News items, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dr. Woo May 14th 2006 11:11AM
I ran into a female human rogue in Azshara when farming for my epic mount who was definitely a bot.
Movement was very unnatural (run in a straight line, stop, turn, run in a straight line to the mob, attack with the same pre-programmed techniques in the same order...and when I approached, she would run off to another mob. If I walked up right next to her, she'd stop and just stare at me. I killed her several times and not once did she make an attempt to fight back.
When she rezzed, she'd rez at the exact location of her corpse and instantly sit down and start eating. I discovered that I didn't even have to hide.
I reported this strange activity and was later contacted by a GM. Since then I haven't seen a single one (at least that I can tell).
Tim May 14th 2006 2:01PM
A friend and I found a dwarf hunter bot in Azshara. We had a good time messing around with it by tagging it's target and then letting it kill it for us. We reported it to a GM, and the character doesn't exist anymore.
Yemaya May 14th 2006 3:15PM
I encountered one in Felwood the other day, hanging around the furblogs in the south. I had no idea this was a bot but it was a very strange one.
It was just hanging around, aggro'ing so many mobs that it just couldn't handle and bringing them to me.. I took them off of her/it and got some nice Timbermaw Rep from all this.
It had an tag on it as well... and of course, it was alliance.
Deathlike May 14th 2006 3:32PM
Having played Ragnarok Online for a long time before World of Warcraft existed, which is heavily infested with botting programs of all types, I think I'd be able to spot a bot easily.
Beware, though. I've looked at the programs and how they work when I moderated a private server at one point, and they can be incredibly lifelike. I've seen preprogrammed responses to various messages, randomized combat(possibly specific to the class of enemy) and a lot of other functions that I can't remember.
I don't think many bots will ever get far in World of Warcraft, though. The actions are just too obvious for such a high population on most servers. Just please remember, everyone, that if you EVER see what you believe is a bot, report it. You can't be punished for wrongly accusing someone once, and the less of them there are the better.
-Deathlike
Vontoro May 14th 2006 7:52PM
Im gonna use this as an excuse next time I wanna grief some low level Alliance. "What, what? I thought they were bots...." Hehe...