Gold Farming Bots on WoW

I've heard of bots - script controlled characters, where the actual player isn't present - on other games, but hadn't seen them in World of Warcraft until recently. Of late, however, even on Argent Dawn, there's been a plague of them.

The realm forums have even popped up a thread in which a number of guilds are preparing to ask Blizzard to do something. And elsewhere, it's been observed that posts concerning bots on the official forums have an alarming propensity to disappear.

I've seen at least six bots in the last two weeks, three in the Burning Steppes area, and three more in the Western Plaguelands. One at Felstone Field has been there pretty much 24-7 for about three months now.

How can you identify them? Well, first, they never do anything but work on whatever they're farming. One of the Burning Steppes ones is a night elf hunter. She runs back and forth across the area where the black dragonkin are, until she comes into range of a mob. She then sets the pet on it, and begins to shoot from a distance while the pet tanks. Once it's dead, she loots and skins it, and repeats. Nothing else. No emotes, no conversation, no jumping. All mobs are attacked equally. Sometimes this will result in her standing in a bonfire, and she'll continue to stand there, taking damage, until she dies.

All that's a damn nuisance, but she'll also try to skin your kills, assuming you're quick enough to tag one before she reaches it. That's really annoying, particularly when what we were there for was black dragonscales - gained by skinning.

The economics of it, unfortunately, stand up very well. Three hours work in a given area, with a certain amount of market savvy thrown in, can net you up to 50g without really encountering anything threatening. That's a fair amount of utility in the game, but it's also worth about €2.70 in RMT markets. €0.90 an hour is not a good wage here, but it's perfectly fine in some other parts of the world - and of course, if you can have ten machines going at once, all running bots, actually stepping in to run the characters only when there's a problem - you can rack up €9.00 an hour, which is far more respectable - again, especially in low-income parts of the world.

I'm not as opposed to RMT as some of my guildmates - I'm of the opinion that you can't isolate any economy - but the fact that the bots are getting in my way, and there's nothing I can do about it, is annoying. I'm not entirely sure what can be done about them, either - if there's an operator sitting by his ten machines to answer any GM messages that arrive in, it's very hard to prove that a given character is a bot. Repetitive behaviour, due to the very nature of the game, is a useful strategy for anyone.

Posted by Drew Shiel at August 25, 2006 7:38 AM

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i've a pet bot in wpl. take it for walks and throw things for it and make it fetch - i'm farming it for honor points!!

Posted by: Jakob at August 25, 2006 8:03 AM

If you're grinding for scales, then take the bots. If you tag the dragonkin before her pet actually does damage, then immediately stop attacking it, it's your kill. She can't loot and therefore can't skin. Leave it till she moves on to another target, tag that one too, then loot/skin your first kill... it's tricky but it can be done.

Posted by: Bastun at August 25, 2006 10:16 AM

The hunters are probably the easiest to identify: unguilded, rankless, they send their unnamed pets to the target, use Beastial Wrath on the pet (each and every time regardless of mob) to make it big & red, send a single Serpent Sting and then Autoshot the mob to death. Rinse & repeat. If you happen to kill a skinnable mob near them they'll run over and try to skin it.

Posted by: Lumen@LJ at August 25, 2006 4:00 PM

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Quote:
If you're grinding for scales, then take the bots. If you tag the dragonkin before her pet actually does damage, then immediately stop attacking it, it's your kill. She can't loot and therefore can't skin. Leave it till she moves on to another target, tag that one too, then loot/skin your first kill... it's tricky but it can be done.
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Yes it works, and it's fun!

Even if you don't manage to tag the mob for your before the pet (usually named "Cat") does the first strike, you can still skin the mob after the bot did the loot.
You just have to hold the mouse cursor over the dead mob and when it turns into the skinning icon, quickly klick. The skin loot should be yours!

I just did it that way using two bots at the ssame time for helping me farm. Kind of bot juggling! :)

Posted by: Markus at August 27, 2006 6:40 PM

i love teh web iste

Posted by: andrew at September 12, 2006 1:36 AM

What is a bot?

Posted by: Unknow at January 26, 2007 1:25 AM

What is the name of this bot

Posted by: cyberborg at March 10, 2007 9:31 AM

Bots can farm a small amount of Gold per hour while your AFK, which is obviously appealing to some people. However, as farming high amounts often requires skill at various stages you could only hope for 20-30g/hour. The other obvious issue is that you run the risk of having your account permanently banned whenever you use a bot.

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Posted by: WoW Gold Farming at January 19, 2008 9:06 AM