WoW player shares ridiculous botting story in Season of Discovery

There appears to be little end in sight to the issue of bots in World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery as one player shared their scarcely believable experience while waiting to enter the Blackfathom Deeps raid.

Bots have been an issue in all flavors of the MMO for some time. Usually, they are used to farm valuable materials and currency, after which the resources are pooled and sold on third-party websites for real money.

The implementation of the WoW Token was designed to combat this, with Blizzard offering players the chance to buy gold through them rather than risk a ban. This was controversial in its own right, with many seeing it as a limited form of pay-to-win, though not as egregious as Diablo Immortal.

Now, one player in Blizzard’s newest World of Warcraft offering has shared their experience with botting, and it does a lot to underline the scale of the problem.

BFD group interrupts pack of botting Rogues in Season of Discovery

In a post on Reddit, one player shared their extraordinary encounter with a large pack of bots who were intent on farming the Blackfathom Deeps raid.

After assembling at around 5 am for the raid, the premade group was suddenly met with approximately twenty rogues, all resurrecting at the Spirit Healer and making a dash for the raid entrance. The group of real players ended up farming kills on these bots for around 20 minutes before mass reporting them.

Many were quick to share their sympathies with the OP, with one saying: “This is such a good example of the problem. Like I’m all for consequences for gold buyers. But how can Bliz not be catching these obvious bots? Cut it off at the source, or at least make it harder for the sellers to get the gold.”

Others pointed out that gold buyers are just as much to blame for the issue as the bots that supply them, saying: “Why so many gold buyers? Because; little to no backlash to buying gold. If people got their precious characters banned because they bought gold I am sure most people would be VERY cautious.”

Much of the banning is now done via an Artificial Intelligence system rather than a dedicated team of paid staff whose sole purpose is to address the problem. With the issue of botting seemingly more prevalent than ever, Blizzard is currently losing the battle to get ahead of the cheaters and ban their accounts.