HonorBuddy Banwave

Early yesterday afternoon (May 13th Eastern Time), Blizzard Entertainment issued a major banwave against users of HonorBuddy.

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Recent Actions Against Botting in WoW - (source)

We’ve recently taken action against a large number of World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay, known as “bots.” We’re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft, and will continue to take action against those found in violation of our Terms of Use. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated. If you believe that you’ve encountered a player abusing a bot, exploit, or cheat, please let us know! You can do so by using the right-click report functionality in the game, and/or by emailing information to hacks@blizzard.com.

- Source: CM Lore - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/17347095985

Many users of the HonorBuddy bot were banned for 6 months following a banwave issued in the afternoon of Wednesday May 13th, 2015.  This action follows a smaller scale banwave in March 2015 in which users of the same bot were also banned for 6 months.  Although the general view of this action has been positive, there have been posts made by the players citing this is just to "pad Blizz's numbers".  This follows the release of Activision Blizzard's Q1 2015 earnings report which indicated a 2.7 million decrease in active subscribers while maintaining record earnings.  It should be noted, however, that the 2.7 million active subscriber decrease only takes into account the number of subscribers with an active, recurring subscription.  It does not count players using game time cards or WoW Tokens.

Here are some examples of positive posts:

People blaming Blizz for enforcing something that some players broke. Miss your raid buddy because he got banned? Tell him how stupid he was for botting. Your best friend got banned for botting? Tell him how foolish he was for doing it. If your friend is drunk driving, you don't blame the cop for arresting him and say the whole thing is the cop's fault.

Wake up people. White knighting for them makes you look like a bigger fool.

And also,

Well done Blizzard!! ^_^ I am so happy! The non-botters can actually play the game now!!

Botters absolutely ruin the game and make it impossible for people to push rating. Not everyone has to, or wants to cheat in order to win. In fact, cheating defeats the purpose of competitive game play. Why would you want a rating that you haven't earned ?

Rating gained using Botting, D-dosing or other cheats has no merit. It is an extremely lazy and selfish way to play the game.

On the other side, you have the "players" who were botting.  They have been posting on alternate accounts to help "clear their name?".  They think botting is okay, they think botting is protected by some 4th amendment right, etc.  There's even a petition on whitehouse.gov demanding Blizzard unban the botters and change the Terms of Use to better suit them. (More about this in another post).

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the most recent banwave, and invite you to join our new forums at http://www.warcraftdaily.com/forum.