[WoW] PvP AFK measures are not enough.

[Xequecal]

What is so difficult about employing a GM per server to contact each person who is flagged and to check if they respond and if the amount of honour earned corresponds with the player average for someone who earnt 15k honour legit.

Let's see, how many servers does WoW have? Let's say 100. If you assume GMs will work 8-hour shifts you need to hire 300 people just for this function. At $12.50/hour (I know it's low-skill, they ARE in the middle of fucking California) this will cost Blizzard about $11 million per year just to police AFKing in PvP. Do you really think Vivendi is going to give them $11 million extra in their budget for THIS? I can almost hear the execs laughing their ass off at such a proposal. That's not even counting equipment/infrastructure costs for computers and shit to sit these people down at.

Like was said, it's very gimmicky.

I was just in an AV where I was feared a grand total of twice yet I did nearly 200k in healing (meat grinder at SP type of game). Being a non-retarded healer I tend not to go running into the middle of the melee fray where I'm bound to get focused on. I run around at the back, venturing forward long enough to pop rejuv and lifebloom on someone then retreat to the relative safety the back of the pack affords me. If someone decides to come after me they have to get through all of those lovely people that I've been healing, it doesn't happen often.

Your idea would actually penalize me for staying alive, away from the front lines and being the support class that I am. In order to get the same "marks per hour" as those that I'm supporting I would have to put myself up there with them which would probably mean I had a lifespan of seconds thus being of no use to my team at all.

Assuming 500 honor/AV completed, which is actually really optimistic, if you trinket 2 fears per BG you'll have 50 marks at the same time you get 12,500 honor. I don't remember what the honor costs per item for the blue stuff is but 12,500 honor sure as hell won't get you any gladiator gear. You won't be slowed in item acquisition at all.

[Dis]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

Alternatively you could have gotten the mace on your very first trip through Kara. That's the nature of PvE loot tables. It doesn't serve as a good example of why the PvP gear is "welfare" epics however.

It does however point out that after countless trips I have yet to get one, but after what will amount to 7 days of about 4 hours of honor grinding (more or less), I get exactly what I need. All without repair costs, mat farming, or keying reqs. I just hope in a BG, and boom, I get what I need. So yes, it serves an excellent example of why they are called "welfare epics". It could serve the same for someone who needs a neck, shoulders, whatever. It is easier and faster to get a set of S1 sets and associated epics through honor grinding, than depending on countless trips to Kara to get all the gear you need.

PvP in WoW has turned into nothing more than free epix. The amount of AFKers and people who are beyond fucking clueless should have shown this at the very least. But hey, 9 million and growing, wtf do I know.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Assuming 500 honor/AV completed, which is actually really optimistic, if you trinket 2 fears per BG you'll have 50 marks at the same time you get 12,500 honor. I don't remember what the honor costs per item for the blue stuff is but 12,500 honor sure as hell won't get you any gladiator gear. You won't be slowed in item acquisition at all.

Gladiator gear is 10.5k -14.5k honor.

[Samflam]

Originally Posted by Dis

It does however point out that after countless trips I have yet to get one, but after what will amount to 7 days of about 4 hours of honor grinding (more or less), I get exactly what I need. All without repair costs, mat farming, or keying reqs. I just hope in a BG, and boom, I get what I need. So yes, it serves an excellent example of why they are called "welfare epics". It could serve the same for someone who needs a neck, shoulders, whatever. It is easier and faster to get a set of S1 sets and associated epics through honor grinding, than depending on countless trips to Kara to get all the gear you need.

PvP in WoW has turned into nothing more than free epix. The amount of AFKers and people who are beyond fucking clueless should have shown this at the very least. But hey, 9 million and growing, wtf do I know.

This late into TBC, is giving people a way to grind Kara-equivalent gear (in your mace example, a little better) such a bad thing really? IMO it makes the BG scene a little healthier. Population wise (rewards worth the grind) and competition wise (everyone has access to a good amount of resil), it's actually reinvigorated PVP somewhat for me. I haven't BGd this much since I ground up to rank 10 in the old school honor system. I know, rank 10 isn't shit, but it was still a decent chunk of time to get there.

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

Gladiator gear is 10.5k -14.5k honor.

Not only that, but AVs quite often DO yield ~500 honor (at least for Horde in my BG it does)

[Jabberwhacky]

Ya and in my battlegroup they don't, so whoopdeedoo. I started serious AV about 2 weeks ago, about 1 solid week before season 3 went up. The first few days were awesome for Horde, we won the majority and they were decisive victories. Since then it has gone downhill. I posted a pic of my tokens rotting in the mail from one full day of AV and it came out to be 10 wins out of 25 games played. That was about a week ago, and Horde has maintained its suckiness since then. Yesterday I was in AV from about 10 in the morning to around 11 at night and brought in 16.3k honor. Don't worry, most of this time was more-or-less AFK, the way AV was meant to be played.

For all you guys moaning on and on about cave-afking, witness this. It lets you do this (not my pic):

[Tolanin]

guy was prolly alliance pre cave afk nerf posting numbers like that.. i know as horde we rarely got more than 25k a day afking.. but the queues were instant.. if we had been winning i could see hitting 35 on a holiday weekend but horde always lost back then.. still its impressive.

[RiskyChris]

I've quickly given up on AV. I had another 38 minute game today that gave just as much honor as a 12 minute game. If I'm going to do anything at all, I'll sit in n/s bunkers to defend it. Everything else is like my dick in a will it blend commercial.

[Jabberwhacky]

It is a super high number, but the bot takes you out of the cave. It's pretty hard to get people to report afkers in cave, much less guys running around the base.

[RiskyChris]

Noob Q, but are bots legal in WoW?

[Samflam]

That would be a resounding 'no'

[WarderX]

If we're just using the word 'legal' than it's not quite always a no.

Most AFK bots are entirely based on AutoIT which is absolutely legal to use with WoW or any program- if you want to sell software on the windows platform, you have to let your program interact with other programs in certain ways, including how autoIT automates things. This is a "no if's and's or but's" issue no matter how much blizzard wants to say otherwise.
I doubt anyone would ever sue blizzard over getting banned for botting, but if they did, blizzard would lose much like eBay lost over the exact same issue.

That said, you will get in trouble if a GM if they send you a tell and you do not reply while being afk in a battleground. But if blizzard's program scanner just picks up AutoIT running, you can't get in trouble for that.

[Nehrak]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Let's see, how many servers does WoW have? Let's say 100. If you assume GMs will work 8-hour shifts you need to hire 300 people just for this function. At $12.50/hour (I know it's low-skill, they ARE in the middle of fucking California) this will cost Blizzard about $11 million per year just to police AFKing in PvP. Do you really think Vivendi is going to give them $11 million extra in their budget for THIS? I can almost hear the execs laughing their ass off at such a proposal. That's not even counting equipment/infrastructure costs for computers and shit to sit these people down at.

You mean that $11 million that they make every month... right? (9 million subscribes times $12 is $108 million...) Sure, bandwidth costs and operations of the servers are going to eat into that heavily, let alone employee salaries and whatnot, but if we went with your model it would require about $900,000 a month to do that police force. I highly doubt that they spend all of their monthly earnings on just the servers and staffing. Some of it goes to the bank. (Let's not get started on the IRS, either.)

[Nar]

With a low risk of being caught, and an environment that seems to promote the idea of just going mindlessly AFK for epics, I can see why so many people are using that program the above poster linked. Still not something I want to risk my account over, but I'd be lying if I said the idea of it doing my AV honor farm for me wasn't appealing.

[Itzena]

Originally Posted by WarderX

I doubt anyone would ever sue blizzard over getting banned for botting, but if they did, blizzard would lose much like eBay lost over the exact same issue.

Apart from the bits of the EULA & TOS which say "We can ban you with no reason given", of course.

[Kreugen]

I, uh, ran an experiment monday. Overnight + work hours, 2k honor. Granted, this was 40 minute minimum Stormstrike queues, but there was only one loss in that time. (come to think of it, when I checked my mail, I think only 6-8ish games were even played during those 18 hours)

I then got the same amount in under 90 minutes of eye/ab + daily quest.

Hardly worth the electricity, but as long as its > 0, theres still incentive to do it.

That said, I'm sure afking AV during prime hours is still lucrative. For whatever reason, even tunnel dwellers don't get reported during the busy hours. I play (key word is play) hours upon hours of AV and hardly ever see those people go purple. And this is with auto-reporting going and people bitching about them in chat. So I suppose my data was inconclusive given the sample was taken off-hours but, fuck that, I'm not afking when I'm right there at the house, even for science. I queue AB/EoTS now, even if it means barely beating a team full of people I already outgear after less than three weeks at 70 and one trip to Karazhan.

Of course, none of this counts AI bots that actually avoid being reported. Those guys are just raking it in, and its really god damn annoying when they show up in AB/Eots where having active players really counts for something.

Anyway, marks are done, now just to conjure up another 80k honor. Fun.