Ranzer

Breaking bots for fun and profit.

June 20, 2007 on 3:49 pm | In WoW | | Ranzer

Actually, there’s no real profit involved, but boy is it fun.

Recently our beloved World of Warcraft has been seeing a horrible number of bots plaguing the landscape, killing indiscriminately to farm experience, leather, and curved raptor talons. Much to the dismay of the more cognitive patrons of the realms, many of the creatures being endlessly slaughtered are also required as kills or for drops to finish quests. In an attempt to help lessen their numbers, I tried reporting several of the bots to the Game Masters (as botting is grounds for banning an account), but alas the official channels and processes are slow, and I am impatient.

So, I started harassing the occasional bot I passed simply out of spite, and in doing so discovered an amusing quirk in their programming. It appears that by interfering with their combat in a particular way, it’s possible to confuse the bot and cause it to target you once it finishes its current fight. Once it’s got you targetted it will follow you around for a while, and you can lead it into a large pack of mobs, or off a cliff…

Unfortunately I don’t have a parachute cloak, and couldn’t find a high enough cliff to kill him. He hearthed after a few minutes when he couldn’t get out, and eventually wound up back on his set path. Ok, so, leading a bot off a cliff and getting it stuck is pretty cool, but I think we could use a little more cowbell…

So I had another think and speculated on the possible programmatic causes of their erroneous behavior. After testing a few theories, I discovered something even more fun. If you flag yourself at the right time during your bot-baiting, you can actually get them to attack you and flag themselves (assuming they’re of the opposing faction, of course). Result: Dead Bot.

A lot faster results, and a lot more personally satisfying, than reporting them to a GM.

BOOYAH.

8 Comments »

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  1. This does not inspire me to play world of warcraft. Im sorry, but you put more effort into that than I put into inter-personal relationships.

    Comment by Rift — 7:32 am — June 21, 2007 #

  2. You exert less effort in personal relationships than pressing a few buttons and a little patience?
    Really, playing WoW is not exerting.

    Comment by InsanityPrawnBoy — 10:06 am — June 21, 2007 #

  3. The complete lack of intent to inspire anyone to do anything aside, I’m going to have to side with the Prawn on this one… I pity anyone who tries to have an inter-personal relationship with you, if that’s how lazy you are about it.

    Comment by Ranzer — 12:19 pm — June 21, 2007 #

  4. Given that our freind rift is the would-be man-lover of both myself and peachy, I feel I should defend his ability to have interpersonal relationships.

    Comment by Jonny Chaos — 1:28 pm — June 21, 2007 #

  5. Heh, tough crowd. Should i say you put more effort into that than i put into my cooking? Not quite as bleak and sarcastic, but never mind. ^_^

    Comment by Rift — 6:43 pm — June 21, 2007 #

  6. In that case I pity anyone who tries to eat your cooking ;P Bleak and sarcastic is overrated, you should try butter chicken soup instead.

    Comment by Ranzer — 7:09 pm — June 21, 2007 #

  7. completely unreleted, picture two of the field looks pretty

    Comment by Balinor — 11:26 pm — June 21, 2007 #

  8. I like WoW

    Comment by Atomix — 12:26 am — June 22, 2007 #

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