Hearthstone has a bot problem, that’s no secret. But how can you identify the mechanical friends or foes?
The gaming magazine PCGamer had the opportunity to speak extensively with a bot user and questioned him about the methods he uses and his reasons for using a Hearthstone bot.
The 7 Signs that You’re Playing Against a Bot in Hearthstone
During the conversation, it becomes clear that you can identify a bot in Hearthstone by the following indicators:
- The bot does not hover over cards and highlight them, nor are there action arrows, instead, the actions come out of nowhere. That’s the surest sign.
- Most of the time, it will have a golden hero portrait, which you get for 500 wins with a class; of course, “real” players can also achieve this, but especially when you encounter someone with a golden portrait in the rather higher or mid-ladder range, this is already a clear sign.
- Bots typically play Warlocks (Zoo decks), but they also manage well with Shamans and Druids. Anything that emphasizes minion trades with value against value can be easily calculated. At the moment, a Shaman deck with Sea Giants is popular. They struggle with more complex decks like Miracle Rogue.
- There is always the same interval of time between the individual turns and actions of the botter.
- The bot does not react to emotes like greetings but remains silent.
- Sometimes, the bots simply give up at the beginning of a round for seemingly no reason, to keep their win/loss ratio low, so that Blizzard does not catch on to them.
- The bots primarily come out at night when their owners are asleep.
I bot because I can
As motivation for botting, the interviewee from PCGamer states that he is expanding his collection, farming golden portraits for the heroes, and avoiding the tedious ladder climb. The bot manages to get up to rank 5, after that he takes over, shuts down the bot, plays himself, and gets Legend. His bots have problems with the new Naxxramas effects like Deathrattle. They overwhelm them to some extent.
He is not afraid of being caught. In the last month, the bot has won him about 2000 games and earned him three golden hero portraits. Once, he says, he let the bot run for 72 hours straight and didn’t hear anything from Blizzard. Their blue posts in the forum, stating that they would find and harshly punish botters, are merely a tactic and result in no consequences. No one he knows has ever been caught.
Botting is widespread, although he does not believe that players do it out of profit greed to sell strong accounts with golden heroes and full legendaries on eBay, but more because they can simply do it.
PCGamer also spoke with Blizzard. They are aware of the problem and say it has high priority and they are working on it. Botters are a problem in all their games. There are so many highly intelligent people out there. Blizzard is coming with a fix, and they are coming with new versions. If you catch them, it results in severe penalties, including account bans.
The botter who spoke with PCGamer does not seem to be afraid of that. If he loses everything, he says nonchalantly, it wouldn’t be too bad. It’s not like he has really done much for it.
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