How do I report an AH sniper bot?

[Kamisayo]

Between midnight and 10 minutes past midnight on the 4th of october, I had Medallion of Grand Marshal Morris sniped off the neutral AH. It was posted by a guild of mine and intended to be purchased by my alliance alt. We coordinated the timing on teamspeak, and the item was sniped in a manner consistent with and only accomplishable by a bot.

I strongly suspect that the 47 rogue "Tassar" is the sniper, since the character was found parked AFK, unresponsive and in stealth near the Tanaris auctioneer only a few minutes after the snipe (I have a screenshot of this). How do I report this kind of breach of the ToS?

[Mimma]

You can make an in-game report, but don't get your hopes too high.

Being close to the auction house doesn't proof anything, and buying things from neutral AH posted at 1c is certainly not a crime.
I would say this is your own fault; you should have made a transaction with a price at 100g, so other buyers would likely not buy it.

Also note that in retail this kind of transactions was not supported; this happened at your own risk. If a botter got busted, he was ofcause banned, but the gold and/or items would not be returned in any circumstances.

[Tinkertown]

If a botter got busted, he was ofcause banned, but the gold and/or items would not be returned in any circumstances.

Only if they were actually running a bot. Not if all they were doing was running an AH addon set to buyout underpriced items.

[Kamisayo]

Of course it's fair game if they just happen to buy the item at the low price - that is my own risk. What I mean is, if they have a program set up to buy it within fractions of a second, that is punishable, right?

Also, I assume that the GM's can see who the buyer actually was. My suspicion of that rogue doesn't prove anything, but perhaps they could obtain concrete evidence through server logs.

[Zerogue]

Hi,

Viper should be able to investigate this through the server logs, so I suggest you send him a PM.

you could also PM Daemon, but he's always busy with something lol

[Tinkertown]

Of course it's fair game if they just happen to buy the item at the low price - that is my own risk. What I mean is, if they have a program set up to buy it within fractions of a second, that is punishable, right?

Note the difference between an addon and a bot.

A bot, when we talk about wow, normally refers to a program running outside of WoW that controls game action. Those are subject to bans both on retail and here.

An addon, on the other hand, is using functions provided by Blizzard to interact with the game in a limitited way. (No movement, no spell casts without an associated keypress etc.) You were never banned for using an addon in vanilla and on this server the only time someone has been banned for an addon so far was when they used a function that the devs considered bugged, and even then they warned the players to stop before they went ahead and banned them.

While the stuff you can do with an addon in 1.12.1 is limited, both refreshing the AH, scan the AH, and buy items on the AH are included. This means that if I want to buy 20 Illusion Dust for an enchant, I can set an addon up to buy any Illusion Dust posted on the AH for under 80 silver, maximum 20 total, and go take a shower. No bot needed. On retail this would be 100% fine.

Nostalrius obviously isn't retail. And they can take any action they see fit. But if they wish to classify using certain addons as "not kosher" they really should specify what behavior they don't want players to do. If they don't like these snipers (for example because they look so much like 3rd party program bots that players assume that its ok to use such programs) they should make it forbidden but announce it in their ToU document and wait a few days before enforcing it. The rule could be as simple as.

"While the API allows for the creation of auction house "bots", the act of using such a script or addon for a period of time longer than a few seconds is considered a breach of the ToU and is subject to account action."

The reason that it "has" to be allowed for a few seconds is that otherwise popular and non-harmful addons like Aux would get caught in the crossfire.

[Cwester4]

L2P

[Arev]

L2P

^^

Don't ever put an item on the neutral AH for less than you would be okay with selling it for.
These bots will always exist as long as people give them an easy way to make money.

[Ragstal]

what is neutral AH? there is another AH beside the one we know? and u tried to send an item with AH to the other faction and u were put a price low ??? that make no sense i agree with mimma lol

[Krinkov]

Lmao got sniped 12 Large Brilliant Shards

In a milisecond we were on the phone as soon as I put them in they got sniped.

....