Over the past few weeks, we’ve taken actions that removed almost 120,000 malicious accounts from the World of Warcraft ecosystem, including both Wrath of the Lich King Classic and Classic Era. This is in addition to our usual, ongoing banwaves, which often include actions against tens of thousands of accounts per week.
As a supplement to these recent actions, we want you to know that as of next week’s regional maintenance, we will be returning the original Death Knight character creation restrictions to Wrath of the Lich King Classic. This means that unless you already have a level 55 character on your account, you will be unable to create a Death Knight. We felt it was very important for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King classic to give anyone who wanted to hop into this iconic expansion the ability to do so with as few barriers as possible. Allowing every account access to Death Knights-- even if they did not meet the historic requirements --was important. However, now that the initial launch period has passed, we no longer wish to allow the unrestricted creation of Death Knights on brand new accounts. It’s a tempting vector for malicious actors to use to get into the game and start exploiting very quickly.
We hope that this helps slow the proliferation of malicious behavior in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. It’s important to keep in mind that as long as there is a demand for gold and other services that players are willing to pay real money for, these malicious actors will keep coming back. Please-- never hesitate to report suspected cheating such as buying and selling gold for real money, automation, and advertisements for power leveling or any real-money sales in chat. Your reports greatly help our efforts to take actions that improve the game.
Thanks to everyone who has commented on this issue over the past several months, and thanks to everyone who helps by reporting suspicious activity.
I still think its a bit too late and can anyone let me know if there are less bots in bgs? My sub ends on the 20th and I dont care to log in and check for myself. lol
Glad that in a backhand way, Blizzard is finally acknowledging that letting people roll DKs without the original level restriction in place was a poor idea.
I don’t know, this kind of comes off as a pat us on the back, we did a good job. But how did it get this bad in the first place? Bragging about the number of botters etc. in your game just kind of makes you look bad imo.
I saw this news today, and was really hopeful. The first thing I did was log on to classic and do /who dire maul… and yeah nothing has really changed. Although I think it’s great they took action, I wouldn’t call this a complete success:
a) /who dire maul in ERA on both sides reveals more than a dozen hunter, mage and rogue bots still operating in broad daylight.
b) the bans took way too long to implement. ERA never used to have a bot problem until SoM closed. Blizzard had weeks to investigate the complaints of botting in SoM before the sever such down, and yet they didn’t. They allowed them to transfer and keep botting openly, almost flouting at us. The damage these bots do to the economy would be irreparable.
I can’t speak on WotLK, because I don’t play there. My suggestion: Blizzard hires one or two additional GM that actually visit reports in game and gather evidence on what players are talking about. I feel they are a bit out of touch with the issue, and that would help give them a look at what is actually happening with the bot pandemic on the ground.
P.S. I’m not a GM and most of these bots are easy to spot. They are either on 24/7 or if they are leveling bots you can see them interacting with the environment in a way that is too unlike a player that has been using their character up to that point. I even reported a bot in Arathi for weeks on end, that was using dangerous code that altered the ways the creatures around it would behave. It was so obvious!
I thought blizzard will hire more GM’s. I think they want to spend as minimal money on upkeep as possible. I have a feeling the bots were left alone to inflate those sub numbers.
For them to let it get to the point of 120k being banned and that barely making a difference is ridiculous. Although I’m not surprised that a company that has a 30+ day wait time to respond to a customer service ticket isn’t at all fussed about player experience either.
Thats sad to hear… I will let my sub end on the 20th and wont come back unless Classic+ or SoM2 gets release. I will not continue to support this company with a sub.
I might log in and give my gold away to some undergeared lowbie.
