The massive account thefts from 2005-2011 or the modern botting plague?
botting plague, hands down.
It was always easy to recoup any account losses.
I tried to get into classic as I was really looking forward to going back to that era of Azeroth, but when I seen how out of control it was, it was a short lived experience lol
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the botting plague by far. At least if you got your account stolen you had a path to get it back.
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There’s just as many bots in retail… and they are far more blatant.
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hmmm that is an interesting question.
i mean when my account was jacked back in wrath, it took me literally 4 days to get it back up and running. hours spent in game on my main looking at all my lost gold, nuked profs having lost all those recipes id collected, all my gear having been lost either because they sold it or deleted it out of spite(betting on the sold), several characters deleted even meaning i’d lost guilds i payed large sums of gold to get bank slots on, all my valuable mats taken and sent who knows where, ect ect ect to sit there doing absolutely nothing because i had nothing and had to wait to get it back. hours spent on hold on the phone arguing over whether or not i was actually the owner of the account and characters in question. all this while i was visiting family for the holidays so there went my whole trip and time with my family.
vs
an unseen enemy i really if ever interact with on my current server. wondering if they even actually exist on my server. only hearing about them being a real issue on the mega servers which are all really in trouble anyway due to the overpopulation issues that plague them already.
for me, its easy to say that account hacking from back then was the bigger problem.
bot bots are bad and all that is still true so honestly who can really say…
I had to re-read my post to see where I compared it to retail bots, I still can’t find it so if you could quote it that would be fantastic, thank you.
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lol maybe you need to chill a bit… i was simply saying retail has a ton of bots too… blizzard hasn’t done anything about that. They won’t do anything about classic bots.
It’s actually shocking how many bots are in retail if you know where to look.
RMT, contrary to popular dogma did not go away with the wow token, it’s almost like the wow token made it more common because now the botters use the gold they bot farm to buy more account play time, and that can in theory drive the price of the wow token giving them a competitive edge to sell gold for less than the blizzard rate.
Additionally, the RMT trades are far more common in retail because achievements and rare mounts and things like that are what’s sold also.
Kinda crazy that blizzard doesn’t do something, but I suspect it’s yet another corner they have painted them selves into with a “service feature” that they cannot simply turn off now that the cat is out of the bag.
The raw number of bots in retail, even in WoD, Legion and BFA was worse than any part of Classic, and the reason people notice in Classic is simply because the players have more to do out in the world and are a more common part of the game economy than they are in retail.
That sense of artificial isolation is likely why retail players do not always notice the bots.
I’ve always had an authenticator, so… probably the most disruptive thing I remember is Blizzard devs thinking it was a good idea to dump an entire server population into Hellfire Peninsula when TBC launched.
I understand you were lucky that you didn’t get hacked before you were able to get an authenticator, but did you know anyone or have any friends that got hacked before the BC launch?
Bots do exist on our server. Our server is smaller though so they don’t impact as much.
i guess in this case ive been lucky enough not to come across any.
one of the times ive been lucky…
oh well i’ll concede to this then.
Yeah there’s one in particular that loves undercutting the herb market. It’s a rogue that runs circles around epl. I’ve followed it several times. I’m not the only one who has discovered this particular bot.
huh
i spend a fair amount there farming the one farm for scourgestones nearest the bulwark entrance for rep right now since i need it for naxx.
where they spend time so i can see if i find them and report them myself to helpout with it.
I’m really only speaking to my own experiences, rather than guessing how others felt. In response to your query - I knew maybe one person that got hacked. /shrug
Honestly though - if more bots mean cheaper consumes… is that disruptive? 
I don’t feel like either one has disrupted my gameplay in any meaningful way. I honestly cant think of how I’ve been adversely affected by either.
They are in epl mostly. No idea if they go to wpl
huh next time im there i’ll keep my eyes open.
thanks for the heads up
To answer OP: imho, botting plague. The account lifts were a big deal and they acted very quickly; you had a feeling Blizzard got it under control and could respond.
With bots Blizzard is basically begging the community to help them enforce things…so…
Maybe the Disney Buyout will change things.