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Blizzard has banned more than 74,000 World of Warcraft Classic accounts, with the “majority” of those affected accounts accused of automation.
These accounts would essentially harvest resources and experience points while the player themselves were absent from the game. It’s also termed “botting,” and it is absolutely a breach of World of Warcraft Classic’s end-user license agreement. Yet, people still seek out third parties to help them progress in the game, which is undeniably a very grindy game. “We’re ultimately working to unravel a challenging circumstance,” read the statement from Blizzard regarding the bans.
“Real money trading drives third parties to put an enormous amount of effort into circumventing our detection systems. As much as this is a very high priority for us, it is the only priority for profit-driven botting organizations. The bans we issue are simply a cost of doing business for them,” it justified.
It also acknowledged that the gameplay requirements of the classic experience may be incorrectly identified as automation. “Yes, there have been cases where a legitimate player appeared (to another player) to be botting,” said the company. “In those cases, where a legitimate player is reported and then cleared of wrongdoing, it can be very frustrating to the reporting player to again see what they think is a bot. We’ve also seen examples where the reported player was caught exploiting the game, and was removed from the game, and then quickly returned to doing the same thing on a new account with the same character name. That’s an infuriating sight for the players who initially reported it. We greatly appreciate your reports, and we understand how you feel about this.”
World of Warcraft Classic is out now for PC.
