It appears that Blizzard may be taking action to combat the widespread botting in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Legacy. The game’s creator recently revealed that they have banned more than 120,000 bot accounts and will be enforcing the Death Knight character creation restrictions that were present in the initial expansion but were removed for the Classic edition.
While bots have always been an issue in World of Warcraft, the number of botted characters in Wrath of the Lich King Classic is unprecedented. Blizzard didn’t impose any restrictions on making Death Knights when the update first came out, so even brand-new accounts could make a level 55 character right away. This error proved to be irresistible to botters, who flooded the game by automatically gaining 55 levels so that they could immediately begin harvesting content and wreaking havoc on the game’s economy.
Blizzard had previously allowed Death Knights to be created on new accounts so that players could quickly and easily join their friends already playing as the Death Knight class, but as of the week of March 20th, they are once again requiring accounts to already have a level 55 character in order to create a Death Knight. They believe this will serve as a deterrent against future malevolent acts.
Over 120,000 identities were banned this week after it was discovered they were using bots to play World of Warcraft. Blizzard says this is a continuing process and asks for players’ assistance by encouraging them to continue reporting anything they find odd.
It has been recently pointed out that the reaction time for support tickets in Wrath of the Lich King Classic is exceedingly slow, and that botting is rampant. Even though these measures will help delay the issue, hackers will always find a way to damage the game economy because no answer will ever completely clear the MMO of bots.