Blizzard brought the ban hammer down to “nearly 120,000.” World of Warcraft classic Accounts after discovering that players were creating bots to exploit the Death Knight class to gain resources in the Wrath of the Lich King classic Expansion that started in September.
For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft classic was introduced in 2019 and is an inversion of Wow to its 2006 level, but using the modern infrastructure of the current game. As the game gradually added the expansions of the main game, it has since achieved Wrath of the Lich King. In this expansion is special death knight class is introduced and it starts at level 55. First, the World of Warcraft classic version of it special “hero class” was available to players without restrictions instead of requiring them to reach the level cap as they had to in the original World of Warcraft. Although this requirement has been removed, Death Knights still start at level 55, meaning players could create new accounts and start as Death Knight and jump straight into the Wrath of the Lich King Expanding endgame content much faster too farm high-level resources. The result is that bots have flooded the servers and Blizzard has finally acted.
In a statement on corporate forumsBlizzard says that not only has it banned 120,000 accounts that engaged in this nonsense, but it has reinstated the level cap Requirement from the original game to discourage them altogether.
“We felt it was very important to the release of the Wrath of the Lich King classic to allow anyone who wanted to jump into this iconic expansion to do so with as few obstacles as possible,” the statement reads . “It was important to give every account access to Death Knights – even if they didn’t meet the historical requirements. However, now that the initial introductory period is over, we no longer want to allow unrestricted creation of death knights on brand new accounts. It’s an enticing vector for malicious actors to get in the game and start exploiting very quickly.”
The community already seems happy with the decision, with one user on the forums calling it a “direct nerf for botters,” although some feel it was an avoidable mistake. One comment read: “This restriction should never have been lifted but better late than never I guess.”
While the studio is yet to announce plans for the release catastrophethe next of the famous MMOs extensions, e.g World of Warcraft classicthe team seems at least open to the idea.