Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard banned “nearly 120,000” World of Warcraft Classic accounts after discovering players were creating bots to exploit the Death Knight class to farm resources in the Wrath of the Lich King Classic expansion, due out in September has been published.
For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft Classic was released in 2019 and is a return of WoW to its 2006 state, but utilizing the modern infrastructure of the current game. As the game gradually added the expansions of the main game, it has now reached Wrath of the Lich King. This expansion introduces the special Death Knight class, which starts at level 55. Initially, the World of Warcraft Classic version of this particular “hero class” was available to players without restrictions, rather than requiring them to level up 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, start as Death Knights, and jump straight into the endgame content of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for high-level resources much more quickly farm. The result is that bots have flooded the servers and Blizzard has finally acted.
In a statement on the company’s forums, Blizzard says that not only has it banned 120,000 accounts that engaged in this nonsense, but it also reintroduced the level cap requirement from the original game to discourage it 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 has yet to announce any plans to release Catacylsm, the next of the famous MMO expansions, for World of Warcraft Classic, the team seems at least open to the idea.
