‘World of Warcraft: Classic’ update: Blizzard explains why banning resource-hogging and cheating bots take time after removing 74,000 accounts

Any online multiplayer game that is designed with painstaking and time-consuming gameplay like “World of Warcraft: Classic” is always prone to having massive problems from bot accounts. To some fans, Blizzard’s response could have been made faster to address this issue.

‘World of Warcraft: Classic’ loses 74,000 cheating accounts over the last month

The developer then explained in a recent community forum post why the process takes time. At the same time, Blizzard confirmed that tens of thousands of bot accounts have been removed or suspended from “World of Warcraft: Classic.”

Community manager Kaivax let “World of Warcraft: Classic” players know that a banwave the developers have been working on for the previous month has either removed or suspended more than 74,000 accounts it labeled as bots or cheaters. The accounts involved were said to be located in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe regions. “The majority of these were found to be using gameplay automation tools, typically to farm resources or kill enemies much more efficiently than legitimate players can,” Kaivax added.

The problem of “World of Warcraft: Classic” when it comes to dealing with bot accounts is complex compared to other video games. As Blizzard recognized in the post, exploiting the gameplay is done more than just the purpose of leveling up characters easier than it should be. Cheaters tend to use bot accounts to farm resources to sell for real money. There have also been reports of exploiting the game’s weaknesses to charge money on other players wanting to have their accounts progress without putting in real work.

‘World of Warcraft: Classic’: Blizzard explains why the banwave takes time

Aside from the banwave that resulted to the closing or suspension of 74,000 accounts, Blizzard told players that they have a dedicated team for identifying dubious accounts “around the clock, every day of the week.” But the post admitted that banning bots is a meticulous undertaking.

Blizzard maintains it uses “powerful systems” to identify suspected accounts, but there is an even bigger work after that to ultimately lead to a ban or suspension. The developer said, in examining accounts under suspicion of being bots, their team collects evidence manually. “It’s worthwhile though, because we never want to take action against a legitimate player,” Kaivax added.