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Blizzard Banhammer Kills 18k

Posted by Zonk on from the i-can-feel-the-burn-from-here dept.

Gamespot reports that Blizzard has banned 18,000 accounts from their popular World of Warcraft MMOG. From official site: " A majority of these accounts were found to be using third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players. We will continue to actively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the negative effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in the permanent removal of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft. "

5 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. 18k cheaters who don't listen to good music ... by dc29A · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They should have listened to Celine Dion, get a nice rootkit as a bonus and be able to cheat without Blizzard's Warden client to detect them!

    Silly cheaters!

  2. Length of Time by therage96 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It probably should be noted that this was "Over the last three months." But I'm not surprised Blizzard is going after the gold farmers. Annoyances to players aside, most of the gold farmers will simply buy another copy of the game (with a new serial number) to continue their farming operation which in turn earns Blizzard a bit more money. After all, if a copy of W.O.W. cost $30, and even if only 5000 of those 18000 bought another copy, thats still another $150,000 bucks to Blizzard. Probably the salarys of 3 full-time GMs right there.

  3. Re:Plugging the hole while the dam bursts around t by Stoopid-Guy0 · · Score: 1, Insightful
    I'm sure it will only be days before the gold farmers they banned will be back up and running with fresh bought copies of the game.
    And Blizzard's reason for wanting this cycle to stop is... ?
  4. I'm impressed by ivan256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This means that Blizzard decided that the gameplay experience for their rule-abideing customers was worth more than the quarter of a million dollars a month in subscription fees that they will lose from this. Either they really care about the player community, they're only killing off a token number of accounts to make it look like they care, or they're fairly confident these 18k accounts will just get re-opened under a different name tomorrow.

  5. CAPTCHA by CriminalNerd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The best solution to solving all of the problems with the gold farmers is to have a CAPTCHA feature that ANY player has to answer before getting anything. It worked with web-based games such as Outwar and Kings of Chaos. Why not WoW?