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Blizzard Bans 100,000 Cheaters In Massive "World of Warcraft" Ban Spree
MojoKid writes: Like many MMORPGs, World of Warcraft can be a grind. To sidestep the time commitment required to continually level up a character, gather resources, improve skills, or whatever else is desired, some gamers turn to bots, software that automates the process. The only problem is, Activision Blizzard isn't so keen on this behavior and has dropped the ban hammer hard on gamers who've been using them. Activision Blizzard didn't specify exactly how many people it booted, saying only that it was a "large number of World of Warcraft accounts." However, a screenshot of a conversation between a player, Game Master, and Activision Blizzard employee suggests that over 100,000 World of Warcraft accounts were identified and booted.
I think that they are making a choice between short term profits and long term customer satisfaction
Maybe this leaves a market segment open to people who want to run games as large scale hack-a-thons, but Blizzard does not seem to want to be that company
Wherever You Go, There You Are
That might lead a jaded person to believe that they are simply pumping revenue
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Instead of banning them, give people a settable-but-not-clearable checkbox:
- "I won't cheat", if you're caught then you're subject to a ban
- "I might/will cheat", fine, but you can't run multiplayer with others who won't
Heck, go one step simpler- no checkbox, but if you're caught cheating you can only go multiplayer with others who were caught. But the flag clears itself after 'X' amount of "time served".
I am not a sig.
The smart thing would be to sort the players. But the bot-users and hackers on one set of servers, and the genuine players on another set. Get money from both camps, without them disturbing each other.