With a collective sigh, the World of Warcraft community will probably say something along the lines of “it’s about damn time” when they hear they news that Blizzard wants to attack accounts that are guilty of “botting”. For almost as long as the game has been around there have been those with knowledge to exploit it. Third party software is used to play the game automatically for the purpose of anything from farming materials to participating in raids and battlegrounds. As a player there is nothing more frustrating than knowing there are bots present in your raid and not being able to do anything more permanent about it.
However, community manager Josh Allen has taken to the forums in what hopefully marks the beginning of a big push from Blizzard to remove this element of cheating from World of Warcraft. He had this to say:
“We’ve recently taken action against a large number of World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay, known as “bots.” We’re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft, and will continue to take action against those found in violation of our Terms of Use. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated.
If you believe that you’ve encountered a player abusing a bot, exploit, or cheat, please let us know! You can do so by using the right-click report functionality in the game, and/or by emailing information to hacks@blizzard.com.”
Blizzard has approached this subject many times before but the persistence of the people involved and the programs they use has continued to evade the developers. Players can really help the situation by taking the time to get in touch with Blizzard if they suspect an account of botting or exploiting the game and hopefully, as a community, this can be a major attempt to rid the game of cheats.
*UPDATE* Since posting this story Blizzard have hit 100,000 accounts suspected of botting with 6 month bans.