WoW Classic sees 120,000 accounts banned over Death Knight bot exploit

Warcraft’s lore describes the Death Knights as a powerful legion undead warriors that have been raised to fight for ever more. So it’s sort of thematically appropriate, if still annoying, that they’ve become bot-farmers’ favorite class in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King ClassicThey are flogging servers with mindless grinding.

What is the reason for this? The original as well as ClassicReleases of Wrath of the Lich-KingDeath Knights begin at level 55 and are only 15 levels short of reaching the limit. To create a Death Knight, you would need another character of the same or higher level to do so. However, it is now possible to create a character at the same level or higher. Wrath Classic, Blizzard waived that requirement — presumably hoping to tempt back players who were nostalgic for one of WoW’s best classes (and expansions), but didn’t want to grind to get there. The Death Knight was an excellent shortcut for bot farmers with fresh accounts who wanted to grind to the endgame as fast and efficiently as possible.

Blizzard was forced to take action, reintroducing the Death Knights restriction from the original game and banning as many as 120,000 accounts that are infected by the special wave.

“Over the past few weeks, we’ve taken actions that removed almost 120,000 malicious accounts from the World of Warcraft ecosystem, including both Wrath of the Lich King ClassicClassic Era. This is in addition to our usual, ongoing banwaves, which often include actions against tens of thousands of accounts per week,” WoW Classic producer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield wrote on the game’s official forum.

Explaining the decision to reinstate the restriction on creating Death Knights, Greenfield said, “We felt it was very important for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King ClassicTo make it as easy as possible for anyone to jump into the iconic expansion. Allowing every account access to Death Knights — even if they did not meet the historic requirements — was important. We no longer want to permit the creation unrestricted of Death Knights for new accounts after the launch period. It’s a tempting vector for malicious actors to use to get into the game and start exploiting very quickly.”

It seems that the decision went down very well. WoW Classic Community even though it was for many too late. “I’m going to be frank they’ve been ruining a large portion of the game for months now,” said one player on the official forum.