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Blizzard Bans 59,000 World of Warcraft Accounts
- July 26, 2006 17:12 PM PST
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A Blizzard community manager confirmed today that the developer banned approximately 59,000 WOW accounts during June for direct violations of the World of Warcraft Terms of Use policy, which includes the use of third-party gold- and item-farming hacks.
[Illegally farming gold and items] not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm; it diminishes the achievements of those who play legitimately."
--Blizzard community manager Eyonix
WorldOfWarcraft.com also reports that 22 million in ill-gotten gold was removed from the game's economy.
The community manager stated that the company "regrets having to take such extreme action," but stressed that the gold and item farming was affecting "the achievements of those who play legitimately."
"We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and our players from the harmful effects of cheating," the manager said."
If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, Blizzard encourages you to actively report these occurrences to in game GMs or email a your report to hacks@blizzard.com.
One player, who goes by "Burntskull," made an interesting comment on the official message boards: "Scary Math . . . 59K accounts banned in June. Let's assume the monthly fee (for) those accounts paid were not refunded. That's $882,050 in revenue at 14.99 a month. Lets assume 1/2 of those farmer accounts come back (lets say 1/2). That's 29500 accounts at $49.95. That's 1.4 million in re-buying the game and another $441,000 in revenue. Just interesting to see banning farming accounts gives a nice little boost to Blizzard as well."
Good for Blizzard. Now only if Bungie were this aggressive about banning Halo 2 cheaters...
