Announced on the forums:
As part of our efforts to eliminate cheating from World of Warcraft, we recently banned approximately 59,000 World of Warcraft accounts in the month of June, and with that removed well over 22 million gold from the total economy across all realms. While we regret having to take such extreme action, these accounts were participating in activities that directly violated World of Warcraft’s Terms of Use, including the use of third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such behavior not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm, it diminishes 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.
We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the community for their assistance in reporting suspicious behavior. Numerous account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in-game or emailed to hacks@blizzard.com.
Moving forward, if you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction using one of the methods listed above. All reports will be investigated, and the appropriate action will be taken when warranted
We appreciate your support and wish you the best with your continued adventures in Azeroth!
Observation #1: Wow… That’s more than what most other mmorpgs have in TOTAL subscriptions.
Observation #2: Blizzard is crazy? No. They are just making the game a better place for all the other players who respect the rules. That’s “quality” as well. It is also important to not legitimate what goldsellers do.
Observation #3: Uhm, is this really a news as big as it appears? The announce says nothing about WHERE those accounts were banned. In USA? In Europe? In China? Everywhere? I cannot remember right now, but isn’t creating new accounts in China really cheap? Without those details we cannot know the real consistence of that announce. Even if I guess it’s just the USA (the announce wasn’t copied on the european forums, for example). In that case it would be around 4% of total subscribers.
Anyway, the goldsellers and bans are still only consequences of a problem. That problem is still a design problem that is waiting to be addressed.
I was banned on Friday also for alleged exploitation of the economy. I am so pissed off, I’ve got addons but they are all allowed, no bots or anything else that would be considered exploitation. I think I downloaded an addon that had a keylogger in it, someone else I know had a friend who downloaded the same addon and was banned a week earlier for the same offense, apparently they were able to get their account back. What bothers me is that I was supposed to get an e-mail stating the offense, it never came so I went onto a second account a family member has and had to bug a GM to send me the e-mail again (the two accounts have the same active e-mail address), only after that did I receive the e-mail with ‘details’ – yeah right, same pat answer everyone else is getting. I’ll fight to get my account back but if I don’t, that’s it for me and WoW. I don’t even know if I can continue to give money to a company the bans people out right who have had their accounts compromised instead of deactivating accounts and THEN investigating.
if individuals would stop hating on those that can level faster than they do and if not want to be bothered by placing themselvs in afk status so to keep on task of leveling then we will not get banned for some petty shit