WoW Purges Thousands Of Cheaters

Blizzard Entertainment Inc., maker of the massive online game "World of Warcraft," purged thousands of players' accounts this week for cheating.

The online fantasy game, which boasts more than five million subscription-paying customers, has been plagued with players, and even massive marketplaces, selling in-game objects, including characters and gold, for real-world money. Unlike other online, multi-player games, World of Warcraft bans the practice of trading virtual items for real dollars.

Some games in fact, such as Sony Online Entertainment's Everquest II, have established officially sanctioned marketplaces where players can buy and sell game goods.

The company banned more than 5,400 players and suspended 10,700 more for breaking those rules.

According to Blizzard, many of the banned players were using third-party software to "farm" the game's gold and other items. "Such actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players," Blizzard said in a statement issued Wednesday.

"Farming" refers to the practice of playing the game with the sole purpose of accumulating virtual gold or other in-game items, such as weapons, so that they can be sold for real money. Some farming is done by players literally warehoused in countries such as China; the workers "play" the game in shifts. Other forms of farming rely on automated bot programs to harvest the virtual money and objects.

"We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating," Blizzard added.

The company also said that many of the accounts closed were brought to its attention by other players, who can report suspicious activity via e-mail or to managers while playing the game.

Comments left by World of Warcraft players on the company's Web site were uniformly positive about the crack-down.


Source: TechWeb

lol thats were all ppl goto, soon as ppl find out u cannot cheat it once b.net fixes it, ppl will start to leave that game, something like some older games

If people would leave because they can't cheat, they're morons and should probably go play Runescape. -.-

Blizzard is the duche of the gaming company. I have fucked them over many times just to make their porrly higherd tecks to track me down. Fo one I will continuse to fuck em over and if then ban I will come back and do even more. If companys were so obsesed with anti cheating maby they should higher the cheaters to block the cheating or put some power behind their bans. THere will always be ways to cheat in every game and it will never get stoped. So Why waste valuble time in traking cheaters down and baning them and creating patch after patch when nothing will stop it. Just Fuck off and Make a new game or allow them to hack. Because I know that if there was no rebelious reason to hack games then it would slow die down because the cheaters would get bored. And let the little pupets buy their items who really cares if some low life gets fucked over.

Not really - think of how many people stop playing a game because of queer "hackers" that make the game shitty?

Don't ruin the game because YOU fucking suck at it.

No what I was tlaking about is hackers would get bored because I do after like 3-4 weeks