Two Step Authentication

Blizzard is taken bigger steps to combat the WOTLK Classic Gold botting problem, including banning nearly 120,000 accounts and bringing back restrictions around who is able to create and play because of the game's popular Death Knight class.

In a post for the Wrath from the Lich King Classic forums, Blizzard announced it had banned nearly 120,000 "malicious accounts" on the game's Wrath Classic and Classic Era servers. Blizzard notes the most recent ban was in addition to its usual ban waves, so it often includes "tens of a large number of accounts a week."

This time, however, Blizzard is certainly going one step further. Back when Wrath with the Lich King originally launched in 2008, players had to already have a level-55 character for the same server where they wished to create a Death Knight home so. However, that wasn't the truth for Wrath Classic's launch, where Blizzard allowed every account to produce a single Death Knight character without the need for restrictions. That was caused by Blizzard looking to allow players to experiment with their friends and jump right into Wrath Classic with no need to spend a multitude of hours leveling from the content in the base version of WoW.

But, as Garrosh Hellscream once said, "times change." Blizzard is actually bringing back original restrictions around Death Knights alongside regional maintenance on March 21 so that you can fight bad actors.

"Allowing every account having access to Death Knights--even whenever they did not satisfy the historic requirements--was important," Blizzard writes. "However, now that the initial launch period has gone by, we do not wish to permit the unrestricted introduction of Death Knights on brand-new accounts. It's a tempting vector for malicious actors to work with to get into the overall game and start exploiting quickly."

The community's response to the news is really a mixed bag. On one hand, players have been pointing out the fact that the ability for brand new accounts lacking the existing level-55 characters to build Death Knights can be abused by botters and "malicious accounts" from the time that Blizzard first announced the move. The issue only has gotten worse after a while, with multiple WoW content creators like MetaGoblin and WillIE documenting the problem over the past couple of months.

Players around the game's subreddit realize that banning the easy advance of Death Knights will more than likely push botters toward using the sport's paid character boost service, an email finder service that has for ages been another point of contention inside the WoW Classic community. In general, it feels like players are satisfied Blizzard takes action, but doubt the return of restrictions around Death Knights will provide any lasting change. Blizzard itself admits from the post announcing the Death Knight restrictions that the battle against botting is a never-ending struggle, writing that "as long nevertheless there is a demand for gold as well as other services that players are prepared to pay a real income for, these malicious actors help keep coming back."

Blizzard has largely been quiet on its plans to buy wotlk classic gold in 2023, just some lines of code within the public test realm for WoW's current Dragonflight expansion do give some evidence that news on what's next, perhaps in connection with official "hardcore" servers, may be coming soon.