Blizzard bans 120K users and restricts WoW: Classic Death Knight creation due to bad-faith actors, leaves community divided

Blizzard recently announced that they had banned 120K users across several parts of the WoW: Classic ecosystem and that they would be bringing back the Death Knight restrictions on Classic. At the start of Wrath of the Lich King Classic, players were free to create a Death Knight regardless of what the original game required.

However, after the next server maintenance, the original requirements will return. Luckily, players won’t lose the Death Knights that they’ve already created, but they cannot create one if they don’t meet the original prerequisites in WoW: Classic.

As expected, the community was swift to respond, with some players elated to see Blizzard taking strong action, while others were more on the angry side.

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WoW: Classic community left divided by Blizzard's response to Death Knight restriction returning

Blizzard made a major announcement on the official WoW: Classic forums. The post was in the Wrath of the Lich King Discussion, and primarily addressed the Death Knights. Game Producer Aggrend released a post stating that 120K users across the Warcraft ecosystem have been banned over the past few weeks.

Although the developers didn’t officially state why this decision was made, it’s fairly clear that this was primarily because of bots and gold farmers who take the simple path of creating a Death Knight. With that in mind, Blizzard stated that on March 20, 2023, when the next system maintenance occurs, the original Death Knight restrictions will be back in place.

Instead of simply being able to make one at any time, you must have a level 55 character first. Unfortunately, World of Warcraft has always had a bot problem, which is unlikely to end with this announcement. The developer who made the post stated as such in the post:

“We hope that this helps slow the proliferation of malicious behavior in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. It’s important to keep in mind that as long as there is a demand for gold and other services that players are willing to pay real money for, these malicious actors will keep coming back.”

Some of the WoW: Classic players were delighted. (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

There were plenty of responses on the WoW: Classic forums, and as this is the Warcraft community, these responses ranged wildly. Quite a few players were happy to see some form of action being taken.

Some, on the other hand, were paranoid, and are convinced that this is the beginning of bad times for WoW: Classic (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

While some were happy to see Blizzard making changes, others were a bit more paranoid. As such, at least one user was convinced that this was only being done so that Blizzard could add WoW tokens and other predatory changes in the coming weeks.

There are a large number of players that are just sick and tired of things, and feel that WoW: Classic devs aren't doing enough (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Another very large and vocal part of the community felt like this was too little, too late. While many remain unsubscribed, others are subscribed, but are unhappy and vocal about it.

Some frustrated players understand that it’s not really the community leaders or the developers’ fault. Most of these decisions fall on people who are higher up the food chain, as the resources required to fix this type of issue would cost a great deal.

None of this meant that Blizzard wasn’t banning people normally in WoW: Classic. This was just a targeted move to restrict how many people can create Death Knight bots to farm gold or boost players. They understand that it’s unlikely that they can ever really get rid of the bot problem, but they seem to be doing whatever they can to slow the tide.