WoW Classic is currently in bad shape. This is mainly due to bots and hackers. If Blizzard does nothing, the second Warcraft game will die in 2020, according to Cortyn.
Blizzard, it is time for us to have a serious talk again. I’ve come to terms with the fact that you are simply letting Warcraft III: Reforged die quietly. There apparently aren’t enough developers to tackle the major problems of the game. But if you also let WoW Classic bleed out, then we have a problem. Because I simply cannot endure two dead games from the Warcraft franchise in one year.
To be honest, I only play WoW Classic very sporadically now. I log in maybe once or twice a week, chat a little, and when I have a lot of time, I do a dungeon run out of nostalgia. I can do that relatively easily, because on “my” RP realm, the current issues are manageable. But on other realms, it’s complete chaos.
I’m talking about botters and hackers.
WoW Classic is infested with bots
For months now, the (obvious) number of fraudsters has been increasing. While in the early weeks there were only a few conspicuous characters running around and mowing down enemies automatically, it has only gotten worse.
By now, there are hackers who just fly through the air as they please. Using exploits and hacks, they farm in Zul Gurub. They teleport “under the map” and farm the herbs from the raid before resetting it. Even streamers provide evidence – like a bot that simply takes off here at the graveyard:
Other bots have apparently been developed to be so “smart” that they even offer services. There are some mages who offer “boosts” in Zul Gurub for gold. While some of these providers are certainly honest players just trying to earn gold, in many cases they are hackers.
More and more videos are surfacing of fraudsters flying through the air or automatically farming the same dungeon for days on end – without a break.
Blizzard’s reaction has helped little
But from you, Blizzard, there has been radio silence. There was no statement from the developers, no announcement that something would be done. Instead, you bring a PTR with new content, like a fix for the Alterac Valley. Those are nice things, but that’s not the core problem right now.
A few days ago, that changed. In the official forum, community manager Kaivax made a post. But to many players – including me – it seems like sheer mockery.
Players are thanked for making such extensive use of the “right-click-report” function. This would help Blizzard act “even faster” against bots.
However, that reads like a bad joke. After all, you can’t report bots that are in instances this way. On the other hand, there are bots in the game that were reported months ago and continue to fly through the world or farm their instances 24/7, flooding the auction house with resources.
But then Blizzard did even more, which I can only call “excessive activism.” They have introduced a restriction for all players. Per account and realm, a player can only visit 30 dungeons in one day, after which they have to wait for a 24-hour cycle to pass.
What sounds like a good plan in theory is nonsense in execution. This restriction only results in bots moving to the next server after 30 instances on one server. After all, unlike honest players, they have no attachment to the server and don’t care where they earn their money.
The only ones this rule affects are honest players.
Ban wave came – but did it help?
After players reacted negatively to the instance limit, which by the way was once an April Fool’s joke, Blizzard did something else.
The community manager posted in the official forum that within the last month 74,000 bots have been banned and also explained that detecting bots is not always as easy as players might think.
Often it is difficult to prove bots’ clearly fraudulent behavior, and false reports from the community are also regular occurrences.
It seems that Blizzard has not reached many bots with this ban wave either, as numerous ones still disturb the dungeons.
Sure – banning 74,000 bots is a big number and a good step. However, I still find it questionable why it took almost 6 months. If further ban waves take so long, and the number of bots continues to increase drastically, WoW Classic simply will not survive.
WoW Classic is bleeding out. Sure, the realms are full, and on some you even end up in queues when trying to log in – because so many bots are hanging around here. But the real players are gradually losing interest. The cheaters have already thrown the economy of the realms into chaos. This is a problem that continues to worsen every week.
To be honest, the scenario now reminds me a bit of the release of Warcraft III: Reforged. Even there, there were promises at launch that the game would continue to be supported. After the disastrous launch, they claimed they would soon be delivering new (and old) features. To this day, there is virtually nothing to see of that, aside from minimal bug fixes.
Private servers were better protected
The last point annoys me the most. I have always been against private servers in World of Warcraft. I don’t believe that anyone should profit from your property, Blizzard. When WoW Classic launched, the discussion finally disappeared. With “original” classic servers, private servers lost their justification.
But now, more and more voices are being heard in the subreddit saying: botting and hacking on this level would not have happened on private servers, and if it did, the server would have died very quickly.
Sure, private servers were individual realms with a few hundred or thousand players. But they also didn’t have a huge company like Activision Blizzard behind them.
It’s only a matter of time before players lose interest in playing on realms full of bots and cheaters. If you believe the voices in the forum, that point has already been reached for numerous players.
So, Blizzard, I ask you. Please don’t let World of Warcraft Classic die like this. Because nothing is more frustrating for fans than a fulfilled wish that is then taken away again.
Do take care of the bots and hackers – otherwise you shouldn’t have released WoW Classic at all.
