New players in WoW Wrath of the Lich King Classic lose access to Death Knights. The fight against bots appears to be more important.
Between the modern World of Warcraft Dragonflight and the Classic version of Wrath of the Lich King, there are some differences. One of the biggest may be how many bots and cheaters you encounter in the game world.
Because especially in the Classic version, this is a rampant problem that has existed since the original Classic launch. Blizzard is trying to curb these people and has now taken a drastic step: More than 120,000 accounts have been banned.
And there is another new feature: Creating a Death Knight will be more difficult.
What has Blizzard done now? In the official WoW forum, Blizzard explained that in the past few days, more than 120,000 accounts of WoW Classic have been permanently closed. These accounts were found to be engaged in fraudulent activities, such as botting, gold trading, or exploiting.
Blizzard emphasizes that this was an additional action. There will still be weekly ban waves in which tens of thousands of accounts are punished or closed.
They also state that the “launch phase” of WotLK Classic is now over and therefore new restrictions will be implemented – which primarily affect botters and make creating new Death Knights difficult.
What does this mean for players? For everyone who wants to play Wrath of the Lich King Classic but does not have a character above level 55 on the corresponding realm, time is now running out to create a Death Knight. Because with the next maintenance on March 22, Blizzard will remove the option to create a Death Knight on new accounts.
Anyone who wants to create a Death Knight in the future must first – as was customary back then – bring a character to at least level 55.
However, if you already own a Death Knight or have a character above level 55 on the respective realm, nothing will change.
The adjustment is therefore only aimed at restricting completely new accounts, which are often used by botters and scammers to immediately own a high-level character.
Why is Blizzard doing this? Fraudulent individuals usually earn gold with their accounts only in the high-level range, which they then resell illegally. If such an account has to start at level 1, Blizzard has much more time to detect automated behavior like botting before real damage is done. However, since Death Knights start at level 55, the time frame is much shorter before these characters earn proper gold and have an impact on the market.
With the change, Blizzard will therefore have significantly more time in the future – and the fraudsters will have to invest much more effort to make new characters “farmable”.
