Recently Blizzard have brought down the banhammer on a number of World of Warcraft accounts who were found to have been using third-party bot programs to play parts of the game for them.

The Community Manager Lore was the one who revealed the bans on the forums saying “We’ve recently taken action against a large number of World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay, known as ‘bots.’ As a part of this action, we have removed various currencies and inventory from these accounts including, but not limited to, gold, PvP currencies, and gear. The penalty for those identified as repeat offenders has also been increased.”

The accounts in question haven’t been permanently banned though, instead given six months time out in suspension. The reasons why Lore says is that research has revealed that it’s the better way to cut down on botting players.

Those with banned accounts apparently often go to buy a new account and most often continue where they left off, while those with suspended accounts are more likely to just wait out the suspension period and then when they do get their accounts back they may give up the botting out of fear of being caught again and permanently kicked next time. In other words the shock of being caught and almost losing what they worked on often acts as a better deterrent than actually permanently losing it all.

Interesting stuff.