World of Warcraft Bans More Than 100,000 Players for Using Bots

The World of Warcraft has become a little less populated as Blizzard Entertainment has banned over 100,000 accounts for using automated bots to play the game for them, sending a clear message that cheating will not be condoned in Azeroth.

The offical Battle.Net forums announced the swift and judicial action against these players, which includes a six-month ban from playing the game on any server.

It's a short message, but it says everything it needs to quickly and efficiently:

"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,'" the post says. "We’re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft, and will continue to take action against those found in violation of our Terms of Use. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated."

Over 100,000 WoW players being plucked from the subscriber base for six months is a staggering amount, even though there are millions of WoW players out there in the world. We're completely for Blizzard trying to protect the integrity of the game by weeding out these "botters," for using an automated system to control a character defeats the whole purpose of playing the game anyway. What the heck is the point of purchasing a game and building up a character if you're going to let some AI play it for you?

We're interested to see if there will be any more actions taken against hackers in WoW, and how the 100,000+ affected will feel after their six-month ban. We're worried this could end up negatively affecting WoW in the long run, but we'll have to wait and see.