WoW Classic players slam Blizzard for “out of control” bot problem
Blizzard EntertainmentWorld of Warcraft Classic has just introduced the popular Season of Mastery, but it turns out some cheaters are using bots to cause havoc for other WoW players.
Despite World of Warcraft Classic’s new Season of Mastery (SoM) promising to make bot exploiting less lucrative for cheating players, it seems that isn’t quite the case.
Specifically targeting the Blackrock Depths – a haven for some of Azeroth’s less savory characters – Rogue players who Pick Pocket too much will be hit with the Thief debuff, which cannot be removed for 30 minutes. Instead of insane amounts of gold, these rule-breakers will only receive the worthless Pocket Lint instead.
While this is great for the residents of Blackrock, it turns out that these sneaky cheaters have simply moved to other places, in turn annoying those who are just trying to play the game as normal.
Blizzard EntertainmentWoW Classic fans demand bot crackdown
Using Reddit to vent their frustrations regarding the current state of Classic, one player has described the botting problem as “out of control.” Writing that they’re “enjoying playing the new SoM so much right now” and are” having a ton of fun,” they lament that they don’t want the new feature to be “ruined by something so avoidable.”
“So I don’t know how many players have noticed yet, but there has been a massive increase in botting activity in the servers over the past week or so. It’s gotten so bad at this point, that many quest mobs in zones like STV (Stranglethorn Vale) are being camped 24/7 and it’s near impossible to tag spawns or complete the quests by yourself. And you want to know the main cause? Rogue bots.”
They note that the bots “are patrolling certain areas like the Hemet Nesingwary quest spawns and are farming the mobs constantly. They walk around the area in stealth so that you can’t notice them or target them at all, so it’s near impossible to catch and report them. I myself have seen upwards of six+ Rogue bots in one area alone and it seems they’re not getting punished.”
Concluding with a plea for Blizzard to “do something about this,” the commenter says that “I want to see this game thrive but I don’t see it happening if the botting problem gets out of hand again.”
The comments section of the post is pretty bleak, however, with players noting that “there’s just no way Blizzard will fix it” as bots are effectively “NPCs that pay Blizzard $15 a month.”
Another echoes this, writing that if the MMO behemoths “don’t ban them super often, the bot runners will be more likely to rebuy accounts when they do actually do the occasional ban wave.”
While the community’s faith in the developers seems to have hit an all-time low, we’ll have to see if more changes are implemented to combat these pesky cheaters in the future.