The WOW against terrorism
Now the bastards are using bots. (With apologies to Dave Barry. Er, this is an item about World of Warcraft, incidentally, since it probably isn't obvious...)
Having banned a whole bunch of users from the plains of Azeroth last week, World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has now ejected another 300 or so users guilty of using bot programs to automate their characters' actions and advance their progress without actually being at the keyboard.
"We have recently verified that certain individuals were using third party 'bot' programs to automate their characters in World of Warcraft," the developer wrote on its official website yesterday. "The use of bots is a violation of the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and is absolutely prohibited. Therefore, the accounts identified as having used bots have been banned."
As before, the developer encourages players who suspect someone else of cheating or using some manner of hack or bot to report them to hacks@blizzard.com. World of Warcraft, released in the US in late November, should be available in Europe in early 2005, and if you pre-order it you should also gain access to the ongoing European beta test.