Wave of Bans Precedes the Launch of The Burning Crusade Classic
Blizzard has prepared an unusual surprise for World of Warcraft players. It took the form of a wave of bans for the use of external programs, both connected to bots and enabling the use of a controller in WoW Classic.
- World of Warcraft gamers report about numerous bans for people using additional programs;
- The bans covered both cheaters using bots and tools facilitating multiboxing, as well as people playing WoW Classic on gamepads with the help of ConsolePort;
- Blizzard has already revoked some of the bans associated with the use of tools that do not modify the game.
Next Monday will bring the second debut of The Burning Crusade expansion, this time for World of Warcraft Classic. However, apparently Blizzard has decided to precede the event with a massive wave of bans. In all cases, the bans were imposed for a period of over 180 days, as reported by users on Reddit and on the company's official forum.
Bans affected, among others, people using bots, which was noted with satisfaction by Internet users. However, users of more innocent third-party programs were also hurt. The harmed are, for example, gamers playing on controllers with the help of the ConsolePort tool and those using the appearance-changing Imorph and Jmorph. In the case of the first of these "add-ons", its creator Munk took the floor. On Discord he assured that he contacted Blizzard, and expressed confidence that the company will withdraw the bans imposed on people using ConsolePort.
Indeed, many affected users regained access to their accounts after sending a complaint to the publisher's tech support. At least in the case of ConsolePort, because so far there have been no reports of bans being revoked for the players using Imorph or Jmorph. Both of these tools violate the license agreement and people using them have already become the target of Blizzard's 'banhammer' once before. Blizzard eventually lifted the ban on programs that only modified the game on the user's side (the likes of Imorph and Jmorph), but the company said it would be less lenient in the future. ConsolePort is - according to Munk, indirectly confirmed on the publisher's official forum - 'supported' by Blizzard as the only way to play WoW Classic on a gamepad (the original offers native support since the release of Shadowlands).
It's unclear at this point what caused the large number of bans, which, according to comments from unrepentant bot cheaters, probably wasn't the result of players sending in reports. Munk suspects it may have something to do with Blizzard's new policy on so-called multi-boxing or simultaneously playing on multiple accounts. In May, the company once again modified the user license to restrict the practice (albeit only with hardware and software tweaks; multiboxing as such does not violate the EULA). However, there are also suspicions that not ConsolePort is guilty here, but the WoWmapper it uses, which is responsible for recording and converting controller signals.
Whatever the reason, the affected players (and scammers) don't hide their frustration. It's hardly surprising since being banned for months just before the release of a 'new' and highly anticipated expansion is especially painful.
