Hello to all you fans of fair play and justice! Do I have some news for you: Blizzard has unleashed a new wave of bans against botters in World of Warcraft. Six months seems to be the standard term but, as detailed in a forum post by community manager Lore, there are reparations to boot. Gold, PvP currencies and even gear deemed to be ill-gotten has been removed from botters' accounts, with harsher levies against repeat offenders.
This spate of bans is doubly interesting for hitting the HonorBuddy bot, as the screenshot from the HonorBuddy forums below demonstrates.
In May, over 100,000 accounts were banned for using HonorBuddy. It was the first time it had been detected, and creator Bossland GmbH vowed to release a new version. Then, in November, TorrentFreak reported that Blizzard had allegedly obtained the source code for Heroes of the Storm bot StormBuddy from James 'Apoc' Enright, a Bossland freelancer, amid legal proceedings against the company.
There's something I like about the idea of cheaters logging in six months on to find their character broke, chilly and confused, although stocks in the middle of Orgrimmar would be my go-to punishment. I am a goody two-shoes though, so if you'd like to get into the mindset of your garden-variety cheater, Emanuel Maiberg has the investigation for you.
