Blizzard's Brilliant Bot Ban Bonanza

In WoW, the average player will probably be disrupted about once a day with a message from a gold seller. This will be a message offering to sell gold, items, leveling, even cheating programs and hacks, for real-life money. Apparently gold selling is an actual industry in China, according to whispers on the WoW forums telling of sweatshop-condition warehouses where starving children labour over hot LCD screens gathering gold pieces and desperately whoring their illicit goods to whoever will listen.

That bizarre and depressing thought aside, many gold sellers instead use botting programs, which are software programs that will automatically play the game for you. These programs can be very basic, such as telling your character to attack the nearest monster, collect the loot, then attack the nearest monster, etc. Others can be much more complex, essentially becoming basic programming. A moderately advanced botting program could have a slew of conditional reactions set up, like log out if someone whispers you more than once, wave at people who come near, fight back if someone attacks you - in other words, act more like a real person. One can clearly see why such programs would be helpful to people who are trying to get massive amounts of gold to resell for cash.

Blizzard has made it very clear that botting or other third-person software programs that play the game for you or automate the game are against their terms of service and are not allowed. However, people still do it. BUT NOT ANYMORE.

This week, Blizzard banned over 350,000 accounts for botting.

Coincidentally, the much-hyped Age of Conan MMO game was also released this week.

The forums are ablaze with people who used botting programs whining and complaining that the bans are unfair. "I only used it once" or "I just used it because leveling was getting boring" are some of the common excuses. Many are also resorting to angry retorts that WoW sucks and WoW players are losers, followed by vows to switch over to Age of Conan in retribution. I love these ones, where they're trying to convince themselves that they decided to leave the game instead of being kicked out. It's like the kid who gets fired for stealing from the cash register, only to angrily yell at his now-former boss "You can't fire me! Because I QUIT!!"

Not only are these complaints hilarious, but it's actually a brilliant move by Blizzard. They have a) purged hundreds of thousands of cheaters from their game, which makes for a better gaming experience for the legitimate players, and b) royally screwed over an upcoming competitor by sending said cheaters over to their door. If I was starting Age of Conan and immediately upon starting the game was pestered by hundreds of spammers trying to sell me gold and items, I would be extremely irritated.

I can just imagine the Age of Conan team upon learning of these bans.
"Okay guys, the game is launched, this is it! We're going to have the best game ever! It's going to have a solid fanbase, loyal players, quality fun, we'll be able to compete with World of Warcraft...what's that, what are you looking at?"
"Blizzard just banned 350,000 botters."
"Oh."
"The botters are mad."
"Okay..."
"They're saying they're going to switch over to Age of Conan."
"Oh. Oh no. OH SHIT. Quick, close the registration page!"
"Too late. 100,000 people just signed up."
"Well, fuck."