In Warcraft lore, the Death Knights really are a formidable legion of undead warriors, raised from death to battle forever more. So it’s kind of thematically appropriate, if still annoying, that they’ve become bot farmers’ favorite class in WOTLK Classic Gold: Wrath from the Lich King Classic, flooding servers using their mindless grinding.
The reason? In both the initial and Classic releases of Wrath from the Lich King, Death Knights start at level 55, only 15 levels shy from the level cap. Originally, you needed another character in the same level or over to create one. But in Wrath Classic, Blizzard waived that requirement — presumably looking to tempt back players who have been nostalgic for just one of WoW’s best classes (and expansions), but didn’t wish to grind to obtain there. That made the Death Knight a perfect shortcut for bot farmers on fresh accounts, looking to obtain endgame grinding as fast as possible.
Blizzard continues to be forced to act, reinstating the restriction on creating Death Knights from the initial game, and banning as many as 120,000 offending accounts inside a special wave.
“Over recent years weeks, we’ve taken actions that removed almost 120,000 malicious accounts in the World of Warcraft ecosystem, including both Wraths from the Lich King Classic and Classic Era. This is along with our usual, ongoing brainwaves, which frequently include actions against thousands of accounts each week,” WoW Classic producer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield wrote around the game’s official forum.
Explaining the choice to reinstate the restriction on creating Death Knights, Greenfield said, “We felt it had been very important for that launch of Wrath from the Lich King Classic to provide anyone who desired to hop into this iconic expansion a chance to do so with as few barriers as you possibly can. Allowing every account use of Death Knights — even when they did not satisfy the historic requirements — was important. However, since the initial launch period has transpired, we no more wish to permit the unrestricted development of Death Knights on completely new accounts. It’s a tempting vector for malicious actors to use to obtain into the sport and start exploiting quickly.”
The decision seems largely to possess gone down well using the wotlk classic gold community, although for some it had been too late, otherwise too little. “I’m likely, to be frank, they’ve been ruining a sizable portion of the game for months now,” said one player around the official forum.