WoW Forever: mage abilities changed to slow bots

Blizzard has said that its work against bots in WoW: Forever now reaches into class design itself. Asked about real-money trading in an interview, the team said one big area it is working on is limiting the class abilities that make bot farming possible, and that certain mage talents and abilities have been changed to make it harder for a single player to farm an instance for gold or experience.

That is a pointed place to aim. Solo instance farming by a mage is one of the oldest money engines in the game, and it is also the shape of work a bot does best: one character, one route, repeated for hours, with no group around to notice. Taking the tools away at the class level goes at the practice itself instead of chasing accounts afterwards.

The punishments are being sharpened alongside it. The team said it has gone back through its policies and arrived at a set that escalates far faster for buyers, up to and including permanent bans, with new systems behind it. It would not give specifics, calling the whole thing a cat and mouse game in which saying too much would tip their hand.

What it would say is that it is watching closely, and that trading real money for in-game wealth is not worth the risk to an account. Blizzard has already closed accounts on the beta over buying.