Blizzard allegedly knows bots are ruining WoW’s economy and is doing nothing about it

Cheating and botting have always been part of the gaming industry, no matter how hard companies try to root it out. World of Warcraft is no exception to this and has quite a large boosting, gold-selling, and botting community. Recently, the prices of WoW tokens have reached the highest value in the past two years, and players claim Blizzard knows about this and is doing nothing.

According to a post on WoW’s subreddit from Sept. 19, the main reason why WoW token in-game gold value has skyrocketed and continues to grow every day is because “farmers/botters are making millions of gold a day and have been for at least 8 months.” Blizzard, reportedly, is aware of this exploit that’s been reported time and time again. but is apparently doing nothing to stop it. 

According to reports, these players have been abusing a critical bug in WoW, and then using that same gold to buy WoW tokens, leading the economy toward inflation and potential collapse. 

The bug reportedly involves Chromie Time, and breaking the game in a way that would result in level 45 mobs dropping level 70 loot.

“Anyone curious, there’s a Chromie exploit allowing level 45 mobs to drop level 70 loot. You just vendor it all. It’s around 1.2m raw gold a day if done right… It’s been around since the beginning of Dragonflight. It’s a problem because normal players wouldn’t get much to abuse this, but bots doing it all day for months on end can make a living off of it, causing in-game prices to soar,” one player explained. 

While some fans are claiming this exploit was hotfixed a few weeks back, others are saying it still works, but with three players—one phased into Chromie Time, while two players are outside it. 

“Go to where you want to farm, Chromie guy invites the non-Chromie guys and enables party sync. One non-Chromie guy mounts the Tundra vendor mount and ejects the vendors. The other guy gets on the vendor seat, then the Chromie guy kicks that guy from the group. He gets ejected off the mount but stays in the Chromie phase,” another player commented explaining how this method is apparently done today.

Since this exploit has such a large influence on the in-game economy, many are now wondering why Blizzard still hasn’t severely punished these botters. Apparently, Blizzard isn’t focusing its energy on banning players due to such behavior because players are admitting instances left and right where they have exploited the system without even getting a slap on the wrist.

“Every exploit I’ve done in this game came with zero punishment. Whether it’s a cheap way to one-shot players in PvP, a way to AFK and gain EXP, or to farm massive amounts of gold,” one player admitted in the post. 

If anything, Blizzard should take this as a lesson and focus on developing anti-cheating systems that would eradicate such players, and give WoW a new lease on life.

Dot Esports has reached out to Blizzard for comment but has received no communication at the time of publishing.