Personally, I don't think blizzard will have all these accounts suspended for the full 6 months. It would be too hard of a hit for them with how money-hungry they are. Think about it..why would they just do a 6 month ban instead of a permanent ban? I don't think people will wait around for 6 months nor do I think people will make new accounts just to pass the time until their banned accounts get reactivated. I could be wrong but I'm calling blizzard's bluff on this one calling it a scare-tactic to shake up the community. Too many people will lose friends/guild mates/raiders/leaders due to bans and will just end up not playing themselves - though i know many will make or find new ones. In addition I think there are too many people who bot thinking to themselves that the game isn't worth playing without the bot (myself included). Only time will tell but I am highly skeptical and think blizzard has ultieror motives and this is too big of a risk at too little of a reward financially - at the end of the day blizzard is still a business that runs on capital. Thoughts?
I haven't played for probably 3 months, which is odd seeing as their logs go back 63 days. However they are down from 10 million subs to 7.1 and ALL the people who just got banned will also likely quit the game. So I'm guessing this is the end of WoW. I'm assuming between EU, US, KR, CN, they are down another 2 million (only they know how many) which leaves them at around 5 million active accounts (depending on how you subscribed). They don't want to actually Ban anyone (except for those who have already been hit previously) because they are going to be bleeding money as is.
I wasn't going to play Warlords to begin with. Actually I was going to quit but then decided I'd finally give botting a try. This is just the nail in the coffin for me and I don't play any other Blizzard games so best of luck to Blizzard.
As a side note, everyone I was playing with, not including a few exceptions, had basically quit already. Barely logging in, no longer showing up for raids, etc. 10 years and I won't be playing again in November. Wow's boring and I'm not a kid anymore.
I think ultimately MMO's are a dying breed. It's mind boggling that the most successful and king of MMOs is one that is a decade old.
To shed some light on what 10 years in gaming is:
Nintendo offically announced the Revolution later named the Wii
Nintendo launches the DS
Doom 3 is released
Counter-Strike Source and Half-Life 2 are released
Ninja Gaiden is released on the XBOX
Battlefield Vietname is released on PC
Unreal Tournament 2004 is released on PC
Far Cry is released on PC
Final Fantasy X1 is released on the PS2
Manhunt comes outs for XBox and PC
City of Heroes Launches on PC
Thief Deadly Shadows on Xbox and PC
Legend of Zelda: Four Sword on Game Cube Nintendo
Silent Hill 4: The Room on PS2 and Xbox
The Sims 2
Fable
Star Wars: Battlefront for PS2 and Xbox
Kill Zone
Halo 2
and finally World of Warcraft
In that time MMOs have gone from a niche to mainstream but not a single other MMO (Wildstar, GW, GW2, Rift, Age of Conan, Warhammer, SWTOR, Star Trek, LOTRO, Champions, DC Online, Darkfall, D&D Online, Matrix Online, Neverwinter, TERA) has anyone even gotten close to WoW. It's just a boring game type at this point, which is why so many of us bot. We want to play with our friends but the whole level up, grind out a character, rinse and repeat has been overdone. It takes way too much time to get to the meat and potatoes of a game which is why other genres like MOBAs are doing so well. Character Development, PVE, PVE, Leveling, Competetive, Social but you don't have to spend a week getting to max level to play.