Blizzard Entertainment, creator of World of Warcraft, recently banned more than 100,000 World of Warcraft accounts because of “botting”. As a result, the maker of a bot called Honorbuddy has decided to close Honorbuddy Authentication. This decision means that people who were using the Honorbuddy bot will no longer be able to do so.
Honorbuddy is a bot. Some World of Warcraft players were using it because it automated certain things in the game for them. For example, it was possible to use Honorbuddy to automatically cause your character to gather resources, level the character, and a variety of other things.
Blizzard Community Manager Lore recently posted information about the ban on the World of Warcraft forums. The forum post was titled “Recent Actions Against Botting in WoW”. The key part was this:
We’ve recently taken action against a large number of World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay, known as “bots”. We’re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft, and will continue to take action against those found in violation of our Terms of Use. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated.
There was no mention of any particular bot in the forum post. However, it appears that Honorbuddy might have been one of the bots that banned players were using. There is a post on the Honorbuddy forum titled “Honorbuddy Bans Statement”. Part of it said:
It seems like Honorbuddy was detected, we are not sure, but looking at BAN THREADS, we think that is the most likely option atm.
We are sorry for all your lost WOW Accounts, hopefully you can use them again after the 6 months ban is lifted. I have read here in the forums a bit, a lot of the accounts where [sic] 10 years old. This is a pity. We always say, do not use your valuable accounts as the risk is always there.
…With Honorbuddy you thought that we are unbeatable, we never thought that, we’ve succeeded since 2010 – Honorbuddy had not a single software detection. It seems there is one now.
…You ask yourself what happens next? For now we closed our Honorbuddy Authentication, when we know more details we will inform you.
The Honorbuddy website has a disclaimer at the bottom that says “This website is not associated with Activision Blizzard Inc. and Honorbuddy may be against their TOS/EULA.”