I’m talking about within World of Warcraft.

A recent post by Bornakk, the community manager for World of Warcraft at Blizzard, includes an update to the game which is causing quite the stir within the player community.

The word out on the street is:

Wait - what?! I AFK and my account is now BANNED? WTF^^!

But there is more to it than that. After asking some who have frustrated experiences and are hailing this update as godsent - or happy developer sent, as the case may be - I’m discovering this to actually be a good thing, not a bad one - this should be embraced with the same fervor as the banning of farmers.

A plague upon the Battlegrounds has been occurring which is allowing people to exploit the honor system while within the zone. While within the [battlegrounds] zone, regardless if you’re fighting or not, as long as you’re there and alive, you receive honor points. This left a window open to the world of exploiters, causing players to locate pockets, or to go so far as to have a script running that summarily shows their in-game characters to be running into the walls while the person on the other side of the computer screen is off doing something else.

This misuse of the Battlegrounds game mechanic is considered an exploit. So if you find yourself wondering why your account is no longer accessible, it may be because you have gone AFK within the battlegrounds.

Though the word on the street is that accounts are being banned, in fact, they are only being suspended - however, that is not the end to the severity of Blizzard’s strike against the people abusing the system.  For those who call customer service and have their accounts reactivated, they are coming back finding that any and all items earned during their AFK period in the battle grounds have been stripped.

There were more updates released as well, so if you’re interested, be sure to check the post linked at the beginning of this article.