A 70-year-old World of Warcraft fan could not play the MMO for six months after being flagged as a bot and banned. The situation was ultimately resolved, though, after a Reddit post blew up last week, so things have led to a happy ending.
One of the 70-year-old’s children took to the World of Warcraft subreddit last week to ask for help as contracting Blizzard support and GMs apparently yielded little result. They explained that their father had been banned for six months “for basically playing the game a way that Blizzard assumes bots do,” even though he was playing no differently to how he had been for the past decade.
“He’s been playing WoW since the original launch of Burning Crusade,” they explain. “He’s a 70-year-old guy who loves to quest around and level new characters. He also doesn’t talk much in chat at all. To the outside perspective… yeah, he seems like a bot. But, it’s an old guy playing who loves the fantasy elements of the game and the world. He’s probably made close to ten hunters at this point.”
The post then gained enough momentum to attract the attention of one of Blizzard’s Customer Support team, which eventually led to the 70-year-old WoW fan getting his account back.
In July 2021, the state of California filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard alleging years of workplace discrimination and harassment. The story has since embroiled CEO Bobby Kotick and prompted the US federal government to open an investigation. It continues to unfold and to be of immense importance to the game industry. You can catch up on all the developments so far in this regularly updated explainer article.
In a follow-up post, one of his children explains that he was ecstatic when he heard the news, wasting little time in jumping back on and getting into the grind. We also got a snap of the 70-year-old father happily sitting next to his PC chuffed as can be, which is very wholesome indeed.