Bots are terrorizing World of Warcraft Classic servers, stealing precious resources, monopolizing rare monsters, and inflating the virtual economy with truckloads of illicitly earned gold. Today, WoW Classic developer Blizzard Entertainment announced it has suspended or closed over 74,000 WoW Classic accounts over the last month, many of which were automating gameplay with bots. For months, clusters of bot-driven accounts have trawled around high-level zones, attacking monsters with uncanny precision before rotating toward their next target in robotic 90-degree angles. These in-game characters are operated by scripts, programmed to optimally kill monsters and obtain rare, valuable items that drop from them. Lately, they've been targeting the sought-after Black Lotus, a necessary item for some competitive, high-level play.

With BlizzCon 2018 kicking off today, attendees and virtual ticket holders will finally get to try out World of Warcraft Classic, a full year after it was first announced. For the uninitiated, that's the massively multiplayer online game in its original form before the expansions altered everything. As part of the launch, Blizzard is laying down some ground rules for those playing at home to cope with high demand, including a 60 minute playtime limit and 90 minute "cooldown" period. Here's how the session restrictions work: If you play for 30 minutes and then log off for 60 minutes, for example, when you come back you'll have a fresh 60 minutes of play time. Alternatively, if you play for 60 minutes, you'll be disconnected and then have to wait 30 minutes before you can play again.