Blizzard is a company who are famed for vigorously policing the elements of their games. Up until now it has been the cheaters on their Battle.net servers which continue to support vibrant Diablo and communities. As of yesterday, dodgy gamers playing their insanely popular massively have begun to have their collars felt too.

Over one thousand subscribers have been banned by for infringing the rules in the game's EULA. Specifically, these shifty folk were expelled from the game for farming gold in the game, which they then sold on to other players for real world money. The practice of selling game content for cold hard cash has been a long established trend in the realm of MMORPGs. It's a system which unbalances the gameworld, disturbs the flow of play for considerate gamers by camping item spawn points and generally causes a nuisance. In recent times companies have sprung up which employ people to mine MMORPGs for items and in-game currency which can then be sold on by these opportunistic scrubbers for a large wedge of real money. Given their track record on banning huge swathes of cheaters, it's no surprise that Blizzard are taking such determined measures against those who exploit the game's mechanics for personal financial gain.

Blizzard's in-game support manager Maleki had this to say: "We do not condone such actions and will take decisive as they are against our policy and damage the game economy as a whole. We will continue researching this matter. If you suspect someone of taking part in said gold farming, please email the report to wowgm@blizzard.com."

Unfortunately this means a certain staff member can't blame in-game cheating for the tardiness of his WoW review...

By Sam Gibson