A while ago I posted this artical regarding Blizzard Europe banning some 114,000 accounts on the European realms for botting/gold selling.
Two months later and the impact of this action is now rearing its ugly head. I have been levelling a new character and it is becomming increasingly difficult as every area I have entered to date has been infested with bots.

Quests are almost impossible to complete when the mobs I need to kill are non existant because of the 5 bots in the area killing them all as soon as they spawn.
So far my character has been in the following zones and I have had problems with bots in ALL of them.

The barrens, 1k Needles/ Shimmering flats, Hillsbrad, Alterac, Arathi, Desolace, ST, and Badlands. Stranglethorn Vale is a particularly bad spot - in one small area alone I counted 8 bots.

I made a post about this on Blizzard’s forum but it was locked with no response from Blizzard.
Also here is a second post by another player - locked and unanswered…again.

I’ll end this artical with what I wrote to Blizzard;

While I appriciate it may take time to investigate, My issue here is that making mass bans has a very negitive impact on genuine players.

I would like to hear from a Blizzard representitive suggestions as to what I should do while I wait for these bots to be banned - because its not like I can go to an alternative area , all of these areas have bots in and I don’t see why I should be forced to grind xp.

Has it become a situation where I have to risk my own account and use a bot in order to compete?