In what may be the most epic banning ever, Blizzard banned some 300k Battle.net accounts on both Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft servers - reason being violation of the Terms of Use. These account holders most likely practiced some form of cheating or account hacking. The official statement from Blizzard reads:

"We've recently banned over 320,000 Warcraft III and Diablo II accounts that were found to be violating the Battle.net Terms of Use. If this is a first offense, the CD key associated with the banned account will be suspended for 30 days, while repeat offenders will see their keys banned permanently. All account ban decisions are final.

We would like all players to remember that abuse of unintended mechanics and/or use of third party programs is a violation of the agreement made when signing on to Battle.net, and can subject your account to disciplinary action up to and including a permanent ban of its access to the service.

These types of activities can severely impact the stability of our servers, and we'll continue to aggressively monitor Battle.net in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips emailed to our hacks team by legitimate Battle.net users."

Looks like the banhammer Blizzard wields is imbued and equipped, so think twice before considering your path. With the upcoming installments of Starcraft, Diablo, and the ever-growing World of Warcraft, you can only assume there are eyes watching every move.

Source: CVG