Wrath of the Lich King Classic Getting Original Death Knight Restrictions to Combat RMT

mmorpg.com:

Last fall, when Blizzard releasedWrath of the Lich King Classic to World of Warcraft Classic, one of the things that was missing from this release was the level gating originally required in order to create a Death Knight.  This requirement is coming back next week in Classic in order to combat RMT and exploits.

When the original expansion was released, there was a requirement that you have a level 55 character before you could create a Death Knight. For the release of breath of the Lich King classic, this was waived for your first Death Knight. If you wanted to create subsequent Death Knight characters, that level 55 gate would come back into place. The team wanted to lower the barrier for launch to let players jump into the expansion content.

WoW Classic producer Aggrend explained the change:

“We felt it was very important for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King classic to give anyone who wanted to hop into this iconic expansion the ability to do so with as few barriers as possible. Allowing every account access to Death Knights-- even if they did not meet the historic requirements --was important. However, now that the initial launch period has passed, we no longer wish to allow the unrestricted creation of Death Knights on brand new accounts. It’s a tempting vector for malicious actors to use to get into the game and start exploiting very quickly.”

The announcement notes that the team has removed nearly 120,000 accounts from World of Warcraft, including from Classic, over the past several weeks. This number is above their usual ongoing banwaves against malicious activities.

The hope is that putting that gate back into Classic will stem some of these attempts. Letting us all know that it will happen next week still