http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index...140C2A48.app03

In our continued efforts to combat cheating in World of Warcraft, more than 76,000 accounts were closed and 11 million gold was removed from the game economies in Europe, Korea, and the US in the month of September. The closed accounts were associated with activities that violate World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, such as using third-party programs that allow cheating, and farming gold and items. These types of activities can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to our Hacks Team by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.

You could really feel it when it happened on EU realms, places like Azshara or Winterspring had at least 20-30 hunter bots grinding Furbolgs 24/7, after weekly maintenance there were none. There still aren't much herbs left to pick up unless you go farming during raiding prime time, but at least farmers you see are real humans. Those who buy such things reported gold prices also jumped up by 50-100% that week.

Yup - 2k gold was going for around 70 bucks, the next day the price had jumped to $160.

Excellent.