Got a U.S. Trade Sanction Over Your Head? No World of Warcraft for You! – Tech Thursday

For the record, I am not a World of Warcraft fan. I got burnt out on the whole fantasy Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing game back with Everquest. But this was kind of interesting to me so I wanted to share it.

Because of trade sanctions and other penalties being imposed on Iran, because they don't want to stop building nukes, or playing nice with others, World of Warcraft's publisher, Blizzard, has blocked access to the game for users who are from countries that have a trade sanction in place with the United States, Iran being one of them. When the ban hammer fell on these users, the Blizzard message boards were filled with angry posts about not being able to connect.

Shortly after that, Blizzard revealed that because of the trade sanctions, that they have to block them by U.S. law since they are a U.S. based company,and they just tightened their procedures for complying. I'm guessing someone from the government WoW account hacked by someone in the middle east and is crying about it.

These now banned customers now have no recourse but to take it, or use the millions of proxies and other software out there to hide where they are from. The only real inconvience will be that these users will not be able to access their old accounts and will have to start grinding with a whole new character. I guess nobody learns from the saga of The Pirate Bay.

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