In one of its occasional purges, Blizzard has announced that it has banned over 320,000 player accounts for its action-RPG title Diablo II and its fantasy RTS game Warcraft III. According to a message board post, Blizzard said the people behind the banned accounts "were found to be violating the Battle.net Terms of Use"

It's likely that most of the bans were due to players using third party hacks and programs for those games. Blizzard states, "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." First time bans will have their account suspended for 30 days but repeat offenders have had their accounts banned permanently.