Originally Posted by
Inahu
It might or might not help. In any event, it's another piece of information that can be used to identify a cheater. On the whole pre-paid card issue, that's one thing I've thought should be dumped for quite a while, but for a completely different reason (it's another method for people under 18 to play the game, and I'd just rather they didn't).
And yes, that is exactly my idea. I honestly wouldn't care if your friends were banned in Vanilla and could never play again. I wouldn't care if my friends were banned and could never play again if they cheated in an MMORPG, moreso if it was something they agreed not to do when they signed up.
Honestly, I've cheated in video games before. Single-player offline video games where my score or performance isn't submitted to any sort of scoreboard. If you're cheating in an online game, or a game where your scores obtained through cheating are being submitted against those who played fairly, you deserve everything that you get for the negative impact you make on others' experience in that game.
Blizzard already retains the right to terminate your access to their accounts at any time, for any or no reason, with or without notice. I know more about what you clumsily described as "legal aspects" than you might suspect, or know yourself (as I suspect), though I must admit I'm not intimately aware of the minutiae of Blizzard's ToS/EULA structure at different levels (such as battle.net account, WoW service, Starcraft service, etc).
The only way in which it would be costly to Blizzard is that they would not continue to earn subscription fees from banned accounts. They reserve the right to ban those accounts right after the monthly subscription payment goes through, although that'd be perhaps a little too shrewd.