Blizzard Entertainment announced Thursday that it is banning more than 100,000 "World of Warcraft" players for a six-month period due to cheating in player versus player (PvP) battlegrounds with third party programs and interrupt-scripts.

A screen shot of a GM chat posted on Imgur states that the player suspensions will last for six months and affect at least 100,000 accounts.

The game developer and publisher posted this message on its website Thursday:

"We've recently taken action against a large number of World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay, known as 'bots.' We're committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft, and will continue to take action against those found in violation of our Terms of Use. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated."

Daily Dot reports that the "bots" are software programs that automate specific processes in the online role-playing game so that "World of Warcraft" players do not need to perform repetitive tasks to access fresh game content.

Botting in massively multiplayer online (MMO) games has become widespread. In "World of Warcraft," unscrupulous players uses botting to spam the Trade Channel and to farm PvP Honor Points, among other things. The practice ruins the game for the other players. When the game is overrun by bots it is still playable, but very frustrating for players.

People beyond the hardcore PvP botters have been banned as well for exploiting game mechanics using programs that perform the damage per second (DPS) rotations in raids, make item crafting automatic and more. These players must wait six months to rejoin WoW, too.

"World of Warcraft" has a subscriber base of 7.1 million people worldwide. The multiplayer role-playing game was released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which started with "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans" in 1994.