The Warden's existence was acknowledged in March 2008, during the opening legal proceedings against MDY Industries.The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Arizona, and also listed Michael Donnelly as a defendant. Donnelly was included in the suit as the creator of MMO Glider, software that can automatically play many tasks in the game. Blizzard claimed the software is an infringement of its copyright and software license agreement, stating that "Glider use severely harms the WoW gaming experience for other players by altering the balance of play, disrupting the social and immersive aspects of the game, and undermining the in-game economy". Donnelly claims to have sold 100,000 copies of the $25 software.

  As with many MMORPGs, companies emerged offering to sell virtual gold and other associated services to players. After Blizzard started offering free trial gameplay accounts, players started receiving increasing numbers of spam sent by bots in the virtual mailboxes of their characters, advertising these services.One study shows that this problem is particularly prevalent on the European realms, with gold being over 14 times more expensive to buy on US realms than their European counterparts. In patch 2.1, Blizzard responded to this by adding additional anti-spam mechanics including whisper throttling and the report spam function. Additionally, trial accounts are prevented from speaking in the public chat channels (although they may speak to players within range or whisper to other players that have first whispered them), participating in-game trades, using the Auction House and the mail feature and several other limitations. In May 2007 Blizzard filed a complaint against In Game Dollar LLC (trading as peons4hire) in federal court. In February 2008, the parties filed a consent decree in which In Game Dollar agreed to refrain from using any World of Warcraft chat or communication to advertise any business or sell any services relating to World of Warcraft.