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72-hour Suspension, No idea what for, need advice
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Post by
MikadoGG
Hello guys. So I've been playing on my current account since the end of BC. Never had even a several hour suspension before. My biggest "notice" ever was two name-changes (apparently some inappropriate names, nothing really offensive, but still forced to change, last one of the two was years ago). Yesterday, try to log on, all of a sudden get error that said "License banned." I freak out of course because over so many years of playing I've never really had any actions taken against my account and I am MORE than 100% sure I have never used bots/hacks, only ever downloaded popular addons from curse.com.
I am at my wit's end at this point, I submitted a ticket through their website and it got answered later that night. They said they reviewed the activity on my account and found that their initial findings were accurate (as in I was indeed botting/hacking or whatever they meant by it since they provided zero details/evidence) but that they were changing it from permanent ban to 72-hour suspension. Now the problem with this is that now I'm afraid to even log into my account when it gets unlocked, because I still have no clue as to what got me into this mess in the first place and if I go about my usual routine I might do "it" again (whatever "it" is). Now, let me stress that I have never hacked, duped items, used a bot to gather, for pet battles, pvp or anything else. I am now trying to ticket it to get more information but something tells me they won't give out any details.
My account has a LOT of gold, gathered mats etc but all earned legitimately by gathering, professions and such (and yes, I do gather compulsively but not like 10 hours a day or anything and not even every day). I asked the rep and he told me they CAN determine whether the client is being used by an actual player or by a bot, but now I'm having serious doubts how true that statement is.
Has anyone ever had this happen before? Anyone have any idea how this could've happened? Maybe some addon is all of sudden illegal as of recently (like I said I use pretty popular addons from curse.com)? Maybe some other advice how to handle this situation?
I used to read threads back in the day from people banned for botting or hacking who claimed to have no idea what they did wrong, and used to think to myself "You probably botted at some point and you don't wanna admit it now" but I definitely take that back. I bet now that some of those people really did get the banhammer completely unfairly and I feel bad for thinking they had to be lying.
Thanks for reading this, any advice is appreciated.
P.S. I tried googling about this, but the majority of results I'm getting are from actual botting forums, so that's no help since most of those people are talking about getting banned for actual use of bots.
Post by
Nathanyal
The best advice I can give is give them a call. Talking to someone is much easier than trying to get info through a ticket.
Other than that, I'm not really sure what else to say. If you haven't been hacked/key-logged then I'm not sure how you were caught botting/hacking in-game.
Post by
jcf190
You receive an e-mail detailing any actions taken against your account.
Post by
Grotto
Have you visited and left open any websites linked to gold buying, character buying, character leveling, item buying, etc... while logged onto WoW. If so, then it's a possibility Blizzard thought you were using the banned actions, regardless if you actually did or did not.
Post by
MikadoGG
I submitted a ticket asking for at least general information of what I was banned for, you know, bots for gathering, or pet battles or whatever else and the response I got was:
"Greetings,
We have conducted an additional review of the action taken against the World of Warcraft account (removed) and have arrived at the same conclusion. We have determined the account is in violation of the World of Warcraft Terms of Use (
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/legal/wow_tou.html
). As such, the action will not be removed or changed.
This action was applied due to one or more characters on this account were identified using an unauthorized cheat program, also known as a ""hack."". These programs provide character benefits normally not achievable in the World of Warcraft. Such benefits include, but are not limited to, increased speed, teleportation, or running through walls/boundaries. Use of these unauthorized programs harm the game environment because they offer an unfair advantage over other players and superscede the intended limits of the game.
Even if this behavior is the result of a third party accessing the account instead of the registered user (for example, a friend, family member, or leveling service) then the account can still be held responsible for the penalty because of the impact it had on the game environment."
So apparently I was somehow speed hacking or teleporting or something like that, which I have to admit, is huge news to me since I've only ever heard of that stuff since Vanilla. I find this situation to be all the more ironic because I've always tried so hard to abide by the ToS and have reported hundreds of actual bots just in MOP( you know, those under level 90s who glitch through the air on windriders in Pandaria, gathering mining nodes). I have huge doubts as to whether they actually bothered to check my activity or if I just got a cookie-cutter response of "yeah, we checked, too bad."
True, I gather a lot on my druid, but it'd have to be one damn sophisticated bot who can gather, go afk, come back, kill a rare, do a pet battle, continue mining/herbing, switch characters, do the Tillers farm, switch back, mine some more. Not to mention my account is quite loaded is more ways than one and I'd have to be EXTREMELY retarded to lose all my progress over some ore or speed hack: I have 5 level 90s with ilevel ranging between 505 and 530, 540 unique battle pets, 220 mounts, over 18k achievement points, ALL progressions at 600 at least once (some more than once), in addition to 1.6 million gold ALL legitimately acquired over the last 3 expansions.
To be honest, since yesterday this situation has sunk in more and now I'm not even angry any more, just extremely disappointed in Blizzard. I put way too much trust in the past in their ability to handle things, and always gave them glowing ratings. Now my experience has been incredibly tainted. Before this incident I didn't even contemplate quitting and now I don't even know if I should put any more time into this game if ALL my progress can be arbitrarily wiped through no fault of my own.
Post by
jcf190
It seems to me like you have too much invested in the game. You got caught cheating. Be glad you didn't lose everything and move on.
Post by
MikadoGG
It seems to me like you have too much invested in the game. You got caught cheating. Be glad you didn't lose everything and move on.
I didn't get caught cheating. I got unfairly accused of cheating. I have no reason to lie on wowhead, this isn't going to erase my suspension or anything, I was just trying to get advice if someone has been through a situation like this before. If you think I'm lying by default then why come here and post? To spread your negativity? What benefit am I going to get by lying about it here? Are you really that daft?
My point is that I have no clue what I did wrong, I've never cheated or botted, and now my gaming experience is completely tainted because I have no idea what I did in-game to deserve the suspension. And if this happened to me it could easily happen to someone else.
Post by
Jkpman
I didn't get caught cheating. I got unfairly accused of cheating. I have no reason to lie on wowhead, this isn't going to erase my suspension or anything, I was just trying to get advice if someone has been through a situation like this before..
Ignore the troll.
The best advice I can give is to call them.
You'll get more done in 5 mins talking to a person than you would in a week of back and forth GM messages. (Ironically they'll ban a player for using a bot or shortcuts yet many of their GM messages seem to be automated.)
You have the right to know what you are accused of, and demand specifics so you can better understand what it was about your play style that triggered the action.
If you don't get answers demand to speak to a supervisor. Be calm but firm and don't resort to cussing.
They have the means and methods to get to the bottom of any problem, sadly for you and others like you it seems sometimes they ban a player rather than waste time and resources to actually determine guilt.
Good luck.
Edit:-
Wowhead also has a Blizzard rep called Araxom, I don't know if he/she monitors this forum but they do frequently answer in the Help section.
Perhaps you could message a mod here and ask for this issue to be directed to Araxom?
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I didn't get caught cheating. I got unfairly accused of cheating. I have no reason to lie on wowhead, this isn't going to erase my suspension or anything, I was just trying to get advice if someone has been through a situation like this before..
Ignore the troll.
The best advice I can give is to call them.
You'll get more done in 5 mins talking to a person than you would in a week of back and forth GM messages. (Ironically they'll ban a player for using a bot or shortcuts yet many of their GM messages seem to be automated.)
You have the right to know what you are accused of, and demand specifics so you can better understand what it was about your play style that triggered the action.
If you don't get answers demand to speak to a supervisor. Be calm but firm and don't resort to cussing.
They have the means and methods to get to the bottom of any problem, sadly for you and others like you it seems sometimes they ban a player rather than waste time and resources to actually determine guilt.
Good luck.
Edit:-
Wowhead also has a Blizzard rep called Araxom, I don't know if he/she monitors this forum but they do frequently answer in the Help section.
Perhaps you could message a mod here and ask for this issue to be directed to Araxom?
I think they actually refuse to disclose how it was that the person was caught violating the rules in situations with botting/glitching/third party software, because they don't want to let people who bot know how their programs are tracked, and how to get around that tracking. That's why every reply is just that you violated the EULA/TOS. Since the TOS says that they can ban your account for any reason at any time, there's no recourse for you to make them tell you why, either.
@OP
Since they specified that it was some kind of movement or speed hack, the most likely culprit is that there was some way that you were bypassing an obstacle or something that was not working as intended. I know that when I ran for the Glory of the Pandaria Hero, someone in my group wanted to use a method I won't get into here to bypass a door that wasn't open, and cheat a timer. I refused because I knew that would be something we could have our accounts suspended for. There are similar things that people have gotten suspended or banned for where they used a combination of game mechanics in an unintended way to bypass a barrier or obstacle, to exploit a programming glitch, etc. While you might not have put in a program to do that, it may look the same if the result is you are bypassing things designed not to be bypassed.
Post by
MikadoGG
I report anyone who uses the glitch/exploit in Shrine to get under the statue. Blizzard is suspending/banning people for this.
If you did that and were reported, that may be why you got the ban. Also, do you mind if I have some of your gold?
Cannot say I've ever heard/seen that since I spend very little time in capital cities, mostly out in the world when I'm online, doing pet battles, farming, running stuff with my husband.
@ElhonnaDS, JKPman: thanks for the advice, I did try calling before, but the guy was adamant that he didn't know any details and that he would expedite it to the game masters, after this call my ban was lifted and the 72 hour suspension was served in its place. I have bypassed things that weren't designed to be bypassed before, but this was back in Vanilla (like dying at Darkwhisper Gorge end door to get into Hyjal that was still under construction). I doubt they'd be banning me for something that took place ages ago. Recently, I ran a bunch of gold challenges with a carry group, but I cannot say I saw them do anything out of ordinary that you wouldn't do in any pug heroic except invisibility potions.
My biggest suspicion atm is that they really didn't bother to spend resources to look at what had happened and simply made a judgement. Not only that I also highly suspect this had nothing to do with speed hacking or anything like that, and more to do with mining. I had done more than my usual amount of mining in the last month trying to stock up for 5.4 for professional cooldowns (since I have alchemy, engineering, BS cooldowns that all require ghost iron), and might have been reported by some competition. So instead of actually investigating, they simply assumed I must be botting when they saw thousands of bars in my mail (I don't ever sell my raw mats). Their GMs seem to just send out copy-paste emails about hacking/botting and that's the end of the story.
I know I have no way of proving anything to them at this point, in fact, I'm afraid to even keep pressing the issue before someone just gets annoyed and seriously reinstates the ban because they might happen to be in a bad mood. I have completely dropped the issue after I received the 72 hour suspension and will not bother with it again.
Like I said, at this point I'm just disappointed I put so much faith in them as a company and thought that this kind of thing could never happen to an honest person. So if you're like me, and like mining a LOT, be careful. I actually ran across several people's stories on the official forums who received the same exact treatment and were also avid miners (now now, I know, they could be lying botters, but I definitely recognized my own situation in their stories). At this point, I'm going to get on whenever the suspension runs out and start giving away my gold and all my TCG/cageable battle pets to people I know before my account gets permanently closed again over something I don't even know about.
The silver lining is, this whole thing made me realize it is really time to quit. Having lost all my progress on my account just like that without any wrongdoing, made me realize (well, I knew this all the time but this made it sink in all the more) that there are really better ways to spend free time instead of accumulating pixels in a game that can be taken away at the drop of a hat.
Post by
Azrile
Don´t gather that much.
Here is my problem with your story, and probably why Blizzard has trackers for this stuff. Gathering is HUGELY inefficient as a way of gaining gold. If I gave everyone 3 days to earn gold, including AH time, mail retreival and all that stuff, and actually forced them to be at their computer.. there are dozens of ways to earn gold faster than herbing or mining. The only way gathering can break into the top 10 is if you do it while you are sleeping.
If you are actually playing your character, then just stop gathering and do something more intelligent to earn gold. Not only do you look like a bot while you are gathering, but you also have to compete with the real bots when you try to sell your stuff. Of course you can make gold herbing and mining, it is pure profit.. but it is inefficient. Heck, park a toon on thunder island and kill the slimes that drop Fithling.. you will make 10x the amount of gold per hour...or do direhorn runts and spectral porcupines.
Post by
Jkpman
I actually watched a documentary on video games last night and a section of it was on gold farming.
In response to Azrille's post.
Bots are inefficient yes, but automated, even though they may be monitored by the gold farmers, they are generally let loose to do their stuff and set back on track if they get killed, stuck etc.
Gold farmers themselves are doing the type of thing you mentioned because they know there is far more gold to be gained in drops.
A farmer said "I just keep killing these hoping the next one drops the jackpot" referring to his 10 hr a day 6 day a week work schedule.
I guess what I'm trying to say is farming is no different from actions many of us in the game take seeking out that rare pet, schematic or whatever, they use bots as supplemental income and that is what Blizzard have the issue with. (Incidentally the farmers then sell their gold to another company, So they are usually not actually the ones who sell gold.)
Just to clarify, I am not defending these actions, I'm just trying to give people who don't know how it works a better understanding.
I guess based on that, you have more chance of being banned by killing mobs for a couple of hours and then gathering for 2 more hours than you do just sat in Stormwind waiting for raid finder and trolling trade. GG Blizz.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
@OP- I'd check in with the people who carried you, and see if they got a ban too. It's quite likely that they did something on one of those carry runs that got you banned. Since the GM specified it was a movement hack, I don't think your farming practices come into play here. It may be that someone in your run glitched out mobs using an exploit, bypassed a wall or something to speed up a pull, etc., and you didn't notice. And if they looked into it and saw that while you benefited from the exploit, you didn't actually do it yourself, it would make sense that they switched from a ban to a suspension. Having run some challenge modes myself, I can't imagine how you could carry someone and still get gold time. It may be that the tricks they used to do that weren't all above board.
I don't think that this is a case of Blizzard not looking into it. Per their messages, they DID take the time to review the case and still found you to have been partially guilty. Generally, if one person in a group uses a hack to get an achieve or clear something for them, everyone suffers a penalty if they reaped the reward. The fault may not lie in Blizzard, but in the people who carried you.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##ElhonnaDS##DELIM##
Post by
MikadoGG
@OP- I'd check in with the people who carried you, and see if they got a ban too. It's quite likely that they did something on one of those carry runs that got you banned. Since the GM specified it was a movement hack, I don't think your farming practices come into play here. It may be that someone in your run glitched out mobs using an exploit, bypassed a wall or something to speed up a pull, etc., and you didn't notice. And if they looked into it and saw that while you benefited from the exploit, you didn't actually do it yourself, it would make sense that they switched from a ban to a suspension. Having run some challenge modes myself, I can't imagine how you could carry someone and still get gold time. It may be that the tricks they used to do that weren't all above board.
I don't think that this is a case of Blizzard not looking into it. Per their messages, they DID take the time to review the case and still found you to have been partially guilty. Generally, if one person in a group uses a hack to get an achieve or clear something for them, everyone suffers a penalty if they reaped the reward. The fault may not lie in Blizzard, but in the people who carried you.
I didn't have a chance to check in with them, but they have been carrying people for many months this way and they are from the top guild on my server. But no, I haven't been online at all and haven't asked my husband to log onto his account to ask. They didn't exactly completely carry me, I still ran with them and dpsed, and there were still several dungeons where we barely beat the clock (might also have been cause they were on alts they don't raid on). I guess it is possible that I didn't notice some glitch they did, but I would've had to do it too because I was right there with them, not just chilling at the entrance.
Regardless, I am kind of tired of the guessing game with this suspension/ban. I guess i'll cut back severely on my activities in game, give away my stuff just in case and see what happens.
And @Azrile, I know it's hard to believe but some people actually enjoy farming. It's a calming brainless acitivity I do while listening to youtube videos, audiobooks or just talking with my husband about stuff. I guess not too many people are fond of farming, but I am and have been since I started playing (used to gather much more hardcorely in vanilla and wrath than I do now). It's actually one of the things I enjoy most in WoW outside of playing alts, collecting and leveling pet battles. I don't sell any of my ore/herbs, I use them to make stuff for my own alts, for my husband and guildies. So this isn't the way I make gold. For my $15 a month this is something I enjoy doing, even if most people cannot relate.
Post by
gnomerdon
If you are actually playing your character, then just stop gathering and do something more intelligent to earn gold.
i dont like that derailing tone. he has the right to do what he likes and feel good about it. it's good honest gatherers like him that keeps the market down.
along with bots owned by blizzard to keep the market down for the people.
my brother, loves herbing and mining on his free time. he just roams around gathering and talking to me. gathering becomes addicting and fun for those who enjoy it.
his standard in playing WoW is gathering mats and making gold. He doesn't care about end content.
Post by
1135830
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Azrile
I think I was misunderstood. I am not saying some people don´t enjoy farming resources, and I am not saying it is wrong to do. I am just saying if you do it for long amounts of time, it is going to raise red flags with Blizzard. if you farm ore for 8 hours, then drop 500 stacks of ore on the AH, you are going to be reported by someone who is also trying to sell ore... and if not reported by someone, then Blizz probably has something to flag it automatically.
Bots are incredibly stupid..there aren´t many things they can do, but farming herbs is one of them. My opinion is that you should find something else relaxing to do in the game that won´t confuse yourself with a bot.
Post by
gnomerdon
for some people, the only relaxing thing to do in game is farming mats.
if someone real farms so much to the point blizzard thinks they are a bot, then that's blizzard's fault. they are bad and should feel bad.
blizzard really isn't trying hard enough to find out which ones are the fake or real ones. they just ban all the ones that seems to be doing consistent. and for a farmer to worry if he should find something else to do so he won't get banned, puts even more stress on the user, probably discouraging him/her to even play the game anymore.
=(
i hate farming mats, and i'll never do it. but through people i know who love farming, it really hurts their gameplay and peace of mind. in the back of their minds, they will feel that guilty conscious that they will get banned because they think they have farmed too much.
this is the same frustration I have with heroic dailies back then. farmed for 6 months for an item, everyday for a stupid epic helm, and it never dropped for me. i would have loved to have farmed that zone 5-6 times a day. and when it did show up, lowbies with green and blue gear would need and win it over me. and when i hosted and created premades 70% of the time with the intent that I will be the only one who will use it, it never shows up. =(
the main reason i quit WoW was because of the headless horseman helm. Farmed for that for 14 days, in 2010, 2011, and 2012, and it never showed up. I farmed 28 straight days for it, and no luck. That's why I automatically quit, while clothe / leather / mail classes were getting the helm left and right and threw it away in front of my eyes. T___T
Post by
MikadoGG
Hi MikadoGG my wow account has been banned for the same reason but I can't get my account back I was accused of cheating as well. I farmed a lot of herbs and ores as well using my own time not cheating through some bot. At first they gave me a full ban then changed to 72 hour suspension after I sent a ticket in. I thought this was some mistake from blizzard so when I got access to my account again I started to farm. Not long after this they gave me a full ban. I clicked on a fake email and got a keylogger on my pc. I think they are confusing this for cheating software.
Hello there, I'm sorry for your trouble. I've run quite a few scans on my pc in the last few days, haven't found anything toxic and I'm very careful what I click on and run noscript when I browse the Internet. I've had my current computer for 6 years and never had a virus before. But I still felt like double checking just to exclude that possibility. I have read more people that also got suspensions/bans after a lot of farming, so it definitely seems like a possibility that farming raises the red flags and quite possibly they don't always actually check if it's a player versus a bot situation.
I also deleted my entire addon folder and redownloaded only a few select ones from curse (DBM etc). If that doesn't help then so be it, I don't know what else I could do on top of everything to protect myself from getting in trouble. Also, I know my ban was lifted Tuesday night but I haven't even tried logging on yet because I honestly have some anxiety in even trying to play now.
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